My second visit to ‘Stage Door’ was on a tour of Dial M for Murder in which I was playing Captain Lesgate. It was mid-February and our company was only the second or third into the theatre after the pantomime, the subject of which had been Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
Since I had been at ‘Stage Door’ over a year before, Ruby had become a widow. Her husband Alf, a large, cheery man, had not seemed to me particularly moribund when I last stayed there, but a series of strokes had taken him. I was sorry because, to tell the truth, I liked Alf rather better than I had liked his wife. Nevertheless I felt it my duty when I checked into ‘Stage Door’ on the Monday afternoon to commiserate with Ruby on her loss. She accepted my condolence listlessly, without letting the cigarette move from her lips. I suppose she had become used to similar speeches from near strangers and had wearied of them. We were standing in the hallway of ‘Stage Door’ rather awkwardly, I still holding my suitcase while her dog Sheba, a large, shaggy Collie-Labrador cross, panted and tail-wagged in the background. I noticed that the dog seemed to have aged since my last visit, had become less vigorously enthusiastic about new visitors.
‘We had a good pantomime this year,’ said Ruby, changing the subject to something more congenial. ‘I had all the seven dwarves here. Not children. Proper performers. Baskerville’s Midgets, they were.’
I had heard of them and said so.
‘Of course, a dwarf is not a midget you know.’ She looked at me solemnly as if demanding a response.
‘I know.’
‘That’s very important. The dwarfs and the midgets; they don’t get on. A dwarf you see—and I’m not being disrespectful—is out of proportion, with the big head and the bow legs, but a midget is what I call a proper little person. Everything in proportion if you know what I mean. They’re very polite, you see.’
Her last sentence did not appear to follow logically from what had gone before, but I nodded again as if I had seen the connection.
‘They don’t get up to anything nasty like some of these dwarfs.’
I did not argue with her. I felt, perhaps wrongly, that the eccentricity of her prejudice went some way towards excusing it.
‘After Alf had gone I was feeling a bit low, as you might expect, but those midgets, they were a real tonic. Full of fun and games, but nice with it, you know. They’re ever so talented. Each of them plays an instrument: that’s their act. Xylophone, trumpet, tambourine, violin; and they play all the tunes: “Charmayne”, “Tea for Two”, “We’ll Gather Lilacs”. I used to call them “my little gentlemen”. They liked that. They were always giving me presents. Chocs and flowers. It’s nice to be pampered, isn’t it?’
I did not quite know where this conversation was leading. ‘Baskerville?’ I asked. ‘Is that their family name or something?’
‘Baskerville is their manager. Mr Leo Baskerville. He’s not a midget. He’s a big man: used to be in the army. Sergeant Major, I believe. He did come down to see them in the panto.’ I sensed a certain reserve, fear even, in Ruby’s attitude towards Mr Baskerville.
She followed me to my room and, while I unpacked, she continued to pursue the midget theme. I tolerated it because she obviously needed to talk about them. During the two months of the pantomime season they had become her life and now they were gone. It was a void she needed to fill with talk.
I eventually contrived to escape, saying that I had to get into the theatre for a line run, but before I did so Ruby insisted on leading me downstairs to show me something.
‘I don’t allow just anyone in here,’ she said, opening a door on the ground floor. ‘These are my private quarters.’ She offered no clue as to why she wanted me to see them, as she ushered me into a smallish back parlour. Sheba pattered in ahead of us and settled herself on the white sheepskin rug in front of the gas fire, whining slightly as she did so.
At first I noticed nothing out of order. It was an ordinary, cosy sitting room, of the kind I had seen in countless provincial boarding houses all over the country. The pattern of the carpet was a violent clash of purples and oranges. There was a glass cabinet full of Coalport figurines and the walls were adorned with Constable reproductions in gaudy gilt frames. So far, so commonplace, but there was something odd about the furniture. It was the usual bulgy stuff, upholstered in a brownish velour, piped and tasselled in gold, but it looked as if it had sunk into the carpet. The seats of several armchairs and a sofa were barely a foot from the floor, and there were a couple of lacquered tables which were at knee height instead of coming up to the waist.
‘I had my little lounge specially done up for them. I had all the legs cut off, you see.’
I understood. The legs of the furniture had been removed or severed to suit the height of her favoured guests. Some of the amputations had been very crudely done.
I said: ‘I see.’ It was not a very profound response, but I was not quite sure how I was meant to react.
‘I like it. I find it quite comfy myself. I said to them, “whenever you come to Westport, there’ll always be a home for my little gentlemen”.’
There were two others from the Dial M for Murder company staying at ‘Stage Door’, and they also had to endure midget talk. When the following morning Ruby had finally left the breakfast room, one of them, Norman, the veteran actor C. Norman Wetherby who was our Inspector Hubbard, gave me a meaningful look and raised his eyes to the ceiling.
‘I’m afraid this looks like a case of “Quoth the Raven”, old boy,’ he said. That day we contrived to spend as little time at ‘Stage Door’ as we possibly could.
On the Wednesday morning I had just come out of the breakfast room into the entrance hall when I heard the door bell ring. Ruby emerged from the kitchen at a loping trot, a characteristic method of locomotion, closely followed by Sheba. She opened the front door.
On the very middle of the doorstep stood what I first thought was a six year old boy. After the few seconds it took me to accustom my eyes to the bleak February sunlight from outside, I saw that it was not a boy, but a tiny man, no more than four feet six in height.
‘Hi ho!’ said the man.
Ruby gave a scream of joy. ‘Rusty Dalgliesh, as I live and breathe!’
At that moment six other diminutive figures leapt out from behind Rusty.
‘Hi ho!’ they all said. I noticed that Sheba, having seen who her guests were, turned tail and made off discreetly in the direction of the kitchen.
‘We’ve come back to see you, Ma,’ said Rusty whom I knew from Ruby’s voluble explanations to be the unofficial leader of the pack. He owed his name to the red hair, somewhat receding, that he wore en brosse. There was a wisp of red goatee on his chin; his eyes were prominent and staring.
Ruby ushered them all in with many expressions of delight and I went up to my room as my exit from the house was temporarily barred by the seven small men. I was not spared their company for long, however, because within five minutes Ruby was knocking on my door. When I answered it she was flushed and out of breath.
‘I want you to meet my friends that I told you about.’
So I was very formally introduced to them. There was Rusty Dalgliesh, Percy Pink, Bob Dobley and Billy Whiffin. I forget what the others were called, but their names without being outlandish, were all mildly improbable. They showed enormous and rather embarrassing courtesy towards me, bowing as we shook hands. I, being over six feet three in height, had to bow too, but from necessity.
‘What’s it like up there?’ said Rusty as he shook hands with me. Everyone laughed.
To avoid having to find an amusing but inoffensive answer to this I asked them what had brought them back to Westport— ‘apart from seeing Ruby here,’ I added. Ruby beamed.
‘We’ve just finished doing a week in Freddie Valentine’s show at Scarmouth,’ said Rusty. ‘We closed the first half, you know.’ Traditionally, the second most important act on a variety bill is the one that comes directly before the interval. Rusty was obviously mindful of status,
so, after pausing slightly to allow this nuance to sink, in, he went on. ‘Well, we thought Ma Ruby’s just up the coast, we’ll drop in and see our favourite landlady. We might even stay a few days if it’s agreeable.’
‘Could you squeeze us in a back room, Ruby?’ said Percy Pink.
‘If you’ve got the time!’ said Rusty.
Ruby shrieked with delight. ‘Ooh! Rusty Dalgliesh, you are a one!’
‘He’s a caution and no mistake,’ said Percy who had obviously appointed himself Rusty’s straight man.
So it was arranged. There was room enough to accommodate all seven of Baskerville’s Midgets provided that I was prepared to move to a smaller room, my present one being large enough to hold two beds. Ruby was so delighted by their arrival that I could not protest, but perhaps the disruption they caused gave me from the outset a slightly jaundiced view of our new guests.
As I was moving my stuff to the new room, I was conscious of activity everywhere. There might have been twenty midgets not seven to judge from the noise they made. For such small people they were surprisingly heavy-footed, especially when using the stairs which they seemed to do the whole time. And then their high, quacking voices were continually raised in laughter or argument. The whole house quivered with unrest.
I could not quite understand the purpose of the commotion, because the midgets were not really making themselves useful. It was Ruby who did all the fetching and carrying, and several times I heard Rusty giving her orders. He was particularly insistent that she make them tea: ‘Let’s have a brew, Ma!’ And a little later: ‘Come along now! Where’s that brew, then?’ Once I heard Ruby say: ‘Oooh! I’m rushed off my feet!’
The following day my two Dial M companions, Norman and Elspeth, the Company Stage Manager, made their excuses and left ‘Stage Door’. I stayed on, partly from sheer inertia, partly out of a vague loyalty. Ruby had enlisted my sympathies from the outset and I found myself incapable of betraying her.
There had been talk and laughter and tramping about from the men far into the night. This was bad enough, but what settled it for Norman and Elspeth, happened at breakfast the next morning. The three of us came in rather late to find Baskerville’s midgets already breakfasting, seated at their own special cut down table, on cut down chairs. They had finished with their eggs, bacon and baked beans and were now calling for ‘a fresh brew’ and extra rounds of toast.
Norman had a habit of beginning the Telegraph crossword on one day, then leaving it in the dining room to complete at breakfast the following morning. On this morning he picked up his paper to find that all the clues on the crossword had been filled in. ‘And the little buggers hadn’t even come up with the right answers;’ he told me later, ‘they’d just put down any old rubbish.’
Ruby entered with a fresh pot of tea for the midgets, followed, as usual, by Sheba. When she had left Sheba lingered behind to lick a few crumbs off the carpet. This was noticed by Billy Whiffin, the fattest and, in some respects, the wildest of the troupe. He played the xylophone.
‘Ah, diddums!’ he said. ‘Isn’t Ma Ruby feeding you enough?’ He threw a half eaten piece of toast at Sheba which caught her on the ear. She yelped, more perhaps out of indignation than pain, and scurried from the room.
Norman threw down his vandalised Telegraph and got up from the table. ‘Right!’ he said, ‘That’s it! Come along, Elspeth!’ Elspeth, a nondescript middle-aged woman who occasionally consented to sleep with Norman on the tour, followed obediently.
Later on I heard Norman coming to rather querulous terms with Ruby in the hall. As he passed me on his way out, he muttered: ‘ “Quoth the Raven”, old boy, “Quoth the Raven”.’ Norman never knowingly undersold his jokes.
I had reason to sympathise with Norman’s attitude when I came back to my digs that afternoon to fetch a book. On entering I found Ruby standing in the middle of the hall with her hands over her eyes.
‘Ninety-one, ninety-two, ninety-three . . .’ she was saying. At her feet sat Sheba, looking up at her. Perhaps it was my fancy, but to me the look on that dog’s face was anxious, even pitying.
‘. . . Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred!’ Ruby uncovered her eyes. ‘I’m coming!’ Then she saw me and I detected a trace of embarrassment. ‘Just a little game of hide and seek,’ she said. ‘It’s their favourite.’ She smiled brightly, but her eyes were weary.
As I went upstairs I heard mutterings and giggles from all corners of the house. From somewhere—I could not quite locate the sound—a voice whispered hoarsely, teasingly: ‘Roobee!’ I heard Ruby climbing the stairs behind me.
‘Now, where are my little gentlemen?’ she said.
‘Roobee!’ it came again, this time with a hint of menace.
My unease did not diminish when I had entered my room and shut the door. I felt curiously self-conscious, in a way I had not felt when alone since adolescence. My ears had become sensitised to the smallest sound. I picked up the book from my bedside table, went to the window, and stood there leafing through it, all the time conscious of the artificiality of this act. It was like the feeling you get when you are on stage in front of an audience, but have nothing to say.
My ears picked up a small scuffling sound, coming from within my room. I turned from the window and looked about me, but the room appeared to be empty. Then there was another noise, this time louder: the sound of suppressed laughter. It was coming from under my bed. I looked, and there was Rusty. All I could see was his head with those poached-egg eyes staring at me. He grinned, but I could tell he was irritated by my presence.
I said: ‘I’m afraid you can’t hide in here.’
Rusty crawled out from under the bed and brushed his knees vigorously. ‘Just having a bit of fun,’ he said. ‘Ma Ruby likes her bit of fun.’
I held the door open for him in silence and he left my room. I believe I am not a prejudiced man, but I have always distrusted anyone—male or female—who calls themselves ‘Rusty’. All I can say in my defence is that to date this irrational instinct of mine has never been proved wrong.
After the show that night I went with the rest of the company to the Lord Nelson pub next to the theatre and stayed drinking with them till closing time. I was hoping that by the time I returned, Baskerville’s Midgets would have exhausted themselves. I wanted to enter a quiet house.
It was nearly midnight when I let myself into my digs, feeling foolish from too much beer. I now regretted not having taken advantage of the opportunity of leaving ‘Stage Door’ with Norman and Elspeth. The hall was dark, but the balustraded corridor which ran across the top of the stairs was lit. As I absorbed the reassuring silence I stared drunkenly at its dull maroon wallpaper bare of anything but its obscure early 1970s pattern.
There was a scratch of sound: it was the squeak of a fiddle tuning up. A tambourine was rattled, a few notes of a recorder were blown; now I was hearing the rasp of a muted trumpet and the squeeze of an accordion. All these formed themselves stumblingly into some sort of tune with a strong pulse from a tin drum and the tambourine.
Then I saw a procession emerge and pass across my line of vision along the passage at the top of the stairs. The seven Baskerville Midgets were slowly marching in line, swaying slightly to the rhythm of the music, each of them playing an instrument. They were stripped to the waist and barefooted, wearing either striped pyjama bottoms or underpants. The only exception was Billy Whiffin who was sitting astride Sheba, banging a tambourine, stark naked. Sheba, the unwilling participant in this rout was being pulled along on a choke chain by Rusty who, with his other hand, was holding a kazoo to his lips and blowing so hard that his cheeks were puffed out like footballs.
It was a grotesque Bacchanal with Billy Whiffin as its miniature, swag-bellied Silenus. The bare flesh of stunted figures set against the dark red background suggested the painted frieze of a doomed Pompeian dining room. I watched the parade pass, banging, tinkling and squawking as it went. The moment it had gone out of sight my paralysis left me.
I let myself out of ‘Stage Door’ and for the next hour or so I walked the empty streets of Westport under a freezing February moon.
The house was black and silent when I eventually returned. The passage light had been extinguished and I nearly fell over Sheba, lying exhausted across the threshold of my bedroom door.
As I had expected, the midgets were there before me in the breakfast room the next morning. Rusty sat at the head of their table. He was reading aloud to his colleagues from a local paper, The Westport Echo and had chosen items of scandal with which to entertain them. I heard his rasping, self-important voice tell how a vicar’s wife had been had up for speeding, a scoutmaster had been caught soliciting in a public lavatory, a local councillor had claimed for trips to Paris on his expenses. He turned a page and there was a pause.
‘Well, I’m jiggered!’ he said at last. ‘Listen to this folks: the Tinytones are on the bill at the Pier Pavilion, Coldhaven tomorrow night. That’s just down the road from here.’ The murmur from the rest suggested both interest and unease. At that moment Ruby entered with the inevitable ‘fresh brew’ for the midgets.
‘Hey, listen to this, Roob,’ said Rusty, and he repeated the information he had just read out.
The Ballet of Dr Caligari Page 9
