The Wardrobe Mistress

by Natalie Meg Evans

  ‘Damaging the table and smashing the mirror?’

  ‘I should think so.’ He pulled a face at the mirror. ‘Make-do-and-mend’ was laudable, but that degenerate jigsaw was going too far. He’d tell Props to locate a replacement. Helping Vanessa down from her chair, he continued, ‘When the siren went off on the evening of the raid, everyone in the theatre ran down to the sub-stage area. Except Eva, who dashed outside. Her man was in the Nun’s Head.’

  ‘Her man?’

  ‘That’s how Miss Bovary described him. Only, he’d already got himself to one of the public shelters. Eva was dug out of the debris, crushed and burned, and when this man was called to the hospital he took one look at her appalling injuries and said, “Nothing to do with me, doctor”. How’s that for betrayal?’

  Alistair thought Vanessa was going to tumble forward. He caught her and heard her say, ‘Even he wouldn’t – ’

  ‘Who?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Vanessa, are you here because of Eva, or because of somebody else?’

  ‘I want this job. That’s all. Don’t ask any more.’ For no obvious reason, she added, ‘Sorry.’

  She spilled the remains of her tea as she tried to drink it, stumbling to the sink to dab at her blouse. Accident, or a manoeuvre away from further questions?

  Fine. Patience was another talent of his. ‘If you see Brennan before I do, tell him that Monday’s design meeting is as inevitable as the rising sun.’

  Picking up the buns destined for Macduff, he recalled his second excuse for dropping in on her. ‘Terence Rolf phoned. The girl who was to play Lady Agatha Carlisle has broken her leg. Tomorrow is the first full cast read-through and somebody has to speak the part. Could you?’

  She turned to him as if he’d asked her to deliver a baby or perform eye surgery. ‘I’d rather have daggers thrown at me.’

  ‘No acting is required; we’ll be sitting around a table. All you have to do is read Lady Agatha’s lines on cue. It helps the others to have somebody of the right age, with the right vocal tone. You’ll see another aspect of the job, too.’

  ‘What about Tanith? She’s much nearer Lady Agatha’s age.’

  ‘Tanith isn’t in today to ask. Is this really beyond you?’ He didn’t intend to sound severe but it did the trick.

  ‘All right. I’ll read.’

  ‘I’ll get a script over to you. The foyer, tomorrow, ten o’clock. Sorry to ask you to give up your Saturday.’ Walking to the lift, he had a strong sensation that Vanessa was staring at the empty doorway, fingering the key round her neck.

  Farren Theatre Productions Ltd.

  Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde

  Opening November 28th, 1946

  Provisional Cast List

  Lord WindermerePatrick Carnford

  Lord DarlingtonRonald Gainsborough

  Lord Augustus LortonLawrence T Weston

  Mr DumbyJ Victor Pagnell

  Mr Guy BerkeleyArthur Whitworth

  Mr HopperRoy FitzPeter

  Footman / Lord PaisleyWalter Hamilton

  Sir James RoystonSimon Greengrass

  Mr Cecil GrahamUncast

  Parker, the butlerJames Harnett

  Lady WindermereMiss Clemency Abbott

  Mrs ErlynneMiss Irene Eddrich

  The Duchess of BerwickMiss Rosa Konstantiva

  Lady Agatha CarlisleUncast

  Lady JedburghMiss Noreen Ruskin

  Lady PlymdaleMiss Maxine Shadwell

  Lady StutfieldMiss Emmeline Perkins

  Lady Paisley/ RosalieMiss Gwenda Mason

  UnderstudiesLeslie McManus and Miss Anne Aisleby

  Saturday morning and they were preparing to witness the birth of a play. Five tables made a pentagon in the front foyer, which would be their rehearsal space until the sets were completed, when they’d transfer to the stage itself. The director had arrived, as had the talent – with one exception.

  Alistair told the director, ‘Miss Abbott isn’t here yet.’ Vanessa hadn’t arrived either. He hoped she was all right. Though why should she be? Yesterday, he’d taken an axe to their fragile relationship and revealed the horror of Eva St Clair’s fate. He’d also implicitly questioned her motives for being here. On top of which, he knew she was anxious about reading alongside professional actors. ‘Let’s give it ten minutes, then start,’ he suggested to the director. Vanessa was probably still in her room, summoning up courage.

  Noreen Ruskin, the heavy actress playing Lady Jedburgh, showed impatience at Miss Abbott’s non-appearance. ‘I trust dear Clemency won’t make a habit of this,’ she said in her powerful vibrato. ‘I shall tell her, there are more falling stars in the sky than rising ones.’

  ‘Lateness is hard to forgive in a young actor. In an older one, it is impossible.’ Patrick Carnford improvised in a clipped, upper class style. Presumably he was ‘being’ Oscar Wilde, though nobody really knew how Wilde had sounded. The playwright had been dead forty-six years.

  Miss Ruskin called across to the director, ‘Aubrey darling, do place a ban on bad Wildean pastiche lest rehearsals set our teeth on edge.’

  The director laughed tactfully. ‘We will be like workers in a chocolate factory, Miss Ruskin. Day One we gorge ourselves. By the end of the week, we will never want to touch chocolate again.’

  From which Alistair derived proof of something he already knew: Carnford, who was playing the emotionally-persecuted Lord Windermere, was a fixed star on the West End stage and would pull in the audiences – in particular the female matinee crowd. Carnford could mangle Wilde as much as he liked off-stage so long as the famous sexual charisma oozed on stage. Noreen Ruskin, meanwhile, could go and boil her head.

  Where the devil was Vanessa? Alistair was pushing back his chair, intending to go find her, when a man in a driver’s buttoned coat called through the doors, ‘This The Farren? Miss Abbott thought you was on Bow Street. I said no, Farren Court. She wants to be sure before she gets out of the car.’

  ‘Why?’ demanded Irene Eddrich. Her character, Mrs Erlynne, was a pivotal one but not the lead. Accustomed to being the female star of anything she appeared in, Irene was showing early signs of disliking Clemency Abbott.

  The driver mugged an appeasing smile. ‘Pardon, ma’am, but she says the location isn’t what she was expecting.’

  ‘Would she like us to move the theatre or Bow Street?’ Miss Ruskin asked acidly.

  The chauffeur appealed to Alistair. ‘She don’t like the look of the footpath, guvnor.’

  Alistair couldn’t entirely blame Miss Abbott, but in one vital point the theatre resembled naval life: lateness on board was impermissible.

  ‘It’s her shoes, see,’ the cabbie said. ‘She’s fearful about her heels.’

  ‘Advise her to swim up through the drains.’ This from Rosa Konstantiva, an ENSA veteran cast as the Duchess of Berwick. It was said so reasonably, one or two people nodded.

  Patrick Carnford touched Irene Eddrich’s hand in a show of collusion. It was well-known that theirs was a relationship that veered between love and hate, but a bumptious juvenile will always bring older actors closer. ‘Tell the dear girl that we managed perfectly well.’

  ‘I’ll go and collect Miss Abbott.’ Alistair paused to say to the assembled party, ‘I apologise to you all for the pot-holes outside. We’re filling them in as fast as we can. There was a war, you see.’

  Ronnie Gainsborough, who had slicked his hair with Macassar oil to express Lord Darlington’s fluid morals, murmured, ‘A war? So that’s what all the banging was about.’

  Alistair left with a wry smile that fell away as he followed the driver to Bow Street. The telephone box that had been on its back for many weeks had recently been returned to its plinth. Somebody was inside, making a call. Somebody who made his heart stop briefly, then pump an acid torrent. He kept going towards a parked black cab, however. ‘Miss Abbott?’

  A peerlessly made-up face gazed out at him. When he opened the do
or, legs misty with silk stockings stretched out. The shoes that Clemency Abbott was so keen to preserve were Marina blue, as was her hat and coat, unbuttoned to reveal a white lambswool dress. Alistair held out his hand.

  She gave a little gasp as their fingers met. Brown, boudoir eyes rose to meet his. Pink lips opened a fraction. ‘Are you who I think you are?’

  ‘Alistair Redenhall.’ Nothing about her charmed him; she was a spoiled female using other people’s time and energy to pad out her self-consequence. ‘You can take my arm, Miss Abbott, or if you’re determined not to touch the ground, I’ll ask the doorman to heave you over his shoulder.’

  Chapter 14

  Vanessa knew she was late, but an unexpected visitor had sabotaged her. Actually, the day had got off to a lousy start. She was tired, twitchy, forced to accept that Hugo had been right. She was slumming it in her new lodgings.

  The rhythmic pulse of bedsprings from the room above hers in the Old Calford Building had kept her awake most of the night. The noise had followed a pattern. Fifteen minutes on, twenty minutes off. Every time she’d drifted back towards sleep, she’d been startled awake by the resumption of the squeaking.

  Stumbling out of bed at one point, she’d smacked a broom handle against the ceiling. Silence was followed by a muffled obscenity and continued creaking.

  ‘Stop that noise!’ she’d pleaded.

  ‘Put a sock in it,’ a female voice had roared back. Ten minutes later, feet on the stairs. The front door opened and closed. Then the sound of heels on lino and a rap on Vanessa’s door.

  ‘You mind your own business, Lady Muck, and I’ll mind mine. Got it?’

  Years of operational shifts had disrupted Vanessa’s sleep patterns. She drifted off as a clock on some nearby tower struck three a.m., and then overslept.

  She’d arranged to meet Hugo for breakfast on Oxford Street, but she’d had to forego it, instead running every step of the way to Farren Court, arriving at the stage door with her curls sticking to her forehead, no lipstick and her stockings twisted. Doyle had called out something about ‘letting the lady in’ which made no sense until Vanessa took out her key and discovered that the wardrobe room was already open.

  Inside, somebody was waiting.

  A woman in moss green stood before the fractured mirror. Red-gold hair identified her.

  ‘Fern! When did you get back? Are you all right?’

  ‘She wants to know if I’m all right!’ Making a leisurely about-turn, Fern Redenhall walked to the window and they met beside the sink.

  Never had Fern seemed so tall. Her shoes were towering, peep-toe wedges. A ‘plant pot’ hat added dignified inches while her fitted coat-dress had large, square pockets and wildly over-sized lapels. Only French couturiers would dare put so much cloth into an outfit. But this wasn’t the moment to ask Fern where she’d done her shopping.

  ‘I arrived from Paris not an hour ago. I went home and straight upstairs . . . Explain this.’ Fern thrust a patterned silk square at Vanessa. It reeked of perfume. After a moment’s confusion, Vanessa recognised its Spitfire motif. ‘Where . . . ?’

  ‘In my bed. Mine and my husband’s bed. More to the point – when, Vanessa? I know he still has a house key.’

  All Vanessa could say was, ‘It’s not my scarf.’

  ‘Come off it. You are the only person I know who would wear something littered with fighter-plane propellers. Leo gave it to you, I suppose. What would he have thought of you rolling about with Alistair? You didn’t even have the grace to pull the sheets back up!’

  Fern’s haughty contempt roused something similar in Vanessa. ‘It’s not mine.’ She shoved the square under Fern’s nose. ‘Sniff it.’

  ‘I already have. It smells tarty.’

  ‘Thank you very much. I have always worn Chanel No 5 – you should remember that. Your father bought me a bottle for my twenty-first. Until it comes back into the shops and I can afford it, I stick with lavender-scented soap.’ She extended her neck sideways, giving Fern the opportunity to check for herself.

  Fern’s fury gained a film of doubt. ‘Then who was it in my bed?’

  ‘Do you imagine that’s how I’d repay your hospitality?’ A mortifying vision spanned Vanessa’s mind. A girl and a man, rucking the sheets.

  ‘Oh, Nessie, oh God, how could he?’ Suddenly, Fern was in her arms, her body racked. ‘How could he? You don’t know what my life is like. I’m trapped. What am I going to do?’

  ‘Talk to him! He still adores you.’ Saying it felt like cracking a nut with an abscessed tooth, but the truth was insistent. Whatever Alistair had done with Tanith, Fern was still first in his eyes. ‘I think you love him too.’

  Fern stood back. She was pale under a skim of face powder. ‘It’s too late. And anyway, have you ever tried to talk to Alistair? If he doesn’t like what you have to say . . . it’s like watching frost spirals form on a window pane.’ She dabbed her eyes with the scarf, frowning at the run-off from her mascara. ‘He cuts you off with a look, with the inflexion of a word. And he’s always right. Alistair could fall into a pit of Bovril and come out bleached!’

  Vanessa couldn’t argue. Alistair stuck limpet-like to ideals.

  ‘Even when it’s a terrible decision, he won’t go back on it.’

  Vanessa consulted the clock Doyle had found for her and put on a shelf beside the mirror. It was gone ten. The reading would have started. ‘Fern, I’m sorry but – ’

  ‘He won’t lose face. The Monarda’s crew paid for that!’

  Vanessa recalled Joanne’s condemnation of Alistair over a lunch table: When a ship in sight of his got hit by a torpedo, he turned his vessel away. The story followed Alistair around. Not safe in taxis. Not safe on the sea. Not safe in a theatre and not safe with Tanith.

  ‘How could he?’ Fern kept saying. But were those tears real? Vanessa recalled her own reaction on discovering, that Leo had been unfaithful to her in the run-up to their marriage and even afterwards. Raw shock. Anger and that punishing sense of failure. Everything but tears. But she hadn’t time to massage the truth from Fern. They’d be waiting for her downstairs, or they’d have found someone else to read the part.

  ‘I’ll just say this: Alistair believes you’ve been betraying him since another man answered your house telephone.’

  Fern beat her fists together. ‘That was Darrell Highstoke. You remember Darrell, who used to come down to Stanshurst for the long holiday? He and my brother made us play cricket with them.’

  Vanessa certainly recalled a friend of Christopher Wichelow’s coming down for summer holidays. A loose-limbed boy with fair hair and a smile that could be charming or cruel, at whim. Yes, Darrell. She remembered now. In his company, Chris had shown her less kindness. They’d christened her ‘Minnie Mouse’ and mimicked her whispery voice.

  ‘It was Darrell, popping by to say hello.’

  ‘Before breakfast?’ Vanessa shook her head. ‘Alistair met your brother in London, the day you left for Paris. Your “emergency dash” excuse fell apart.’

  ‘What about Alistair and his tart?’ Fern believed ‘when cornered, attack’. ‘Who the hell is she?’

  ‘Turn the noise down. For all you know, Alistair might have slept alone at your house hoping you’d come home to him.’

  ‘A perfumed scarf in his pocket?’ Fern would have ripped it in two had Vanessa not taken it from her. ‘Nessie, I have to get free of him. I have to get a divorce.’

  ‘Consult a lawyer.’

  ‘The only way is for Alistair to admit adultery and let me divorce him.’

  ‘You’re right.’ Vanessa opened the door. A coarse hint, but she might be here all morning otherwise. ‘It’s how it’s done. The man takes the blame. I’ll walk you to the stage door.’ She hadn’t the time or inclination to repeat Alistair’s refusal to end his marriage. Let Fern discover that for herself.

  To Vanessa’s inexpressible relief, the reading hadn’t started. People were lounging, or out of their seats stre
tching their limbs. ‘We’re waiting for Clemency Abbott. The Commander’s fetching her.’ The information was given by a trouser-wearing blonde girl who invited Vanessa to sit by her. ‘I’m Gwenda Mason.’ The girl had a Yorkshire accent, though she reverted to perfect BBC pronunciation to add, ‘I play Lady Paisley and Rosalie – two of me for the price of one. You?’

  ‘Vanessa Kingcourt, standing in as Lady Agatha. I’m not a real actress.’

  A moment later, Alistair was preceded into the foyer by an imposing young woman wearing the chicest of hats. A grim hush fell. Oblivious, Clemency Abbott struck an effortless pose. ‘Darlings! Don’t tell me I’ve kept you waiting?’

  ‘Miss Abbott,’ the director filled the silence, ‘I bid you welcome. Gentle players, Miss Abbott has indeed arrived late but will not do so again. Shall we get on?’

  As it was Saturday, Alistair had dressed down in a blue crew neck jersey sprayed over his muscles. For the benefit of Clemency Abbott and the other actresses? Several eyed him appreciatively as he took his chair to observe the read-through.

  It began, with Lady Windermere and Lord Darlington trading scripted banter. The Duchess of Berwick ‘entered’ with her daughter, Lady Agatha Carlisle. Rosa Konstantiva spoke her lines and looked towards Vanessa, as if to say, ‘Get ready!’

  Vanessa’s pulse knocked. Don’t let me muff it.

  Nobody laughed or sneered as she gave her simple lines: ‘Yes, mamma.’ Alistair nodded ‘well done’. She radiated disgust at him, and went back to her script. The reading jigged along. Lady Windermere was so firmly part of the actors’ repertoire that they had lines and intonation ready. Too ready for the director, who stopped the flow several times to say, ‘Remember, the line was new when Wilde wrote it. Speak it as if for the first time.’

  When they’d read to the end of Act Two, a tea-break was called. As the cast trooped off to the green room, the director thanked Vanessa and told her she might go since Lady Agatha made no appearance in Acts Three or Four. ‘Stand by to help on Monday, for the blocking-rehearsals. Getting an Equity member to stand in is too much of a fiddle and I can’t ask any of the stage crew. The unions forbid the crossing of the divide.’