Distant Music

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘How long is Portly going to stay with us?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know how long Portly is going to stay, Oliver. As long as he wants, I suppose—’

  Elsie stared at her reflection in the sitting room mirror with some satisfaction. She had added just a few lighter streaks to her hair, and she was quite pleased with them. As she had hoped – they did indeed make her appear older – which she was going to have to be, in Bartlett’s next production, which was the reason she had decided to put them in.

  ‘You must know a bit – how long?’

  ‘No, I don’t, really I don’t. I mean, you saw the state of him when we bumped into him at the café, you saw the state of him yourself. We couldn’t just leave Portly there.’

  ‘I don’t see why not?’

  ‘Because,’ Elsie said with every evidence of patience in her well-trained voice, ‘he was the first person to really help me when I changed categories, he really was. He helped me to get my first real starring role. Without Portly I would still be going up for coughs and spits and twirling in front of producers in the vain hope of getting minor roles. He really did help me.’

  ‘Help you? He cheated you!’ ‘Portly did not cheat me, Oliver, Donald Bourton cheated everyone. Portly knew nothing about what happened, why should he?’

  ‘They were partners, weren’t they?’

  ‘Of course they were partners, Ollie.’ Elsie stared at the beautiful colour of the new lipstick that she had just put on her mouth. ‘Diana Dors pink, that’s what I call that,’ she said out loud to herself. Then she turned back to Oliver. ‘Of course they were partners, we all know that, but Donald was always in charge of the business side. He brought Portly in to the production company. A lamb to the slaughter, that was what young Portly was—’

  ‘Saw him coming, more like.’

  ‘Donald Bourton was much older than poor Portly. Anyway, Portly paid back everyone that Cosgrove and Bourton owed, every penny, from his own pocket, that is why he is so broke. Because he did the decent thing and made sure that every single person was paid what they were owed, and how many managements can you think of as being that decent, Oliver?’

  ‘I don’t think managements are capable of being decent, Popeye, do you know that?’

  ‘Well Portly was, and is. That is a fact.’ Elsie was beginning not only to feel, but to sound, impatient. She just would not have Portly thrown out of the flat, particularly not just when he was beginning to look, and obviously feel, much better. She would never get over the shock of seeing him in that café looking so pale and thin he had hardly been recognisable. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, turning from the mirror to face Oliver. ‘How many managements have you known, sweet lummox, may I ask? Come on, how many have you known, when they were at home?’

  Oliver looked sulky, and putting his hands behind his head he stretched out the full length of the sofa so that Elsie could not possibly have joined him there, even if she had wanted to.

  ‘That’s not the point—’

  ‘This is priceless. Ollie, you are priceless. You have known just one management, just one, and now all of a sudden you are an expert! I have known upwards of – well, I would hate to count – and believe you me, Portly Cosgrove is the only one who ever cared a tuppenny damn whether I lived or died.’

  Elsie thought back to when Dottie had to be fooled into thinking that the play script was a radio script, and how Portly had met her in Fullers. How they had cast about trying to think of how Elsie could be offered the part, and how she might be able to accept without Dottie’s say-so. How they had both finally agreed that offering Dottie a part was the only way to get her to agree to his casting Elsie. She shook her head. No, no one was ever going to tell her that Portly Cosgrove was less than she knew him to be.

  ‘Anyway,’ she gave Oliver a lightly disparaging look before turning back to the mirror, ‘anyway, you wouldn’t understand Portly, really you wouldn’t, Oliver.’

  ‘Why not?’ Oliver was pretending to read a book.

  ‘Why not? Because Portly is a gentleman, Oliver Lowell, which you are most definitely not. What was it you told me the other day your father was when he was at home—’

  ‘I can’t remember, I can’t remember what I told you,’ Oliver replied at once, with complete truth, his heart sinking as he was reminded of his double existence, his make-believe background, which, for some reason that he could not understand, he had, on the spur of the moment, decided to keep up with everyone at the Stephens Theatre.

  ‘Well, whatever he is, he is certainly not any Portly Cosgrove. He is at least as common as you, isn’t he?’ Elsie gave a short, sarcastic laugh. Portly’s vaguely patrician background had always impressed her, most particularly since he never, ever referred to it. He just was, or came over as, one of nature’s gentlemen.

  ‘Coming on all grand, are we, now?’ Oliver stood up and walked over to Elsie. ‘And since when were we so posh, Miss Elsie Lancaster?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not posh. I know that, but then, I don’t pretend to be, whereas you, on occasions, well, you would honestly think that you were at least a Vere de Vere, which you certainly are not.’ Elsie smiled across at Oliver, her eyes momentarily straying from her own image. She had a good smile, but she had to give it to Oliver, he had an even better one. Oliver had a brilliant smile.

  ‘Did you know that this famously grand Portly Cosgrove is not coming back until after lunch, Miss Lancaster?’

  ‘Oh, isn’t he?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you want to do then? Your choice – it’s either trying to find me some nose scissors, or staying in and—’

  ‘Nose scissors, definitely. Nose scissors are my choice.’

  Elsie just managed to keep a straight face before shopping and lunch were put on hold in favour of something rather more passionately interesting.

  Portly returned with a huge bouquet of flowers for Elsie, and not only that, but he also returned with lunch. Being acutely aware of Elsie’s kindness in taking him in, from the first Portly had made sure to absent himself after breakfast until well into the early afternoon, after which he always tried to return with something, or some things, that would make him once more welcome.

  Living with lovers was probably not always easy, but living with Elsie and Oliver was perfectly beautiful, not just because he himself was also in love with Elsie, but because they were his sort of people. They took life as it came, just like the porridge that Portly enjoyed making for them all for breakfast, sometimes with sugar, sometimes with salt, but always with verve.

  ‘Shall I make us all a spaghetti bolognese?’

  Oliver and Elsie, filled with that languorous but hungry state that follows energetic love making, nodded happily at Portly’s suggestion, and he hurried equally happily towards the small kitchen, the fresh ingredients in his shopping basket just waiting to be cooked up into a perfect sauce.

  ‘The perfect spaghetti bolognese is made like this,’ Portly announced as he finally emerged from the kitchen.

  Oliver nodded, and sat down, not at all interested in the recipe. He was much more interested in eating than hearing about the ingredients of a dish which, at that moment in time, everyone everywhere seemed intent on serving. Elsie followed suit and sat herself at the small, square table. She was more interested than Oliver in the perfect bolognese sauce, although also, admittedly, ravenously hungry.

  ‘Go on, Portly,’ she told him, ‘tell me. I’m interested in your sauce, even if Ollie’s not.’

  ‘You must have perfect meat, the best steak minced in front of you in the shop. It cannot be butcher’s mince, nothing like that, that would be far too fatty.’ He put a hot plate at each place setting and carefully ladled perfectly cooked, al dente spaghetti on each. ‘So. You begin with some olive oil and butter, about four tablespoons, into which you put a choppped onion and four ounces of chopped bacon, add a clove of garlic and a little salt, crushed together with a knife, a chopped carrot, a piece of chopped celery, and cook
until the onion is soft. After which—’ Portly, having helped everyone to both pasta and sauce, now sat down to the first silence that any of them had enjoyed all day. ‘After which,’ he continued, ‘you add the minced beef, stir until it loses its pinkness, pop in four ounces of chicken livers and turn them until they are browned before adding a tin of consommé, a pound of skinned tomatoes, a bay leaf, and some salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Cover and simmer gently for thirty minutes. At the end of the cooking, stir in four tablespoons of cream, and serve with grated cheese or pecorino, if you can find it in Tadcaster, which, believe me, you can’t.’

  Sitting back, very, very eventually, after two helpings of this sumptuous pasta dish, Oliver found that his earlier objections to Portly’s residing with them had quite disappeared, never, perhaps, to be aired again.

  ‘Portly, you are to be congratulated. I have eaten spaghetti far too many times in my life before, but never, ever, like this. This bolognese sauce has all the taste of Bologna and none of the King’s Road. This is a sauce for Italians, by Italians, and you are a genius to recognise it. Where did you get the recipe?’

  ‘Bologna.’

  ‘How appropriate.’

  And as Portly served the best coffee, too, that Oliver had yet tasted, Portly’s own special mixture, Oliver found that he could not leave the subject of the spaghetti alone.

  ‘Really, you are to be congratulated, from the bottom of my heart. What are you going to make us tomorrow?’

  ‘Proper English chicken pie. None of that rubbish with garlic and tomatoes drowning out the taste of good, corn-fed chicken. Made with cream, and lemon pastry, naturally. Nothing better.’

  Before standing up and announcing that they would leave the dishes, and now go in search of the stubbornly elusive nose scissors, it came home to Oliver, and quite forcibly, that Elsie was quite right. Portly was a very nice person, and it would be terrible not to have him in the flat, in their lives, very much part of their present existence. What was more, Oliver could not wait to sample his chicken pie and lemon pastry.

  It was a sunny afternoon and as the three of them sauntered happily down Tadcaster’s main street it occurred to Portly that they must be the luckiest people in the world at that moment. Certainly he felt that he had to be. He had been at the bottom of the pit, in utter darkness, not knowing which way to turn, and, being an only child without any living family, desperately lonely, all business acquaintances having turned their backs on him.

  That had been his state of mind, when, on looking up, he had seen the familiar and to him utterly beautiful face of Elsie looking down at him. The round contours of her youthful beauty had been, he knew, in stark contrast to his own grey, badly shaven face. Her hair, so thick and lustrous, his own lank and dull, his clothes barely presentable, shiny in their effort to look clean, hers glossy with that particular look that newly fashionable clothes assume on the young and beautiful.

  It had been a terrible moment, and he of course, realising instantly the potential humiliation, had immediately looked away, while Elsie with her usual élan had pulled him to his feet and instantly embraced him, as if she knew, from the very look of him, that he had, after all, been the innocent party in the whole turgid affair of Cosgrove and Burton, and the ill-fated tour starring Elsie Lancaster, and she had always known it.

  ‘Ah, now they may well have an ink well and pen in here.’

  Oliver stopped and stared into the antique shop which, before he had even looked in the window, Portly was sure would be filled with excellent, over-priced, reproduction antiques. He knew at once that it would be the kind of shop which has a few over-polished items and a couple of jars of beeswax polish and the inevitable proprietor sporting half-moon glasses and a superior expression. Inevitably it was, but it also had an inkwell with accompanying plumed pen, very Shakespearean and completely lacking in authenticity. This did not deter Oliver who happily bought it, and turning to Elsie and Portly announced, ‘I shall write my first play with this.’

  Elsie raised her eyes to Portly, and then turning to Oliver said, tongue in cheek, ‘Well then, listen, Will dear, if you are to write plays for us—’

  ‘For me actually, Elsie. Don’t please be deceived, I wish to write myself into work – not necessarily you.’

  Elsie stopped and stared into Oliver’s eyes. Seeing that he meant it, she smiled, and putting on her most faux naïve expression opened her eyes wide, casting about in her mind for some way to retaliate, to get back at Oliver, finally settling on a plan to turn up her evening performance so much that she would wipe the floor with him.

  ‘If you are to write plays for you and you alone, then Portly had better be—’ She turned to Portly frowning. ‘Portly had better be my agent. That will even everything up, won’t it? After all, if you’ve been in management, being an agent’s a doddle, wouldn’t you say, Portly?’

  Oliver turned at that. ‘Do you think that is wise?’ he asked, before starting to write out a cheque for the inkwell and pen.

  ‘Why ever not. After all, the fact is – and it is a fact, Ollie love – I at least am going to need an agent, whereas you, if you are going to write things for yourself, won’t, at least not really, will you, not if you are going to write yourself into work?’

  When they were outside the shop again Oliver felt it was quite safe to become indignant.

  ‘I will need an agent for my plays, you know I will, Popeye.’

  ‘Well, you can’t have Portly, because I have just nabbed him.’

  ‘I have an acting agent, but I shall need someone for my plays.’

  ‘You can’t have Portly, Oliver. I have just told you, once and for all, he is mine.’

  ‘I don’t mind doing actors and plays – I had never thought before – I mean about becoming an agent. But now I can see, I could do it, couldn’t I?’

  Portly looked from one to the other with a pleading but unanxious expression. The truth was that he did not mind doing anything at all, as long as it was for Elsie.

  ‘You haven’t enough money to do anything, Portly, you know you haven’t, not a single sou.’

  ‘I have my dole money,’ Portly protested, keeping a straight face. ‘That would be enough to pay for the hire of a typewriter and a desk.’

  ‘You have just enough for us all to live off you, that is all,’ Oliver curled his lip in mock disdain.

  ‘I have some. But not enough …’ Elsie stared ahead as they continued sauntering down Tadcaster’s main street.

  ‘I know someone who has quite a lot—’ Oliver stopped, his eyes half closed as they sometimes were when he had a bright idea.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Never you mind, Popeye. But I certainly will write and ask him and see if he can come up with some doh ray me.’

  ‘With your new quill pen, sweet lummox?’

  ‘With the very same.’

  That evening, during the interval, when he was quite alone, Oliver dashed off a letter to Cliffie, in biro, because he had not yet quite mastered his reproduction quill pen.

  Dear Cliffie,

  Some friends and I want to start an agency for writers and actors, but we are quite skint. Have you enough for a down payment – nothing too much, but it should be a London premises, you know, so it has to be quite a bit, I should have thought. Everything is going swimmingly, love Oliver.

  He received a letter by return from Cliffie.

  Dear Master Oliver,

  I enclose a banker’s draft for a thousand pounds, which I managed to extricate from Mr Hopkins with some difficulty. In common with your father, he does so hate to send you your allowance, as you know, thinking that you will only waste it on cigarettes and beer and wild, wild women, and so it has been accumulating. I hope that it will help things along. As ever, Master Oliver, Cliffie.

  Unfortunately Elsie looked over Oliver’s shoulder when he was reading the reply.

  ‘Why does this “Cliffie” write to you as “Master Oliver”, sweet lummox?’

  ‘It’s
a very long and boring story,’ Oliver told her, turning away. ‘As long and boring as they get. They’re just nicknames that we all use for each other really, and we had better hurry, or we just might be in danger of being on time to make up for the matinée, just for once.’

  He snatched up his jacket and hurried off. Elsie hurried after him, knowing that this was Oliver’s way of telling her to mind her own business, both of them leaving Portly, as usual, to clear up the debris from their tea.

  ‘So that is that. We have a cheque, now we have to find the premises.’

  ‘Portly says it has to be London.’ Elsie skipped along, barely keeping up with Oliver.

  ‘Portly is quite right.’

  ‘He says otherwise we will just appear as hicks.’

  ‘Which is what we are.’

  ‘Exactly. But we must not appear as such.’

  ‘I shall stay with Tad Protheroe’s agency for my acting, of course, because Portly has not got the experience that old Tad has. You can go to Portly, because you have no one else, and I don’t suppose anyone else would take you on at this moment anyway.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you, is that right?’

  Elsie stopped skipping, allowing Oliver to go ahead and frowning at his back as he did so.

  ‘Oh, don’t you,’ she repeated, but this time to herself. ‘Well, just you wait, Master Oliver, just you wait. The Tad Protheroes of this world are pretty soon going to be falling over themselves to sign me up, but they can go jump, because it is Portly I am going to, and Portly who is going to make me into a West End star, see if he doesn’t.’

  She said all this to herself while ahead of her, by some way, Oliver had gone on talking, not realising that Elsie was no longer by his side.

  ‘No, I don’t think anyone but Portly would want to sign you up, Popeye, because, it stands to reason, you have not been seen in the capital, and then you are a girl too, you know, and there are far, far fewer parts for girls, and agents know this, d’you see? On the whole they prefer men, and they don’t get pregnant, men don’t get pregnant, that’s another thing.’