Curtain Call

by Anthony Quinn

  ‘Honestly, just drop me at the bus stop,’ she said.

  ‘It’s no trouble, really. Marylebone isn’t far.’ Tom’s initial exasperation at being appointed cab driver had evaporated. There was something rather glamorous about driving an attractive young woman through town in an open-topped motor. He leaned into the back seat and grabbed Jimmy’s car blanket. ‘Here, that should keep the chill off.’

  They turned into New Oxford Street, heading west. ‘Quite a character, your Mr Erskine – entertaining,’ said Nina.

  ‘You could say,’ replied Tom.

  ‘And rather selfish?’

  ‘Entertaining people generally are.’ He paused for a moment, then said, ‘I gather he treated you to “bird-bun-horse”.’

  ‘Yes. He all but threw a saddle on me.’

  ‘I once told him off for trying out the theory on a lady he’d just met. Actually, I think you might know her. I saw you together at Edie Greenlaw’s party.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Madeleine Farewell.’

  Nina heard this with a flinch of surprise, then recovered herself. ‘I don’t know her at all well.’

  A beat passed, and he said, ‘Nor do I.’ She glanced at him, expecting something more, but having brought up her name he seemed reluctant to enlarge. They talked instead of Edie and what a scream she was. Nina noticed that in profile he looked more handsome than he did face-on. Unaccountable, really.

  ‘You must be quite sociable, doing what you do,’ she mused.

  ‘In a way, yes,’ said Tom, who had never felt as lonely in his life. ‘I don’t have Jimmy’s knack for it, though. He walks into a room, starts talking and assumes people will hang on his every word. Which they usually do.’

  They had reached the busy junction of Oxford Circus and Regent Street. Nina took out her cigarettes, offering him one. He reached for the packet, distracted between his hand and the wheel, and she saw the difficulty. ‘Here, let me light it for you.’ She did so, passing it from her mouth to his. As her hand hovered he caught a noseful of her scent, and was jolted.

  ‘That perfume – what is it?’

  ‘Jicky. D’you know it?’

  He nodded. ‘It reminds me of someone. I suppose that’s what a scent is for.’

  Nina felt sure then that Madeleine was on his mind. And judging by the set of his mouth he was very downcast about it. She gazed out at the shop windows of Marylebone sliding by, and wondered what to say. But Tom saved her the trouble. ‘What will you do next – I mean, now the play’s finished?’

  ‘I’m not sure. As I was saying to your friends, I had hoped to get a part in a film – Fortune’s Cap – but the studio doesn’t want me.’

  ‘On Fortune’s cap we are not the very button,’ Tom quoted.

  She gave a shrug. ‘That would appear to be the case.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it. If I were a film producer I’d sign you up in a shot.’

  She laughed with self-conscious bravery. ‘Then it’s a pity you’re not, because I need the work. Ah, here we are,’ she said, indicating Chiltern Street on their right. Tom pulled the car over outside her boarding house. By unspoken agreement they would finish their cigarettes before parting.

  ‘Awfully nice of you to drive me,’ she said, trying to set a friendly tone in preparation for her next remark. Tom gave a quick smile, and after a moment she continued. ‘When you mentioned Madeleine just before, I wasn’t quite sure what to say. You see, I only know her by chance, really, through some odd circumstances that brought us together – it’s hard to explain. From the little I do know she’s a good sort, and brave, too. But I have this feeling that her life is in – disarray.’ She had meant to say ‘danger’, and corrected herself at the last moment: it sounded melodramatic, and she didn’t want to mislead him.

  With palpable effort Tom said, ‘The last time we spoke – I’m afraid I offended her, gravely. I was too – I hadn’t realised she was . . .’

  ‘An escort?’

  He gave a slow nod, lost in thought. ‘Perhaps I should have guessed. You see, she never . . .’ He tailed off, unwilling to confide further. He tossed the butt of his cigarette and turned his face sadly to her. ‘It was nice to meet you.’

  She offered him her hand and a smile. On stepping out she lingered on the pavement, and watched as Tom drove away up the street.

  Stephen, rising late, came down to breakfast as Cora was brooding on the morning’s post, scattered over the table. Something had irked her. The letter knife was poised in her long pale hand like an assassin’s dagger. He decided to wait rather than provoke her with an enquiry; in the event the suspense was not drawn out.

  ‘As I thought. No invitation to the Inchcombs’ this year,’ she said, pursing her mouth. She referred to the annual Christmas party thrown by their wealthiest neighbours in Chelsea.

  ‘It might still be on its way,’ he said, playing the optimist.

  She shook her head. ‘I know they’ve already gone out.’

  Stephen stirred his coffee absently. ‘Hmm. Dropped by the Incomes. I really have achieved notoriety.’ In fact he could not have cared less about being snubbed by the Incomes – Stephen’s nickname was a family joke – but he knew that it would hurt Cora.

  ‘At least the golf club has stayed loyal,’ she said, holding up the letter in her hand. ‘I’m invited to renew our subscription.’

  Stephen laughed gloomily. ‘That may be the one place where my reputation has actually been enhanced.’

  ‘Any news from the lawyer?’

  ‘Only that Carmody is out on bail. They’re waiting to set a date for his trial.’

  ‘I see.’

  Cora rose and began gathering the detritus of breakfast. She no longer appeared cross, merely fatigued; the worry of the last few weeks had kept them awake at night. Stephen leaned across to take her hand. ‘Don’t fret about the Incomes and their wretched party. We hated going anyway. Our real friends’ll stick by us.’

  His wife smiled tightly and continued clearing the table. After a moment she said, ‘By the way, your father telephoned earlier. He’s started on the house. He asked if you would go round.’

  ‘Really?’ His father, a model of self-sufficiency, rarely asked him to do anything.

  ‘Said he has something to show you.’

  Stephen could guess what it might be. Somewhere in the family home at Addison Road were the Ruskin sketches once presented to his grandfather, the ones he had told Freya about. He had been meaning to dig them out for ages: his father’s house clearance would be the opportunity. He drained the last of his coffee and glanced up to find Cora, arms folded, staring worriedly into the middle distance.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Her gaze held an appeal. ‘I was just – are we going to be all right – about money, I mean? What if the commissions dry up altogether – is that possible?’

  He knew he must sound confident, even if he didn’t feel it. ‘Of course not. I’ve not been wholly cast out by society. In fact I may have a new client.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Fellow named Druce, very charming, pots of money. Ludo introduced us, though I think I may have met him at Oxford – his face is familiar.’

  Cora leaned towards him, an eager frown creasing her features. ‘D’you think he’s serious?’

  Stephen nodded. ‘He seemed so. He asked me to pay him a visit anyway –’

  ‘Oh, then you must!’ said Cora urgently. ‘Will you confirm it with him?’

  He assured her he would, pained by the edge of desperation in her tone. She clearly believed he might never work again.

  Outside, the morning was brisk, with zeppelin-sized clouds bumping across the horizon. He headed north across the Old Brompton Road and through the gracious quiet of Kensington. It was not until he reached Holland Park that it occurred to him that this might be one of the last times he would take this walk. His father had already got a buyer for the house. He passed a telephone box, and his step slowed. He would hav
e liked to hear Nina’s voice, just for a few minutes, but now that the play had ended its run she wasn’t so available, and he disliked having to deal with that awful landlady. It alarmed him how much of his time was consumed in thoughts of her. He sometimes wondered if all the worrying he did – about being in the newspapers, about Freya, about his father’s imminent move – was a way of displacing his one big worry over what to do about Nina. When they had last been together, on that hilariously awkward afternoon at the Corner House, he’d come as close as he ever had to confessing his love. She had looked so meltingly at him it was all he could do to stop himself. For the first time the prospect of leaving Cora had become a possibility, and he was terrified.

  His father answered the door dressed, as ever, with immaculate care: regimental blazer and tie, cavalry twill trousers, shoes polished to a barrack-room gleam. In the face of such formal severity Stephen half wondered whether a salute was more appropriate than a handshake. Even the pipe he was smoking seemed a remnant of officer-class authority. But there was also something in his manner today – a kind of embarrassed solicitude – that made Stephen uneasy.

  They went through the hall into the drawing room, now in the early stages of abandonment. The curtains had gone. Shelves denuded of their books looked suddenly forlorn, and paintings in heavy frames leaned in stacks against the walls. Their long occupancy had left dark rectangles on the wallpaper. The unsettled dust made his nose itch. The pair of them stood in the middle of the room, neither quite able to take in the disorder. Richard Wyley, distractedly fiddling with his pipe, broke the silence.

  ‘Pickford’s are coming round next week, but I thought I’d make a start.’

  ‘I could help, you know, with this,’ said Stephen uncertainly.

  ‘No, no. It’s all in hand.’

  Another silence intervened, then: ‘Cora said – on the telephone – you had something to show me.’

  His father gave a thoughtful nod. ‘Should I make us some tea?’

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  ‘Right,’ said Mr Wyley, leaving the room, as though he had just heard ‘yes’ to his offer of tea. Stephen bent down to look through a selection of the paintings, and found one of his own, a small Norfolk beach scene whose lines of sand, sea and sky blurred close to the point of abstraction. Its date was minutely inscribed after his initials: 1923. He stared at it, momentarily bemused at a compositional style that might have belonged to someone else altogether. It wasn’t bad! – and he smiled at his own conceit. But he struggled to remember the person whose hand had painted it. Hearing his father’s footsteps returning, he silently propped it back against the others.

  ‘Come and sit by the window,’ said Mr Wyley, who carried not the Ruskin sketches but a small cigarette box of ancient vintage, its edges blunted and frayed. Its gilt lettering advertised a tobacconist’s on Old Bond Street that had long disappeared. They sat on the sofa, congenially knee to knee. ‘I was emptying your mother’s bureau –’ he began, then halted, apparently at a loss. He opened the box and took out two photographs, sepia-tinged and faded. The larger was stiff, the size of a playing card, and carried the photographer’s marque on its border. Three dark-haired girls, formally posed, gazed at something off-centre. The smaller photograph was a more relaxed portrait of the same trio, perhaps taken by a family member, and on the reverse someone had written, in pencil, the sitters’ names: Ella, Dorothy, Adeline. Stephen was staring at someone he knew well but had never seen in her youth.

  ‘So . . . that’s Mum. Who are these other two?’

  His father’s voice was low. ‘Her sisters. Ella was the middle of three.’

  ‘Er, how can –? Mum was an only child. You always –’

  ‘I know.’ He gently laid his hand on Stephen’s shoulder. ‘Her father was a Jewish watchmaker, in Edgware. The family was Orthodox – strict as they come. As soon as we met it was made clear that marrying “out” would be impossible. But we loved each other, so . . . they disowned her. Not one of them came to the wedding. As far as they were concerned she was dead.’

  Stephen felt almost faint with a sensation that mingled bafflement with something darker, like betrayal. ‘I don’t understand . . . Why didn’t you tell me?’

  He heard the regret in the pause before his father spoke. ‘She didn’t want it known that she’d been – an outcast. You must understand how terribly painful it was for her. There were times I suggested she ought to . . . but she was adamant. I couldn’t, because it wasn’t my secret to give away. She felt rage, and remorse, for years – years – and in the end I think she couldn’t bear having to explain it to you. It would have meant reliving the whole thing.’ He moved a trembling finger over the girl’s face. ‘I thought she’d erased every trace of them. But it seems she kept these.’

  Stephen stared at his mother, this dark-eyed Jewish girl he had never known, never suspected. The family photograph showed her smiling, a slender teen in a floral dress whose future was a blank – her marriage, her ostracism, her death. And her son, an unwitting innocent. There was something astonishing, something almost transcendent, in this tiny window of processed light thrown on her past. Why had he always accepted the story that she was an only child, with no living relatives? Because he had no reason to doubt it. That she should have lived with the loss of them, her own blood. The pity of it tore at his heart.

  ‘She never saw them again – not one?’

  Richard Wyley turned his head slightly. ‘About five or six years after we were married – you were an infant – Dorothy, the youngest, wrote to her. They’d been close to one another growing up. They met at a cafe, somewhere in town. I don’t know what was said. I think she hoped to effect some kind of rapprochement. Well, their father got wind of it – and that was the end of that. A friend told Ella that they had left London, before the war. Never heard of again.’

  The photograph had blurred before his swimming eyes. All those years, and not a word, not a murmur of it. The memory of her last days came to him, her eyes sunken in their sockets, flesh withered to the bones. Had she thought of them then, her parents and her sisters, as she lay dying? Did word ever reach the family of Ella, their unforgiven? ‘I wish – I wish she’d told me,’ he said huskily, not sure if he meant it for his mother’s sake, or for his own.

  Later, as he drank the tea his father had made for them after all, Stephen picked up the photograph, the smiling one, unable to leave it alone. ‘She never liked having her photograph taken, did she? It never occurred to me at the time.’

  ‘Keep it. You should have it,’ his father said, indicating the snapshot. Stephen demurred, while knowing that he would take it.

  ‘Quite an irony, isn’t it? – damned as a Fascist lackey when it turns out I’m actually Jewish, or half-Jewish.’

  ‘I’d like to see how the newspapers respond,’ said Richard Wyley. ‘Those blighters should eat their words.’

  Stephen shook his head. ‘They won’t, because they’re not going to hear about it. Not from me, anyway.’

  His father looked puzzled. ‘My dear chap, after what they’ve done to you – I would have thought, well . . .’

  Stephen gazed out of the window for a moment, half smiling, and realised he didn’t care. Now that he had learned his mother’s secret, and about his unsuspected ancestry, he knew they couldn’t harm him any more. His father was staring at him in concern.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Dad. This should teach me. You never ask for something that ought to have been given.’

  18

  IT WAS EARLY evening, the last day of November, as Nina stepped off the bus at the Aldwych. The Strand Theatre already appeared to have forgotten her recent triumph. All the signs advertising The Second Arrangement had been taken down, including the lights that had picked out her own name below the title. It was like returning to your old home to find it brutally refurbished, unrecognisable, all traces of your occupancy erased. But she realised that she had left behind, in the chaos of her dressing room, a V
ictorian letter knife – a gift from Stephen – and she didn’t trust the management to return it.

  She gave the doorman a cheery hullo and descended the stone stairs into the bowels of the theatre. The caretaker unlocked the door of her dressing room, and, switching on the light, she beheld the melancholy spectacle of change, her racks of clothes, the glittering bomb site of her dressing table, her books and bits and bobs – all gone, gone! How many hours had she lolled about on that sofa, this chair, smoking and chatting with Dolly, preparing for the curtain at seven thirty? Now it was as if she might never have been here. She waited for the caretaker to depart, then closed the door and bent down to the little drawer beneath the mirror, unlocking it with a pewter-coloured key. And there it lay, loose among the detritus of hairpins, grips, buttons, cigarette cards, cough drops, and more paste jewellery than any actress could possibly require. Come, let me clutch thee, she thought, holding up the blade so that it glinted in the light, its dainty pearl handle snug against her palm.

  She looked again around the room, wondering if there were anything else she had missed. There was nothing. She absently picked up a cough drop from the drawer, shucked off its wrapper and put it in her mouth. Its menthol taste brought back those nights of panic when she imagined herself going hoarse, unable to speak. She tossed the little key onto the table and left the room. As she returned up the corridor she idly checked the green-felt board where notices and messages were pinned, some of them in Dolly’s hand, some in the stage manager’s. Her eye fell on one addressed to her, one she wouldn’t have noticed at all but for the caller’s name: Marlborough Studios.

  A number was appended. She plucked it off the wall. It dated from last week, the day after closing night, which was why she hadn’t seen it. Bafflingly, it had come some days after the studio had rejected her for Fortune’s Cap. Perhaps it was a courtesy call to thank her for the screen test. But why would they bother? Or could it be that someone had had a change of heart? She walked towards the public telephone at the foot of the staircase, and paused to examine the message again. If she did reply, the potential for embarrassment was obvious; lines of communication may have got crossed, and this call had been made in error. She ought to ignore the thing. But what if it wasn’t a mistake, what if there were plans afoot to put her on the big screen?