Part 2 (1/2)

The next day, seeing her dressed in such workmanlike attire, Bunny had disconcertingly handed her a measuring rule and a stub of chalk and instructed her to work out the dimensions of a door, stage right, which would feature on the set of Dangerous Corner Dangerous Corner. He had talked mysteriously of an angle of forty-five degrees. Half an hour later, returning to the wings and finding the boards unmarked, he had sought Stella out in the prop room. She was making a great show of sand-papering the wheels of the bicycle perched on the sofa. 'Anything wrong?' he said. He was very pale and his lips looked swollen.

'I don't know what you mean about dimensions,' she said.

'What particular bit defeats you?' he asked patiently.

'All of it,' she admitted. 'I've never got the hang of feet and inches.' She knew by his expression, the clamp of his dry mouth, that he was annoyed. 'I'm not being awkward,' she said. 'It's just that I had a disturbed schooling.'

'Think nothing of it,' he retorted, and sent her upstairs to fetch Geoffrey down from the paint-frame. Geoffrey laid a newspaper on the stage to protect the knees of his cavalry-twill trousers and finished the task in two minutes flat.

'It's not that I thought the job demeaning,' Stella a.s.sured George. 'Uncle Vernon says I haven't the humility to find anything beneath me.'

There and then George made her measure the rail of the fire-guard. Twice the rule snapped back and drew blood. 'There must be a better way of learning something,' whined Stella, sucking her fingers. 'Get away,' said George, whose own knowledge of such things had been acquired through pain.

At fourteen he had gone straight from St Aloysius's school to s.h.i.+ft scenery at the Royal Court. If he slopped whitewash onto the floor the stage manager clouted him over the ear with the brush and, if he forgot to grease the rag in which the tools were rolled, at curtain fall he had sixpence docked from his wages. When he cut short a length of timber the master carpenter brought the saw down on his knuckles.

Having learnt all he could, George had given in his notice and applied up the road to the Repertory Company. His very first job had been in that celebrated production of Richard II Richard II in which P.L. O'Hara had performed the King. The designer, who was later blown to smithereens at Tripoli, had wanted the deposed Richard ranting and roaming beneath the underground arches of a palace '... I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I dwell unto the world...' and George, a man accustomed to sleeping eight to a room, the condensation weeping down the cellar walls, the baby coughing itself into the Infirmary, had sketched out a confined s.p.a.ce, a simple box-like structure just roomy enough for a man to stand up in. in which P.L. O'Hara had performed the King. The designer, who was later blown to smithereens at Tripoli, had wanted the deposed Richard ranting and roaming beneath the underground arches of a palace '... I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I dwell unto the world...' and George, a man accustomed to sleeping eight to a room, the condensation weeping down the cellar walls, the baby coughing itself into the Infirmary, had sketched out a confined s.p.a.ce, a simple box-like structure just roomy enough for a man to stand up in.

The local newspaper had commented in its review: 'The King's face, petulant, wilful, caught in a noose of light from the number one flood, floated in darkness... when Exton entered and struck weak Richard down, such was the power of the set, the shadow of the prison bars rearing like spears against the backcloth, there was not a woman in the stalls worthy of her s.e.x who could refrain from weeping.'

Then the war came, and George joined the Merchant Navy. Two years later his s.h.i.+p was torpedoed twenty-four hours out of Trinidad. He spent nine days adrift in an open boat, croaking out Christmas carols and spitting up oil.

Stella was used to such stories. Every man she had ever met told tales of escape and heroism and immersion. They had gone down in submarines, stolen through frontiers disguised as postmen, limped home across the Channel on a wing and a prayer. The commercial travellers pushed back sleeves and rolled up trouser legs to point at scars; they tapped their skulls to show where the shrapnel still lodged.

George's chief officer had collapsed in the boat. They tried to lay him flat, but he was so badly burnt he was trapped upright with his fingers stuck to the gunnel. George had sc.r.a.ped the skin free with his teeth. The cobweb of a hand, like a woman's lace glove, clung to the wood until the salt spray dashed it away.

'How awful,' said Stella dutifully. George was rocking over the fireguard and smiling. It was astonis.h.i.+ng to Stella how fondly men remembered their darkest hours.

P.L. O'Hara had risen to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy. In 1944 he'd sent George a postcard of an old man tapping his way up a village street somewhere in the Cotswolds. The card was pinned to the wall beneath the moose, alongside the yellowing cutting of the review of Richard II Richard II.

'I wish I'd seen the play,' said Stella, kindly.

Geoffrey said it was absurd to think the designer had taken the slightest heed of any suggestion put forward by the likes of George. And furthermore, if Captain Bee's Knees O'Hara was the great actor he was cracked up to be, why hadn't he been snapped up by Hollywood instead of returning year after year to the provinces?

'Why don't you like George?' asked Stella, when they were upstairs, on the third floor, cleaning out the extra's dressing room.

'But I do,' he protested. 'He has considerable native intelligence.'

'He's not a n.i.g.g.e.r,' she said, and noticed how he winced. He was wearing a pair of woollen mittens discovered in a cupboard; he was afraid of dirt. He was was.h.i.+ng the long mirror with a scrunched-up page of the Evening Echo Evening Echo dunked under the running tap of the basin and his mittens were sopping wet. dunked under the running tap of the basin and his mittens were sopping wet.

'You'd be better off without them,' she advised. Her own hands were black with newsprint. She couldn't quite reach the corners of the gla.s.s and was stretching on tiptoe across the dressing-table when Geoffrey put his arm round her shoulders. It wasn't an accident; he was breathing too hard. She was about to shrug him away when she thought of Meredith. Rehearsing with Geoffrey would make it easier when the time came for Meredith to claim her. Penetration, from what she had gathered from library books, was inescapably painful unless one had played a lot of tennis or ridden stallions, and she hadn't done either. Despite his Gestapo monocle, Meredith, as a man of the world, might be put off if she screamed. Hastily swallowing the liquorice George had given her earlier that morning, she swivelled round, eyes shut, and waited.

Ignoring her lips, Geoffrey nuzzled her ear. Even if it had been Meredith she didn't think she would have found it very exciting. She was reminded of the time she'd taken part in Children's Hour Children's Hour and they'd showed her how to simulate a rising storm by panting sideways into the microphone. and they'd showed her how to simulate a rising storm by panting sideways into the microphone.

She began to stroke Geoffrey's harsh hair. It was a womanly gesture witnessed often enough on the screen at the cinema. She supposed it was maternal rather than sensual; it was what women did for babies, to make them feel secure and stop their heads from wobbling.

She was glad her ears were clean. Every fortnight, on bath night, Lily probed them with a kirby-grip. Uncle Vernon said it was a dangerous thing to do. Stella could be perforated. Squirming, she left off cradling Geoffrey's head and brought her hand down to separate her stomach from his. It was disgusting really, linking men with babies.

Something with the texture of an orange, peeled and sticky, b.u.mped against her wrist. She couldn't suppress crying out her distaste, any more than she could help envying Geoffrey his lack of inhibition. On occasions, when visiting the doctor for some minor ailment, she had even felt it immodest to stick out her tongue. She didn't dare look down in case she glimpsed that object bobbing against her overall.

It's no use, she thought. I'll have to practise on someone else. It would be fearful enough to be up against something as dreadful as that belonging to a beloved, let alone attached to a person one despised. Punching Geoffrey in the chest she broke free from his arms and leapt upwards to swipe a cobweb from the ceiling. She was shaking all over and yet she felt much fonder of him now that he'd behaved so rudely. Even his hair looked different, less annoying.

'I know I give the wrong impression,' Geoffrey said, when they had finished cleaning the dressing-room. 'I know you think I'm a sn.o.b.'

'You are,' she said, 'but it's no longer an issue.' It was the truth. If he had a need to s.h.i.+ne it was all right by her. He could spout his foreign words until the cows came home; he wasn't a stranger any more.

'I like old George,' he insisted. 'Really I do. Trouble is, he stinks.' And he went downstairs to drape his mittens in front of the coals.

Stella stayed behind, dipping her nose like a pecking hen into the front of her jumper to sniff herself. She hadn't known George smelled, or rather that the sour whiffs of stale tobacco and unwashed clothing const.i.tuted an unacceptable reek. Stink had an awful sound, on a par with putrefaction.

She raised her head and stood there, her hand cupped over her nose to trap the scent of her skin, and all at once she inhaled some forgotten, familiar odour of the past. It wasn't a bad smell: something between wood smoke and a house left empty. Her lips parted to give it a name but the word got lost before it was uttered, and all that remained was the sweet brilliantine caught on her fingers and her own breath smelling of the liquorice that George had given her.

It was inconvenient, Stella coming home and wanting a bath. As Uncle Vernon pointed out, it was only Wednesday.

'I don't care what day it is,' she said. She was so set on it she was actually grinding her teeth.

It meant paraffin had to be fetched from Cairo Joe's chandler's shop next door to the Greek Orthodox church, and then the stove lugged two flights up the stairs and the blanket nailed to the window with tacks. In the alleyway beyond the back wall stood a row of disused stables and a bombed house with the wallpaper hanging in shreds from the chimney-breast, and sometimes women, no better than they ought to be, lured men into the ruined shadows.

'You'll freeze,' Lily threatened, having run upstairs in her coat and hat to lay out the family towel and returned, teeth chattering, like Scott on his way to the Pole.

'You're a fool to yourself,' said Uncle Vernon. He'd put two and two together and come up with Stella's monthlies. There wasn't any other reasonable explanation, and anyone with an ounce of sense knew it was courting disaster to get into water at such a time.

Then there was the business of lighting the geyser, never easy on the best of days, let alone unscheduled. A loss of nerve, a miscalculation of timing between the release of the gas and the striking of the match could blow them all into eternity. 'Can't it wait until next week?' he implored, catching his breath on the first landing with the stove in his arms and the loofah, stiff as a smoked kipper, slotted for convenience through the braces of his trousers. 'No,' rasped Stella, 'it can't.'

When he'd fixed the 'Bath in use' notice on the door and gone stumping disapprovingly down the stairs, she pulled aside the blanket and peered into the yard. There was a high wind blowing a new moon through the clouds billowing above the chimney tops. She couldn't see any women in the alley-way, nor had she ever. They were all images in Uncle Vernon's wanton mind.

In the mirror above the wash-basin she spoke to Meredith. 'Good evening. I'm Stella Bradshaw. I don't expect you'll ever want to love me'. It was only make-believe but her mouth trembled at the suggestion. She thought she looked haunted, as though there was a demon standing at her shoulder. Perhaps it had something to do with the swooping shadows thrown by the naked light bulb swinging in the draught from the window.

There was something wrong with her hair; she had too much forehead and her neck wasn't long enough. When she wasn't concentrating her eyebrows shot up and her mouth fell open. But then, when she willed her face to remain immobile, her mind stopped working. When she had first met Meredith she had noticed how he controlled the muscles of his cheeks, even though his eyes showed curiosity. She suspected it was education and breeding that enabled him to keep his face and his feelings separate. Bunny, who plainly came from the same sort of background as herself, hadn't mastered the trick. Under pressure, particularly when ordering the stage hands about their business, he grimaced like a gargoyle.

She wet the loofah under the tap and flattened her hair down over her eyebrows. In the corridor of the upper circle she had seen a photograph of an actress dressed as a page-boy. She had asked Bunny who she was and Bunny had said it was someone or other in the role of Joan of Arc, and that she mustn't go up there again because Rose Lipman wouldn't like to find her wandering about the pa.s.sages. Up there was Miss Lipman's territory. As a girl she had been employed in the crush-bar, her arms immersed up to the elbows in beer slops. The bar had long since been done away with, but some compulsion drove Rose to climb the stairs, morning and evening, to stand vigil at the window overlooking the square. Bunny said that sometimes she let Meredith accompany her. She took a special interest in him on account of the affection she felt for his mother. Meredith had once asked her outright why she came there, and she spoke evasively of the state of the paint-work, and had he noticed the rat droppings on the bend of the stairs? He thought he saw tears in her eyes, although it was possibly only a trick of the gaslight, and he squeezed her arm in a little gesture of sympathy, and she said, looking not at him but out of the window, that she came because the past never went away, that it was always out there, waiting. Then Bunny had added, 'Mind you, we only have Meredith's version of it. And we all know how he likes to put words into other people's mouths, don't we?' It was an unguarded thing to say, and Bunny clearly regretted it because a moment later, when Geoffrey b.u.t.ted in with some daft remark on how extraordinary it was that a woman of Miss Lipman's humble beginnings should be aware of the theory of four-dimensional time, he had rounded on him and ticked him off for being disrespectful. Geoffrey had coloured up and marched out of the prop room as though he was putting himself under close arrest. The really extraordinary thing was that Miss Lipman should be a friend of Meredith's mother.

Uncle Vernon was dozing in his chair when Stella came downstairs. His mouth hung open and he had taken out the bottom set of his dentures; they sat in the hearth, nudging the pom-pom of his slipper, the flames flickering across them in a smile.

'I'm sorry to be a burden,' she said. 'I can't help myself. Really, I think the world of you. I've cleaned the tide-mark and I've put the loofah back under the stairs.' She knew that even if he heard he wouldn't let on. Declarations, like rich food, upset him. She kissed the air above his head and scurried on icy feet through to her bedroom, off the scullery. She didn't bother to turn on the light. She flung her coat onto the bed and curled beneath the sheets, shutting her eyes to the glitter of the moon spilling across the linoleum.

Vernon waited until Stella's door closed before leaving his chair. He considered whether he should go upstairs to take down the blanket or leave it until the morning. He didn't think Stella would have remembered, not being the one to pay the bills. Come daybreak the lodgers would be burrowing in and out of the bathroom like ferrets, burning the electricity with abandon when they found the place in darkness. The poor wretch with the sewn-back eyelids would spot the difference, being in a state of perpetual light, but his sleeping habits were so irregular that by the time he surfaced from his nightmares the meter would have run up a tidy penny.

Rubbing his back, Vernon limped to the window. Above him he could see the outline of the railings and the black smudge of a wallflower thrusting through the cracks of the bas.e.m.e.nt bricks. A man walked past, the steel tips to his boots striking the pavement. He was trailed by a frisky dog who stopped and c.o.c.ked a dancing leg in the lamplight to let fly droplets of dazzling urine. 'b.u.g.g.e.r off,' shouted Vernon, thumping the window with his fist.

He felt out of sorts. Stella had worked for no more than three weeks, and already she was changing. For five days she had refused to let Lily come near her with the curling tongs, and several times she had left the food uneaten on her plate. She hadn't shown insolence; she simply told them she wasn't hungry, and that she thought it was high time she chose for herself whether to crimp her hair or leave it as G.o.d made it. Lily said she had a point, on both counts.

The girl was less argumentative all round, with the exception of tonight, and that had been his fault for setting up such opposition. He had wanted her to alter, had himself at some sacrifice to his pocket jostled her onto the path towards advancement, and yet he sensed she was leaving him behind. He hadn't realised how bereft he would feel, how alarmed.

There was more to baths, he thought uneasily, than cleanliness.

4.