Flossie was one of a long string of little nobodies with ghastly accents and a bit of voice who had been given to Myra to make something of. She was sitting at the piano when the girl was shown in to her studio. She had become fat, she was wearing a purple dress, she had a cerise shawl thrown round her shoulders, long ear-rings swung from her ears, and half a dozen rows of beads from her neck, her brown hands glittered with rings.
“Oh my!” thought Flossie. “A gyppo.”
Myra’s tired, worldly, amusement-glutted eyes travelled over Flossie, and she recalled her tenting days, a wet spring, and one morning seeing a laburnum exquisitely gold, shining through a fog. She struck three soft chords, a wordless tribute to perfection.
“Come here,” she said gently. She played a scale. “Sing that.” She listened and squirmed. “My good child, you have a roof to your mouth, spare your throat. Say ah, ay, ee, oh, eu.” Flossie said them. “Tra la la la,” Myra sang. Years of teaching had made it a habit with her to express herself with a few notes, “Cockney prunes and prisms! Take off your hat and coat. Me, me, me, me, me. Now stand there. You’re going to work as you never worked before.”
“Lightly, Flossie, lightly, don’t let me hear your feet. Now a Pas de Basque. One two. One two. And again, Connie dear. And again.”
Madame herself came in to watch the classes.
“Mus’ work, Flossie. Mus’ work. Mus’ work.”
Muriel, knowing of the chance to be given to Flossie, tried to identify herself with her. Technique up to a point she could give to anyone. But that something more. She must try and pass that on. There could never be success for herself such as she had once dreamed of, but success could come through her labour. “Don’t you think, dear,” she said daily, “that you’ll stay as good as you are now without working. You’ll never be able to miss a day’s practice. You’re improved, I don’t deny it, and you’ll stay improved just so long as you work. Now let’s have those pirouettes once more. Neat finish. That’s better. And again, Connie dear. And again.”
“I do wish I might go to the pictures some night instead of to the theatre, I’m tired of seeing all this acting.”
“L.L. thinks listening to the voices good for you.”
“My goodness! I’d say I heard enough of listening to voices with Miss Lynd ah-ay-eeing. Aren’t you taking me?”
“No. Miss Brown is. Why that face? She’s a very nice girl.”
“I suppose so, as secretaries go. But she’s dull. Never talks about really interesting things. Wouldn’t you think working for a man like L.L. she’d have heaps to say; he’s supposed to have carried on with I don’t know who.”
“He has. You need to watch your step with him.”
“Not very nice, is it? But I suppose he wouldn’t try it on with a young girl like me.”
Mouse laughed.
“If he did, I’d say you could look after yourself.”
“That’s right. I’ll never be one to allow fellows to take liberties.”
“Not ‘fellows,’ my lamb. You better go and change, dinner won’t be long.”
Flossie got up, she collected her hat and bag. She looked aggravatingly at Mouse.
“I suppose you aren’t taking me because that gentleman friend of yours is coming again.”
Mouse raised her eyebrows.
“Never ‘gentleman,’ my sweet, the word suggests that you think you have social superiors, you have to learn you have none. That shouldn’t be difficult to you. Jim Menton’s coming, I suppose that’s the man you’re talking about. I didn’t know you’d seen him.”
“I haven’t, but I knew somebody’d been, I saw the end of a cigar one day, and most nights when I come in, there’ve been two glasses used. Not very nice a gentleman, I mean a man, visiting a single lady.”
“All my remarks about ‘gentlemen’ concern ‘ladies,’ there are none unless you happen to be referring to the aged. As regards Jim visiting me, my dear Watson, I shouldn’t worry if I were you, he’s been coming to see me so long that it’s become respectable by habit. Anyway, I’m almost at the parrot-and-black-cat stage of spinsterdom, so I think I can take care of myself. Now do go and dress.”
Flossie looked at her knowingly.
“In a hurry to be rid of me, aren’t you?”
Jim rang the bell. Mrs. Hodge had gone, so Mouse opened the door.
“Hullo, sweet. How was Leeds? The Virgin Queen says it isn’t nice your visiting what she describes as ‘a single lady.’”
Jim poured out two whiskies.
“Little tick. How’s she progressing?”
“Marvellously. The girl’s a human chameleon, literally she changes with her background. If you put her down in Buckingham Palace she’d have all the etiquette in a couple of days, and be telling the ladies-in-waiting what to do next.”
“Liking her any better?”
“No. She’s an inhuman little toad. But I take off my hat to her, it’s no joke being shoved down in a strange flat with a strange woman, everything different to everything she knows, and me correcting her every time she opens her mouth. She’s keeping her end up marvellously. You should hear her with Mrs. Hodge, none of the familiarity there is between Mrs. Hodge and me; to Flossie she’s a servant and nothing else, and she never lets her forget it. I shock her terribly. She reproved me yesterday and told me that those beneath us need keeping in their places.”
“How’s L.L. behaving?”
“Perfectly. He never gets a chance to do anything else, and, mind you, if he did make a pass at her, I’m sure he’d have no luck, she’s terribly respectable.”
“Takes after Nonconformist Pa.”
“I won’t have you laugh at Mr. Elk, he’s a darling, and he’s asked me to come and see his allotment near Cheshunt. When he came to see the flat, he brought me apples he’d grown himself, he’s the only man I know who does that for me.”
“I seem to remember baskets of figs and grapes, and a melon or two.”
“Grown by you? Tell me another funny story.”
Jim came over to the sofa.
“Move up and make room.” He lay down beside her. “Enough of the Virgin Elk and Father Elk, and all the Elks. Oh, Mouse, I did hate Leeds and I was wanting you so terribly.”
“Were you, my sweet?” Her head wriggled into his neck. “Oddly enough I missed you. Five days is a hell of a time.”
L.L. called a conference at his office, Ferdie Carme, Mouse, Myra, and Madame, who arrived late, with an astounding velvet toque popped rakishly on her wig, and her ballet shoes replaced by buff kid button boots.
“I’ve got to put up the notice for ‘Love in Spring,’” L.L. explained. “I thought it might weather August, but it won’t. That means ‘Looby’ for about the third week in September. What do you all think of the girl?”
There was a pause. Ferdie Carme, who had been gazing at the ceiling, looked round at them all. He was a small man with a yellow face, he never smiled, he made the worst of himself by living in pullovers of shades guaranteed to accentuate the biliousness of his colouring.
“You can speak up,” he prompted, “you’re among friends.”
“Tra la la la la la la la,” sang Myra, “shell do. Mediocre talents, but a face like spring.”
L.L. turned to Madame.
“What do you say?”
“Sharp chil’, sharp chil’, sharp chil’. She’ll do, she’ll do, she’ll do.”
L.L. collected eyes. “Let’s say it’s fixed then. She plays ‘Looby.’ Now what about her name? Miss Shane lunched with me to-day and gave me an idea, and I’d like to know how it strikes all of you. It seems she’s nicknamed her ‘The Virgin Queen,’ so I thought just one name, ‘Virginia.’ Just the one word, what do you think?”
“All innocence and dew,” Mouse explained.
“Hey nonny nonny nonny,” Myra chirruped,
“what could be sweeter for a young girl.”
Ferdie helped himself to a cigar from a box on the desk.
“First time I ever heard of virginity being advertised as an attraction. Still it might be a novelty.”
“Sing hey. Sing ho. Sing—I’ve an idea,” Myra beamed at them. “I’ll spread one of my little stories. L.L. found the child in a convent, she’s never seen anything but a nun.”
Ferdie shook his head.
“How’d L.L. get in a convent?”
“How did Flossie get there if it comes to that?” asked Mouse.
“Virginia,” L.L. expostulated. “Must try and remember to call her that.”
“Pom de doodle. Pom de doodle,” Myra conducted herself with one finger. “I’ve got it. A little royal mistake.”
Ferdie sighed.
“What sort of royalty? Very few left. Easy to become personal.”
“She can’t speak any languages,” Mouse pointed out. “Better be careful.”
“Well, I don’t know that that matters.” Ferdie laid some ash on the carpet. “Can’t really speak English, if she comes to that.”
Myra was thinking ahead.
“Me, me, me, me, me. We’ll never say which royalty. I’ll just whisper it around that L.L. has found somebody with a terribly interesting history and the nuns say that there was a crown embroidered on her baby clothes.”
Ferdie groaned.
“That ‘found in the basket on the convent steps’ gag has been worked to death.”
L.L. stretched out his legs and looked in a satisfied way at them all.
“It’ll work again. With a kid looking like that, anything’d work.” He turned to Mouse. “Could you coach her up to a few royal touches, do you think? Not too much, you know the sort of thing.”
“And she might teach her that she’s a virgin,” Ferdie suggested.
Mouse giggled.
“Don’t worry about that, Ferdie, she is. As for the royalty stuff, she’ll be so royal in a couple of days, she’ll have you all getting up when she comes into a room, and me doing a curtsy. But in Myra’s beautiful story there’s one flaw you’ve all overlooked. She’s got a real father and mother.”
“Oh God!” Ferdie moaned. “It’s the silliest thing why these girls never think to be orphans.”
“Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah.”
“Let’s have this one without music,” Ferdie suggested. “Got an idea, darling?”
“Yes.” Myra’s ear-rings shook with excitement. “The parents are old retainers, who always loved the child, and they took her to the convent for safety.”
Ferdie gave Mouse a sorrowful wink.
“What language do the old retainers speak, Myra?”
Mouse lit a cigarette.
“There are a few more dear old stories we have not yet exhumed. Deaf and dumb peasants with their tongues cut out because they wouldn’t betray their royal masters, for instance. Now do listen to your Aunty Mouse, a minute. Let Myra put over any story she likes, she’ll have no difficulty with Flossie—Virginia, I mean—she’d drop her parents to-day if anyone told her it would be a good thing to do. But the parents won’t be so easy. She’s got a rather silly mother who worships her, and a divine Nonconformist father who is determined to save her immortal soul.”
“So are we,” Ferdie argued; “aren’t we calling her Virginia to show the sort of girl we think she is?”
“Do do do do do do do do,” Myra paused at the top of the scale. “When the girl learns she needs to get rid of her parents she’ll do it herself. She’s got no heart.”
“Tha’s ri’. Tha’s ri’. Tha’s ri’,” Madame agreed.
L.L. disliked the turn the conference had taken. His finds were always flawless until such time as he found their cracks for himself. He got up.
“I needn’t keep any of you then. Everything’s fixed. We’ll begin rehearsals in about three weeks, and meanwhile Myra will start her story round, and Mouse’ll get the girl put up to it.”
“And L.L. will find out if the name’s a mistake or not,” Ferdie whispered to Mouse.
CHAPTER XI
Twenty-four hours before the curtain rang up on ‘Looby,’ there was a queue forming for the pit and gallery. A Leon Low production was always an excitement. With Leon Low you could be certain of getting so much for your money. Lavish was an inadequate word to use in connection with him, he needed a new one coined specially for him. His entertainments never presented one or two stars, but a Great Bear and Milky Way of them, and never a star on the wane, but always stars at their brightest or in the ascendant. It was said of Leon Low that no new actor or actress could make a success overnight, but he had them signed up before breakfast the next morning. It was what he called giving new talent a ‘break.’ He seldom had the right parts for the new talent, so mis-casting frequently broke them for ever, but he never noticed failures, he had a gift for seeing nothing but success. He had an all-observing international eye. He never put on a show without a foreign find to display. An exquisite body from Mexico, a wonderful tenor voice picked up in an Italian gutter, a gipsy dancer from Spain, the loveliest legs in the world from Java, nothing missed him, he signed them all on, and somehow squeezed them into his next production. He had another trait peculiarly endearing to his public, he never used a makeshift if it was possible to get hold of the real thing. Should he show a mountain-side it might be made of cardboard, but at least you could be sure that the edelweiss were honest flowers, and you could read in your paper how many of them the real goat had tried to eat. When he needed waterfalls, not only were they falls of real water, but all his fans, who read their theatre gossip columns, knew exactly how many tons of water were used per night, and how far it dropped, and how the overflow was carried away. If food had to be eaten in a Leon Low production, no miserable banana appeared pretending to be fish, but an honest-to-God four-course dinner was eaten in front of the audience, each one of whom could, had they read their papers, have known what was on the menu and to please which member of the cast each dish was chosen. When it came to matters of dress and décor he stood alone. He had an excellent flair himself in these matters, but he used it only to make suggestions to the brilliant witty people he got round him. Frequently, to the serious critic, the mounting of the Low shows was the one bright spot in a tedious evening.
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