Long Acre

by Claire Rayner

  ‘Ah, yes — as to that — well, now it seemed to me, when you were speaking to Charles of your father, that you were expressing some very real and very important feelings.’

  She looked up at him, a little puzzled. ‘But of course!’

  ‘There is no of course about it,’ he said, and his voice was suddenly gentle. ‘Miss Lucas, let me explain something to you. I believe you to be at heart a lady as capable of sincerity and — and directness in your dealings as any other person. But all the years you have spent steeped in theatricality have made you to an extent artificial — and the artifice has become so much a part of you that you do not even know when you display it! I daresay it is an impertinence in me, but I have set myself the goal of — shall we say, of helping you to recognize your artifices and use them only when it is right and proper that you should. This is why I torment you as I do. And I daresay you do regard it as some sort of unkindness in me.’

  She blinked and looked away, frowning. ‘I suppose you are right. Not that you torment me — precisely — you make me angry, I admit, but torment — that is a very different matter. I know what you mean, of course. That I act a great deal, but it is what I am for —’ and she looked up at him appealingly. ‘I cannot change that.’

  He smiled. ‘I am sure I do not wish you to change in any real way, Miss Lucas. But I would wish to teach you — no, shall we say, help you to learn — how to control your artifices. As I think you will — but as I was saying, in the matter of your father —’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘When you spoke of him, you did so with such feeling that it seemed to me that you really care deeply about finding any of his family.’

  ‘I told you I did! Could you not believe me?’

  ‘Yes, I believe you. In this, I really believe you. And, so did Wyndham. He was about to offer to help you make a search for these relations, you know.’

  She whirled and looked about the room for him, but he was in the far corner with Miss Sarah, playing a rather noisy game of cards at which both were laughing quite immoderately.

  ‘He was? Then I shall speak to him of it immediately! Because —’

  He put out his hand to restrain her. ‘There is no need. That is why I was speaking so to Cousin Oliver. I shall help you seek your family. On each and every Monday evening, if you will permit, we shall make such inquiries as we may. If you would like that, of course.’

  ‘Like it? I would like it above all things!’ She was staring up at him with great delight, and his own eyes narrowed appreciatively as he smiled back at her pleasure.

  ‘Then, next Monday, I suggest that I call for you at your lodgings in Long Acre, and we sally forth upon our search. Perhaps you and your brother will dine with me first at an hotel? There are several excellent and respectable establishments where a lady may safely be seen —’

  ‘I shall ask him — right now —’

  ‘Oh, I think I would not disturb him.’ He turned his head towards the far corner of the room where Fenton and Isabel were seated side by side at the piano with their heads close together, picking out a pretty little Mozart duet, and Amy nodded and smiled and turned back to Felix.

  ‘Well, yes, I daresay, it would spoil their concentration on the music — but I shall tell him tonight, as soon as we may, how kind you are being — and — and —’ she stopped and bit her lip.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I was so angry with you the other day, I quite hated you. And from what I have seen of you already, I daresay there will be times when I will hate you again. Most heartily! But at present, Mr Laurence, I will be as direct as even you could wish, and tell you I like you very much!’

  ‘You mean you are grateful at the moment, Miss Lucas! But never mind — you are indeed speaking just as you feel, and I find that most refreshing! And now, I think, we should join the card-players, don’t you? Drawing-room manners may be tedious, but they needs must be adhered to!’

  Martha, watching still from behind her embroidery, sighed again. The undercurrents were now running very smoothly, it seemed. And she wished she could have been happier about it.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  January snowed and then thawed into a blustery February which blew itself with gusto into a crisp pale March, and Amy was as happy as she could ever remember being.

  Each Monday morning she spent in dealing with her wardrobe, an activity she much enjoyed, with Miss Emma Miller to help her (and she turned out to be as pretty a needlewoman as she was a teacher of the pianoforte) while Fenton slept the morning hours away and left them in peace. He would then join them, yawning hugely, for one of Mrs Miller’s ‘scratch luncheons’ as she called them, to eat vast quantities of boiled ham and mutton pasties and apple and currant pies before taking himself off to meet his cronies at the Wrekin coffee house, just round the corner in Broad Court. Here he spent his afternoons until it was time to go to King Street for the evening performances, sittting and drinking and gossiping with other actors and singers — for the Wrekin was an acknowledged meeting-place for the profession — leaving his sister alone to occupy herself as best she might.

  Not that she had any difficulty in finding occupation. Arrayed in whatever new item she had devised with Miss Miller’s aid — were it a hat, or a newly trimmed muff, or occasionally a completely new gown — she would sally forth to walk about the handsome shopping streets of London admiring the goods spread on the counters of the richest establishments in the richest city in the richest country in the world. Her lack of money with which to buy the splendid creations offered to the eager gaze of passers-by bothered her little; it was enough at present to admire. The deep-down discontent which had been so much a feature of her life since she had grown up and which had expressed itself hitherto in a hungry longing for anything and everything she saw or could imagine was damped down, and it was some time — well into March — before she realized just why it was she was so serene.

  The reason was, of course, Monday evenings. They had devised a ritual quite early in their acquaintanceship and followed it as regularly as clockwork, a patterning which in itself gave Amy a most agreeable sense of security. The suggestion that Fenton should join them to dine soon shrivelled away, for after one evening which Fenton spent with them and clearly found exceedingly boring — for Felix was an abstemious man, and ordered only one bottle of wine to their dinner, which Fenton clearly found inadequate — he made excuses not to accompany them. So, just the two of them would meet each Monday at about five o’clock, when Felix left the hospital, and would stroll even in the most inclement of weather — for as Amy stoutly told him, they had much worse winters in Boston — to one of the pleasant if rather dull little hotel dining-rooms or respectable family restaurants in the district, there to eat a comfortable meal.

  And they would talk.

  Sometimes of patients he had seen that day, sometimes of episodes she had experienced at the Supper Rooms, sometimes of Fenton’s doings (though that was rare) occasionally of books he had read or music he had heard, and wished to introduce to her. Gradually he taught her, even though she did not realize she was learning anything, to be relaxed and comfortable with him. The pretty little tricks of behaviour that she had used when with men for as long as she could remember — the sidelong glances, the sweeping of her thick lashes, the little pouts that so delightfully displayed the errant dimples at the corners of her mouth — were all abandoned with him. She would still use them at the Supper Rooms, both as part of her performance and when talking to the customers after each show, but with him, never.

  She did not know that this was the reason he did not come to watch her, even when she put a new dance in her repertoire. He told her simply that he had seen her first performances, and remembered them well enough; he had no need to see more. And though that at first had made her angry, and indeed quite hurt, she had been mollified by the obvious pleasure he took in their Monday evenings, when he would sit across the table from her and talk, and encourage her to talk, listening w
ith his face bearing its usual friendly expression, yet with a grave interest that was very warming.

  For him it was a comfort that she had accepted his calm refusal to attend the Supper Rooms to see her and he was grateful for it, for he had suffered a good deal of distress about his feelings when he had seen her there. Indeed, Felix was going through what was for him a most difficult time. Although he was a mature man of some twenty-seven years he had never yet been at all touched in any way by any young woman. He had grieved long and sorely for his beloved father, and found much comfort in the easy close relationship he had built with Martha, and that had been enough for him. Over the years of his arduous medical training and early struggling years as a qualified physician, he had held himself aloof from females, hiding his most tender feelings behind a mask of friendliness that had maddened many a hopeful young lady on the lookout for a husband. And Martha’s friends had long since given up hope of snaffling him for one of their daughters.

  So that when he had been caught unawares by the sight of a girl in a blue gown going up the stairs of his cousin Phoebe’s house, he had been extremely startled by the effect. When, that same evening, he had heard young Foster’s declaration he had been positively amazed at the stab of rage and disappointment he had felt; and when she had come to see him at the hospital he had to admit he was captive. Every turn of her head, every tone of her voice, was as dear to him as life itself.

  Not that he had not tried to fight what he regarded as a weakness in himself. That he should be captivated by one who was, in a sense, a professional captivator hurt his self-esteem keenly. He had tried hard to provoke her into behaviour of the sort that would free him of the thrall into which she had cast him. But that did not help. In a very short time he realized that for all the guile there was in her, there was no malice. Indeed, at bottom she was a good honest girl, he discovered; a little too biddable perhaps by her brother (and he, Felix shrewdly suspected, was far from good at bottom) rather too easily swayed by the opinions of others, but a dear good girl for all that.

  In other words, Felix was head over heels in love, although none, seeing his calm exterior and hearing his easy quiet speech, would ever have thought it.

  It was that which made it impossible for him to sit and watch Amy perform at his cousin’s establishment. All the falsity which he so disliked appeared in her there with such glitter and cleverness that the girl he so deeply loved seemed to disappear altogether to be replaced by a grinning posturing painted creature he positively despised. And in addition, he realized full well just how besotted Oliver had become with his new performer, and the sight of him standing in the shadows of the wings, staring at her with a fatuous beaming glow upon his face and his eyes shining almost with lasciviousness as he watched Amy’s pirouettes and swaying movements across the small stage, was agony for Felix. Better, by far, he told himself, to stay away. He could see no other way in which to battle against the ignoble jealousy which so filled him when he went there.

  But, fortunately, she came to terms with that and as winter gave way to spring enjoyed their Mondays more and more. With him she felt safe and comfortable and deeply happy; and yet at the same time greatly excited. She did not analyse her feelings, made no attempt to put a name to her relationship with him, and would have been amazed if someone had told her she was in love. That was something that happened to young men for her sake, or to foolish young girls who fell into a trance at the sight of Fenton’s handsome face. It was not conceivable to Amy that she should ever be such a one, so she did not conceive of it. She was just content to be as she was.

  Graham Foster was no longer a problem to her, for he had passed his final examinations and taken himself and his broken heart off to work in a hospital in Southampton (where, if he missed Amy quite agonizingly, he was at least free of his masterful mother’s attentions); she was working in a reasonably agreeable occupation which had the great virtue of allowing the Lucases not only to pay their way (for Oliver was providing most generous salaries) but to pay back their debts and even to save a little, and was being looked after with great cosiness in the little house in Long Acre. With all that and a Monday evening in every week, life seemed to be offering her all it could as the months pleated themselves contentedly into each other.

  They did not forget the reason they had started their ritual of meeting each Monday. Amy was genuinely eager to make a search for any connections of her father’s who might be found, and Felix was genuinely eager to help her. He, who had loved his own father so dearly, could enter closely into her feelings for her dead Papa. He too could remember the delight of spending childhood time with a man who had made him laugh and made him feel safe and happy. He too could feel the pangs of guilt which sometimes Amy felt; she would talk with remorse of the way she had been captious or noisy or shrill and had spoiled outings by fighting with her brother, or stamping and balking at her mother, and he would remember his own great guilt about his father’s death. How he had to learn to live with the fact that it had been his own impulsive schoolboy desire to ‘fight in the Crimea’ which had forced his father to make the long and tedious journey to follow him; how his father had stayed behind in Scutari because there was only one passage available on the ship going home to England, a passage which he had insisted the boy Felix should take. And how his father had died there. These were matters upon which he had thought many times over the years and which had given him much pain. But now, in a curious way, he felt he was to an extent expiating his own guilt in helping Amy to make her search for her father’s family.

  They covered much the same ground that Amy and Fenton had covered in their early days in England, when seeking work as actors. They went to the Theatre Royal in the new Adelphi, to the Royal Italian, to Drury Lane, to Terry’s, to the Royalty, to the Globe.

  They would see the performance in the theatre each time, whatever play was being done. It seemed reasonable to both of them to assume that any connection of her father’s would be involved with the theatre still, and so might well appear in a playbill, so they would sit in the comfortable stalls and eagerly peruse the list of players in search of Lucases; until Felix pointed out that the assumption that her father would have had only male relations of his own name was absurd; could he not have had sisters who had married and produced offspring with quite different surnames? Which obvious fact quite cast Amy in the dumps for a little while — until he pointed out that they could look at the actors for family likenesses to herself and Fenton, both of whom had been very like Papa.

  Which they did, conversing in soft whispers about whether or not that actor had a nose like Fenton’s or a head shaped like her own. And come to the conclusion at last that this was not really the way to make their searches, but at present could not devise another. Not that they thought about it very hard; for both of them it was the sharing of the evening that mattered. There seemed to be plenty of time yet in which to carry out their plans.

  It was late in March, when the flower-sellers at the street corners were offering bunches of violets and primroses and occasionally even daffodils and the roads were noisy with the chatter of sparrows who made themselves heard even above the clatter and roar of the traffic that they accidentally bumped into Charles Wyndham as they entered the restaurant they had chosen for their dinner that night.

  Amy had almost forgotten him and greeted him with real pleasure, and he glinted at her as he bent over her hand and said in a voice which sounded richer and rounder than ever: ‘My dear Miss Lucas! How good to see you! Indeed today is full of such coincidences! Here I have not set eyes upon you since that delightful dinner —’ and here he bowed at Felix, ‘— was it as long ago as last January? And now I see both you and your brother on the same day!’

  ‘Oh?’ Amy smiled up at him. ‘Indeed? How very curious! I imagine you went to the early performance at the Supper Rooms, then?’

  ‘Oh, no, nothing so mundane! I have seen your show, of course, and quite delightful it was, quite delightful! I am n
ot surprised to hear your cousin is doing such good business, Felix, indeed I am not! No, my dear Miss Lucas, I saw him in the Burlington Arcade, with Miss Henriques, you know, quite girdled about with her packages! They seemed to be on very happy terms — so happy, indeed that I forbore to speak to them. It would have been quite an intrusion, I fear, to have interrupted their colloquy!’

  Felix looked at him with a hint of dislike in his eyes. He had not remembered the fellow as being quite such a coxcomb, with his posturings and posings, and he wanted to send him away as fast as he could, fearing that his precious evening alone with Amy was about to be spoiled. But she responded to his words with some surprise, and was talking eagerly.

  ‘My brother? In Burlington Arcade? With Miss Henriques? Oh no, I am sure you were mistaken, Mr Wyndham! My brother went to the Supper Rooms early today. He told me he was going there directly from Long Acre, instead of spending his usual couple of hours with his friends at the Wrekin. He is there most afternoons, you know, except on days when there is an early performance.’

  ‘Oh, I am sure it was he, my dear Miss Lucas! I was almost as close to him as I am to you — yet still he was so absorbed in his fair companion he did not see me. The Wrekin, did you say? I am often there — most afternoons when I am not occupied at the hospital, and certainly almost always at luncheon time, you know, and I have never seen him there — yet as I say, I see both of you on the same day! Is it not strange?’

  ‘Not very strange, I am sure,’ Felix said a little sharply. ‘Large as London is, the parts in which people work and shop are not so widespread. I am never surprised at anyone I may meet —’

  ‘Well, I am indeed delighted to see you both! Will you take a little wine with me, perhaps? It would be agreeable to share a little talk with you, Miss Lucas, on matters theatrical —’