The Wardrobe Mistress

by Patrick Mcgrath

  – You’re not wearing your suit.

  – I keep it for best.

  She turned and resumed the ascent. Then she stopped again.

  – This isn’t best?

  – Oh, this is very best, he said.

  – I’m not royalty, you know, Frank.

  He was staring at her intently although she didn’t see him, for she was again climbing the stairs.

  – I think you are, Mrs Grice.

  – Am what? – with her back to him still.

  – Royalty.

  She smiled grimly but he didn’t see it. She was rarely flippant with him. When it happened his heart sang. He regarded it as brazen flirtation, any trace of humour he discovered in this composed and haughty and immensely desirable woman. It was due in some part to what had happened during the fitting of the blue suit prior to the alterations. He was not used to being the object of the close physical attention of a woman like this, by which, we suppose, he meant a beautiful woman who so strongly impressed and aroused him. So yes, she acquired more glamour in his eyes each time he saw her. He was, to be plain, falling in love.

  – Come in here please, she said.

  She led him into Gricey’s room. It was cold. The morning, although bright, was chill. It had snowed again. Vera’s clothing was strewn across the bed and the chair, her stockings, her underwear, her chemise de nuit, her slightly tattered peignoir. Fragrant odour of Fleur d’Oranger in the cold morning air. Joan gave out a brief exasperated sigh and moved quickly to the bed, and swept the offending lingerie under a tumbled blanket. In her pocket was the key to the wardrobe. Eyes averted, she unlocked it. She had long since tidied and reorganised the contents, and on the rail three suits hung in wintry sunlight, the rest pushed out of sight.

  – You are to choose one, Mr Stone.

  With what cool formality she addressed him today. Oh, but her heart was breaking. He approached the suits and sorted through them quickly. His choice was soon made.

  – I like this one, Mrs Grice.

  It was a light Donegal tweed in flecked mustard, single-breasted and with a waistcoat with narrow lapels.

  – It was one of his favourites. It’s really a winter suit but he used to wear it year round.

  How difficult now to speak of him. But it had to be done.

  – Did he? Year round?

  – Please try it on.

  She left the room then stood with her back against the door, her arms at her sides. She took a few deep breaths. Having gone through this once already she was anticipating the shock of seeing her husband again, and this time with dread. She wasn’t disappointed. When he appeared she was once again overwhelmed. Tears came. She stepped forward and pressed her forehead to his shoulder, but now it was Frank, him alone. He put his hands on the flatness of her back, beneath the shoulders, and again she was wearing cashmere. She rubbed her cheek against the rough nap of the tweed and let it scratch her skin as once it used to. Oh what was she doing? How could this be happening. She stepped back and they solemnly regarded each other.

  – Do you like it?

  – Yes, I do, he said. Do you?

  The sensation of her body pressed close and warm against his own had almost undone him.

  – Come into the sewing room, Mr Stone.

  As before, as she pulled and pinned and chalked the fabric, physical intimacy occurred, in the sense that she stood very close to him. His hands had already been on her back for a few seconds, and he felt it would happen again but he wanted her to give him a sign. It came when she’d finished with the shoulders and once more rubbed her cheek on the slightly hairy texture of the tweed. So again he put his arms around her, more confidently this time, with his fingers spread across her lower back, and she shifted her position and lifted her arms up around his neck, Frank Stone’s neck, still with her face pressed against his shoulder where she could detect a distant whisper of Gricey’s scent. Oddly it didn’t disgust her. Then with a groan Frank Stone all at once buried his face in her hair and clutched her very tight to himself.

  After a few seconds she lifted her head and pulled back so as to look into his eyes, and she was frowning now. She was almost as tall as he was. The world stood still.

  – It is you, she whispered.

  – It is.

  But the kiss that should have occurred then did not. With her eyes averted she told him to go and change so she could make the alterations. It was clear to both of them that a day would come, and soon, when they would kiss each other, and with that knowledge a certain tension eased, as another came to life in its place.

  Later, after he’d gone, she tried to work in her sewing room but it was no good. She had to lie down. With her face in her pillow she wept for several minutes. Then she heard someone enter the bedroom. She sat up at once, pulling down and flattening her skirt.

  – Oh Mum.

  Joan rarely allowed Vera to see her grief. But for a few minutes that day in February she allowed herself to be comforted by her daughter, for this now was no ordinary grief, this was grief compounded. The two of them lay on the bed staring at the ceiling. Vera reached for her mother’s hand. They were silent for a while, no sound from the street outside. Vera spoke.

  – That man’s covering Harry now.

  – What man, love?

  She was thinking about the smells in Gricey’s wardrobe.

  – Dan Francis. The one who took over from Daddy.

  Joan sat up on her elbow.

  – Why do you mention him now?

  – He mentioned you.

  Joan was staring at Vera, whose eyes were closed. All at once they opened wide.

  – You told him his Malvolio was as good as Daddy’s.

  – He said that?

  Joan lay back down and again stared at the ceiling. It seemed most unlikely. Now it was Vera who was up on an elbow.

  – Did you?

  – Did I what?

  She wouldn’t talk to Vera about Frank. She wouldn’t do it. Vera rolled over like a big warm seal.

  – Tell him that.

  – Oh I don’t know, dear. It was just after your father died, I could have said anything.

  – I think he’s soft on you.

  Joan said nothing.

  – Don’t you think that’s funny? said Vera.

  She was sitting up now and rolling a cigarette.

  – Why is it funny? Funny how?

  She was getting off the bed. Vera didn’t understand why her mother was suddenly irritated. There’d been intimacy and shared tears a moment before.

  – It isn’t funny, said Vera, of course it isn’t, I only meant that Daddy’s cover would be like that.

  – Like what?

  Joan was sitting at her dressing table by this time, staring at her face in the mirror, and at Vera behind her, who was sitting on the bed straightening the seam of her stocking with a roll-up between her lips.

  – It doesn’t matter, said Vera.

  She was sulky now. Joan was rubbing cream into her face.

  – Are you going out? said Vera. What is it? Why have you gone all funny, is it because I mentioned that actor?

  Silence from Joan.

  – Mummy!

  – Oh please don’t talk about him! Can I just ask you not to do that?

  Joan swivelled around on her stool. Her cheeks and forehead gleamed with white face cream. Vera thought it must be Gricey’s memory that accounted for it, but it lodged in her memory all the same, and the next day, when she saw Frank Stone – or Dan Francis, as she still thought of him – in the theatre, she remembered her mother’s strange mood and the two were now associated in her mind, this man and that mood. And he was wearing another of her father’s suits. Not the double-breasted blue one but the light mustard tweed she’d always liked. Vera decided that it made her feel really rather peculiar to see her father’s clothes being worn by another man.

  Joan heard Frank’s news and told him how pleased she was that he was working again, and so soon after Twelf
th Night had come down. They were in a busy Lyons Corner House off Piccadilly Circus. He’d come from rehearsal and she was on her lunch hour.

  – I’m cast as First Madman, he said.

  He gazed at her, looking for a flicker of amusement, at least. Her hands were on the table, folded together, white and slender beside her teacup. He noticed she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring. An eyebrow lifted, her lips parted slightly. He covered her hand with his own for a second or two. A public gesture of affection like this was by no means usual, for them, in fact it had never occurred before, not in public, but she allowed it, although as she gazed at him a small frown was picked out against the almost translucent skin of her forehead. Then she opened her handbag. She extracted a powder compact and briefly examined her face in the mirror. He’d never seen her do this. They’d only ever met at night, in pubs, and three times in her flat. She closed the compact with a light snap.

  She smiled at him briefly without showing her teeth.

  – I will also play an executioner. I’m going to learn Antonio just in case.

  – Mr Stone, I know this. Vera told me. Now when is it you have to be back at the theatre?

  He told her.

  – Then you should go.

  He left soon after. He was disappointed that she did not share his pleasure. She wouldn’t allow him to pay for the tea, or for his slightly stale split scone and jam. She watched him thread his way through the people crowding into the teahouse, this tall, shuffling young man in a tweed suit, hatless, frowning, and over his arm his overcoat, which really was a disgrace. He must have one of Gricey’s—

  She felt weary of the whole thing. He must be kept in check. To touch her hand had thrilled him, she was aware of it, but that was enough. For now. And there was of course this further complication, that he was in the same company as Vera. Only a Madman, but he’d realised it might trouble her.

  – Shall I tell them I don’t want it? he’d said.

  She was touched that he would offer.

  – Did you accept it?

  – I did accept it. But only two days ago.

  – Then of course you must do it.

  But after he’d left it was the problem of the overcoat that concerned her. She didn’t want to think about the other thing, about Gricey. The winter showed no sign of letting up. There was more snow on the way. And he badly needed shoes too.

  Joan found that when she was with Frank Stone she saw herself again reflected in a man’s eyes, as for so many years she’d been reflected in Gricey’s eyes. As though it were the habit of this remote woman to be loved. And for love Joan would have waited as long as she had to. Her good fortune, or ill, as it may be, she thought, was to find love so very soon after losing it, and losing it so abruptly, with such shocking finality. If there was reserve in her relations with Frank Stone, it had nothing to do with propriety. For was he not Gricey’s vessel?

  No he was not. She was no longer capable of sustaining his memory in one chamber of her heart and entertaining this stranger in another, and regarding them as one and the same. Difficult, perhaps, for some of us to grasp that a grieving woman could discover in one man the living spirit of another, and yet Joan had done so. But now this sense of a mutual identity was fast disappearing. Or put more plainly, a split in the fabric had appeared, a rent. She’d thought Gricey was going to come through, Frank Stone being the vessel. But it was Frank who was coming through, and Gricey, well Gricey was fast receding—

  And as for Frank, here was a man bewitched by an older woman, herself, in whose cool demeanour and refined physical allure he had discovered beauty, but who had no way of knowing if she felt as frustrated or as impatient as he did, and if she did, whether loyalty or discretion or something else, he didn’t know what, prevented her from telling him so. It would have eased his mind had she been able to. Had she put her hand on his and whispered: Yes, my dearest heart, I know, and it’s as difficult for me as it is for you. Or words to that effect.

  But like so much else it went unspoken. Pacing around late at night, or running his lines, or standing before his mirror, he’d feel the rising hunger, the fierce greedy need of her, and have to hold still while the emotion ran through him like a flood of water sluicing down a drain.

  12

  IT WAS DELPHIE who’d got us all together in the pub that time, and Delphie who Joan went to talk to when she couldn’t keep it to herself any longer. Poor Delphie, she’d been much in demand in the London theatre until her looks went. Parts for middle-aged actresses being always scarce, she was out of work for long periods. Joan often used to visit her in her little flat off the Fulham Road. She still dressed in some style, our Delph, for she had an eye for a bargain and a feel for fabric, and she and Joan always had much to say to each other on the subject.

  – Now my father, said Delphie, who’d become a florid woman in age, he was a man of the cloth. Everything black except for the collar, and he wore it back to front. You ask me, it was his trousers should have gone on back to front, him a vicar and all.

  The two women wheezed over their cigarettes. It was an old joke but they still liked it. God knows the rest of us had heard it often enough.

  – He thought I was a tart. You go on the stage you must be a tart.

  Joan sat with her cup of tea.

  – Delph, you ever feel your underwear brought you luck?

  – Bad luck, oh yes.

  Delphie was settled in the little armchair in her parlour. Like every room in London that year it was freezing despite the electric fire and the insulation round the windows and under the door. She seemed to drift off then, possibly thinking of the bad luck her underwear had brought her.

  – I always wear white, said Joan, when I need things to go well.

  – And what did you wear for Gricey?

  Joan made herself busy with the teapot.

  – Gricey, she said quietly, he liked me without a stitch.

  – You don’t surprise me, dear. You’re a very good-looking woman. Any man would.

  – I’m not so young any more.

  – Who is, darling?

  His Venus de Mile End, Gricey used to call her. Men would go to war for a woman like you, he said.

  Oh dear. All it took was a thought like this and she had to turn her head away. Delphie understood, or she thought she did. She’d buried husbands. Two she’d even loved.

  – You’ve had the worst luck, dear.

  The widows drank their tea in companionable silence. No point rushing it, thought Joan. Delphie’s cat had died. Septic throat. He’d got thin, weak, very pinched, she said. He wouldn’t eat. She pressed her tired lips together. Not a tear. Flinty old thing, thought Joan.

  – He smelled awful.

  – I’m so sorry, love.

  Delphie’s armchair was by the window. The ashtray was on the arm of the chair beside the Senior Service and a box of matches. She reached for them now. Her trembling fingers were freighted with heavy rings.

  – I had the fire in the bedroom going all night, she said.

  Joan looked around the little sitting room. The framed photos of Delphie in her salad days, with stars of stage and music hall, many from before Joan’s time. The upright piano against the wall. When had she last opened the lid? A year or so ago, it was, when a few old friends gathered in this room to celebrate VE Day. Gricey was present, of course. Songs were sung, with Delphie on the piano and Gricey in good voice.

  – He’d had a haemorrhage, that’s what the vet said. Bit of trouble with his lungs.

  Joan wanted to know if there was trouble with Delphie’s own lungs but she didn’t say so. She also wanted to know what sort of a fascist Gricey was, but she didn’t say that either, not yet. Instead she told Delphie she’d found a badge in one of his coats. She took it out of her handbag. Delphie peered at it, then reached for her glasses. If anyone knew – if anyone would tell her the truth – it was her.

  – Was he one of them? said Joan.

  Yes, there was a lot of
it about in the East End, in the thirties. She found it so very hateful that it was her people who got picked on. Not that she’d ever thought very much about it, but what had we ever done to them? And Vera, she feared for Vera, god forbid she ever fell into the hands of those thugs some dark night. She remembered Friday nights, the old people coming out of synagogue and the fascists waiting round the corner to beat them up. Then there was the Ridley Street market on a Saturday morning, and up the canal, the old towpath under the gasworks, the slums, and Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts were always making a bloody nuisance of themselves, always where the Jews lived. Why? Joan didn’t get it; well, she did of course. It was always the Jews got picked on when times were hard, look at bloody Germany. She’d see them in the pubs, they were the BUF then, civil servants, some of them, schoolteachers, factory workers, all kinds but mostly hard-faced ex-servicemen and young louts from the shops and banks, handing out leaflets, trying to sell their newspapers or get a donation. There were women too, ladies of uncertain age and good family, unattached, and wistfully attracted to the idea of a glorious German past. Half the Mitfords were fascists, and their friends. Gricey would never say much about it, which she didn’t understand at the time. She did now.

  Olympia, that was back then, huge event in Earls Court that Mosley organised with fifteen thousand come to hear him spitting blood and thunder, the rich and important as well as the rest. Oh, and Blackshirts dragging people into corridors and alleys, anyone who dared heckle their precious Leader, and kicking them half to death. First they threw you down the stairs, then they beat you up, twenty or thirty on one, oh yes. The British don’t care for that kind of thing. Fucking bullies. Gave Joan a chill just to think of it.