Family Chorus

by Claire Rayner

  ‘No wallowing,’ he said crisply. ‘It’s happened, so it’s happened. The thing to do now is get you out of this as fast as possible. Keep your head down and your mouth shut — come on.’

  Her own footsteps rattling on the terrazzo of the long corridors as they hurried to the huge entrance doors, the smell of disinfectant and dust, the feel of Max’s hand hard on her elbow — it was a dream again. None of it was really happening — and then she was out in the open air of the Strand, blinking at the hazy September sunshine as voices attacked her and lights flashed in her face and made everything she looked at seem bright green.

  ‘This way, Miss Asher, look this way. How do you feel about the verdict, Miss Asher? Will you be going back to the Café de Paris, Miss Asher? This way, Miss Asher —’ And more bright lights popping at her and Max’s hand hurting her arm now as he half pushed, half dragged her across the pavement to a waiting taxi.

  She sat beside him in frozen silence all the way to Hackney, staring out at the passing traffic and seeing nothing. He, to her immense gratitude, said nothing either. Even when they arrived and he told the taxi to wait, he didn’t speak to her directly as he led her to the front door of the house in Victoria Park Road.

  ‘I wouldn’t get any papers tomorrow, if I were you,’ he said curtly to Bessie, who had obviously been watching for the taxi and opened the door as soon as it drew up. ‘It won’t be very pleasant, I’m afraid. They were all there, the damned vultures. Express, Mail, the lot. I did my best, talking to them. Gave them an angle that might help Lexie a bit — but it still won’t be very pretty, even if they use it my way. I’ll keep an eye on the flat, Lexie, so don’t worry about that. I’ll come in the morning about eight. Try and rest.’ He put his hand on her shoulder and for a moment she thought he was going to bend and kiss her cheek, but he didn’t. He just bobbed his head and turned and went running down the steps and back to the taxi, leaving her alone with Bessie.

  She woke early, long before Bessie, and lay staring up at the ceiling trying to remember all that had happened, but it was woolly in her memory. Bessie had fussed over her, plied her with hot milk laced with brandy, and she had taken two big cupfuls. That had been all she needed to add to her fatigue, for she had fallen heavily asleep before ten and had slept deeply all night. Now she felt lumpy and slow, her eyes were sandy and she stretched and thought — I can’t stay here, I’ve got to get out, I need some air. Quietly she dressed and, moving like a cat, slipped out of the flat and into the street below.

  Even though it was only seven o’clock there were already workmen hurrying past, but none of them paid any attention to her as she hovered near the front steps. She knew she was being absurd, quite ridiculously self-centred to think anyone cared tuppence about what had happened yesterday. It had been awful at the time, but it was over now. Dead and forgotten. Over. She took a deep breath and began to walk, marching briskly along the road towards the Park, taking great breaths of the morning smokiness and feeling the sandiness leave her eyes and the heaviness leave her limbs. This was what she had needed: a little exercise, a chance to see things in perspective — because, after all, what was it all but a silly fuss? Just another case that would be forgotten by this time next week.

  At the end of the Park she stopped to think for a moment and then walked out of the big iron gates to the road. The Park had been agreeable enough, with its dusty paths, its sooty shrubs and its emptiness, but now she wanted a little bustle, the feeling of life around her, and she swung along past the little shops, feeling better by the minute. It had all been a fuss over nothing after all.

  She hadn’t meant to go into the newsagents, but, seeing it was open, with people bustling in and out as though it were a small beehive, had reminded her how hungry she was, and its window full of models of chocolate bars beckoned her. Chocolate would be just right, something to tide her over till Bessie woke and they could have breakfast.

  She couldn’t have believed that seeing her own face staring up at her from a newspaper would be so shocking. She stood there by the counter with the chocolate in her hand as the carpet-slippered old woman behind the counter went shuffling away to get her change, and felt her chest lurch. Then as the woman came back she picked up the paper and said as casually as she could, ‘Which paper’s this?’

  ‘Eh? Oh, that’s the Mail. Yer want it? Express an’ Mirror’s over there, News Chronicle and ’Erald t’other side.’

  ‘I’ll take one of each,’ she said, and feverishly scooped them up. The old woman sniffed and took her money, and with the papers under her arm Lexie ran out of the shop as though she was being chased, to run back the way she had come, to the Park. There she could sit on a bench in peace and look at them all, and find out just how bad it was.

  23

  It was dreadful. Every paper had the story, and all of them had pictures. Lexie stared at the blank-faced but surprised-looking creature who gazed muzzily out of the smudged print and thought — that isn’t me. It says it’s me, but it isn’t. I don’t look as stupid as that. Or perhaps I do? Perhaps it wasn’t just the popping of the lights that made me seem so childish and silly? Maybe I do really look like that? How awful if I do.

  She took a deep breath and started to read the words. ‘Businessman’s son cites actress aunt in cash argument,’ read one headline. ‘Did wife’s young sister know?’ ran another. The worst, in a paper liberally sprinkled with photographs not only of Dave and herself but also of the block of flats in Mulberry Walk and of Bessie and the Victoria Park Road house and even of the Café de Paris, shrieked, ‘Father and aunt shared love nest on mother’s money alleges cheated business man.’ She felt sick as she looked at the heavy black type, and crumpled the paper in her hands furiously. Then she smoothed it out and began to read the strips of type below.

  She was glad she had, for it was clear that what Max had told the journalists had had an effect; the headlines were much more lurid than the story that unfolded beneath them. Monty had obviously not taken the reporters’ liking; description after description presented him as hard and greedy, a mean-minded son treating his father’s misdemeanours with unnecessary cruelty. Dave was depicted as a naughty but rather charming gay dog, full of waggish bonhomie; the reports made it clear that Dave had indeed been misappropriating money, but there seemed to be sympathy for him in the accounts of his doings, far more than there was for the aggrieved Monty.

  When it came to their descriptions of Lexie and her part in the affair, the reporters’ partiality really showed. She was described as ‘charming’, ‘delicate”, ‘sweetly pretty’, ‘dainty’ and in spite of her distaste for it all she couldn’t help but smile at that. She, the tough, hard-working Alexandra, dainty and sweetly pretty? Such nonsense. But it was agreeable all the same to know that she gave that impression.

  The description of her own part in the affair was comforting. She had, they said, been an innocent recipient of her brother-in-law’s generosity. One of the papers — the one with the ‘love nest’ headline — hinted coyly that there might have been a more-than-family affection between the two, but even then the message was that it was Dave who had been the leering naughty one (and who could blame him, when his sister-in-law was so lovely?) and she, Lexie, a helpless tool in the hands of a man of the world.

  She read every word in every paper, then leaned back on the park bench, trying to get her thoughts into some sort of order. Her name was all over the cheap newspapers, and her photograph was displayed for everyone to see and smack their lips over. She’d been described as an ‘actress’, a ‘dancer’ and ‘girl about town’. The fact that someone had paid her rent and bought her gifts of furniture was common knowledge. But that was all, wasn’t it? No one actually knew what had happened between Dave and herself on that night all that time ago, when she had let her misery about Ambrose push her into letting Dave behave as he had. No one knew, so was any real harm done? Would managements stop wanting to use her because of the publicity?

  She looked agai
n at the photograph of the Café de Paris and the caption beneath it that read. ‘The West End Funplace where Alexandra Asher, the girl quoted in the case, once danced’, and she felt sick again. Of course they wouldn’t. No one would want someone who had been dragged through the cheap papers in this sordid fashion. They’d feel she was tarnished, useless to them, and she wanted to shout her fury about it all to the dusty, tired privet hedges that lined the path in front of the bench where she sat, and at the scrawny sparrows and pigeons hunting for crumbs on the cracked tarmac.

  She left the papers on the bench for the first passer by to claim and walked back to Bessie’s, hands deep in the pockets of her coat, head down and cloche hat pulled well forward to shade her eyes. If she couldn’t see the people she passed — and the streets were busier now as the day began to swing into top gear — she could persuade herself that they couldn’t see her.

  As she let herself into the house, and stood there in the squares of yellow and green and red light that the glass door insets spilled on to the lino of the narrow hallway, she could hear Bessie’s voice upstairs. She was in the Jiving room of the small flat with the door open, talking on the telephone. As Lexie pulled off her hat there was a scuttling sound along the hallway, and she peered into its recesses to see Mrs Bernstein peeping back at her.

  ‘Such a megillah!’ Mrs Bernstein, aware she’d been spotted listening to her neighbour and making a bold front of it, came shuffling along the hall, pulling her grubby apron around her and sniffing unappetizingly. Her hair was tied up in metal curlers under a tight bandeau, and her eyes glittered excitedly under its frayed edge as she stared at Lexie. ‘All this in the papers an’ everythin’ — it’s all over my Daily Sketch, how your brother-in-law — I mean, it’s not nice, is it? Such a respectable house this is, and now your sister’s phone never stops ringin’ and you here. I never had a person in my house what’s been in a court case like this one.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s not nice.’

  ‘I’m not precisely enjoying it myself, Mrs Bernstein,’ Lexie said as calmly as she could. ‘And you really mustn’t believe all you read in the papers.’

  ‘No? Then it ain’t true? You know — that you and your brother-in-law — I mean, we all know Dave Fox. Known ’im for years round ’ere, we ’ave, but I never thought there was any — well, you know —’ And she came closer and nudged Lexie with a sharp elbow. ‘Is it true?’

  Lexie stared at her, her mouth pulled into a grimace of distaste as she stepped back. The old woman cackled again with a lascivious leer and nudged Lexie once more. She opened her mouth to shout at her, to tell her to keep her revolting little mind out of her affairs, to go to hell and mind her own business there, but Bessie called down anxiously from the head of the stairs.

  ‘Lexie? Is that you? I was so worried — I couldn’t find you! Where’ve you been? There are messages for you — oh, no!’

  She turned distractedly as the telephone began to shrill. ‘There it goes again. It never stops —’ She went hurrying back into her living room as the door bell pealed and Mrs Bernstein threw her hands up in the air and cried, ‘You see? A madhouse you’ve made of this place, you and your carryings on! A madhouse!’ She pushed past Lexie to open the door eagerly.

  Max was standing there. Over his shoulder Lexie could see three men starting to walk up the path, but it was only a glimpse because Max, with rare ill manners, pushed Mrs Bernstein out of the way and hurriedly closed the door in the face of the men who had now reached the top step.

  ‘Don’t open it,’ he said commandingly as the bell rang again. Mrs Bernstein gaped at him, shook her head and cried again, ‘A madhouse. That there should be such goings on in my house — my poor Hymie, rest his blessed soul in everlasting peace, he must be spinning in his grave, such a megillah in a decent woman’s home —’

  ‘You’re making most of the noise yourself,’ Lexie snapped. ‘And —’

  ‘It’s all right, Mrs Bernstein,’ Max said soothingly. ‘I’ll deal with it all. Lexie, go upstairs. Mrs Bernstein, you go back to your own kitchen. I’ll deal with everything. Off you go.’ And she went, still muttering and staring back over her shoulder malevolently, but not able to withstand Max’s firm hand on her back, urging her to return to her own part of the house.

  ‘Oh, no —’ said Lexie as she heard Bessie hang up the phone with a clatter upstairs and then its demanding trill as it rang again at the same time as the front door once more pealed furiously. ‘What on earth are we —’

  ‘Upstairs,’ Max said firmly. ‘I’ll handle it.’ After a second’s hesitation she ran up the stairs and straight into her room, to sit on her bed and stare at the wardrobe with her heart beating like a trip hammer and her mouth feeling sour and dry. This morning on the park bench she’d thought it was all over, a fuss over nothing much — then the phone rang again in the living room.

  But Max was as good as his word. After a few moments she heard the crunch of footsteps on the path and the creak of the iron gate as the men went away, and then heard Max come swiftly upstairs to her door.

  ‘Come in,’ she said drearily. ‘It’s open —’ He stopped in the doorway, looking at her, and then came over to sit beside her on the bed.

  ‘It’s not as bad as you think,’ he said gently. ‘This excitement will die down. In a day or so. Certainly after the Sunday papers have picked their share of the bits off the bones. By next week it’ll all be history. Except for the use people will try to make of it.’

  ‘Use? What possible use can people make out of anything as — oh, Max.’ Her eyes filled and she made no attempt to hide the fact.

  He put both arms round her and held her close. She let her head droop on his shoulder gratefully and the tears ran and it didn’t matter; it was all so right and natural; and when she lifted her face to his and kissed him that was right and natural too. He held her close and kissed her as tenderly as she had kissed him, and for the first time for as. long as she could remember she felt good.

  ‘Lexie, we’ll get married. As soon as the fuss is over. A week or two, that’s all. Then you can forget it all. Just a few weeks, no longer. Then you can push it all away. We can be comfortable and happy and I’ll look after you —’

  She was unsurprised, just grateful, and she held on to him and said, ‘Oh, yes!’ without stopping to think, for it seemed even more natural than their kissing had been. But then she was surprised at her acceptance of it all and she looked at him through tear-swollen lids and said, ‘This is mad!’

  He laughed, ‘Isn’t it just? But it isn’t mad really. It’s exactly as it should be —’ Again he hugged her close and rocked her with that same rhythmic, crooning comfort that he had on that hot night at the flat when he had first come back to her after their long separation.

  The telephone rang again, and he swore softly under his breath. ‘I told Bessie to leave it off the hook. I’ll have to go and deal with it — it won’t take a moment.’

  ‘Who is it who keeps phoning? Reporters? Like those men downstairs?’

  ‘Some are — but most of them are managements —’ He got to his feet, still holding on to her, so that she had to stand up too. She frowned and shook her head, puzzled.

  ‘Managements?’

  ‘They want you, of course,’ he said, and there was an edge in his voice. ‘Damned muckrakers.’ He kissed the top of her head and turned to go, and after a moment she followed him into the sitting room.

  Bessie was standing at the sideboard, the telephone earpiece pushed agitatedly against her ruffled head and the stem held so close to her mouth she could hardly move her lips to speak. Her knuckles were white with the tightness of her grip.

  ‘No,’ she was saying. ‘I haven’t been able to tell her yet. Yes, I will, I told you, I will. No, I can’t say what other offers. No, I don’t know. Yes, Mr Cochran’s office has been ringing, but —’

  ‘Bessie,’ Max said gently, taking the phone from her. Bessie let it go gratefully and pulled her thick woollen dressing go
wn round her crooked back more tightly, grimaced at Lexie, and went off to the kitchen. Max said firmly, ‘No, I am afraid not. No, I can’t say. You’ll have to wait until Miss Asher is available. No, I can’t say when that will be.’ Lexie followed Bessie into the kitchen, where she was putting on the kettle, striking the matches for the gas with shaking fingers.

  Lexie took the box from her and lit the gas ring herself as Bessie leaned against the kitchen table and rubbed her face wearily with both hands.

  ‘Tell me what they’ve been saying, Bessie.’

  Bessie lifted her face and tried to smile at her but it was a weak and watery affair.

  ‘They’ve gone mad! There’ve you been all this time looking for good jobs, and now because of all this, they’re all — oh, it makes me sick, it really does! It’s not anything to do with your dancing, you see. It’s just they want you to do anything, anything at all. There was one of them wanted you to sell furniture, even — beds, as I understood it, all satin and — and another said they had this show in Soho and you — oh, it’s horrible, really horrible. It’s like they want to make you into a circus turn.’

  ‘You said Mr Cochran’s office had been ringing?’ Lexie kept her voice as calm as she could. ‘Anyone else like that? Real managements, I mean?’

  ‘Oh, I can’t remember!’ Bessie sat down and rested her elbows on the table as Lexie made the tea and set the pot in front of her. ‘It started so early! It wasn’t eight o’clock and there’s people ringing and you weren’t here and — I couldn’t believe it at first — there must have been a dozen of ’em. How they knew you were here I don’t know.’

  ‘There was a picture of you and this house in one of the papers,’ Lexie said, and began to pour tea as Max came into the kitchen. ‘Tea, Max?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ He sat down and put his hand on Bessie’s shoulder. ‘I told you, Bessie. Leave the phone off the hook. It’s the only way to stop ’em. As soon as you’re ready I’ll take you to town, both of you. You can stay at an hotel till the fuss is over and then —’ He looked up at Lexie, his face suddenly transformed with the widest grin she’d ever seen on it. ‘Then we have plans to make and things to do. Yes, Lexie?’