“But luckily,” she added, “they were let off with jankers, or put on fatigue, and I think they had to apologize. My point is … it’s a very serious play.”
And at any rate, when here in Aldershot the time arrived, no one appeared to have misunderstood; she had clearly performed her job well.
It seemed a quietly anticipatory audience. After the curtain went up, there was a round of clapping in appreciation of the set—which presented a smart dressmaking establishment: not just its showroom but its office and its staff canteen. All this was especially ambitious, I thought, considering how regularly it must have needed to be adapted to different-sized venues. (And to have had this pointed out in advance greatly increased my admiration: the Wren on the train had been knowledgeable about ENSA, having a sister touring in some production in the Middle East.)
Yet for roughly the next forty minutes—until almost the end of the first act—I felt perplexed by the play itself. Not by its content; more by its supposed appeal to an audience composed mainly of troops. Admittedly there were several glimpses of young women in their underclothes. But apart from that? Surely members of the armed services didn’t by and large take any great interest in the intricacies of women’s fashion? It seemed to me that these opening scenes were filled chiefly with comings and goings, which—despite their undoubted air of busyness—didn’t add up to very much. Along with the venting of petty grievances and the pointing out of rivalries amongst the staff there appeared to be a good deal of unnecessary chatter.
Just before the first-act curtain, however, the stock-keeper stole a dress; and at last you felt the drama might be getting under way.
During the interval many people stayed in their seats (some had trays of tea and biscuits brought to them) but at least half the audience headed for the bar. I did so myself.
And at the bar—to my surprise—I deduced from several animated conversations that the play was being enjoyed. Yet most of what I overheard had little to do with its intrinsic dramatic appeal: female voices were raised in appreciation of the costumes and the hats; male voices—equally expectedly—in appreciation of the women who were modelling them.
All the same, when in the second act several more dresses went missing, the acceleration of interest was maintained. And, by the third, the play had turned into an eloquent diatribe against social injustice, and it had grown to be affecting.
The stock-keeper was the person you mainly cared about. The thief. And I knew I didn’t feel this way only because the role was being played by Sybella … Sybella Standish, so the programme had informed me. Naturally I’d felt impatient for her to come on, and naturally I had been conscious of her, all through that first act, not as Freda the stock-keeper but as Sybella the fiancée of Bill Martin. But long before the final curtain I had almost forgotten the true purpose of my being there and had become thoroughly caught up in her actual performance and with the character she was portraying … If it hadn’t been for the cast list I wasn’t sure I should have recognized the woman giving the performance. She was pale, downtrodden and defeated. Gone was all the vivacity of that snapshot.
Of course, such vivacity wouldn’t be present in real life, either—not for the time being.
But at first even her voice had come as a shock—despite my rapidly perceiving how stupid this was. What had I expected? A replica of her mother speaking down the telephone from the Manor House?
After that initial jolt, however, I felt very much impressed: not only was her accent flawlessly consistent; it conveyed—without any trace of comic condescension—all those grinding years of poverty and hopelessness that had finally reduced her to this moment of sobbing self-abasement in front of her employer.
“Yes, all right, I stole them because I thought you were getting everything and me nothing. I thought I had a right to them—a right to have pretty things to wear so I could look decent on my holiday and perhaps get off with someone that had money enough to give me a good time.”
That was the climax to the play. When the curtain came down a few minutes later, the audience appeared dazed. As at the end of any compelling drama (and this one contained in its last line the just-learned revelation of a loved one’s death) the silence that descended on the theatre was disconcerting. You thought that nobody was going to clap.
Yet, bit by bit, the clapping did break out.
And eventually became tumultuous.
By this time, though, the curtain had risen again and the whole cast stood in a row, smiling its acknowledgment. Mrs Pembroke, the kindly proprietress, was positioned in the centre, with her daughter Clare to her left and Freda to her right. In fact, because of the even number in the line-up, you could certainly attest Freda stood as fully in the centre as her boss. But it was an ensemble piece—there were no ‘stars’—the young woman at either end (each of whom had played a junior) seemed to receive as much recognition as those who had been given the more demanding roles.
The curtain came down and went up a further three or four times. On the last occasion there were wolf whistles mixed in with the applause—and at least one ebullient invitation. “Want to get off with me tonight, darlin’? Here’s someone that can give you a good time all right!”
The soldier’s wording suggested precisely whom he had in mind but it was Mrs Pembroke, probably in her late fifties, who then stepped forward.
“Yes, I’d love to!” she said. “Where shall we meet?”
Where upon, there was a good deal of laughter and a fresh wave of applause. I noticed that Sybella herself was laughing—a very different person from the one she’d just been playing. More the woman in the photograph again.
And then it suddenly occurred to me.
Oh, my God! Supposing that their secret engagement had been kept secret even from the War Office? Supposing the War Office hadn’t been aware of her existence?
Supposing she doesn’t know?
It was too awful to consider. Wouldn’t anybody have informed her? Mr Martin, in spite of his depression? Or, at the very least, Mr Gwatkin?
Yes, they must have, I decided. Must have! I felt a great surge of relief. Even if they hadn’t realized the news itself still needed to be broken, a message of sympathy would surely have been sent.
Oh, sweet heaven. Only imagine—if Sybella hadn’t known that anything had happened! Had continued to think of him as being alive and well!
The lights went up.
A scratchy record of the National Anthem was then played.
The first few bars produced instant calm and brought the audience to its feet. The sixteen members of the cast now led the singing. But as the last notes died away there was again a moment of deep silence. It seemed that people were actually thinking about the meaning of the Anthem and didn’t like to resume chatting too soon afterwards. Or even to start putting on their coats.
The curtain descended for the final time.
Outside the theatre I went and stood on the opposite pavement. As the crowd moved off, my view of the stage door became less restricted.
I was feeling nervous again. I’d decided that I wasn’t going to mention to Sybella (or to Miss Standish, as she’d now perforce become) either of my recent telephone conversations—on the grounds that, even if she had spoken to her mother in the interim or to her flatmate, there still wouldn’t, inevitably, be anything to connect me with that unknown caller. I should have to change the name, of course.
My wait on the pavement was a short one.
A dark blue charabanc drew up close to the stage door. This was in Birchett Road, not Gordon—the theatre stood on a corner. The driver didn’t get down. He lengthily sounded his horn. Then he rolled a cigarette and leaned back in satisfaction, from time to time exhaling the smoke through his partly lowered window.
And it wasn’t long before the stage door sprang open and all the ENSA women emerged—well, I didn’t do any counting but it seemed it must be all of them; Sybella was certainly amongst them, carrying the flowers presented to her fo
llowing the performance. There was laughter as the women climbed onto the coach.
Through the windows I could make out nothing except for a jumble of moving shadows but when everybody was aboard I distinctly heard the driver say:
“One of you girls must have a suitor! That bloke was standing over there even before I ruddy well arrived. Lucky thing you’ve got yours truly to protect you!”
“And to deliver us up to the soldiers!” cried out one of his charges, seconds before somebody else called, “Well, then, why not let him on, for Gawd’s sake?”
Both sallies were greeted with guffaws.
I watched as the coach drove into the darkness and rounded a further corner. The streets became still again.
Slowly I too moved off into the night; turned back towards the quiet guesthouse where I had booked myself a room.
15
The following day I should have gone to church; but church for the present seemed a luxury. Instead, at roughly half past nine, I arrived outside the barracks. I gave the guard at the gatehouse an envelope bearing Sybella’s name and did my best, without causing him irritation, to stress its urgency. He only nodded and looked poker-faced.
Then I retreated to the edges of a park I had passed on the way. I had a book with me: a detective story I had bought in Mold and had read two-thirds of whilst travelling comfortably to London. I now sat on the bench closest to the park entrance and wondered how long it might be before Sybella received my letter.
Well, actually it wasn’t a letter. The envelope had held merely a postcard.
I wondered if she were awake yet and whether things appeared more bearable when she first awoke—or whether it was like receiving the news afresh every time that memory resurfaced?
A postcard had struck me as being preferable, since this meant I could withhold my address. In the first place the B and B wasn’t that impressive but, more important, I didn’t want her making do with just a phone call in return, or a quick line dropped through the letterbox, suggesting our meeting at some future date. I needed to see her now. Today. Already my allotted week was half over.
After much thought I had written:
“Dear Miss Standish,
“I saw Nine Till Six last night and thought your performance incredible. I represent the London office of an American film company and currently we’re looking for an unknown face for a new movie. I was wondering if maybe we could meet for lunch today? I shall be in The Tap and Tankard from opening time until one-thirty but in case that’s not convenient I shall also be at Daphne’s—likewise in the High Street and just opposite the pub—from half-past-ten.
“I very much hope to see you, then, at one or other of these places.
“Yours sincerely,
“Oliver Redgrave.”
I regretted having to be so corny—and still more regretted having to fill her with such extravagant expectations. But I couldn’t think of any other way. And, after all, this was war, wasn’t it? Maybe huge decisions would depend on the strength of the bribe I offered.
And, indeed, I had tried my hardest to devise some alternative. But what? I could hardly have hoped to pass myself off as a friend of Bill Martin’s—not to Sybella—not knowing so pitifully little about him. I’d have been asked questions; would naturally have been expected to reminisce. Reminisce about schooldays or something. The pitfalls along this route were innumerable.
Anyway, of course, it was she who needed to reminisce. That was the whole point of it.
Even as it was, I felt far from confident that my cheap little dodge would succeed. (Whether it deserved to succeed was a different thing altogether.) Her friends would say, “Oh, Syb, just listen to us, please. Use your common sense. This is the oldest trick in the book. The man could be a rapist—killer—anything!”
“No,” she might say, “he’s arranged to meet me in a very public place. There can’t be any danger.”
Her friends would not be reassured.
“Oh, doubtless he’ll appear quite normal at first. Then he’ll draw you off to some dark place and pull out his penis or his bloodstained carving knife. Or both. Well, at least if you do go you’d better take a chaperone.”
Yet I didn’t believe that she would even tell her friends. My belief wasn’t rational. Was based simply upon instinct.
Perhaps I was banking on her curiosity—that, coupled with her ambition and possibly a sense of adventure. If I pass this up, shall I always think my future, my whole life, might have been different? Might have been better?
Curiosity? Ambition? A sense of adventure?
Oh, for Pete’s sake!
Had I forgotten? Here was a woman in mourning. Did I truly expect her, already, to be thinking about new beginnings?
Only connect, E.M. Forster had insisted. Only connect.
Well, at any rate, she didn’t come.
Not to Daphne’s.
But in fact I had scarcely thought she would. Even if my card had been delivered without delay—and at breakneck speed—I still hadn’t given her much time.
Nevertheless, when I eventually moved across to the pub, I felt anxious. I went into the lounge bar, bought a pint of ale and took it over to a small polished table that had a chair facing the door. If she didn’t turn up this time, what lure could I possibly cast out on a second occasion; and why should I fare any better with that one? It would be easy enough to discover where the troupe had gone; easy enough to pursue it and then find my way backstage during one of the two intervals. But inevitably she’d be sharing a crowded dressing room and that—obviously—would render her difficult to get at. I hadn’t realized she was going to be so thickly … and so constantly … surrounded.
I tipped back in my chair, hoping to feel more relaxed. But I stiffened, automatically, every time the door opened.
A couple … composed of a RAF officer and a Wren…
Three elderly women, all wearing civvies…
An old man, carrying his Jack Russell…
A group of five (sixteen-, seventeen-year-olds, you might have said, but each of them in uniform), its arrival giving rise to a collective cry of welcome from beside the bar.
Door-swing after door-swing … Two-way traffic, of course, but more customers coming in than going out.
At twelve forty-two I glanced at my watch for possibly the fifteenth time. I believed I had never known any period of waiting to pass so slowly; had probably forgotten what it felt like to be a child impatient for Christmas.
I suddenly remembered the opera house in Berlin: how I had once stood outside it in the cold for more than ninety minutes. Frieda had been a girl I’d met at a party (Frieda—huh!), an attractive and apparently soft-hearted girl whom I had liked a lot. Even without that pair of tickets in my pocket—that pair of ruinously expensive tickets—my feelings of disillusion and hurt would still have been pretty much the same.
By one o’clock I had more or less persuaded myself that this second Freda wasn’t going to show up either. (Although, really, there was no legitimate comparison.) Another thirty minutes remained until the expiration of my deadline—yes, I realized that—but equally it was now about three and a half hours since I had delivered the envelope. In three and a half hours she could have crossed between the camp and the High Street ten or twelve times. If she had truly meant to come, she could have been with me at least two hours earlier. Easily.
An entirely forlorn hope, therefore. I wasn’t so surprised. I had been patently over-optimistic.
Perhaps I should have said on my postcard: “I need to speak to you about your dead fiancé.”
Confronted the issue head-on. Seen where that might lead me.
Into jail, most like.
She came at seventeen minutes past one.
16
She was wearing an elegant green dress, woollen, with narrow lapels and short sleeves; it had self-coloured buttons down the bodice and a self-coloured belt emphasizing the trimness of her waist. On her head she wore a light brown pillbox, the
same shade as her gloves and shoes and handbag: a shade that harmonized not only with her hazel eyes and bobbed hair, but even with her legs, which were bare and carefully made up. The lipstick whose absence I had mourned from the fifth row of the stalls, along with the impression of any colour in her face, was today discreetly present. She looked good. Extremely good.
And scarcely was she through the door than I was on my feet and walking towards her.
“Mr Redgrave?”
“I’d almost given you up,” I said.
And since this was true I now felt considerably more at my ease. If she’d arrived ten minutes earlier, I shouldn’t have been able to greet her with at all the same composure. I was reminded of my telephone call to Lucy—and of Reggie’s most opportune assistance.
“But why?” she asked. “Oh, I’m not late, am I? Didn’t you say you’d be here until half-past?”
“Yes, I did. Definitely.” I found it hard not to stare. She was prettier than her picture.
Then, as we shook hands, she added: “And I only received your note about an hour ago—shamefully, whilst I was still in bed! On Sunday mornings, you see, we’re inclined to pamper ourselves.”
At the time, I didn’t question this, but afterwards…? Only an hour in which to get ready, then walk the near-mile between the barracks and the pub? I doubted it. Her pencilled stocking seams appeared too straight; her nails too newly polished; her make-up too perfectly applied. And also—despite my first impression of her appearance—I now thought she seemed no more rested than she had looked the night before, while playing Freda.
Yet should it come as a surprise that she wasn’t managing to sleep?
“What will you have to drink, Miss Standish?”
“A dry sherry, please … if they have one.”
They had. She sat across the table from me and as she twined her fingers round her glass and made over-lively conversation she reminded me of Mr Martin—or, rather, of Mr Gwatkin telling me of Mr Martin … the connection was probably the sherry. She had taken off her gloves, and it was at this point I could have felt tempted to challenge her on her duplicity: on her defamation of the camp’s delivery service. I decided against it, though. I also banished the reminder of Mr Gwatkin. She helped me there—simply by talking.
Letters for a Spy Page 9