Cordelia arrived home a few minutes after Rupert and was thrilled to see Ma and Ronnie. Archie brought in champagne and diablotins, which are tiny puffs of pastry filled with whatever you like – in this case, a mixture of Roquefort, shredded mushrooms and courgettes. At six o’clock we went to change and at seven we were driven to the Kemble Theatre where we were to meet Ophelia and Charles in the bar. An admiring throng gathered round Ma and Ronnie in the foyer.
‘Do look!’ I overheard someone say. ‘It’s that actor Ronald Whatshisname who was Bonnie Prince Charlie. My mother’s been in love with him for years.’
‘Ooh, yes,’ said another, ‘And isn’t that Vanessa Redgrave on his arm?’
Upstairs the crowd parted respectfully to let Ma and Ronnie through, affording us a glimpse of a familiar rear view seated on a stool at the bar.
‘Bron! Oh, my darling boy!’ Ma ran in slow motion towards him, her beautiful dress floating out behind her like an advertisement for chocolate. The other theatregoers were all eyes and all ears. ‘I’ve missed you so much, my angel.’ They kissed each other with consummate grace. ‘And you never telephone! You’ve no idea what a mother’s feelings are! Where are you staying? Is Letizia with you? Oh, my sweetest boy, it’s such heaven to see you!’
‘Hello, Ma. You’re looking top-hole. Letizia sends her love but she’s got a show on and couldn’t spare the time. I told her I had to be here for the old man’s first night so she agreed to let me off the leash just for this evening. I’m flying back tonight. But why don’t you and Ronnie come and stay as soon as the show’s over? Say next week? We’re renting a palazzo near Rome for few months.’
‘What bliss, darling! We’d love to. If you’re sure I wouldn’t cramp Letizia’s style? It isn’t every young bride who wants her mother-in-law to stay just when she’s getting to grips with housekeeping.’
It occurred to me then that there was quite a lot about Letizia that Bron hadn’t told Ma.
‘Oh, Letizia doesn’t worry about that kind of thing. The villa’s well-staffed, including two cooks, so we’ll be fairly comfortable, I should think.’
‘I must say that’s a very tempting invitation,’ said Ronnie, looking eager. ‘Speaking for myself I could do with a break from decorating –’
‘Stop grumbling, Ronnie,’ cut in Ma. ‘Of course we shall come. It’s so wonderful to see you, sweetest boy! Shall we have a chance to talk afterwards? What time is your flight?’
‘Oh, any time I like. Letizia has her own ducky little jet. It’s waiting for me at Heathrow.’
There was more in this vein. By the time Ophelia and Charles arrived, everyone standing near us had given up any pretence of talking to each other. They were gripped by the impromptu entertainment provided by my family.
The first bell rang and at once, with a spurt of terror, I was brought back to the present. We went to our seats in the front half of the stalls. My knees were weak and ached with fright for my darling father, who I knew would be shivering in the wings. Just as the lights were going down and a hush was falling over the auditorium, there was a disturbance behind as some latecomers scrambled along the row. I recognised one of the voices muttering, ‘Excuse me … Sorry … Thanks …’ I turned round and saw Portia and Jonno.
The curtain went up and we were engulfed by that familiar rush of cold air from the stage, which always wrought my nerves to their highest pitch. I had forgotten how long the first scene of Othello is – or so it seemed to me now – in which Iago declares his hatred for his master and plots his downfall. Cordelia who, she said, could take Shakespeare or leave him – preferably the latter – made so much noise tearing out a page of her programme and pleating it into a fan, that the woman in front turned round and glared. For the rest of Scene One Cordelia dropped little bits of torn-up paper into the folds of the woman’s shawl collar. In the end I had to take the programme away from her. I sensed that the audience was restless. Everyone had come to see the man whose wrongful imprisonment had made him the focus of intense interest and public sympathy. At last the flats did a cunning little twist about and the backdrop lifted to indicate a new location for Scene Two. Now was the moment for Othello’s first entrance.
The audience leaned forward in their seats. The spotlights dimmed. Servants ran on to the stage bearing torches and then Pa strode forth from the wings, magnificent in crimson and silver. A collective murmur of ‘Aah’ broke out spontaneously and a current of excitement shot through the theatre.
‘’Tis better as it is.’ Pa’s voice boomed out … ‘Let him do his spite.’
As the play unfolded I could hardly believe this man was my own dear father. Not only because he was as dark and glistening as a Sachertorte, but because he was the embodiment of martial swagger and barely restrained violence. In real life Pa was a man whose pain threshold was zero. He had to be completely anaesthetised before the dentist was allowed even to look into his mouth. When Ma had babies he had to be exiled from the house until it was over, lest he should hear anything like a moan and be precipitated into full-blown madness.
But as Othello he bore himself like a man who would knock you down if he disliked the colour of your hat. And then repent of it afterwards. A man of supercharged energy whose instincts were to react first and think second. A bear of a man, fiery of temper, always running to extremes. A man more at home in a sea-battle than in the bedroom with a beautiful young wife. He could command legions of rough men but he was a child when it came to understanding women.
And yet how tender he was with Desdemona. When he took her in his arms to say, ‘I cannot speak enough of this content: it stops me here’, and put his hand on his heart, he was humble, tamed, his voice tremulous, at the point of tears. His inability to articulate the strength of his love for her was touchingly at odds with the fluent tales of his adventures at sea, his descriptions of ‘hairbreadth scapes i’ th’ imminent deadly breach’. Like Desdemona, the audience listened with a greedy ear.
Othello is often played as a man of neurotic insecurity, distrustful and uneasy in a white man’s world. Pa showed us why Desdemona loved him. He charmed us like birds to his hand and won our allegiance so that as we watched him degenerate by degrees from ecstatic lover to afflicted wretch and then to monster and murderer, we could not withhold our pity. We saw how his reason was destroyed by the conflict between love and jealousy. When he smothered his innocent wife, his suffering was unbearable to behold. His remorse was so frightful, his suicide so tragic and calamitous yet so inescapable that tears poured down my cheeks. Othello and Pa had merged in my mind as victims and outcasts. Great unhappiness cannot all be wept away at once.
As the curtain closed on the three corpses you could have heard a fly buzz. Then a trickle of applause began that rapidly became a roar. The curtain was slower than usual to reveal the cast. The audience grew clamorous. When it parted all the actors were on stage except for Pa. Ophelia and I looked at each other in alarm. What could have happened to him? He explained afterwards that when he had thrown himself on the body of Desdemona to die in her arms he had cut his head on the bedpost and there had been a panic backstage to find a sticking plaster. The delay served him well. The audience had worked itself into a frenzy of impatience and when at last he appeared it started to bellow. Everyone from stalls to amphitheatre leaped up to give him a standing ovation, stamping, throwing flowers, whistling and shouting their appreciation.
This went on unabated for what seemed like ages while Pa stood uncharacteristically still, not bowing or kissing his fingers to them as he usually did but looking around at the excited smiling faces as though dazed. Then he held up his hands for silence and slowly the noise died.
‘Dear friends,’ began Pa. ‘I am emboldened by your generosity to delay you for a few moments.’
‘Hear, hear!’ Another burst of applause.
Pa smiled and waited for them to be silent. ‘It will not be news to many of you, perhaps, that until recently I was detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure
in the insalubrious building known as Winton Shrubs.’ There was a jocularity in this that made the audience titter uncertainly. A few clapped and then broke off, abashed. ‘More than enough has been recorded in the press about my own tribulations and it is not of them I wish to speak. You can guess that I found myself in unfamiliar company. Men who, if report were true, had done terrible things. Murderers, violators and thieves. Initially I shrank from them in horror. But when you are locked up together, twenty-three hours a day, in a room the size of a cupboard you cannot help falling into conversation. And what I heard made for pretty uncomfortable listening, I can tell you. We think we can imagine what it must be like to be born poor and unfortunate – deprived of those things that everyone in this theatre takes for granted. But what these men had to tell defied imagination. I had not guessed the half of it. When they spoke of their experiences in childhood and early youth, my blood ran like fire, then ice. Life is a merciless bully for children born into circumstances of grinding poverty, to unhappy families broken apart by crime, drugs, alcohol. It brutalises the affections, cramps the intellect, destroys aspiration. It grinds Beauty and Truth under its heel.’ Pa paused for a moment, visibly moved. ‘These men talked tough, but who were they kidding? They weren’t even any good at being bad. Until you spend time in prison you can have no idea of the sort of living death it is. The claustrophobia, the boredom, the ugliness, the dirtiness, the inhumanity. Ladies and gentlemen, these men were on the whole bad but they were not wholly bad. Are some babies born cruel, avaricious, evil? I don’t believe it for a moment! Misfortune makes men bad and prison makes them worse.’
He paused and coughed, wiping his eyes on the sleeve of his sumptuous black and gold tunic. Several people around us were sniffing. I found I was biting my handkerchief until my jaw ached.
‘So what happens when the sentence is served and the gate swings wide? Many prisoners have lost touch with family and friends. They go out into a world which is at best indifferent to their fate. A lonely bedsitter, the old familiar poverty, ugliness, meanness of spirit. Beauty and Truth have made themselves scarce yet again. And to compound the misery, they are marked for ever as the dregs, the scum, the detritus of society. The only people who do not heartily distrust and despise them are other ex-prisoners. Is it any wonder that the majority reoffend and find themselves in the grim cycle of crime and punishment? Ah yes, you would say. But it’s their own fault. And of course it is. But where would any of us be, without good luck behind us? A kind parent, an inspired teacher, an agile mind, good looks, some power to attract, enough money for the simple pleasures of life, to escape the squalor of base existence. Speaking for myself I believe I could have been the lowest villain imaginable if I had undergone the misery and degradation of those men.’ Pa’s voice broke here and he began to weep openly. There was a general rustling as people groped for handkerchiefs. ‘So, with these thoughts in mind, I hope you will not object when I tell you that the entire cast and theatre management have most generously agreed that all receipts from tonight’s performance are to be donated to the Waldo Byng Ex-Prisoners’ Centre.’
There was a moment’s silence and then a great cheer went up with more whistles and stamping, and such was the collective enthusiasm for the cause I was prepared to bet that for a brief while there was not a man or woman in the auditorium who would have objected to find an ex-con waiting for them at home, sipping their whisky and wearing their own fireside slippers.
‘Magnificent, Waldo! Annihilating! I was scorched to my very bones!’ Ma swept into his dressing room and everyone in it apart from Pa crowded back against the walls. I had noticed before that my mother always took up a surprising amount of space for one so slender and lissome. Pa and Ma embraced each other fervently as though they were lovers from rival families who had been kept apart by vindictive relations. But I knew it meant little. The old French saying, Toujours il y a l’un qui donne la baisée et I’autre qui tend la joue, is probably true. In my parents’ case they both offered the cheek and it was this need to be the object of whatever adoration was going, that made them fundamentally incompatible.
After an effusion of compliments they embraced for the last time and Ma made a graceful exit. The two commissionaires who had been appointed to stand guard at the door of Pa’s dressing room and keep out undesirables, temporarily lost control and a heaving, babbling throng pressed forward. Poor Pussyfoot was shoved into a corner and almost forced to sit in Pa’s wash-basin. Her face had been glazed in a mirthless grin as she watched my mother’s performance. I felt quite sorry for her. I was standing just inside the doorway, having been recognised and approved by one of the doorkeepers. I took a step in Pa’s direction and felt my progress impeded by a clutch on the back of my dress. I turned to see, above the epaulettes of the bouncers, the top half of a face I recognised. It was Caroline Frensham. She had squeezed her arm between their uniformed chests and was hanging on to my beautiful gooseberry-green silk taffeta with a determined hand.
‘Harriet! I’ve got to talk to you!’
I had read somewhere that in New Zealand there are ‘strong-eye dogs’, trained to control sheep by staring fixedly at them. Caroline’s eyes were small but fierce. Obediently, like a lamb to the slaughter, I turned and pushed my way under the locked arms of the guardians of Pa’s sanctum. I had been haunted by Max’s wife to such an extent that, on finding myself actually in her presence, I did consider making an undignified dash for it. But such was the crowd in the corridor, flight was impossible. Also Caroline’s face was miserable. I thought she looked ill. I had behaved very badly. It was time to atone.
Together we elbowed through the mob until we reached a place of relative calm. I started to say, ‘Caroline, you must believe how sorry I am. It was a dreadful mistake –’
But she wasn’t listening. ‘Harriet! I’m desperate! Just desperate.’ She clutched at a button on the coat that lay over my arm, as though I might fly from her. But this I now had no intention of doing, provided she did not become violent. ‘I’ve got to see him! I can’t go on like this!’ She started to cry.
‘But – truthfully – I don’t know where he is. Well, somewhere in South America, I think,’ honesty compelled me to admit, ‘but really I’ve had no contact –’
‘What? Oh, you mean Max. He’s in Brazil. But I’m not talking about him. It’s Waldo. I’ve just got to see him! Oh, hell, Harriet, you’re a big girl now. He and your mother have an understanding – I’m sure you know all about it.’ It was more of a statement than a question. I half nodded, half shook my head but she carried on talking at speed anyway, almost gabbling. I assumed she was still taking pills. ‘OK, so Waldo and I have been having an affair. I know he feels bad about wrecking my marriage, but I’ve made up my mind to divorce Max, whatever. He’s never been faithful – he even slept with my bridesmaid the night before our wedding – he’s incapable of passing up a chance of a fuck. All he ever wanted from me was my money. When I fell in love with Waldo I realised what a fool I’d been, putting up with that bastard all these years. Waldo’s everything I’ve always wanted in a man – tender, sincere, unselfish. You know, he’s returned every present I’ve ever given him? He’s so high-minded. I just worship the ground he walks on.’
In her urgency Caroline increased her grip on my button and it came off. It was carved jet and I knew I’d never be able to match it but it would have seemed heartless to appear concerned.
‘Harriet!’ Caroline’s red-rimmed eyes were boring into mine. ‘You’ve got to help me! I’ve done everything Waldo asked. While he was in prison I stayed with my sister in New Zealand so the papers wouldn’t write him up as an adulterer and prejudice his case. But now he’s free what harm can it do? When I call him he always says to wait a while longer till the fuss has died down.’
I remembered Pa complaining, while he was in prison, of a tiresomely persistent girlfriend who showered him with unwanted presents. If only he had told me then that it was Caroline Frensham.
�
�It’s been damn near six months! I’m so lonesome without him!’ More tears fell and she rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, turning it into a scarlet blob. ‘But when I rang his apartment yesterday, a woman answered. She told me there was no point in calling any more. She said Waldo wasn’t interested in me.’ Caroline laughed, a desperate sound. ‘Well, I knew better than that. I just got on a plane and came straight over. I mean, who was that woman? Not Clarissa, that’s for sure! Sounded like a Yank to me. Those guys on the door wouldn’t let me backstage before the performance. And now they want to stop me even speaking to him. I’m going crazy!’
I thought she did look mad. Her eyes were staring and there was a fleck of foam at the corner of her mouth. I noticed that her coat was fastened on the wrong buttons, her hair looked limp and greasy and her hands were shaking. I wondered what I ought to do. I could tell her point-blank about Pussyfoot. Supposing she went off and killed herself? Max might have been telling me the truth about her suicidal impulses. I could not take the risk.
‘Why don’t you go home, Caroline? I promise I’ll get him to telephone you. You must be very tired if you’ve just got off the plane. Wouldn’t it be better to get a little sleep before you see him? You really don’t look well.’
‘Oh. Yeah.’ She looked down at herself in a bewildered sort of way and I felt a brute, stringing her along just like Pa. ‘Yeah, I’m bushed. Guess I look pretty rough, eh? Perhaps I’ll go back home and lie down a bit.’ She put up her hand to her hair. ‘And I’ll get my hair fixed. I want him to see me look my best. That’s a good idea, Harriet. You’re a peach!’
Oh no, I said to myself silently. I’m a selfish coward. ‘I expect he’s got your number?’
‘Yeah. Tell him to call me first thing tomorrow.’
Clouds among the Stars Page 62