Long Acre

by Claire Rayner

  But he was totally unaware of her, limping elegantly over to the Misses Henriques’ sofa to sit between them, much to their obvious delight, and she sat down on her hassock again, feeling quite wretched.

  She felt rather than saw someone bring another hassock to sit beside her, and turned her head, as the first notes trilled from the piano under Phoebe’s fingers, hoping it might be Felix. His friendly company would be very comforting at this moment, she thought.

  But it was Mr Oliver Lackland, and she smiled at him politely, if a shade mechanically, and returned her attention to the pianoforte, her head spinning. How would she evade having to perform and make a fool of herself? She could perhaps recite the ‘Quality of Mercy’ speech from The Merchant of Venice, she thought suddenly. Perhaps that would satisfy them? And it would show this boring man beside her, who was looking at her steadily and making no attempt even to pretend to be interested in what his sister was singing, that she had a real talent.

  Phoebe had started singing, a rather old-fashioned melody, Amy thought, about a Girl in a Garden whose lover, it appeared, had gone to war as a soldier. It was a mawkish song, Amy decided, and her lips curled a little as she listened. She was glad indeed that she could not sing, if it meant having to produce such foolish songs as this —

  The sound trickled away, as Phoebe’s voice died to silence, and Amy came out of her brown study to the sound of clapping, to see Freddy Caspar standing beside the piano holding his wife’s hand in his and looking down at her as though they were sweethearts rather than respectable man and wife, and she stared at them, slightly puzzled.

  ‘That song has a great meaning for them, you know,’ a voice said in her ear, and she jumped and turned her head the other way to find Felix beside her.

  ‘Indeed? I must say, I thought the song a trifle —’ she shrugged, and he smiled at that and she reddened, for it seemed to her that he was aware of the cause of her petulance and was amused by it.

  ‘Well, it is a silly old song, no doubt, but you see, Freddy was in the Crimean war, as my father was, and she — Phoebe, you know — she went out there as well, and sang that song, among others, to the soldiers there —’

  She could not answer him, for now Phoebe was on her feet and saying loudly, ‘There! You insisted, so I have sung! Now it is the turn of you young ones — Isabel? Sarah? That charming duet of yours —’

  Amid some fluttering of music and rearranging of pianoforte stools the sisters settled themselves at the keyboard, and Amy had to admit that they made a delightful picture, their dark heads together, their elegant long necks and sloping shoulders outlined against the lamplight, and clearly she was not alone in her approval; for suddenly Fenton rose to his feet, and limped across the room to stand behind them, ready to turn the pages of their music, and Isabel looked up at him over her shoulder and smiled, and he smiled back and for a second Amy felt a stab of surprised anger. Fenton, to look so at a girl? He had often looked at girls and simulated admiration — she knew his repertoire of charming mannerisms as well as he did. But she had never seen him behave with quite such sincerity before, and she felt a sudden little chill in her belly as she stared at the three young people at the piano. Tonight was altogether turning out to be most disturbing.

  The duet was tinkling and pretty, and when it ended to a spatter of warm family applause, with Abby and Gideon both beaming widely with parental pride, Isabel turned her head and whispered to Fenton who after a moment nodded, and Sarah stood up and returned to the sofa, while Isabel moved across and Fenton stood closely behind her.

  ‘Oh, no —’ Amy said involuntarily under her breath as a small buzz of approval rose in the room, and Felix leaned forwards and said softly, ‘What is the matter?’

  ‘He cannot sing!’ she whispered. ‘He must be mad to try it! He has never studied or —’

  But she had forgotten besotted Miss Emma of Long Acre. In two short weeks she had taught Fenton more than his sister had realized and she sat there with her eyes wide, watching and listening in some amazement.

  He chose a song that was very popular, being whistled and sung by every errand boy in Covent Garden, but yet which was perfectly respectable and suitable even in as elegant a drawing-room as this, being comic without being offensive in any way. He stood with one hand lightly resting on Isabel’s shoulder — a circumstance of which they both appeared to be totally unaware, although Isabel’s mother was not — and warbled pleasantly in his easy tenor ‘— then love your neighbour as yourself, as the world you go travelling through. And never sit down with a tear or a frown, but Paddle your own Canoe!’

  The applause he received was warm and genuine and he stood there flushed and smiling, refusing an encore (and Amy guessed shrewdly that he had learned no other suitable songs from Miss Emma) and then apparently on an impulse he turned to Amy.

  ‘Amy, my dear, you are being much too quiet there!’ he said, and his voice was rallying. ‘Come here, now, and Miss Isabel and I will play a duet for you, and you shall do your charming dance! Then both of us will have made our small effort! Do, now, dear, please do!’

  She stared at him in horror, her eyes wider than ever, and at once Oliver Lackland beside her got to his feet, and held out one hand.

  ‘Indeed, it would give us all much pleasure if you would, Miss Lucas,’ he said, his glasses winking as he looked at her with great earnestness. ‘Your brother sings very well, but I have no doubt your dancing will excel him.’

  Martha and Phoebe began to applaud, and the clapping was taken up by the others, and Amy, knowing herself defeated, walked across to the piano, as Oliver busily removed a small table or two from its immediate vicinity, and pushed back a sofa to make more room.

  ‘Which dance, Fenton dear?’ she said in a sweet low voice, looking up at him, and her eyes were glittering with rage as he grinned down at her with great insouciance and said airily, ‘Oh, you know, my love! The charming divertissement that you learned from Miss Farraday —?’

  Since the only dance she had ever done while being taught by Miss Farraday had been a cruel mimicry of her teacher’s attempts to be stylish and move well, Amy’s rage increased, but there was nothing she could do. Fenton and Isabel were now seated side on the piano stool looking up at her expectantly, and Fenton said, ‘A waltz rhythm, as I recall, Amy? Yes? Then Miss Isabel, shall we about it? One, two, three,’ and they began to tinkle out a melody in a rhythmic three-four time.

  She turned and stood poised in front of them all, her hands hanging loosely at her sides and her mind filled with rage and hurt that Fenton should treat her so and sheer embarrassment at being forced to make, as she was sure, a fool of herself, and feeling very close to tears. And caught the encouraging expression on Felix Laurence’s face.

  He was looking at her with his head on one side, and his mouth curled into a smile and she stared at him and it was almost as though he spoke; she seemed to hear him say, ‘You can do anything you wish! Go on — you know you can!’

  And suddenly she did know she could, and she waited for a moment until the music reached a suitable point and then, lifting her arms, began to dance.

  She had never been taught to dance, just as she had never been taught to sing. Her mother had preferred to have her taught what she regarded as quiet accomplishments such as water-colour drawing and the speaking of French, having a deep distrust of all the performing arts. She had only agreed to allow the speech lessons because Amy had told her that Miss Farraday would improve her French accent, and help her to speak in the sort of low voice her mother much admired. Yet, despite her lack of teaching, Amy did have the theatre running in her blood, given to her by her father, and whoever had gone before him. Just as Fenton had been able to learn how to sing a song and make it sound agreeable in just two short weeks with an indifferent teacher, so she could put on a semblance of dancing that would satisfy these people. For what did they know of such matters, after all?

  So she told herself as she allowed the rhythm of the music to
enter her muscles, and her body to take what direction it would in response. These people would not know, and could easily be persuaded that she was a superb dancer — if she acted the part of a dancer.

  And so she did, dipping and swaying and turning and making little leaps with all the aplomb of one who has spent half her life in the corps de ballet, drifting lightly and delicately about the small space available to her as easily as any one of the snowflakes still falling into the silent square outside.

  She danced with her chin thrown up, and moved her head as well as her body and her limbs, knowing that the swirl of a curl against a long neck could beguile attention away from any faults in her footwork, and that an expression of beatitude on her face could persuade even the most unresponsive of individuals that she was really dancing well, instead of merely going through a sketch of it.

  To Oliver watching her, bemused, she was almost painfully perfect. He looked at the curve of her narrow back and the way her hands fluttered and shaped themselves as her slender fingers stretched and then curled, watched the turn of her head against her neck and was totally bewitched. He found his heart beating thickly in his chest, and was startled. He found his hands damp with perspiration, and was even more surprised. And when she had finished and stood there with her head flung back and her arms spread wide he was amazed to hear his own voice crying out, ‘Bravo, bravo! Splendid performance, quite splendid!’

  Freddy was delighted and called out above the sound of the applause, which was considerable, ‘Well, Oliver? Are my protégés to join your company, then?’

  The sound of applause drifted away and Phoebe turned her head to look at her brother, her eyebrows raised. Not as susceptible to Amy’s charms as he was, she had clearly seen the flaws in her extempore performance, and with all her own experience of stage work doubted very much whether this girl, with all her charm, could translate what she had done into any sort of appearance of which paying customers would approve. But, seeing his flushed face and eager expression, she said nothing, being too surprised to do so. That Oliver should look at a girl like that — she turned her attention back to Amy and looked at her with new eyes.

  ‘Well, Mr Lackland, am I to understand that we have given a successful audition?’

  It was Fenton’s voice which was raised now, and he stood looking challengingly at the bald man, who nodded and smiled widely and said simply, ‘Of course! We shall design our new show in such a way that both you and your sister will appear to advantage. I have no doubt that between you you will give me one of my most successful seasons!’

  ‘No!’ Amy stood and stared at Fenton with horror all over her face. ‘Fenton, are you quite mad? We are not singers and dancers! We are actors, you and I! I said at the start that this would be — oh, Mr Caspar, did I not say to you that we were actors? That I could not imagine what we should do in such a show as you said was performed at your brother’s establishment and that —’ She turned back to Fenton. ‘Truly, Fenton, I did say it! We cannot work as singers and dancers.’

  Her voice seemed to drip with scorn as she said the words, and even Fenton, usually well able to keep her in control, stepped back in some surprise.

  She turned to Oliver, moving so swiftly that her gown belled and lifted, showing her ankles and creating a waft of air that made the candles on the piano dip and flutter. ‘I’m sorry indeed that you have been misled, sir, truly I am. But we are legitimate actors! We do not — we don’t cavort and dance about the stage! We are better than that, I do promise you!’

  There was a short and uncomfortable silence and then Phoebe, without moving from her place on her sofa, said in a low but very clear voice, ‘Miss Lucas! I spent my girlhood cavorting on the selfsame stage upon which you are being offered an opportunity not merely to earn your keep — which I understand is a matter of some urgency for you — but also to enjoy a very respectable acclaim. Legitimate or not, the stage of the Celia Supper Rooms is not to be scorned! I think you should reconsider your hasty rejection of the very splendid offer my brother has made to you, and accept it, if he is still willing to stand by it — and I do not hesitate to tell you that I would not be so meek! — and perhaps, apologize to him? Your response to his generous approval of your — er — performance is I feel, a little less than appreciative!’

  ‘I — I did not mean to be — to seem ungrateful or — or —’ Amy stared at Phoebe for a long moment, at the cold gleam of dislike in her eyes, and then at Oliver who looked merely blank with amazement and then shook her head and tried to speak, and to her horror found tears rising in her throat, choking her with a needle sharpness more painful than any she had felt even when her tears had been shed for her dead mother. Indeed, not since Papa had died had she felt so bereft, so lost for understanding and love. And the thought of Papa was more than she could bear and she shook her head wildly again and, to her eternal shame, burst into tears.

  The result was electric. Oliver after one horrified moment hurried across to her, his hands held out in an almost comical gesture of supplication, and Fenton jumped up and began to move towards her. But it was Felix, moving with a deceptive easiness, who reached her first and said comfortably above the little hubbub of conversation that had broken out, ‘I think she is a little over-excited by her exertions — strange people, you know, at a party, and then dancing — I will soon see her settled. No, Freddy, all is well, I do assure you. I will just take her up to the morning room, if Aunt Martha will accompany us? Thank you, Aunt Martha. Some sal volatile to settle the nerves and I am sure all will be perfectly comfortable with her. Thank you, Aunt Martha — that’s the way, Miss Lucas — just come with me — ’

  And he led her out of the drawing-room with one protective arm about her shoulders while Miss Martha Lackland hurried ahead to open the morning-room door and make sure there was a sofa ready for her to collapse upon, and hide her mortified face.

  CHAPTER TEN

  She was in fact recovered long before she was prepared to admit it. Aunt Martha had mixed the sal volatile and insisted she swallowed it, though it had made her cough and caused her tears to run even faster, and then after a few words with Felix had gone rustling away, back to the drawing-room. And Amy had lain there on the sofa with one arm flung up to hide her face trying to regain her self-control, but, above all, trying to plan how she would behave to get herself out of this silly, highly shameful situation into which she had fallen.

  No ideas came to her at all. Dignified silence? Not very effective, since she would have to break it sooner or later. Lip-trembling shyness? That was possible but difficult to maintain, and anyway, her behaviour in the drawing-room had been the very reverse of shy. Icy rejection of them all? That would hardly be practical. The Lackland man had, after all, offered them both work, and heaven knew they needed it. Perhaps if they agreed to work for him she could persuade him that a much better idea would be for her to do the ‘Mercy’ speech from The Merchant of Venice than to leap around the stage like some sort of burlesque queen? Which she was not nor ever would be —

  She turned her head on the cushion sharply, trying somehow to see a way out of it all, and Felix’s voice came equably through her self-absorption.

  ‘Will you stay so all evening? We have barely half an hour to go to midnight, and they will all expect us to be with them to welcome the New Year. Do you think you have recovered yet?’

  She lay very still, her arm still up, her thoughts rushing around like mice. Throw herself on this young man’s care? He has been so friendly and kind, though not, to be honest, showing any signs of being at all enamoured of her; she thought momentarily of Mr Foster, out there in the snow somewhere, and wished he were with her; he could not do much to help, perhaps, but his care of her, and his willingness to do anything she asked, was very comforting. This young man would never be so biddable, that she knew. Yet perhaps he would help her, talk to his relations, make them forget what a cake she had made of herself —

  ‘Well, if you are not going to talk to me, I
might as well return to the drawing-room. To sit here with a totally silent female is no sort of entertainment, I can assure you —’

  Still she lay there remote and quiet and after a moment she heard the scrape of a chair being pushed back and footsteps crossing the floor and at once she sat up and said breathlessly, ‘No — do not leave me, please!’

  ‘I will stay with pleasure, if you will talk to me, and stop lying there like a tragedy queen. You are not so badly put about, after all!’

  ‘Not put about? How can you say that — how can you? Fenton — I could kill Fenton! He made me dance, knowing full well I could not and —’

  ‘You still managed very well,’ he said calmly and came back to sit down in the chair beside her again. ‘I am no expert but to my eyes, you looked charming. As well you know.’

  She shook her head impatiently. ‘Oh, it is easy enough to look tolerable! But to have to do it always, when I am an actress and not a dancer —’

  ‘Miss Lucas, will you permit me to advise you? I am somewhat your senior, after all, and although I am but a physician with little personal knowledge of the ways of the stage, I belong to this family which is much involved with theatre matters. And I think you should stop insisting so much upon your status as an actress. If you say it too often, when none have seen you act, you will harden their lack of interest in ever seeing you do so. I am sure you understand me! If you were able to entertain here tonight — as you did, more than tolerably well — why, then you may do so upon a stage. Cousin Oliver may not seem to you to be the thespian ideal, but I have to tell you he is a very shrewd man, who has built himself an excellent reputation and a comfortable fortune from his Supper Rooms. You will lose nothing and gain much by accepting, indeed you will.’