The Cilla Rose Affair

by Winona Kent

  He sat now, facing forward, mesmerized by the view from the window: the grimy ribbon of bound-together cables, the bolted segments of ribbed cast iron, sooty black.

  He loved the tube. There was something about the stations, buried under London, that made him feel safe. He understood how they must have felt during the war, seeking shelter on the platforms while the bombs rained down above.

  There was something about the tunnels, snaking under the streets, being carried along through the secret entrails of the city…

  He smiled. It was probably some classic Freudian hang-up left over from his childhood.

  The train climbed slightly, and slowed. Anthony pressed his hands against the window, shielding his eyes from the reflecting glare of the interior lights. The train slipped out of its running tunnel, and entered a dark, wide abandoned space, and in the passing of a few precious moments, he was able to glimpse what was left of a wooden staging platform, the dull gleam of once-white tile walls, a warehouse of debris deposited by generations of work crews.

  Fragmented remnants.

  There were many of them under London—people rattled through them every day without noticing anything more than a gap in the girders and a change in the pitch of the train’s rolling echo.

  It was over quickly. The train picked up speed again and clattered away into its running tunnel, the majority of its passengers unaware they had just been taken through the skeletal remains of another lost tube station.

  He surfaced at Leicester Square. Below him, on the landing between the Northern and Piccadilly Lines, a brave tenor was attempting Gilbert and Sullivan, a cappella, the male and female parts in turn. Leaning on the moving handrail, Anthony observed reactions: near fright at the top, where the overhanging curve of the roof of the escalator shaft obscured what was actually going on at the bottom; and notable relief midway down, where it finally became apparent that the bloodcurdling shrieks emanating from below had nothing whatever to do with subway terrorism.

  Charing Cross Road in the afternoon was a madhouse: lost clumps of tourists congregating on crowded corners to consult their maps, showgoers on the prowl for ticket bargains, book-browsers and bottom feeders and altogether too much vehicular traffic for the narrow thoroughfares that branched off like ribs from a backbone into the long shadows of Soho and Covent Garden.

  This was where London began. His London, anyway. By day, the playhouses of the West End looked tatty and old, their doors shut tight and their splashy production stills hanging faded and worn in their streaked glass cases. Come night, however, under the kind disguise of the marquee lights, their souls awoke, and they were once again grand.

  Anthony trudged through the dwindling afternoon, his Walkman on, listening to Jean Michel Jarre’s London Kid. He absorbed the sights and the smells, coming at last upon his place of current employment: a small, friendly theatre of Victorian vintage that came complete with a lost underground river seeping through its foundations, a wonderfully ornate interior of pink and turquoise and gold, and a ghost—reputedly that of the original owner, who’d been bludgeoned to death by a disgruntled actor.

  The same ghost, Anthony supposed, as he let himself in through the stage door, that several evenings before had been responsible for a three-hour power failure that had resulted in the doors being locked and the show being cancelled and a good number of disconcerted patrons having to line up at the Box Office for refunds and rain-checks.

  He could smell the subterranean river on the stairs, and sweat and makeup and that peculiar pervasive odour old London bricks gave off, that made him think of bombsites and churches.

  His shared dressing room was small, and hot, and crowded. Negotiating his way around the assembled players, he caught sight of himself in one of the mirrors. He resembled neither of his parents in particular, but what there was by way of inheritance was his mother’s: her honey-coloured, rather coarse hair, with its tendency towards havoc; her hazel eyes; and her nose—noble, it had been called, by relations who liked to believe they shared the distinction.

  He had on this day pulled a white, loose-sleeved shirt out of his closet—a theatrical sort of blouse whose origins escaped him. He strongly suspected the wardrobe of one of his university productions—a third year Molière. His trousers were cotton, brown, with cuffs rolled rakishly up over his ankles, and his boat shoes were scuffed-in new.

  He was without socks.

  One of his colleagues, a morose individual who seemed eternally to have his nose buried in the Flats to Let columns of the daily papers, handed him, as he passed, a postcard that had been delivered earlier in the afternoon.

  “Fan mail,” he said, in a slighted voice.

  It was a large glossy rectangle of nothing, black, bearing a legend: LONDON AT NIGHT. Anthony flipped it over and read the brief, blue-inked fountain pen message, and the signature: a flourishing “E”.

  “Ardent admirer?”

  “Ardent father,” he said, curiously, dropping the card into his pocket.

  It was an older neighbourhood, not quite middle-class, with wide pavements and tall, three-storey terraced houses, bay windows and freshly-painted doors and gates, and gardens growing roses.

  Number 98 was the black sheep of the block: flagstones instead of lawn, a rusting bicycle with a flat tire propped up where the flowers ought to have been. There was no gate.

  Ian had assumed Mrs. Varney’s establishment would be close to Clapham Common. He discovered, after a rather long walk from the tube station, that it was not.

  He rang the bell beside the door, and it was answered by a slight, grey-haired woman in a flowered pinafore, a cigarette languishing in her mouth.

  “Mrs. Varney?”

  “Full up,” she said, curtly. “You should’ve rung first—saved yourself the bother.”

  “I haven’t come about a room, Mrs. Varney.” He showed her his warrant card in its green plastic folder: the CSIS crest, his authority to investigate, his picture and identification.

  She peered at it, holding it close to her narrowed eyes. “You with the police, then?”

  For a fleeting moment, Ian was reminded of his father’s old TV series: the running line, couched in chicanery, the innocent heroine wide-eyed at the moment of truth—“Are you some kind of weird policemen?”

  “No, miss, we belong to a top-secret organization dedicated to the eradication of evil the world over. We’re called—”

  “Canadian Security and Intelligence,” Ian said, putting away his ID. “I’d like to ask you some questions, if you don’t mind…”

  “About what?” Mrs. Varney asked, suspiciously. “If you’re here about those Irish charter flights…”

  “About Simon Darrow,” Ian answered, quickly. “I understand he was once a lodger here.”

  Mrs. Varney squinted up at her visitor. “Canadian Security and Intelligence, you say…? Nothing to do with Scotland Yard?”

  “We’re the Canadian counterpart to MI5,” Ian said, patiently, waiting on her doorstep. “I’m investigating the death of Simon Darrow. The disc jockey.” He despised this part of his job—door-to-door legwork. He was far better in the field.

  “What’s that got to do with MI5?”

  It was never this difficult on television. “Could I just come inside and have a quick chat with you? Simon Darrow was once a lodger here…”

  “MI5 must have a bloody good memory,” Mrs. Varney replied. “That was in 1966, that was. Oh well, you’d better come in. Can’t have the neighbours gossiping, can we?”

  Thank you, Ian muttered, under his breath, as she led him down a gloomy, narrow hallway, to a room at the back where, he imagined, each morning a motley crew of dossers sat hunched around a communal table, sharing cold toast and greasy eggs, and endless pots of tea.

  The only table guest at this hour of the day was a large black and white cat, and he was on top of it, a sleeping, snoring centrepiece.

  “I used to watch him on the telly, you know. Doing that music program. Who�
��d have thought it? A young man like that. Cuppa tea?

  “No,” Ian said, “Thank you. Do you remember how long Simon was a lodger here?”

  “Now you’re really taxing my memory, you are. Not long at all, really, when I think about it. Six months at most, and even then, it was only for one week in every three.” Mrs. Varney stubbed out her cigarette and extracted a second one from a china holder on the mantlepiece—a souvenir from Bognor—and lit it with a wooden match from a large box beside the telephone. “He was one of them radio pirates, wasn’t he. Worked on a boat.”

  “What I’d really like to know, Mrs. Varney, is if you remember anything about his personal life. Friends, girlfriends…”

  “I know he used to go out evenings. Not every evening, mind—only once, usually, once every time he came to stay. She used to wait for him in her car—one of them sporty little things, you could tell she had money. I used to wonder what she was doing messing about with a lad like Simon, but there you are, see—she must have seen something in him none of us did—potential, like, that spark, whatever you want to call it.”

  “Did he ever talk about her? Mention her name?”

  “I don’t think so. I had me rules, you know—no entertaining visitors and that—so he did his entertaining out—stayed out all night, sometimes, didn’t come back ’til morning—’course I still charged him for the use of his room.” She drew upon her cigarette. “She kept him in ready cash, I’ve no doubt. Pretty, in a way—dark hair, liked to wear red.”

  “Did he ever mention her name?” Ian asked, again.

  Mrs. Varney inhaled the curling tendrils of blue smoke. “If he did,” she said, “I don’t remember. It was too long ago.” She brushed some breakfast crumbs off the table top with a brisk sweep of her hand. “And why’s MI5 involved in all of this, eh?” She narrowed her eyes at Ian again. “Our Simon Darrow wasn’t any sort of James Bond spy boy, was he?”

  “There are a number of things your grandmother never forgave me for,” Evan began. “The first was marrying your mother.”

  Anthony didn’t say anything. Behind them, a late train rattled across Hungerford Bridge to Waterloo. They walked along the Embankment, the dark Thames beside them reflecting the lights of the city, its dank depths smelling of boat fuel and commerce.

  “She also never forgave me for being an actor, and for taking your mother away to Canada—for having Ian in Toronto instead of in London—the list goes on and on.”

  “There must have been something you did right.”

  “Yes—the three years I spent back here in the mid-sixties. But then, of course, I made the mistake of renting a flat in Hampstead.”

  “What’s the matter with Hampstead?”

  “Nothing at all. But it was too far away from Mitcham to suit your grandmother. And on the wrong side of the river. In fact, about the only thing I managed to do right in all that time was conspire to produce you.”

  Anthony looked away. He’d lived in London for three years. His father had been here for almost as long, yet their visits with one another had been infrequent, their conversations strained.

  No one thing had been the cause of the distance between them. Rather, it was an accumulation of feelings: an uncertain hesitancy on his father’s part, a sullen stubbornness on Anthony’s.

  He’d been performing for as long as he could remember. He’d been a juggler. A clown. A gypsy rover in a roaming band of summer storytellers, with a bright-paint caravan and horses and a grant from the Canada Council.

  An actor.

  It had been a journey of validation, notably marked by his father’s absences.

  It hurt.

  “I was impressed by your performance this evening, by the way.”

  “I didn’t know you were there. I’d have got you a ticket.”

  “No need, Anthony,” his father said, gently.

  Anthony swallowed.

  “My performance aside,” he said, “what can I do for you?”

  His father prised the lid off a styrofoam cup full of tea he’d bought earlier at Charing Cross. “I’m trying to track down an actor, Anthony. Potter Maynard. Does the name ring a bell?”

  Anthony thought. “I met him once, didn’t I? In L.A.?”

  “You’ve got a good memory.”

  “It more or less comes with the territory,” Evan’s middle son said. “Why are you looking for him?”

  “Something to do with something else from a long time ago. Do you remember the night I went out to that pirate radio station? You must have been three…four years old.”

  “I was three,” Anthony said. “I remember. There was a gale warning and mum didn’t want you to go. She thought you’d be washed overboard.”

  “Indeed. That was the night I met Simon Darrow. Ian used to listen to him on the radio.” He stopped, and tossed the lid, and a plastic stir-stik, into an overflowing litter bin.

  “You came home with a book.”

  “Muirhead’s Short Blue Guide to London. That’s right. God, Anthony, your memory.” He shook his head in disbelief.

  “You gave the book to me. I used to pretend I was reading it.” He thought. “It sank, didn’t it? The ship?”

  “It did,” his father confirmed.

  They had walked together as far as Waterloo Bridge.

  “One of the people we think might have had something to do with the ship’s sinking is Simon’s wife—Potter Maynard’s sister. We’re trying to establish a connection to Simon in 1966, and I was hoping Potter might be able to provide us with some answers.”

  “He’s not listed anywhere? Equity, the British Theatre Association? The Arts Council?”

  “Nowhere that I’ve looked. To tell you the truth, I don’t even know if he’s still in the business.”

  His son didn’t say anything.

  Evan paused. “I wouldn’t normally ask you to get involved, Anthony, but we’ve run up against a complete dead end with this one. Would you mind?”

  Chapter Eight

  Saturday, 24 August 1991

  Anthony walked across Adelaide Road and up the Bridge Approach. On the blue-walled overpass he stopped, and clambered onto a concrete planter filled with crumbling earth and shrubbery, and stood and watched as the trains rattled beneath him, clattering down to Euston.

  Long ago there had been many weekend walks like this: his mother and father, and Ian, and Anthony, in his push-chair. There had been this bridge, and Anthony remembered his older brother, eight years old, pleading: “Lift me up—I want to see.”

  And after Ian had had his look, Anthony would say, very seriously: “I want to see, too.” He had taken life very seriously when he was three. People used to say to his mother: he’s got a terribly grown up little face, hasn’t he?

  His father would swing him up onto his shoulders, and there Anthony would perch, the king of all of Primrose Hill, watching the trains.

  He got down. He was taller than Evan now, by a good three inches.

  He continued his journey through Chalk Farm Village, stopping at Mr. Dhaliwal’s shop on Regent’s Park Road for a chilled orange Fanta, then crossed the road and entered the park.

  Anthony’s mother, reminiscing, had once told him she used to push him up this hill on a daily basis. Anthony wondered how she’d ever managed it; the path was steep, and there were very few trees along the way to provide shade from the beating summer sun or shelter from the winter rain. The reward for such perseverance, however, was great: the view from the top was insurmountable.

  Anthony stood for a moment, observing the magnificent vista of distant spires and towers and scaffolds, breathing the crisp air, savouring the brisk, cooling breeze. Below him, a small child was rolling down the face of the hill, his delighted laughter catching the stray strands of wind.

  He remembered hill-rolling. He remembered wall-walking, too—childhood preoccupations in a country where childhood was still an imaginative indulgence. Somehow, in the process of moving back to America, all those years ago, th
at magic had vanished.

  He’d been quite unprepared, at the age of four and a half, for the culture shock of Southern California—for the large cars and the miles of concrete and the sprawling suburbs. For not terribly well-behaved children with loud American voices.

  He’d been something of a curiosity to them, with his earnestly polite English demeanour.

  He’d been singularly unhappy there.

  He was happy now—a kind of happiness, anyway—an unfinished emotion, like a work of stained glass, its glittering pieces cut and wrapped and soldered into an exquisite pattern—all of the pieces but one, in the very centre, in the very heart.

  He’d been walking a few days earlier through Hyde Park. It had been cooler then, a hazy, grey afternoon; the mist had hung in the trees, and the grass was that brilliant green you don’t find anywhere except in England. He’d wandered down from Marble Arch, skirting the curious and the obsessed at Speakers’ Corner, and the clutter of deckchairs. There were teams of American footballers and joggers, and further down, at the Serpentine, a regatta with rowers and loudspeakers and prizes.

  He’d trudged along Rotten Row, and just before he’d turned south to leave the park, he’d caught up with a family. There were five of them—mother in a skirt and comfortable shoes, father in shirtsleeves, a girl and a boy on small, two-wheeled bikes, and a little boy, very blond, being made to walk as far as the gates, while his mother wheeled the push-chair.

  A tiny pique of delight had suddenly taken hold of the woman. “Come on,” she’d said, tossing her head, laughing. “I’ll race you.”

  “Now there’s a treat for the eyes,” the father had remarked, as the two older children pedalled furiously in the direction of Coalbrookdale Gate. “Mummy running.”

  At that single instance, a pang of something had shot through Anthony’s heart, so swiftly and so deeply, he barely had time to catch himself. He’d stopped, and, aching and angry, had rubbed away the sudden tears with the heel of his hand.