The Wardrobe Mistress

by Patrick Mcgrath

  She folded her hands on the half-darned sock and gazed at him. She waited for him to pick up his cue. There was a gust of wind against the window, and the big clock tick-tocked on the shelf beside the stove. She was at the table and he was in Gricey’s armchair. The bulb was dim and shadows clustered in the corners, plotting. The whispering gods of tragedy.

  – I don’t know what to do about her.

  Then he was on the floor before her, his head against her knees and his arms wrapped around her legs. She gathered his hair in her fists and pulled at it, moaning a little, suddenly strongly moved. He scrambled onto a chair where he could put his arms around her and kiss her throat as she lifted her head to the ceiling, and then with small shushing sounds she pushed him away a little and took his face in her hands. Gazing into his damp eyes from very close she shook her head and then pulled him to her once more.

  – We’ll go and see her together, my love, she whispered.

  – Together?

  – Yes.

  She was stroking his head, then his face again, and then she kissed him on the lips and he pulled his chair forward, the legs scraping on the floorboards so as to get as close to her as he could and smother the idea.

  A little later she sent him home, saying it would be on her conscience if his mother were left on her own another night. From Gricey’s room she watched him walk rapidly towards the cemetery with his collar turned up and his breath like billowing smoke. She turned away from the window. How strange and marvellous it all was. None of it disturbed her now. She did not care what she ought to feel, nor about the nightmare of having lost the world when Gricey died. We knew what was in the bed when she first took Frank Stone into it: Death. Then Death was driven out. There was no place for Death any more. Gricey was the ghost now. Of the two of them it was Gricey who clung on, and it was for her now to let him go. More than once she had imagined him dangling over a void, hanging on to her fingers and in terror begging her not to let him go – and then, her decision to just open her hands – and then the long receding wail as he plummets into darkness, to be heard from no more—

  No abject hesitation now! Her own resistance astonished her. She returned to the kitchen and lit the gas under the kettle. She sat at the table staring at the hissing flame. She reached for the cat, and wanted a cigarette, but she had none. But there was still gin. She stood on a chair and got the bottle down from the top shelf, where she’d hidden it behind the turpentine. Hello, dear Uncle.

  When next she saw him he said his mother was too unwell to see anyone and Joan said she was sorry. She wasn’t in the least sorry because she didn’t believe him.

  – All the same, love, it’s not right, an old woman left on her own.

  They were in the kitchen again. He paced up and down, as far as it was possible for a tall man to pace anywhere in that room.

  – Come and sit next to me, she said.

  She turned her chair around to face the stove, where she’d opened the little door with the tongs so what heat there was poured straight out into the kitchen. It flung a sudden red-gold glow upon her features, and then upon his. They sat close together gazing at the flickering coals, while above them the dim bulb crackled in its stiff linen shade all veined in black, and hanging from a twisted cord, as the clock ticked.

  15

  WHEN VERA READ the part she remembered it at once for she’d seen it performed as a child. A severed hand presented for a woman’s kiss. A family dead in waxen effigy. Incestuous appetite and rampant madness. How they schemed and plotted, grotesquerie abounding, and the minds of the men, all but Antonio, twisted with evil intention.

  The author was John Webster. He had read contemporary accounts of the historical duchess, but chose to present her not as others had, as a wanton widow who abandons her duty so as to indulge private desire. No. Instead he gives us a woman who, choosing love, finds affection and friendship in her secret marriage to her steward, Antonio. Reading it now Vera understood how much work lay ahead of her.

  For the Duchess was a woman, and Vera until now had played only girls. Nina, Nora, Cordelia. Rosalind. Juliet. For this reason alone we were all so very curious as to what she’d make of it. She saw a mother, first, a reckless, lusty mother, but an honourable woman, brave, wilful and autocratic, and also cunning. She was wise and deceiving (but not of her husband). Hot blooded, active rather than pensive. Dark like her brothers. Could she do it? we asked one another, had she the imagination for it? Julius thought so. And he would have for his director a woman of broad experience and an iron hand, and consummate theatrical taste. She was thought by many to be old school, a woman of the thirties, they said, but Julius thought otherwise. He hired her. Her name was Elizabeth Morton-Stanley. She agreed with Julius that the times called not for light sentiment but for tragedy, and the darker the better.

  The worst is not,

  So long as we can say, ‘This is the worst.’

  This was the spirit, redemption through suffering.

  At the first reading Vera had not been impressive; she herself knew this and was not alarmed, and nor was her director. Of the others who’d been cast, she knew her waiting-woman Cariola – Mabel Hatch – and Ed Colefax, playing her twin brother Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, who goes mad, believes himself to be a wolf, and attacks his own shadow. Him she’d known from a Lear in Stratford. And that heart-throb matinee idol, handsome Harry Catermole, he was to be her Antonio, oh a most perfect, gallant and gracious gentleman, later condemned for marrying above his station.

  Vera knew Julius would look after her through the long days and nights of the rehearsal period. He expected an anxious, at times panicked and desperate woman, and at other times he knew she would be calm, elated even. Late in the day he would hope, in his exhaustion, for tranquillity, although without any real expectation of getting it.

  On the first morning the cast assembled. At about half past nine in an empty hall in Waterloo several affable men and women in hats and overcoats were to be seen standing around in small groups smoking cigarettes and conversing in low tones. The booming laughter of Edmund Colefax erupted at intervals. Elizabeth Morton-Stanley was of course present. She stood by the door engaged in murmured argument with Julius about Harry Catermole’s schedule, specifically his contractual release one afternoon a week to do BBC radio work. Elizabeth Morton-Stanley claimed not to have been told about this. Frank Stone stood near the door with May Lyons, a lady-in-waiting who was also covering Vera. Frank overheard this argument.

  Vera herself was alone on the other side of the hall. She and Julius had stayed up late talking in the kitchen. He knew what she was going through. It was the traveller’s unease before the start of a journey into the unknown. It is not true that the terror lessens with every step. Often the reverse is true. Julius had been patient and understanding, and wise enough to make the same point over and over.

  – Vera, listen to me, dear. You’ve done this before.

  – It’s never been like this.

  – Oh yes it has.

  – It hasn’t! Christ, Julius, you’ve never done it!

  They’re both smoking cigarettes. Outside the kitchen window the snow on the back lawn has only partially melted. The wall is seamed with ice, and icicles still hang dripping from the branches of the weeping willow at the bottom of the garden. There’s no moon. The only sounds are the shunting trains, and the banshee screeching of iron wheels on rails. Julius knew it would be a long night.

  – I’ve never done it but I’ve seen you do it, and nobody does it better than you, you know that, darling, but it’s always like this and then you start to see a way. Don’t you remember? Sweetheart?

  Vera was standing by the back door, her arms folded, half turned away from him. She was flinging glances at him over her shoulder, fiery darts of resentment, resistance—

  He was waiting for petulance. He realised that before they were married this had been Gricey’s task, to reassure her in her panic. He wondered how he’d done it, what he’d
said to her. He regarded his wife carefully. When he saw petulance he’d know she was starting to surrender. She was in a tight black skirt and high heels and a pale blue cardigan, and she had a scarf wrapped around her neck to protect her voice. Her hair was in a great tumble and her eyes were glorious in their damp black-lashed fury as she flung at him those fearsome glances, and insisted with no small contempt that he knew nothing, nothing, of what it was she was about to endure. Then she appeared to come to a decision.

  – I’m not doing it, Julius. You can forget about your fucking Duchess of Malfi right now.

  – What about Elizabeth?

  He referred to Elizabeth Morton-Stanley.

  – I don’t care about Elizabeth!

  – You don’t care about Elizabeth?

  A weak spot in her argument, this. Vera was afraid of Elizabeth Morton-Stanley, everybody was, except perhaps Julius. She laid her forehead against the wall, and now her back was fully turned to him. Her arms were folded tight across her heaving chest, while Julius stood beside the stove, the length of the kitchen table between them. He watched her coolly. He lifted his glass to his lips. He waited.

  Later she sat at the table and wept. After the mention of Elizabeth Morton-Stanley the first chink of petulance had opened, and a fretful child appeared. She’d sat down at the table, elbows planted close together, her head clasped tight in her long, pale hands.

  – Oh give me a drink for Christ’s sake before I kill myself.

  Julius poured her a weak gin and put it in front of her. She took a few rapid sips then buried her face in her hands again. There was a long silence in the kitchen. Distant railway noises could still be heard. Then she started to talk.

  – You’re right, of course, you’re always right, damn you, darling, this happens every time but it doesn’t make it any easier because you think, oh, this time it’s too much for you and it is too much for me, it’s an unnatural act, you see that. It’s just – oh, it’s impossible. What am I supposed to do? I mean, why does she let Ferdinand destroy her, why does she provoke him? She doesn’t have to marry Antonio! Nobody has to marry someone—

  Julius let out a small grunt of pleasure. He’d wanted to marry Vera about ten minutes after he met her. If that. It broke her ill temper. She briefly hammered the table with both fists then started to laugh and cry at the same time.

  – What a fool I am, she murmured as the outburst subsided, her head came up, she pushed a hand through her hair and reached for a handkerchief.

  By then he was sitting opposite her, leaning forward.

  – You’ve done this before, he said again.

  – Yes yes yes, I know. I’m going to bed, Julius.

  – Where are you going to sleep?

  – In the attic.

  A pause here.

  – Oh, in our room, she said, and then, with a rising inflection: can I sleep with you?

  – Yes, dear.

  Thus the night for Julius and Vera, on the eve of rehearsals. Some hours later, in that cold hall in Waterloo with the view of St Paul’s, Elizabeth Morton-Stanley called her actors together. She was a woman of some heft, both of personality and physiognomy. A small female giant, then, with broad forehead and narrow, probing eyes, nose of an eagle, stout chins and a vast heap of reddish hair piled on top, she bestrode the London stage like a colossa. In a hoarse whisky baritone she told them what she wanted. It wasn’t so much. Be punctual, she said. Be sober. Know your lines. Vera was composed now for it had started. She was setting off. In front of her she saw a sort of tunnel. It was long and dark and it would take her some time to reach the end of it. But what she’d find at the end of this tunnel was a truth. Yes. That’s what she was after. The truth about the Duchess. Why it is that she does what she does and says what she says at every bloody moment of the drama. That was all.

  Frank Stone was watching her, at least when he wasn’t watching Harry Catermole. He had already decided that he would learn his own part, and that he would learn Antonio as well. This would not be easy but for Frank it felt like no obstacle at all. His appetite for the thing was huge. He would learn the part of Antonio exactly as Harry did it, which is what he’d done with Malvolio. He’d studied Gricey day in and day out and missed nothing. Saw it, and practised it. Made it perfect in his own image, so perfect in fact that when the man died and dear Joan first came to the theatre she couldn’t tell the difference.

  Then, to his astonishment, he felt rather nauseous. He felt very odd indeed – and had anyone been watching him, they’d have seen him turn grey, and then white, and even his lips grew white, for he had suddenly glimpsed that who he was – his very self – was as nothing. A tiny shadow self. Cowering behind the persona projected. Nothing. Certainly his identification with Gricey had been sustained far beyond the stage door, and often during Twelfth Night he’d walked out of the theatre a star, at least in his own mind, a being on a higher plane than the scruffy shivering fellow who sloped home through the dark streets of London. Yes, and in Gricey’s bed, with Joan, even there he was something other—

  And this is sometimes the case, we have observed, in the genuine actor, the real thing, that is, that the sense of self is weak to the point of incoherence. Yes. It is the way of the mask. Vera was watching him now, seeing him turn a most peculiar colour, and catching her eye he realised that she didn’t think he was Gricey. No, it was only Joan, only Joan—

  Oh, but that strange woman, Frank then thought, with all her impossible mystery—! She absorbed his every waking moment when he wasn’t thinking about the play. So opaque, he thought, so very unreadable. And as the actors sat around the table that day, and read the play aloud, and Frank recovered from his momentary – vastation – he recognised in Antonio’s dealings with this duchess, whose love he’s aroused, a reflection of his own story. For he too possessed a duchess. He too, all undeserving, had won the love of a duchess. He glimpsed the revelation of a symmetry, and how often does that happen? We thought him a most unfortunate man. Yes, a very nice symmetry, life and the drama, that’s what he saw; but we know what happens when symmetries appear, don’t we, ladies? Bad tidings all round.

  They read the play through. Elizabeth Morton-Stanley sat at the head of the table, and the frown barely lifted from her great blasted heath of a forehead. There was a pipe in the top pocket of her shapeless black blazer and she pulled it out at times to hit it on the table while she talked to an actor.

  – Dear boy, would you please just read the bloody line as the man wrote it and stop trying to pull the wool over my eyes, I don’t care what you think the character’s really thinking, just say the bloody line.

  Actors glanced at one another and made small illegible movements with fingers and lips, for they knew you can’t just say the bloody line, you might as well get a machine in. Christ knows what the old girl wants, this was the feeling. At least they’d be on their feet in a day or two.

  Then when they were on their feet it wasn’t much better. Ed Colefax got it in the nose before he’d moved three steps downstage.

  – Don’t mince, man!

  This was shouted from the chairs out front, where Elizabeth Morton-Stanley sat with her assistant, a weary homosexual called Sidney Temple who’d been at her side for years. The idea of Ed Colefax mincing provided amusement to the company and the tension briefly lifted. Ed swore audibly, although he wasn’t heard out front, and then tried to move downstage again.

  – Who are you? cried the director.

  Again everything came to a halt. Ed knew enough to say nothing. The question expired in the cold air of the rehearsal hall. Elizabeth Morton-Stanley didn’t shout at Vera at all. It seemed she understood that she was working with delicate porcelain here. She would tread softly and keep her stick for the big beasts like Duke Ferdinand and his brother the Cardinal, played by the languid David Jekyll, a very well respected actor, and of course Bosola the melancholy spy. From the lovers she would coax with gentle tact the performances she required.

  Vera cam
e home exhausted but not desperate. She’d started to glimpse the invisible currents, the attitudes, the prospects of the other actors, around which she’d have to navigate in her own work. She’d been wearing her fur coat all day, it was still that cold, in April. Elizabeth Morton-Stanley liked the coat. She let others of the cast wear overcoats but not Harry Catermole. She said Antonio must be always vulnerable. Others thought she was punishing him for being absent once a week to do his BBC radio parts as contracted. It forced the director to use another actor for Antonio, which irritated her. Fortunately another member of the cast knew the part.

  Later, in the kitchen, Julius asked Vera if she’d like to go out but he knew what she’d say. What she needed now was peace and quiet and early nights so she could think about the work. So she could be clear-headed for rehearsal, and protect her voice, her skin and her mood. And her bowels. Once the play was on, it would be different. By then she’d have been down that tunnel and got at John Webster’s truth and come back out again a different woman. She was then supposed to put her on and take her off like a garment. But that’s what she found so difficult. She always had trouble taking off the garment, perhaps because like Frank she hadn’t got that much on underneath.

  Julius was waiting for her when she came home in the evening, just as Joan would greet her Frank. Well, she’d had Gricey all these years, of course, but it had been different with him. Gricey never took it seriously. He was not a man for whom the drama mattered beyond its being his livelihood. The engagement of his true self, whatever that elusive and probably specious entity might be, or the idea of going down a tunnel and finding truth at the end of it, this was the stuff of humour for Gricey. The man without illusions, that’s how he saw himself. Capable of playing the role he was asked to, and taking his pleasure where he found it, that for him was the meaning of life in its entirety, or so he’d led her to believe.

  She remembered him coming home after the show, and how they’d sit and talk, just as she now sat with Frank Stone. But this was the difference – here was an actor who did take it seriously, so much so that Joan at times became alarmed and didn’t know what to say to him. She was silent when he talked about his ambitions, and her silence seemed only to encourage him, and then he’d be walking back and forth in that little kitchen, telling her how Harry Catermole would be missing from rehearsals and he’d be on instead, for he’d let it be known that he’d learned the part. Joan thought about him working with Vera, and of this she was sure, that she couldn’t return to the loneliness of those first weeks without Gricey; she’d rather die. Frank Stone made the world tolerable again. She strongly suspected that without him she would sink.