‘It’s Dottie, she’s dying.’
‘You can’t go now – you just can’t.’
‘I have to. It’s over an hour’s drive, I have to go. An hour and a half. It will take me an hour and a half, at least. Got to go. Can I take the driver?’
‘Tell her, tell her, Portly,’ Oliver hissed across the table to Portly. ‘Tell her she can’t go now, Portly.’
‘She’s dying, Oliver.’
Portly, who knew just what Dottie had once meant to Elsie, nodded. ‘Oliver’s wrong, of course you must. Take the car,’ he whispered, while at the same time trying to listen to the compere. ‘Of course you must go. If you win, Oliver can go up for you, and explain. Of course you must go.’
This notion obviously assuaged Oliver’s affronted feelings, and, clutching her evening bag, Elsie quickly left.
‘How awful,’ Coco murmured.
‘Terrible,’ Portly agreed, but his eyes had reverted to the stage.
He was not as concerned as he might be, because if Elsie won Best Actress Oliver could collect for her. She had been heavily photographed arriving in her chauffeur-driven car. It was a pity, but if she won, Fleet Street had the pictures. Besides, he quite understood why she had to go.
But, God, Dottie of all people, to be dying at that very moment, it did not seem possible. Dottie had once meant everything to Elsie. She owed it all to Dottie. Never said so, but Portly and she had both known it, from way back when, from when she had been sacked from that first show.
Arriving outside the Beeches Nursing Home, Elsie did not wait for the chauffeur to open the door for her, but burst out of the car into the rain, pulling the beautiful pale green evening coat with its high collar around her as she did so.
Unhappily it was raining hard, and she had forgotten her umbrella. The chauffeur ran after her holding out a large black gamp, but not so soon that it could prevent Elsie’s hair, Elsie’s coat and Elsie’s dress from becoming soaked.
‘Oh God, oh God,’ she sobbed suddenly. ‘Poor Coco. She will be devastated, the beautiful coat and dress she made specially.’
The chauffeur sought to comfort her as Elsie turned at the door. ‘Don’t worry, Miss Lancaster, it will dry out, really it will.’
‘Thank you, thank you so much.’
She ran towards the night desk, towards the smartly dressed night porter. She had only been at the Beeches once before, when one of Dottie’s ‘boys’ had been taken ill of a heart attack and subsequently died.
‘Miss Dottie Temple – I have been called to see Miss Dottie Temple. Dorothy Richards? Mrs Richards?’
She kept repeating various names under which Dottie might have booked herself in, but the night attendant looking down the register kept shaking his head.
‘Sorry, Miss Lancaster, there is no one here of that name.’
‘But there must be, there must be, truly there must.’
She glanced back at the chauffeur, shrugging her shoulders, and he smiled reassuringly.
‘Perhaps Mary Martindale then?’ Elsie suddenly suggested, remembering one of several names Dottie had sometimes used when she was still acting, when Elsie was tiny.
‘There must be some mistake, I am afraid, Miss Lancaster.’
The night attendant looked apologetic. He recognised Elsie, from Golden Days, of course, and she could see from the expression on his face that he would dearly have loved to find this mysterious Mary Martindale or Dottie Temple, if he could, but he patently could not.
Elsie turned back to her chauffeur. ‘I don’t understand. I mean you saw the telegram, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, Miss Lancaster. As a matter of fact, it’s here.’ He produced it from his uniform and they both stared at it.
‘Please come at once, Dottie dying, et cetera, et cetera. Signed Richard Clough. There you are, it’s all there. The Beeches, everything.’ Elsie pushed the relevant piece of paper across the desk to the attendant.
‘Perhaps Richard Clough could help you?’
Elsie nodded. Of course, Richard Clough, one of the oldest residents at Dottie’s house. Old Richard Clough, sometime actor and director, of mixed attitudes, to say the least. Someone of whom Dottie used to murmur, as she slapped down the iron on yet another sheet, ‘I’m not quite sure about Clough’s credits, really I am not, but it’s easier to go along with them than not.’
‘We’ll go back to her house. There must be someone there who knows something, surely?’
Back through the rain which was now coming down in stair rods, following her instructions, the large car made its way slowly back to Elsie’s childhood home.
Of course it looked smaller, as childhood homes always do. And of course it looked even smaller because she was arriving at the front door in a large car with a chauffeur, dressed to the nines in an Awards dress and coat, all of which made the paint on the front door look even shab-bier, not to mention the one geranium in the pot by the front door, and the boot scraper with all its bristles missing.
Elsie smiled at the chauffeur as she raised the door knocker and then let it fall. ‘I just can’t believe this.’
He smiled back at her. ‘I’m sure there’s an explanation.’
There was.
Hours later it seemed to Elsie that it was something from a nightmare, like the actor’s nightmare, and that she would wake up from it and laughingly turn to Oliver – why did she think she would turn to him? – and say, ‘My God, what a nightmare I’ve just had, I dreamed I was at an Awards dinner, and I had a telegram that Dottie was dying, and when I went to the house she opened the door to me! And she was laughing, and laughing, and that awful old actor who lodged with her, you wouldn’t know him, Richard Clough, old Clough, he was behind her and he was laughing at me too, except he didn’t have his teeth in. God, what a nightmare.’
But it was not a nightmare, it was all true, and Richard Clough was not the only one with his teeth out. The chauffeur had stared at this sight from some hell hitherto unknown to him, and he backed off down the steps as he heard Dottie screaming with laughter and saying, ‘Only you could be so stupid, Elsie, only you could be taken in by such a stupid trick!’
‘I think we had better go, Miss Lancaster,’ the chauffeur had called quietly up to Elsie.
Elsie had wanted to move, but she had found that she could not. Her pale green satin evening shoes seemed to be glued to Dottie’s top step, just beside the boot scraper with the bristleless brush.
‘You always were an idiot, Elsie.’
Even after the door slammed in her face, Elsie stood rooted to that same top step facing that same front door up to which she had used to reach with the door key tied around her neck on a string.
That was how much Dottie hated her. Enough to drag her away from her first big night, to pull her out, as she had used to pull her out of the coal hole when Elsie dashed down to it to cry her eyes out when she had lost a part.
The chauffeur touched her on the arm.
‘Come on, Miss Lancaster, you don’t want to bother with folk like that, they’re not worth bothering about. Jealous, that’s what they are. Just jealous. Get back into the car, and have a good sleep while I take you back to town. Nothing like a good kip to put everything into perspective, that’s what I always say.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Not really.’
‘No, of course it doesn’t, Miss Lancaster.’
He folded the long trains of her beautiful dress and coat into the car after her and, going round to his side of the car, he slammed his driver’s door with some force. As he said later to his wife, ‘You wouldn’t credit it, not unless you’d seen it, really you wouldn’t.’
Oliver was waiting for her at Elsie’s own flat. They had both decided on a party back at her flat, whatever happened, whoever won or did not win.
It seemed that they had both won, and pretty soon after Elsie arrived back from her abortive trip, the newspapers too arrived so that they could both stare at pictures of themselves on the inside pages, Elsie in the beautiful dress t
hat Coco had made for her, and Oliver accepting the second award on her behalf. So there he was smiling, holding two awards, and now, as Oliver poured a drink for the chauffeur, Elsie found herself staring at the statuettes in bewilderment, turning over and over in her mind what the night had brought. Triumph and disaster, hand in hand, typical of the theatre; even of life.
She still could not believe that Dottie hated her enough to play such a cruel practical joke on her, one that she must have known would mean that Elsie would miss her big moment. But that was how craven Elsie had been: she had been prepared to leave and go to Dottie’s bedside and hold her hand as she left this world, in place of receiving what might be the only award she would ever win.
It was chilling, but it was real. She had known and seen enough of theatrical jealousy to realise that it could eat into the soul to such a degree that it destroyed it. Dottie and Richard standing there laughing and mocking her, doubled up with laughter, had been a sight from hell.
‘Oh, by the way, how was your grandmother?’ Oliver suddenly asked.
‘Sorry?’
‘I said, how was your grandmother?’
Elsie could see the chauffeur out of the corner of her eye and thought she could feel him blushing for her.
‘She’s dead. Quite dead.’
‘Oh, I am sorry.’
‘Yes, it is a pity,’ Elsie agreed. ‘But there you are, these things happen.’
Some minutes later, murmuring his congratulations, the chauffeur took his leave.
‘Good night, Miss Lancaster.’ He looked at her evenly.
‘Good night, and thank you again.’
‘Sorry, again, about your grandmother I mean.’
‘Yes, it was a pity, wasn’t it?’
‘Still, all in all – a merciful release.’
‘Yes, it was, wasn’t it?’
‘Next year. You’ll win again next year.’
‘Of course.’
Elsie closed the door behind him, as Oliver called excitedly from the sitting room, ‘Want to hear the news, Else? I mean the bits that you missed when we all came back here?’
‘Portly and Coco have gone home together,’ Elsie joked.
‘Yes, you’re right.’
‘Portly and Coco, gone home, you mean together together?’
‘Yup.’
‘But they can’t—’
‘Why not?’
‘Because – because – they’re not suited, that’s why.’
‘Just as well they went home with other people, then.’
‘Who? Who? Who? Oh come on, do tell.’
‘We-ll.’ Oliver was determined to drag out the news which he knew would be of foremost interest to Elsie. ‘Portly seems to have a deep desire to get engaged to the lovely Constantia who is, let’s face it, just so Portly, and they will make a formidable couple, so organised it will be absurd, but also utterly right, don’t you think? Just so long as she lets him do the cooking. So, that’s all right, tick.’
Elsie put her head back on the sofa, closing her eyes. It was just so nice to hear Oliver rattling on in his usual artless way, a bit of gossip, and then a sip of champagne, some more gossip and more champagne. She let it all wash over her, closing out the earlier scenes of the evening, the nightmare.
‘I do love you, Ollie – you’re such a chatterbox,’ she murmured.
‘And Coco was picked up from the reception by Aeneas, who is obviously besotted, so they have gone back to Coco’s flat, and I don’t want to be a gooseberry, particularly since I am in the process of divorcing her and could be spotted by the Queen’s Proctor, or she could – so would you mind if I stayed here for the night?’
Elsie opened her eyes and looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘Don’t you mean for the day?’
‘Well, both, really.’
Elsie closed her eyes again. ‘No, of course not. You can stay here for the rest of my life. Just keep on talking, Oliver, just keep on. It’s just so lovely to be home again, with you, that’s all that really matters.’
Aeneas was protesting, vociferously.
‘I don’t understand about the Queen’s Proctor.’
‘Well, if you’re divorcing, which I am, divorcing Oliver for non-consummation, you have to be careful not to be spotted by the Queen’s Proctor and had up for collusion, or something like that.’
‘You mean this Proctor person is a voyeur?’
Aeneas followed Coco up to her flat on the first floor, carefully putting lights on and off, just as they had been careful to leave their taxi at the back entrance.
‘Yes, that’s it, he spies on people for the state, filthy beast. No, it’s quite serious actually, but don’t ask me how it all works.’
‘I don’t care about how the Proctor works, only how you work.’ Aeneas tiptoed after Coco down the corridor. ‘I love you, Coco Hampton, and tonight you looked like an angel from heaven, that is what you looked like, like an angel from heaven.’
Coco turned back to look at him. They had waited long enough to make love, until Aeneas had finished filming, and Coco had finished her collection for ‘the palace’, and now the time had come, it was somehow so right.
‘Do you think if we had got together, um, earlier, it would have been better, Aeneas?’
‘Not at all. No.’ Aeneas shook his head. ‘There is always a perfect time and a perfect place, and just now, I would say that we have both.’
EPILOGUE
THE CAROUSEL
Play orchestra play, play something sweet and light and gay, for we must have music, we must have music!
Sir Noel Coward, ‘Play Orchestra, Play’
John Plunkett was preparing for his son’s second wedding. He was, although he would not admit it, even to Clifton, excited. It was going to be a London wedding, which was a little bit of a pity, but on the other hand he liked London. Taking time out to see old friends at the Betterton Club, catching up with the gossip and so on, and so on, was pleasant; but more than that, his youngest son had achieved such fame, quite a bit was rubbing off on his old father, which made visiting the Betterton even more stimulating. The triumph of Golden Days was indisputably the greatest television success of its era, and might indeed prove to be so, some were saying, for many eras. It had, overnight, made watching television somehow acceptable, even for members of the glorious and ancient Betterton Club.
However, there was only one thing that still really puzzled John Plunkett, and that was Clifton’s refusal to see how like Clifton himself Master Oliver looked in the series. Each week, when the series went out, the conversation was always the same.
‘Master Oliver has somehow assimilated you, Clifton, d’you know? I swear it. Magnificent performance, really it is. I thought his Hamlet was the tops, but this – well this is really quite something. Everyone is saying so. All my friends keep ringing and saying “It’s a young Cliffie, to a T.”’
‘Can’t see it myself, sir. To me, as you have always said, Master Oliver is a throwback to his ancestress on the upper landing. His mother’s great-grandmother.’
‘Yes, but don’t you see, Clifton, that’s it? That’s the actor’s art. They assimilate someone so well, they even start to look like them. He looks like you, moves like you. Uncanny.’
‘Really, sir.’ Clifton looked enigmatic. ‘I just can’t see it myself.’
He turned away. He had plans for Master Oliver in the breaks between making the series, big plans that he must discuss with Portly Cosgrove. Back to the theatre – perhaps a sparkling Benedict, certainly a Romeo would not be out of the question – he was still not too old.
Clifton went off to his pantry cheerfully humming. Everything had turned out a lot better than he had thought it would when Master Oliver was born, which was when the likeness to Clifton had, for some reason, first manifested itself.
Not that Mr Plunkett had seemed to notice, only hesitating slightly when he was first shown the baby, before saying to his wife and Clifton, ‘Little chap looks just like your
great-grandmother, Amelia, the one on the landing, doesn’t he, really? Spit of her, I would say, absolute spit.’
Which all in all was exactly like John Plunkett, always and ever the gentleman, which was why Clifton was so very proud to serve him. As to Master Oliver, he was marrying a great actress in Elsie Lancaster, and it had to be said that they were not only going to make a match of it. The general feeling was that both of them had met their match.
THE END
Charlotte Bingham would like to invite you to visit her website at www.charlottebingham.com
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