The Wardrobe Mistress

by Patrick Mcgrath

  We see them next at the front door of a terraced, three-storey white building with a small bookshop on the ground floor. In the window are displayed academic volumes of modern European history, German mostly. There is a black door to the side with a polished plaque that identifies it as the home of the Brompton Club. After a minute this door is opened by a tall woman of heavy build with blonde hair piled atop her head in braided heaps. She wears a dark green tweed suit. Her eyes are heavy-lidded. There is a spark in her, on seeing them, for Julius is known to her, as is Gustl. It’s the man who owned the theatre that got bombed, and his sister, the eccentric German lady.

  – Come in, please, she says, and glances up and down the street as they enter.

  She leads them upstairs and into a large pale living room with a pleasant outlook over a walled garden. Above the mantelpiece hangs a framed photograph of a thin-faced man in a black uniform. One of his eyes is out of alignment.

  Hilda Bacon has no need to tell them, as her guests’ eyes wander to the portrait, that this is the Leader. Mosley. High-born parliamentarian who threw it all away to found the British Union of Fascists. He’d spent most of the war in Holloway Prison. Released in 1943 on humanitarian grounds. Phlebitis.

  They sit in low armchairs around the fireplace. There are mounted sepia-tinted photographs on a low table of a man in flowing Arab dress with camels. Hilda Bacon explains that her husband has been delayed. Julius reclines in the armchair, gazing at Hilda and smoking a cigarette. Hilda Bacon sits in placid majesty and only once betrays unease when picking at a wisp of lint on her skirt.

  Beside Gustl on a table lie stapled newsletters, the top one titled, in Gothic script, Imperial British Patriot, and elsewhere on the page the initials, IBP. The subtitle is Wir Kommen Wieder. Gustl glances at Julius. We Come Again.

  Ten uncomfortable minutes later they hear voices on the stairs and five men loudly enter the room, including Hilda’s husband, Frederic Bacon. He is a balding, frowning man of fifty with a clipped moustache, in a black three-piece suit and a dark blue tie over a grey shirt with a silver tiepin in the form of an arrow. When he shoots his cuffs it’s apparent he’s wearing swastika cufflinks. Julius knows this about him. He is thought to be one of Mosley’s most trusted officers. Earlier he had served with T. E. Lawrence in the Middle East, where he’d become an expert on the diseases of the camel. He is a devout Catholic with a religious conception of the State, and known to his subordinates as an inflexible martinet. His four companions are men in their late twenties in raincoats and duffel coats, all ex-Blackshirts.

  Hilda takes her husband’s coat and he comes to the fire, rubbing his hands. Nods are exchanged, for Julius and Gustl are known to these men. There are mumbled Heils and a bit of heel clicking. Several of these men spent the war in prison. They sustain a belief in themselves as diehard idealists fighting for a lost cause that may still come good. Their faith in their leaders is intense. All are virulently anti-Semitic. Gustl is as impassive as marble, and Julius is impressed, as always, by her composure. Frederic Bacon stands with his back to the fire then claps his hands.

  – To business, he barks. There is a problem, gentlemen. We have a problem.

  They all know what it is. It concerns security. Gustl watches the men scattered about the room. They are very dreadful to her. They frighten her. Julius has steepled his fingers under his chin and gazes at the ceiling. He shifts his position in his chair and shakes his head. Muttering is heard from the back of the room but Frederic silences it.

  – What is it you have to say, Edgar?

  A young man with a shock of black hair is sitting forward with his elbows on his knees. All at once he sits up. He seems angry.

  – It’s not us talking in the pub, he says. It’s worse than that.

  – What do you mean, Edgar?

  – They know everything. They even get there before us. They know our numbers, they fucking know who the speakers are—

  Gustl glances at Hilda with lifted eyebrows and pursed lips, as though to say, rough talk for the drawing room.

  – Shut up, Edgar, says Hilda Bacon, you’re not in a public house now.

  Edgar turns his head away. He flushes at the rebuke.

  – Nevertheless, he has a point, says Frederic Bacon.

  – What is his point? says Julius.

  Gustl marvels that he seizes the nettle so boldly. Someone’s giving their plans to the enemy, and otherwise disrupting their activities. There have been cancellations when landlords and local councils have been warned who it is they’re renting a hall to, and that there will be trouble. With outdoor meetings, when Bacon’s men arrive to set up the platform, they find the enemy already in possession of the site, whatever East End street corner or piece of waste ground or bomb site they’ve chosen. Who is the enemy? A group of Jewish ex-servicemen, returned from the war to discover that what they’d been fighting against is flourishing in their own neighbourhoods. It’s now clear they’ve infiltrated the resurgent fascist movement. Peter Ryder’s name is mentioned.

  – The point? cries Frederic Bacon. The point, my dear Julius, is the quality of their information. Edgar is right. It doesn’t come only from the rank and file. And Peter Ryder is not the only one.

  The persona Julius assumes for this meeting, and has sustained since he was first introduced to Frederic Bacon and the IBP, is one of careless lethargy at times interrupted by a vicious expression of xenophobic profanity, most often directed at the plight of the honest businessman, like himself, in this Jew-ridden country. As a blond Englishman with a Germanic surname and a glamorous actress wife, his credentials have gone unquestioned. Gustl, as his sister, is a more scattered species of anti-Semite. Nobody listens to her, but they like big women with fur round their neck who believe in the destiny of a greater Germany.

  – Then where precisely is it coming from, says Julius. One of you boys?

  He sits up in his chair and with his hands planted on the arms, elbows out, peers around the drawing room. He subjects even Hilda Bacon to scrutiny.

  – Julius, please, says Frederic Bacon.

  – In this room? says Gustl. Mein Gott!

  There is animosity, sneering. The young man in the corner, Edgar Cartridge, seething, resentful, leans against a table and watches with hooded eyes.

  – Enough of this, says Frederic Bacon. I will deal with Peter Ryder in good time.

  The meeting rambles on. There is discussion about a quantity of fascist literature to be moved from a printer in Hammersmith to the bookshop on the ground floor of the building. Other matters come up. Eventually Julius rises to his feet. On his face, the suggestion of boredom.

  – You won’t stay for a little sherry, Mr Glass? says Hilda Bacon.

  – I’m afraid not, my dear. My sister and I have a luncheon appointment in town.

  – Wait! says Frederic Bacon, bending to crush out his cigarette in an ashtray. Julius and Gustl stand startled for a few seconds.

  – What news of the Grice woman?

  – She is with us. She wants to help.

  Frederic Bacon glances at the others.

  – The widow of Charlie Grice is with us. What do you think of that, gentlemen?

  There is some satisfied murmuring. Gricey had told none of them what sort of a woman he was married to. Oh, he wouldn’t have been so very popular if that were known! No, they’d have kicked him out, and pretty sharpish too. He’d kept quiet about Joan all right.

  – We may expect her then on the fifth?

  – Yes, said Julius. We will bring her here. She is eager to meet you. But now, I’m afraid—

  He looks at his watch.

  – Then I will show you out, says Hilda.

  As the door closes behind them, Edgar Cartridge looks at Frederic Bacon, who shrugs.

  Julius and Gustl are sitting on the top floor of a double-decker bus bound for Pimlico.

  – You were brilliant, Liebste, says Gustl.

  – Such a tricky bastard he is. The printed matter
isn’t in Hammersmith. They’ll point the finger at us when it’s lost.

  They sit gazing straight ahead as the bus wheezes down Ebury Street. They understand the danger they’re in. But it had gone well this morning, considering.

  – They’re on to us, of course.

  – But they like Joan.

  – It’s Gricey they like. But if Joan comes in we have more time. Our secret weapon.

  Gustl laughs quietly, and under the red fur tippet her shoulders heave.

  18

  THEY WERE A week into rehearsals and it wasn’t going so well. Vera was having difficulty with her lines. Webster’s dark poetry was not easy. When she wasn’t in the rehearsal hall she was pacing the attic of the house in Pimlico. She was determined to be off-book by the end of next week. Julius and Gustl could hear her up there as she flung about, stamping back and forth on the bare boards, shouting her lines, and swearing wildly when the words didn’t at once come to her, or came wrong. They sat trying to read or, in Gustl’s case, paint, but their eyes went constantly, nervously to the ceiling.

  Eventually she came clattering downstairs and sat at the long kitchen table, snorting, and pushing her hands through her hair. Gustl entered the kitchen in spattered smock and turban.

  – Going not well, love?

  – Fucking nightmare.

  – It comes, I hear it. Cup of tea?

  – You think so?

  – I think so. Here’s Julius.

  Julius had left his work in the small back office to see what was amiss.

  – Not going well, love?

  – It’s coming but it’s so fucking slow. I’ll never be ready.

  – Oh you will. Won’t she? Tell her she’ll be ready.

  – She will, nicht wahr. Here’s your tea, love.

  And so it went at home. And back in the rehearsal space, the chilly church hall in Waterloo, some knots were untied, others they just pushed further down the piece of string for later. Was there progress? It wasn’t the question. The question was: was there time?

  – Brighton would be nice, said Edmund Colefax as he and Vera and the actor playing Bosola, Freddie Campion, sat on wooden boxes smoking cigarettes during the break. He’d have liked them to open out of town.

  – Just to break the ice.

  – I hate Brighton, said Freddie Campion.

  – I was born in Brighton, said Vera. Daddy was playing the Royal.

  – Nice to have memories then.

  While they were enjoying this bit of wit Frank Stone wandered by but they didn’t ask him to join them. He was playing First Madman in Act IV. He’d also learned Antonio. Then came the day Harry Catermole was off, released to fulfil his contractual obligations with the BBC. Vera was asking for more work on the last pages of the first act. This was the wooing scene, which involved her romantic assault on Antonio.

  – Yes, damn it, we’ll have to use the First Madman. Does he know it?

  Sidney Temple supervised the secondary parts.

  – He knows it.

  – Let’s get it over then.

  Frank was of course aware that Harry would not be present and that those pages were in the schedule because Vera wanted them in. Also that Vera was unhappy with how they’d been played in the first run-through. So there was more than a chance he would get to work with the Duchess, and oh yes, he was ready. It was just a hundred lines earlier that Duke Ferdinand says to Bosola: She’s a young widow, I would not have her marry again. And a bit later he makes it clear to the Duchess herself: Marry and you die.

  But she will defy him. And it is in this scene that she does so. Much will be revealed about the Duchess. That she is brave. That she knows her heart, that she is a passionate woman, and that she has chosen well. And is nothing if not decisive. She drives the matter forward and Antonio is pleased to be driven. She tells him she wishes to make a will. He suggests she first find a husband as beneficiary. Go, go brag – she says – you have left me heartless, mine is in your bosom. And later still she commands him, Kneel – and with her servant Cariola – Mabel Hatch, that is – stepping out from behind an arras, as witness, they declare themselves married. That’s all it took in those days. The newly-weds then depart and Cariola says: Whether the spirit of greatness or of woman, reign most in her, I know not, but it shows a fearful madness. I owe her much of pity.

  Ominous words. End of Act I.

  Frank Stone was fine. We were all impressed. Elizabeth Morton-Stanley stopped him only twice. First, to demand a stronger response when the Duchess closes his lips with a kiss. So they do it again, and this time she wraps an arm around his neck, and slips her other hand into the side pocket of his jacket. When he breaks free of her, hearing a sound behind the arras, it is done with such passionate urgency that the seam of the pocket rips and hangs off like a flap. The second time is when the Duchess commands him to kneel, and in the same moment Cariola emerges from behind the arras. Antonio’s line is: Ha? The director wants this stronger too. But that was all.

  When they were finished Vera laid a brief distracted hand on Frank’s arm then went off to talk to the director. Frank wandered away. He was exhilarated. It was clear to him that he could play the scene much better than Harry Catermole. And he could still taste Vera’s kiss. It was awkward, later, to tell Joan how well he’d done. She listened to him as she cooked their dinner. Shredded cabbage and corned beef, with cold semolina for pudding as a treat. Frank mentioned only that the director had had very little to say to him.

  – What did she say to you?

  Joan knew the cruelty towards actors of which Elizabeth Morton-Stanley was capable.

  – Oh in one place, do more.

  – What place was that, love?

  She was not paying close attention. This was two days after her conversation with Frank’s mother. She’d decided to say nothing about it yet, and so apparently had Rosza.

  – When I have to kiss her.

  – The Duchess?

  – Yes.

  – Vera?

  – Yes.

  Joan set her glass on the table and crushed out her cigarette in the ashtray. She stared at him with a stricken solemnity. He understood her concern, or thought he did.

  – Should I not have said?

  – No, you should have said. I am very tired, dear. I think I must go to bed. And you are to go home. I don’t like your mother left on her own.

  – You’re displeased with me.

  His distress was palpable, for a few seconds; then settled to resignation. But her heart was sick, she could not pretend otherwise. She reached across the table and laid her palm against his cheek. He was white as a sheet, and his eyes were alive with anxiety. Yes, and guilt, she knew, she could see it now. He may have been a good actor but he was a poor liar. How was that possible?

  – No, my sweetheart, I am not displeased. I’m just tired.

  He had to be reassured, then he had to be sent away. She wept a little in bed. She lay awake for an hour and then she fell asleep. She seldom had difficulty falling asleep. She was sad in the morning, as she sat at her mirror. Vera was hysterical but not recklessly so. Anyway she was far more preoccupied with her work than she ever was with sex, or so Joan told herself: nothing would come of it. She slipped her coat on, locked the door and went downstairs and out into the cold. Then she was on her bicycle and gliding past the bombed-out buildings near the docks, with their high, empty windows and air of unutterable desolation. The days were past when they still smouldered and stank but Joan was swept with sadness all the same. Wherever she looked, all she saw was ruin and waste.

  Later, in Julius’ house, sitting in the high-backed chair against the peeling, off-white plaster wall, with behind her the vase with the dead rose in it, and dead petals strewn across the table now, Joan gave Gustl her decision.

  – I will come with you.

  Gustl was behind the easel wiping a brush on a rag.

  – Gott sei Dank, she whispered. I will tell Julius.

  She could s
ay nothing of any of this to Frank Stone. He came to supper on the Thursday, a cold, wet night. It was fortunate there was the matter of his jacket pocket, for it allowed them to avoid the topics about which for the first time they found they could not speak. It was when he took off his overcoat that she saw that it was ripped and hanging askew, and she at once told him to remove the jacket so she could inspect the damage.

  – What happened, love?

  – I had a book in the pocket and I tried to stuff my script in beside it. I wasn’t thinking.

  No, thought Joan, you were thinking about my Vera. He sat by the stove in his shirtsleeves and Joan put on her spectacles.

  – Come into the sewing room, she said. Put your coat back on, dear, it’s cold.

  He followed her, she carrying the torn jacket. He’d seen her at her machine before. It gave him a curious pleasure. It was one of Gricey’s jackets he’d torn, of course. She dropped it on her chair and from the shelf she pulled down a box of spools of thread. She selected what she wanted and sat at the machine. She put the spool on the pin and passed the thread onto the bobbin. How quick her fingers were, he thought, as she frowned over her spectacles, then selected a needle – and what was she doing now? She was humming as she pulled the thread through the machine then into the eye and with a turn of the wheel she was ready to feed the material onto the plate. She pressed the treadle and the sewing commenced. Whirr-pause. Whirr-pause.

  It was soon done. When the material started to rise with the needle she paused to lighten the pressure on the thumb screw, and murmured to herself as she did so, for she’d forgotten how heavy it was and Frank, watching her, agreed.

  – It is heavy, he said.

  Again she paused, and turned to him where he stood behind her.

  – Yes dear, she said, isn’t it?

  It amused her, and she resumed humming.