by Laura Wood
“Well done, darling.” Dan sweeps me into his arms and swings me around.
“You did it!” Alma’s eyes shine. “That was so much fun!”
I think the benefit of low expectations is that by putting in a competent performance you convince people you’ve done well.
“My love, we must take you for drinks,” Dan says. “To celebrate your triumph.”
“Yes,” I say. “Drinks.”
In the dressing room I take off my costume with unsteady hands and a sense of detachment. I know this dress very well, I sewed these lace frills on myself. I trace the pattern with my finger, as I stand in my slip, shivering.
“There you are!” Nora exclaims, bursting in through the door. “You did brilliantly. Why are you standing about in your underwear? You’ll catch your death.”
She wraps me up in a dressing gown and pushes me down in a chair, wiping the make-up off my face. I watch her do it in the mirror, watch as she wipes the colour and life from my face, the mask I was hiding behind.
“I’ve seen this before,” she says reassuringly. “It’s just the adrenaline. You have to be so up when you’re onstage that when you come off, you crash. Don’t worry, you’re just not used to it. You’ll feel better in a bit.”
“Will I?” I ask, my eyes filling with quick tears.
Nora misunderstands my emotion, smiling fondly. “Of course you will. You’re overwhelmed! It’s a big night for you. I’m so pleased for you, darling.”
With a bit more pulling and prodding, Nora helps me into my own dress. I’ve recovered some of my senses now, enough at least to put a brave face on. I can hardly consider all the thoughts running through my head, there are so many, and they are so overwhelming. I daren’t start untangling them, pulling them out and examining them now, not while there are people waiting for me. It’s too much.
“Come on, come on!” Dan sticks his head around the door. “We’re all ready to go. Time to toast to your success!”
He puts his arm around my shoulder, and Nora sweeps along in our wake. We make our way through the corridor, and people keep stopping me to say well done.
“You did it!” Lindsey exclaims, squeezing my arm, as I walk past.
“I did,” I say brightly. “I did it.” Because that is completely true. I went onstage, I said the lines. I did it.
I just didn’t do it well.
And I think if they’d had any expectations of me, then they’d realize that themselves.
We meet up with Alma and Russ and bustle out into the cold. They are merry and laughing and I am too, acting a thousand times better than I did on that stage.
We pour into the pub, and there’s a crowd forming around me. It makes me feel hot and claustrophobic. I try to keep my breathing steady. I try to keep the broad smile pinned to my face.
And yet, even while I smile and thank them, there is something happening inside me that I can’t articulate.
It feels like I am coming apart.
It was wrong. It was all wrong. It felt wrong.
And there’s only one person I want to talk to about it.
It seems like an age passes before the crowd starts to disperse, before people drift off to chat in smaller groups. I sip my drink, wincing at the taste of gin. I don’t know who ordered this, but it wasn’t me.
At the first opportunity I slip unobtrusively out into the cool night air, drinking it in, feeling the cold snap against my heated cheeks. I head back to the boarding house, where I climb the stairs, quick and silent, then I knock on one of the doors.
A low voice answers. “Who is it?”
“It’s Freya,” I say. “Please, I have to speak to you.”
There’s a pause, a shuffling sound, and finally the lock clicks and the door swings open.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“You’d better come in,” Viola says.
She is wearing a white nightgown and, shivering, she gets straight back into bed, pulling the blankets right up around her like a cocoon. Her hair is matted and her eyes have dark circles underneath them. Perhaps she really is ill.
“Are you … feeling any better?” I ask hesitantly.
Viola tilts her head as though considering this. “A little,” she says finally.
“That’s good.”
There’s an awkward silence. I hover in the doorway, unsure of what to do or say.
“So you went on, did you?” she asks, and she gestures to the foot of the bed, where I perch myself gratefully.
“Yes.” I hesitate, and then I look at her, really look at her. Straight in the eyes. “I wasn’t very good.”
Viola doesn’t correct me. She doesn’t rush to convince me otherwise. She simply nods, accepting the fact. “No,” she says. “I don’t suppose you were.” The words sound like they should be cruel, but somehow they aren’t. She’s just being honest.
“You are the only person I can talk to about this.” I twist my hands in my lap. “I know you’ll understand. I need you to tell me the truth. Do you think I could be an actress?”
Viola doesn’t answer. She reaches to her bedside table for a packet of cigarettes, tapping one loose and lighting it. I’ve never seen her smoke before.
She takes a drag and then slowly exhales. “If you’re asking me if I think with work and training you could make a living as an actress on the stage, then the answer is possibly yes. But I don’t think that’s what you are asking me.”
“What am I asking you?”
She looks at me steadily. “You’re asking me if you can be great. And the answer to that is no.”
I absorb this small hard truth into my body like a blow. “Perhaps I don’t need to be great,” I say weakly.
“Don’t do that,” Viola says sharply, pointing at me with her cigarette. “Don’t turn away from your own ambition. You and I are the same in some ways and that’s one of them. There’s no point in doing it if you’re not going to be the best. There’s no sense in aiming for anything less than perfection. You could do a fine job. You could be…”
“Competent,” I say, giving voice to an earlier thought.
“Competent, yes.” She nods. “But you’d be miserable.”
I am miserable now, I think. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted,” I say. My voice is small and sounds like it’s coming from somewhere far away. There is a static buzzing in my ears, and a physical ache in my chest.
“I know,” she says without sympathy. “But that’s true for lots of girls. Not all of them can make it.”
“But you can?”
She taps her cigarette into an empty water glass. Something flickers across her face. “Yes. I can. I will.”
I believe her too. She has the talent, the determination and the strength to become a star, a household name.
“I knew it the second I was onstage,” I say finally. “It wasn’t like how it used to be, when it was just me and I could fall into it, lose myself in it. It hasn’t been like that, even in rehearsals. I was trying so hard, too hard. I was trying to be you, thinking about what you would do. It just felt … wrong. Up there, on the stage. It’s not where I belong.”
I think if I had tried to explain this to anyone else, even Kit, that they would misunderstand. They would tell me it was just one performance, that I would improve with time and work. They wouldn’t understand the instinctive feeling of wrongness, the undeniable message my brain and my body were sending me, the one that I heard loud and clear. Viola does. I am grateful for her honesty, even if it costs me dearly. I know she understands, and though we are not exactly friends, in that moment I feel incredibly close to her.
Perhaps she is feeling the same, because she leans back against the pillows and closes her eyes for a moment. “I suppose they all think I didn’t turn up today because of that stupid fight last night?”
I nod, because we are telling each other the truth. “Yes, I think most people do. Was it because of that?” She doesn’t answer and I take a deep breath. “I know you think Kit and I…” I fl
ounder here, because the truth is I’m not at all sure about Kit and I.
Viola rolls her eyes. “This is certainly not about Kit and you,” she says, making me feel about two inches tall. “It’s not even about Kit. I guess I thought he was so besotted he’d hang around for me. I couldn’t imagine he’d turn me down.” She pauses, bewilderment in her face. “But he’s right, you know; there’s nothing between us any more. Perhaps there was once, but I made the choice to end it. I went after someone more useful to my career.” She pauses. “That didn’t end well either, but I’d do the same again. I have to. There’s nothing more important to me than the work. Nothing.”
She leans forward, and her eyes are wide, willing me to understand. I nod. She slumps back on her pillows again, the spark gone, the weary look returning.
“Russ said I was naive about how things worked in this industry,” I say. “He said I’d get a reputation, if I wasn’t careful. With men, I mean.”
She shoots me a thin smile. “Russ was presumably saying that after you turned him down.” She takes my silence as assent. “God, he’s predictable. Not that he’s exactly wrong. Navigating this industry as a woman is an obstacle course. It’s a very fine balance. Men can be useful, but they can also want more than you’re prepared to give.”
I think about this for a moment. Then I say, “So … this evening, were you really feeling ill?”
Viola hesitates and then she seems to make a decision. As if we’ve already spilled so much, let each other see so much, that there’s no need to hold back now.
“Something happens to me,” she says carefully. She closes her eyes. “I don’t know how to explain it. It used to happen to my grandmother as well. She would say, ‘I’m just having a funny spell.’ It happened this morning. I woke up and everything was just … grey. And heavy. And the thought of doing anything, I mean anything – brushing my teeth or walking downstairs or going outside – it seemed impossible. Completely exhausting. It’s like a huge dark cloud descends on me and I feel … nothing. When it happens, I can’t get out of bed. There’s nothing I can do, except wait for it to pass.”
“That sounds … hard,” I finish lamely, kicking myself for coming out with something so paltry.
Viola nods. “It is hard. It’s hard to have a reputation as a flake when all I care about is the work. When all I want to do is to be able to do my job.” Her hands clench in fists at her sides.
“Have you told anyone?” I ask.
She laughs mirthlessly. “Oh, they’d all love that, wouldn’t they? Can you imagine how Dan would react? Or Russ? Your little friend Alma, who would kill for my parts – they’d be spreading it round that I was mad. No one would work with me. Better to be considered a temperamental starlet, that’s what they expect me to be – though if I was a man, no doubt it would be a sign of genius.” Her voice is hard, bitter. I can understand why.
“Kit knows,” she says at last. “You and Kit. The only ones.”
“Did the fight with Kit,” I hesitate, unsure how to phrase my question, “cause the … um … spell?”
Viola makes a noise of impatience. “Nothing causes it,” she says. “I wish it did. I wish there was some rhyme or reason to it, but there isn’t. If anything the fight with Kit was part of it. Sometimes I know the crash is coming because I feel the high beforehand.”
I remember how Viola looked last night, glittering with energy. I think I see. At least some of it.
We sit silently for a moment, just looking at each other. It’s strange. We don’t like each other very much, but I know what it has cost her to be honest with me, in exchange for my own vulnerability. For once, between us, there is no acting, nothing but our real selves, stripped bare.
“I hope you feel better,” I say at last. “I’ll leave you to rest.”
I get to my feet and move towards the door.
“Goodnight,” Viola says.
“Goodnight,” I reply. “And thank you.”
“For what?”
“For telling me the truth.”
I slip back into my own room. Alma is still out and I slump on to my bed in relief. Relief at being alone. I press my hand to my chest, almost too afraid to think about what has happened, to sift through it, because I know how much it will hurt.
Whenever I have imagined my first night onstage – and I have imagined it many, many, many times – it never ended this way. It never ended with this feeling of hopelessness, of being lost and alone. It never ended with me, curled up under the sheets, crying as though I was never going to be able to stop.
Part Five
London, again
December, 1931
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I move through the final days of the tour like a sleepwalker, going through the motions. I sew buttons, fix hems, tidy up. I go to the pub and stand quietly at the bar while people chatter around me.
Viola is back at work the next day as though nothing has happened. A couple of people make some cutting comments about her diva-like behaviour, but she ignores them with her chin held high. It is her armour, I know now, this icy hauteur – it keeps them all at a distance while she focuses on what matters.
She and I do not allude to our conversation. It was a temporary truce, that spilling of our secrets, and now we are back to business as usual.
Only nothing is usual for me. My dream has died, and that is what it feels like: a death. I feel bereft. The thing that I have been chasing all my life, the thing I have always been the most certain about, has gone. And in its place, there is nothing – just emptiness, and a sense of failure that gnaws at me, eating me up inside.
I watch the play being performed three more times. There is a line which Dan delivers that always gets a big laugh.
He says, “Lady Bracknell, I hate to seem inquisitive, but would you kindly inform me who I am?”
And every time Dan says the line, I think, That’s what I want. I want someone to tell me who I am. I have to pretend to laugh to hide the tears that sting in my eyes.
I feel as though the rug has been swept from under my feet. And where the rug had been is nothing but a gaping hole that I am falling into deeper and deeper. I am Alice in Wonderland all over again, only this time the dream feels like a nightmare.
Kit tries to talk to me, more than once.
“Are you all right, Freya?” he asks outright on one occasion. “I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” I say, in a tone that is bright and brittle as the ice in the streets.
“Well, I’m here,” he says. “If you want to talk. If there’s anything…” He trails off. “I’m here.” The words are like a promise.
I can tell he is hurt and confused that I have withdrawn from him, though – to be fair – I have withdrawn from everyone. But he is here. He keeps his word. In the evenings he sits beside me in the crowd, not talking, simply being there, occasionally putting food in front of me, or a glass in my hand. I don’t even thank him. I say nothing.
And then, just like that, after six busy, beautiful, heartbreaking weeks, it is all over.
When Nora drops me off at Lou’s house, we say goodbye, her wool coat pressing against my cheek as she gathers me in for a hug.
“Here,” she says, handing me a parcel wrapped in brown paper. “This is for you.”
“Thank you,” I say. “For everything.”
Nora hugs me again, until I gently pull away. I notice her eyes are suspiciously shiny.
Then I let myself in with the key Lou gave me and I go up to my little yellow bedroom and sleep for eighteen hours.
When I wake, Lou is sitting on the end of the bed.
“Hello, stranger,” she says.
I fling myself into her arms and cry like I am a small child and she is my wise, capable big sister. Which, I suppose, is completely accurate.
“I take it something has happened,” Lou says, when my tears have reduced themselves to very undignified snuffling sounds.
“My dream is dead!” I int
one, flinging myself back against my pillows.
“Oh dear,” says Lou mildly. “I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that. Why don’t you wash your face and get dressed and come downstairs?” Lou’s unruffled demeanour reminds me for a second of Midge, and I feel a wave of homesickness that threatens to crush me. “There’s tea and toast and jam tarts, and I’ve found that dreams have a way of reviving on a full stomach.”
“If only it were that simple,” I sniff, disconsolate. “Jam tarts, did you say?”
Lou nods.
“Did you make them?” I ask suspiciously.
“Robert did.”
“Maybe I’ll come down, then.”
Soon I’m sitting on the sofa in Lou’s living room, wrapped in an enormous striped woolly cardigan that Midge sent for Lou with one sleeve longer than the other. (“Stripes now,” Lou says despairingly. “She’s extending her repertoire.”) A mug of steaming tea is cradled in my hands and I am three jam tarts and two pieces of toast deep into my breakfast.
“Now,” Lou says encouragingly. “Tell me everything.”
So I do. I leave parts out, of course. I don’t tell her about Viola’s revelations. I don’t mention Russ’s unwelcome advance. I don’t mention the fact that Kit and I almost kissed or how mixed up I feel about that. But I tell her about the theatre, about my experience of going onstage, and how it all went wrong.
“I know how it feels to be lost,” Lou says gently. “I felt like that after Alice got married. I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself or who I was. I was so scared I would never find my place or what I wanted to do. But I did.”
“That was different,” I object. “You didn’t know what you wanted to do. I knew what I wanted to do. I knew who I was. There wasn’t a single doubt in my mind, not one, not for as long as I can remember, and now it’s all gone. Just like that. It feels like my idea of what I wanted to do was so tangled up with me, that without it I don’t know who I am. The entire career I imagined for myself is over.”
“Are you sure?” Lou asks. “You can do the work and improve, can’t you?”