Family Chorus

by Claire Rayner

  ‘Gentlemen, be silent, if you please, for our skipper, who has a few things of his own to say. Miss Asher, gentlemen — Commander Cramer!’

  34

  ‘Dolmades,’ Max said. ‘Vine leaves stuffed with meat and rice. Will you have some more?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Thanks. I just wondered what they were called.’ She pushed at the food on her plate with her fork, trying to behave as though she were hungry, as though everything was normal and that she could eat just like everyone else.

  ‘You’ll have to try the lamb when they bring it,’ he said. ‘Greeks get very upset if you refuse their food. And it really is delicious.’ He leaned across to pour some more wine into her glass and she felt his sleeve brush her bare shoulder, and it was as though she had been stung.

  The table stretched away on each side of her, lined with young men chattering and shouting and laughing and eating and drinking as fast as they could, and she felt a stab of anger. She could have enjoyed this, could have been sitting here at the centre of their attention, flirting a little, laughing and eating as cheerfully as they were, but all she could do was feel the tightness in her throat that made her want to get up and run away into the darkness, down towards the sea that lay on the other side of the stretch of beach where their celebration was being held. But she couldn’t get up and run because if she did she knew her knees would give beneath her.

  ‘Did you know I was coming here?’ she said abruptly, not looking at him.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When did you know?’

  ‘The signal came ten days ago. They said you’d had a rough time in North Africa, been with the Eighth Army through all the worst of it, and that you’d had a bad ride. Needed a rest, and we were to look after you. Are you all right, Lexie? You look wonderful.’

  She ignored his concern completely, fanning the small flame of anger that was lurking deep inside her.

  ‘Then you could have found me and talked to me any time this last three days. Why wait till tonight? Why be so dramatic about it?’

  His laughter bubbled clearly under the hubbub that surrounded them. ‘Actresses aren’t the only people with a taste for the dramatic. I’m a lawyer, remember? All that courtroom stuff — we’re quite good at it.’

  ‘So you were just amusing yourself?’

  ‘No,’ he said after a moment. ‘No. I thought it would be safer.’

  This time she did look at him, briefly. ‘Safer?’

  ‘You’d have to stand there with me, there on the stage. Couldn’t run away. Not in front of several hundred men —’

  ‘Why should I run away?’

  ‘Why did you last time?’

  She caught her breath sharply and he put out one hand and set it on her arm. ‘You did run away, Lexie. You didn’t give me a chance to sort it all out, to talk to you, find out what you wanted, to — to explain —’

  She jerked her arm away. ‘Tell me about your wife.’

  It was as though she had slapped him, even though he didn’t move, still sitting there with his hand on her arm, his fingers warm against her bare skin, for he seemed to recoil from her. There was a silence and then he picked up his fork and began quietly and methodically to eat.

  ‘A calm person. Very quiet, but fun. A sense of humour that could surprise people. It often surprised me. Hardworking. Kind. What more can I say about her? You’d have liked her. She was a likeable person.’

  She frowned then. ‘Was?’ she said uncertainly.

  ‘Yes,’ he said equably, and ate another dolmades. ‘She was killed in a raid in ’41. She’d been ambulance-driving in the East End and went right into the middle of an incident. They told me it was almost certainly a direct hit. I hope so.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and closed her eyes for a moment. ‘I’m so sorry. That must have been dreadful for you.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said and put down his fork. ‘Yes. It was a tragedy. She was forty, just. The same age as you. Almost exactly. Her birthday was in February — just a couple of weeks after yours.’ She caught the glimmer of his eyes in the light of the charcoal fire over which the lambs were roasting in front of the long table, and felt her own eyes get hot and sandy with unshed tears for a woman she’d never known, who had taken her place with this man.

  ‘It’s all right, you know,’ he said gently. ‘I can talk about it now. It’s been three years, you see. You can learn to live with anything. I learned to live without you. I’ve learned to live without Laura.’

  ‘Did you have children?’ She had meant the question to be a kind one, an interested query, no more, but it came out harshly and she bit her lip, but he wasn’t looking at her now. His head was bent as he stared at his plate.

  ‘No,’ he said after a long moment. ‘No. That was the real tragedy for Laura. She wanted children very much, but there it was — sometimes I think it was better for her that she died when she did. To have gone on, into her older years, without children — she’d have been very unhappy about that.’

  ‘And you?’ She shouldn’t have asked, she didn’t want to ask, but the question couldn’t be held back. ‘Does it make you unhappy?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, making no attempt to disguise the depth of feeling there was in him. ‘Yes, dreadfully unhappy. I always wanted children.’ He looked at her then. ‘You knew that, didn’t you? How much I wanted children?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You must have done.’ He said it almost angrily, startling her a little. ‘You must have known it was part of how — oh, well, it doesn’t matter now, I suppose. But it was part of —’ He grinned suddenly. ‘I used to see her, you know. Our daughter. It was always a daughter I imagined, somehow, to start with. Then there’d be boys, I thought — ridiculous, isn’t it? I sound like Home Chat magazine. Tell me about you, Lexie. More than I know already, I mean. I’ve watched your career, of course — read about you in the American magazines. You were hugely successful, weren’t you? You deserved to be. I thought I knew how good you were, but tonight — I really saw tonight what it was you had. Still have. You danced like an angel tonight, Lexie.’

  She was staring at him, not hearing his words, just watching his face moving in the glow of the charcoal fires, and trying to see Molly in it. He had wanted a daughter, she thought. He wanted a daughter and there’s Molly, and she’s part of him just as she is of me, and she should be there in his face, and for a moment she thought she saw her there, almost saw that eager expression that had been so much a part of small Molly, growing up on the West Side of Manhattan. But then the image faded and she could only remember the closed little face that had stared at her over folded arms in Bessie’s living room at Victoria Park Road the last time she had seen her. There was none of that watchful stubbornness she remembered in Molly in Max’s face now, none of her self-absorption. He was interested in her, Lexie, not in himself as he talked on about articles he’d read about her, showing how eagerly he had collected news of her during the long years while she had lived and worked in New York. Suddenly she wanted to put out her hands, to touch him as he had touched her, to tell him everything that was in her, of the loneliness of those long years, of Molly and Barbara and —

  It took a physical effort not to do it, and she sat with her hands tightly clasped in her lap as he talked. She was grateful when the waiters who were serving their meal came bouncing round the table, following one of their number who was bearing a great platter of steaming, fragrant roast lamb while they played bazouki music and sang at the tops of their voices. The men sitting round the long table began to applaud, banging their knives on their glasses and Max made a face and gave up trying to talk. He couldn’t compete with the din and she was grateful for that, for she could turn away and concentrate on separating herself from him.

  It was all still there, that was the trouble. The old comfort she had found with him, the old certainty that he was interested in her, really interested in her for herself, and not for what he might get out of her.

&nbs
p; He was exciting in a way she had forgotten he could be. In the years that had elapsed between that October afternoon beside the Thames at Maidenhead and this dark May night on a beach in Cyprus there had been many men who had wanted her, who had looked at her with that dark gleam in their eyes that showed how much she stirred them. There had been men she had danced with and dined with, men she had laughed with and men she had enjoyed talking with, but there had never been one who had made her flesh move on her bones the way this man could. Her reputation on Broadway as untouched and untouchable had been rooted in reality, unlike many Broadway labels. She had really not been interested in sex, and for a while had even thought that she was completely unlike other women in that she didn’t need passion. But then she had wondered, when she thought of the matter at all, whether she had in some way transformed her feelings from one kind of wanting to another. She had wanted success as eagerly as some women wanted to be kissed and caressed. For her the excitement of being greeted with a huge roar of approval from an audience was a greater exhilaration than being greeted with a surge of need in just one man’s loins. Why waste energy on one man, she had asked herself sometimes, when I can control a theatre full of them, when I can meld several hundred separate individuals into one great yearning creature with one great yearning desire — to love me? Who needs lovers when they have what I have?

  So she had thought till tonight, sitting at a trestle table covered with bed sheets and decorated with rough pottery plates and thick glass tumblers, eating peasant food served in peasant style under a Mediterranean sky, surrounded by a horde of half-drunk naval officers. So she had thought until she had seen Max Cramer’s face again with the deep clefts that split his cheeks into familiar planes and the thick dust-coloured hair that shaped itself to his head so neatly. He looked older yet unchanged, the same yet totally different, and she ached for him and trembled for him and was amazed at the strength of her own feelings.

  The noise eased a little as the lamb was served and the young men began to eat. She tried to eat too as the man on her other side, a Surgeon Commander, began to talk to her, and slowly she regained control of herself. It had been a bad moment that, she told herself, a bad moment. I almost told him about Molly. I almost told him.

  Later, waking yet again from her fitful sleep to lie staring up at the low ceiling of the small whitewashed room she had been given at the taverna, listening to Dave Calleff’s snores coming from the adjoining room, she thought suddenly — why? Why am I so worried about telling him? Would it be so terrible to tell the truth now, after so long? He wants a daughter, and God knows Molly needs a father. Perhaps it would be the best thing for everyone if I did tell him, let him know what he had always wanted was available?

  She drifted into a half waking, half sleeping fantasy in which she told Max about his daughter and Molly about her father, and they both came hurrying back from their wartime wanderings so that they could throw their arms around each other’s necks and come to live with Lexie in a small house somewhere near the Park. Hyde Park, not Victoria Park, she told herself, watching the scene she was creating grow behind her closed lids. Hyde Park, in a perfect little white house, and Bessie and Barbara will live with us and we’ll all be happy together, Max and Molly and me — and the scene behind her lids changed, became a stage, and she was dancing in the middle of it, in a skirt made of myriad layers of the most delicate tulle, floating in a dance that was all grace and spun sugar delicacy as she sang — Max and Molly and Me — just Max and Molly and Me —

  The next time she woke it was daylight, the sun already slanting across the mass of blue-green sea grass that fringed the beach across the road from the taverna, and she sat on the windowsill staring out at the gently heaving sea licking the sandy shingle and knew herself for a fool. As if she could tell Molly she had a father when she didn’t even know who her mother was! That’s the real problem I’ve got to deal with when I get home. I’ve got to tell her. She’s old enough now, she won’t be as hurt as she would have been if I’d told her when she was six or ten or twelve. Sixteen — she’s almost grown-up.

  I’ve got to go home and tell her. After that, I can think about Max and what I tell him. And she wanted to laugh, suddenly, sitting there curled up on a windowsill in her shabby silk pyjamas which showed in every seam the rigours of the past two years of travel, and plotting how to rebuild relationships she had once deliberately destroyed. Why do I always get it wrong? I got it wrong with Max, timed it all wrong. I got it all wrong with Molly, too. I had him and I lost him and now I want him. I had her and I gave her away and now I want her. I can time a dance, why can’t I time my own life?

  She hadn’t remembered how much it hurt to cry — it had been so long since she had done it. It hurt dreadfully, making her eyes burn and her chest feel tight and her belly like cold lead. But though it hurt, it helped. For a little while.

  35

  They had told her that she and Dave and Larry Peters, the accompanist, would probably be on their way home from Cyprus within a week of getting there, arriving in London some time at the end of the first week in June, but then suddenly all that changed.

  She was doing a show for the whole base, both ratings and officers, including some different numbers but mostly the stuff they’d already seen and were delighted to see again, when she became aware that there was some activity in the audience. Even while she danced one of her most vigorous numbers, a jazz affair that made her head snap round so that the whole stage and auditorium swirled in her eyes, she could see what was happening: messengers coming to whisper in the ears of the senior officers sitting in the front rows, and then people getting up and leaving. At first she was irritated, and then alarmed. In North Africa that sort of behaviour had always meant trouble on the way — a German attack, perhaps.

  But it wasn’t a German attack, she discovered. Indeed it was quite the reverse. As soon as she was off-stage and had changed and cleaned off her make-up there was a messenger waiting to take her to Max Cramer.

  ‘Developments, miss,’ the seaman said in response to her demand for news of what was going on. ‘Don’t know no more’n that, I’m afraid. Developments. But I dare say Commander Cramer’ll know. ’E said to bring you as fast as I could.’

  The big room he took her to was alive with people and sparking with excitement. It was a little while before Max could detach himself from the group of officers with whom he was talking, heads down over a big map, but he caught her eye and grinned at her, a huge excited grin, and for a moment she felt a lift of delight in his pleasure and grinned back as widely. And then she thought — is it over? Is this why they’re all in such a state of barely controlled excitement? Is the war over?

  ‘Invasion,’ Max said when at last he came over to where she stood just inside the door of the big operations room. ‘At last, the second front. Not a word to anyone, for God’s sake, but it’s scheduled for the next few days. France. We’ve got to send support vessels, and — well, anyway, it’s going to be as hectic here as it’s never been. We’ve had it too cushy for far too long and now it won’t be cushy any more, thank God. But it means you’re stuck here for a while. We can’t send any ship out of here except to the invasion area — at least not for a week or two. There’s no hope of air transport, the way things are. Can you just settle for a rest? I doubt there’ll be much chance for shows — once we really get going every man’s going to be hard pressed to find time to eat and sleep, let alone get any recreation. It’ll be a bit dull for you.’

  ‘Dull?’ she cried, jubilantly. ‘Dull? It’s the most exciting thing — oh, thank God! This bloody war really could be over by Christmas — they’ve said that so often, and now it could be true.’

  He nodded. ‘It’s going well in Italy, too. Your Eighth Army is well on the way.’

  ‘My Eighth Army!’ She laughed then, feeling the absurdity of it. ‘They’re not mine, bless ’em — though I spent enough time with them to feel I was theirs — oh, Max, will it be all right? No more bo
mbs at home, no more need to worry about Bessie and Barbara and —’

  She stopped, just in time. She’d nearly said Molly’s name.

  ‘No more bombs,’ he’d said, grinning at her again so that his face slipped into the familiar clefts, and she wanted to reach up and touch his cheek and had to clench her fists in her pockets. ‘You can sleep well at night and stop fretting. Bessie’ll be fine —’ He frowned then and said interrogatively, ‘Barbara?’ but she ignored that, and began to ask eager questions about the likely progress of the invasion. France? Where in France? Would it work at once, did he think? Would they get a foothold fast enough to send the Germans running back to Berlin? Was it just a British operation or would the Americans be in on it? Where exactly were they going to land? And —

  He laughed and told her she’d have to contain her curiosity as best she might. As soon as news was available she’d get it — and now go to bed. Everyone had work to do and she was in the way, and that was the last thing they needed.

  She obeyed at once. Her long trailing round North Africa with the army had filled her with as much discipline as any of the soldiers she’d entertained. She left the big map room buzzing with its barely contained exuberance and drama to go back to the taverna and an attempt to sleep.

  But she slept poorly that night, and indeed for several nights after, as the base slid into full gear. Ships moved in and out of the harbour so fast that she couldn’t keep up with what was going on, and the men stopped being the friendly chattering companions she’d become used to and became abstracted and too busy for conversation. She would spend long hours sitting up in the middle of the ruins of Apollo’s Temple with her arms clasped round her knees, staring at the sea below and all the activity, trying to imagine what was happening at home in London.