– What a fucking nightmare, she said.
– What is?
– Oh, everything, she said. We won’t talk about it. What’s up with you, First Madman?
– I’d sooner be Antonio.
She smiled at him rather archly. There were still a few shreds of whelk caught in her teeth. She picked at them, inspected them, then laid her fingers on Frank’s cheek for a second. He thrilled to her touch.
– Maybe you will be.
– What do you mean?
– Oh nothing.
She heard the brief whisper of hunger in his voice and it reminded her of that which she wished to forget, the damn theatre and all its pressures and obligations, the compulsion always to compete, to succeed – could she never escape it? It would be better once they were on, she thought, and the notices were in, and they could just get on with it, flop or hit, who cared?
– Do you know my husband? she said suddenly.
Nobody in the pub was paying them any attention. She had been recognised, but London manners decreed she should be allowed to have her drink in peace like anyone else.
– I know who he is.
– Poor Julius.
Frank waited for more.
– I don’t make his life very easy, you know. I’ll tell you something I haven’t told anybody else. You mustn’t breathe a word.
– I won’t.
– I sleep in the attic.
Frank Stone wasn’t sure what to say.
– What, up at the top of the house?
– That’s usually where they put the attic, Frank. I can’t bear to sleep with anyone when I’m in rehearsal, you see. But he’s very good about it. He understands. Well, he knows actors, of course, but not every man would be so nice about it.
She drank off the last of her beer.
– You would, I think, she said. Be nice, I mean. Can I have another one?
Frank frowned as he groped about in the pocket of his overcoat, which had once been Gricey’s, and which as he well knew was empty of cash of any kind.
– You’re broke, darling, oh you poor thing! Here.
She went into her handbag and came up with a half-crown. When he returned from the bar she was peering at her face in the mirror of a small powder compact.
– I am a sight! You don’t care, do you, Frank?
– Of course I don’t, anyway you’re not.
– What a sweetheart. Do you have a girl, Frank?
He shook his head. She didn’t know! He sat there in her father’s overcoat and she had no inkling of his true relations with her mother. Her earlier suspicions were forgotten. Gone clear out of her head. He’d been sure she knew. Then she looked at his coat. She took the lapel between her fingers. She leaned in and smelled the fabric. Her head was close to his chest and he sank his face into her hair. She sat back.
– Daddy’s, she said, and her eyes at once filled with tears.
Again she groped about in her handbag, and produced a small handkerchief. Frank leaned over and touched her arm.
– Shall I take it off? he said.
She lifted her face and laughed and it was as though her laughter loosed the tears from her eyes for they suddenly overflowed and ran down her cheeks in two streams, and for a few seconds she glowed there with wet cheeks and eyes damp and gleaming.
– You fool, of course not. I like you wearing Daddy’s clothes. It makes me feel he’s still alive.
Christ almighty, thought Frank Stone.
– What is it?
– Nothing, it’s just—
– What?
– Your mother said the same thing.
Vera stopped wiping the tears from her face and stared at him. Frank realised he’d given away far too much, and that in that moment a brilliant flashing intuitive insight had pierced to the very heart of his secret.
– Mummy said that?
He had the distinct certain feeling that the cat, oh, the cat—
We all saw it too, of course. We turned to each other, sadly shaking our heads, our laughter dying on our lips, and said in unison: It’s out of the bag.
The cat was out of the bag.
Vera stared at Frank Stone and there could be no question about it. She remembered. She knew. If she hadn’t before, she did now.
– Are you shagging my mum?
The colour rose in his cheeks. He was unable to speak. He opened and closed his mouth like a trout. He was no good at lying. An actor who couldn’t tell a lie!
– You are! You’re shagging my mum!
A silence fell in the public bar as Vera’s voice carried through the low murmuring conversations and quiet laughter of the early evening clientele. Vera slapped his face hard then flung her beer at his head. It happened so fast he had no time to react. The slap started a nosebleed and the beer caught him full in the face and went right up his nose, and into his hair too, and dripped from his chin as he choked and coughed and wiped at his eyes with his fingers and tried to speak but was unable to, and meanwhile blood was dripping out of his nose and Vera had risen to her feet with her own eyes blazing, seized her handbag, and crushed out her cigarette in the ashtray. She muttered a few obscenities, called him a lecherous cunt and stormed out.
The landlord came from behind the counter once more. He had a dish towel, which Frank accepted as the regulars turned to one another once more. Frank wiped beer, blood and snot off his face.
– Shagging her mum, are you, son? he said quietly.
With a damply strangled groan Frank managed to knock over his chair and stumble out into the street. It was now dark. He still had the dish towel. He walked blindly towards the river with the incoherent intention of throwing himself in.
Frank sat staring across the Thames to where the dome of St Paul’s loomed pale in the gloom of early evening. He would have to talk to Joan before Vera did. It might not help but he had to do it. He could smell the beer on him, it was in his hair and down his shirt, as was the blood. He set off east towards Tower Bridge. He flung the sodden dish towel into the river. He hadn’t even the bus fare to Mile End for he’d given Vera back the change from the half-crown. It took him what seemed an eternity to get to Tower Bridge and then up to Aldgate and along Whitechapel. When he arrived at Joan’s door he was chilled and he still stank of beer. She was not happy to see him. She brought him into the kitchen and relieved him of the coat.
– I’ll have to sponge that down. It may have to go to the cleaners. What happened to you, Frank?
He told her all of it. She wasn’t angry with him. Pragmatic, if anything. She had more serious matters on her mind.
– She was bound to find out some time, I suppose, what with you in Gricey’s coat and all. And you walked all the way here from Southwark?
He told her he was broke.
She regarded him with concern. She was not amused, but nor did she feel in the least maternal towards him. She’d already arrived at the sad conclusion that he was not to be depended upon. She didn’t ask him what he was doing in a pub in Southwark with Vera. When he tried to apologise she silenced him with a shake of the head. She was thinking about Vera, and whether she would now be having a little nervous collapse. It’s what she usually did.
Earlier Joan had sat at that same kitchen table in a state of anxiety, such that she’d had recourse to the much-depleted bottle on the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard. An ordeal lay ahead. For not only was she to attend the street meeting in Hackney, she was to speak at it. This had first been proposed to her by Julius, and then by Hilda Bacon. Joan had listened to the woman with mounting dismay, but had learned to show nothing of her feelings to these people.
– I will have to think about it, Mrs Bacon. Public speaking is not a thing I’ve done much of.
– It will give the boys something to really cheer about, said Hilda Bacon. They need such a lot of bucking up these days.
They were in Joan’s kitchen. Joan had been startled to hear the doorbell soon after getting home from work, and was fran
kly astonished to find the big blonde fascist on her doorstep. Ascending the stairs, she rapidly composed herself. She remembered Julius’ advice: stay calm and say as little as possible.
– A cup of tea, Mrs Bacon? I’ve just put the kettle on.
– So this is where Gricey ate his dinner and laid his head, said Hilda Bacon, dreamily. It’s a kind of shrine, you know, although very few of us ever saw it.
Joan, her back turned, was busy with the teapot. She thought, Gricey brought them here?
– Oh why is that? she said.
– May I smoke? Well, you must know. Such an inspiration he was to us all, especially during the war when the men were in prison. Such a comfort he was.
Joan turned to the table and saw through a cloud of cigarette smoke a cold woman with half-closed eyes and corn-yellow hair organised in a flawless chignon with an encircling plait. She smoked her cigarette, her face complacent and aquiline, and Joan detested her.
– Sugar, Mrs Bacon?
– I don’t use it, Mrs Grice. I’ll take mine black.
Joan sat down opposite this woman. Stay calm, she thought.
– What can I do for you, Mrs Bacon?
– You needn’t say very much, dear. Frederic will write it for you. It’s more the symbolism of the thing, if you know what I mean. The spirit of Gricey, still with us.
– Yes, I see.
– The fight goes on. Have you an ashtray?
– Of course. Biscuit?
– What a privilege it must have been.
Joan was on her feet getting ashtray and biscuits. She only had three left. She put them on a plate.
– What was a privilege, Mrs Bacon?
– To live with such a man. With all he had to do. His work and his beliefs. It isn’t easy, with so much of the world against you. Gricey would say, think of the Führer, the early years. The wilderness years, he’d say. And see what he became. What he made of Germany.
Joan watched first one then another of her precious biscuits being dipped in black tea and rapidly devoured. She decided she would say nothing about Gricey whatsoever. They could think what they wanted. Hilda Bacon left soon after. An hour later Frank Stone had appeared at her door, sodden, covered in blood, and stinking of beer.
They are running Act IV. The Duchess is already in prison. Her twin brother the Duke visits her at night, in darkness, and offers his hand to be kissed. She brings it to her lips, then as torches appear she discovers that the hand is not his own, it is another man’s hand, severed at the wrist. Barely is this horror absorbed than a curtain is drawn aside to reveal a tableau mort. The stage directions read: Here is discovered behind a traverse the artificial figures of ANTONIO and his children, appearing as if they were dead.
They are waxwork effigies but the Duchess cannot know this yet. Then in Act IV, scene ii she is visited by Madmen sent by the Duke. It is in this scene that Frank Stone as First Madman speaks the words: ‘Doomsday not come yet?’ The horror of the dead hand pales in light of what follows. It is a harrowing scene, and it is dominated by the Duchess. This is the scene in which they strangle her. It’s not quick.
Vera was in a fine state of readiness. She’d slept well in her narrow bed in the attic and awoken prepared to sweep the gallant Duchess to her end with all the grandeur of spirit of a true tragic heroine. Wiping the sleep from her eyes and pushing her hands through her hair, she knew herself to possess just such a spirit, and she lay in her bath ready and eager to meet death with the name of her husband on her lips. She took the bus to work, contemplating her executioners entering her chamber with a present from her brothers. It is a shrouded coffin. She will say farewell to Cariola and forgive the men about to murder her. She will send a message to the Duke and the Cardinal, saying that this is the best she can hope for. A few seconds later she will kneel. Come violent death, she will say. Serve for mandragora, to make me sleep./Go tell my brothers when I am laid out,/They then may feed in quiet.
Vera was on top of it. They were close to opening night and over the weeks of rehearsal she had discovered a kind of narrative of feeling in this last scene, a movement from the sounds of approaching Madmen – What hideous noise was that – to her last breath, with Antonio’s name on her lips. And then, on the very point of death: Mercy.
She knew it for the best death scene she was ever likely to play. It allowed for both terror and serenity. She had come to believe that she’d been preparing all her life to play it. She felt she possessed a charge of human passion like a fermenting spirit in a corked bottle which, once released, would inebriate the world. But to think this was to tempt fate, and no actor will dare entertain such thoughts for long. Nemesis will surely follow, and strike her down for pride and presumption, although – although – she did in her secret heart believe it would take the audience all of Act V to begin even to think of coming to terms with the death of this Duchess. With Elizabeth Morton-Stanley she’d hatched a scheme.
In the preceding scene, when she’s given the dead man’s hand to kiss, and servants come with torches, the Duchess cries: Ha? Lights! – Oh horrible! – then strides downstage centre – and flings the severed hand out into the horrified audience.
Genius.
Frank Stone stood in the wings with the other Madmen, and most of the rest of the cast, and none seemed able even to breathe as the scene was played. When it ended they broke into spontaneous applause. From the auditorium came the booming voice of Elizabeth Morton-Stanley – ‘Splendid!’ – and she lumbered up onto the stage, where she took Vera aside, the girl by this time drained and limp from the work she’d just done. Odd, thought Frank, to think this was the same girl who just last night had flown into a rage and called him a lecherous cunt. But then he thought, no, not odd, it was all in the same register of heightened dramatic tension. Thinking this he recognised an important precept about the craft of acting.
Elizabeth Morton-Stanley spoke in low tones to Vera for some minutes as she wiped the sweat from her face with a towel. Vera was grinning now, and as the director left her she laid a pudgy hand on Vera’s bottom and patted it. Vera wandered upstage left, where the Madmen were waiting to know if they were needed again. Seeing Frank, she stopped. She placed her hands on her hips and cocked her head to one side. Frank gazed back at her with his eyebrows slightly lifted and his mouth a little open: expectant. She shook her head and walked off towards her dressing room.
– Someone’s in the doghouse, said a Madman – it was Willy Ogilvie – and they pushed him around a bit, asking what it was he’d done to upset the Divine One, as they called her. But Frank told them nothing, for he was still observing constant sanctuary for Vera’s mother. Oh but Joan had made it clear to him she would rather he left her alone now. But first she had gone into her purse and put a pound note on the table.
– That’s far too much, he’d said.
Joan didn’t reply and Frank felt even more wretched than he did already, as though, being dismissed, he was now being paid off. He’d got to his feet and gone out of the flat and down the stairs and into Archibald Street, leaving the pound note where it was. Joan sank onto her chair, laid her arms on the table, laid her head on her arms, and wept.
Then she heard Gricey again.
It began with a crash. It brought her up from the table at once. It came from Gricey’s room.
She flung open the door and the wardrobe was standing where it had always stood. But from inside it she heard him shouting, and he was in such a rage that at first she could make no sense of it.
– Go hang yourselves all! you are idle shallow things. I am not of your element I am not of your element Sir Topas never was man more wronged –
Malvolio!
– good Sir Topas do not think I am mad: they have laid me here in hideous darkness. I am not mad Sir Topas I say to you this house is dark –
These were Malvolio’s lines, shouted from a dark chamber in Act IV, scene ii of Twelfth Night when at the connivance of Sir Toby Belch and others he has been declare
d insane and locked up, and Joan, oh, she was so very familiar with these lines –
– I say this house is as dark as ignorance though ignorance were as dark as hell and I say there was never man thus abused. I am no more mad than you are –
Joan sat down on the bed where she was all in shadow with just the light from the open kitchen door across the passage, and listened in silent wonder to her late husband shouting the lines of his last role until he fell silent. She didn’t move. She sat staring at the wardrobe. Then came the voice again, now low, dreadful, full of threat.
– Madam you have done me wrong, notorious wrong –
And then silence again. Joan felt the hair on her neck begin to stir and a chill creep over her skin. Her lips turned white. As in a dream she couldn’t seem to move. Then came a shrill voice, like a woman’s voice, the shriek of a crone.
– He hath been most notoriously abused!
Then silence once more. The wardrobe grew still. The deathly coldness seemed to pass and all at once Joan realised she was alone in the bedroom and could move again. She rose to her feet unsteadily. Gulping for air she stumbled with her head down into the passage and shut the door behind her and locked it, then went into the kitchen and closed the kitchen door. She sat at the kitchen table and with trembling fingers poured herself a glass of gin. It was his voice. She didn’t know who the woman was, probably it was himself imitating Olivia but unrecognisable in that last screechy voice, and with sinking heart she acknowledged at last that which she’d suspected for weeks but dared not properly fully confront.
– You’re in the fucking wardrobe, she said aloud.
She lifted the glass shakily to her lips and drank, then turned towards the window. She repeated his words.
– I say this house is as dark as ignorance though ignorance were as dark as hell.
For a little while she sat with her hand over her mouth. Then she spoke again.
The Wardrobe Mistress Page 18