Elizabeth forced herself to be calm. ‘I’m sorry, Uncle Robert. But why? Why is my arrival so disturbing?’
‘Because of your earlier behaviour. You deliberately chose to ignore my request that you should take employment at Fallowfield. Instead you asked Miss Tully to refuse the post she had found for you. This was very unwise of her, in my opinion. Her part in this has been quite irresponsible, and she will hear more of it, I assure you. And all this for some fantasy of going on the stage – something I assure you, Elizabeth, you will never do.’
Harriet interposed, ‘No time must be lost in informing Constance Albury that there has been a mistake and you find you cannot join her company. It may still be possible to correct the situation at Fallowfield, if you write to them straight away. You moved so quickly and impulsively at Mountview, Elizabeth, that we could do nothing. But now you have another chance to undo the mischief.’
Harriet, in blue silk, sat on one side of the fireplace. Bella took her a cup of tea and then went back to the table. Robert was standing with his back to the fireplace. Elizabeth, also standing, decided not to look as if she was waiting to be reproved and went and sat on a chair by the wall, opposite him.
As she did so her uncle told her, ‘You must give up this ridiculous plan to go on the stage, find a respectable post as a pupil-teacher and embark on a sensible career. You have your bread to earn, after all, and your mother needs what help you can give her. If you get a living-in position at a school, and some fifty pounds a year as a salary, you will be able to assist her to the extent of a pound a week.’
Elizabeth felt a pang of guilt. Then, though unused to financial calculations, she realised that any money she gave her mother would be cozened out of her by the Warrens for what would look to Bella like perfectly good reasons. It would be a useless sacrifice. She could not say this, so responded, ‘If I succeed with Miss Albury, I will get much more than that.’
‘If,’ he said. ‘If you succeed. And I think you are mad to imagine you can. But that is beside the point. I do not propose to see my niece on the stage.’
‘Miss Albury is quite respectable. Her father was knighted,’ Elizabeth told him.
‘The profession of acting may be suitable for a man. For a woman it is different. In any case, it was for his services as a producer and manager, not primarily as an actor, that the knighthood was granted. For a woman, the acting profession presents constant moral danger.’
Bella said, ‘I’m sure there is nothing to fear where Elizabeth is concerned.’
Her brother rounded on her. ‘Then you’re more confident than I am. Now, Elizabeth, please sit down and write to Miss Albury.’
Elizabeth shook her head.
‘What?’ shouted Robert Warren. ‘Are you refusing to relinquish this post?’
‘Yes,’ Elizabeth said. She was very frightened. As far as she knew, her uncle could ask her to leave the house immediately – Bella too. They had no money and nowhere to go. There was Mrs Macfarlane, she thought desperately. And that was all.
What she did not know was that Robert Warren would not, could not, evict his sister and her daughter. In fact he was very anxious that this confrontation did not lead to Bella or Elizabeth finding out the true state of affairs at Linden Grove. They might flee to that interfering Scotchwoman across the street, he was thinking. And she’s the sort who might start asking questions.
Elizabeth and Bella were exceedingly surprised when Robert backed down – although his wife was not. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘If you want to be a foolish girl who will do nothing for her mother, just to have her own way and embark on a risky and morally dangerous profession, then so be it. The consequences will be on your own head. And your mother’s,’ he said, with a sharp look at Bella, who quailed.
‘Are you going to write to the trustees of the school?’ Elizabeth asked timidly.
‘I ought to,’ her uncle declared. ‘But I will not. I admit it – I fail in my duty to the other parents at the school in not exposing Miss Tully’s part in this matter. However, in this instance I choose to keep a family embarrassment within the family.’
Elizabeth did not know what to make of all this. However, she saw that her uncle had yielded and that she would be able to go to the Imperial after all. She would be able to stay at Linden Grove and help her mother. Miss Tully would not be faced with the criticism of the governors and trustees of the school. Somehow, Robert Warren had been defeated, and that was enough for Elizabeth. Daring, now, she asked, ‘May I have a little money to get my trunk from the station?’
‘I have some,’ Bella offered.
Robert reached into his pocket. ‘No, Bella. If this young lady is to earn her own money, I will lend her what she needs.’ As he handed over five shillings he added, ‘Of course, your salary from Miss Albury will come directly to me. As you will be living here I will return to you what is left after the appropriate deductions have been made. You will please arrange the details with Miss Albury at the earliest possible opportunity.’
And now here she was in Shaftesbury Avenue, only yards away from the start of a new life. Suddenly she saw the sign of the Imperial Theatre hanging out over the pavement. It was a large, newish building, covered in elaborate plasterwork, with three big pillars in front. She walked up the alley beside the theatre, as she’d been instructed, and stood outside the stage door. It was closed. Tentatively, she pushed it. It did not give. From behind her a man said, ‘Excuse me.’ He was tall, dark, handsome and clad in a well-cut suit. He rapped on the door with his cane. The door opened. He stepped back to allow her to pass through. Elizabeth Armitage was backstage at the Imperial Theatre, ready to begin her new life.
Chapter Twenty–Two
Lily and Ivy Moran walked away from the doctor’s surgery in the long terrace in Bath. Lily was clinging to Ivy’s hand. It was hot, yet she was shaking with cold in the bright sunshine.
‘When will it happen?’ she asked.
‘If it happens,’ Ivy said, very pale herself.
‘But when?’
‘There’s no telling. You’ve got two shows tonight, and tomorrow night. Concentrate on that.’
‘I suppose I’ve got to,’ Lily said.
‘Christ, Lily, I hope you’re doing the right thing.’
‘So do I, Ivy. So do I.’
Because Bath was the only place outside London where Ivy knew for sure there was an obliging doctor, they had had to wait until the tour reached there. He had done what was needed to start a miscarriage but there was no question of Lily’s staying on his premises, or anywhere connected with him. He was carrying out an illegal act and, if caught, faced two years in gaol and being struck off the medical register. ‘Go home, Mrs Wallace,’ he had said, patting Lily’s hand, ‘and go about your normal business until you feel unwell.’
Lily had given a false name, of course, and if the doctor knew who she was he did not mention it.
She got through two houses on Friday, and went back to the hotel straight afterwards. There, feeling ill, she paced her room, restless, frightened and wondering whether she was right to have done what she had. She was not normally self-questioning. Her way was to act, not think; but she could not help wondering if Ivy was right. Perhaps she should have told Jack she was expecting their child and made the best of it. But Jack didn’t want a child or, more importantly to Lily, a woman with a child. As she pictured herself pregnant and huge, then nursing a baby, she saw a whole crowd of the worn-down women amongst whom she had grown up – so many women – pregnant, untidy, with yet another child in an old pram, yanking a whole trail of others behind them. She recalled the artistes she knew, saw their children in dressing rooms, their babies parked in theatrical baskets in the corner, thought of how so many had to leave their children with their own mothers, how they agonised when the children became ill, far from them. She saw them when another baby was on the way, tiredly letting out the seams on their costumes so that they could go on working.
She felt she was
going mad. Ivy came in with something in a small brown bottle and made her drink it. ‘Chin up, Lily,’ she said. Lily was sitting on her bed in her petticoat, head hanging. ‘Soon be over,’ Ivy encouraged. Then she departed to a party downstairs, and Lily went to bed. She got up late the next day, joined the group having lunch with a local reporter, roamed the town, rested and then went to the theatre to give her performance on the big night, Saturday.
She got through the first house and departed for the nearby pub to join the others waiting to go back on for the second. She found it too noisy and the smell upset her, so she rose and told the others she’d go back to the theatre. Where else had she to go in a strange town, feeling as she did? One of the girls from the corps de ballet, Grace, got up and said, ‘I’ll come with you, Lily. Leave this rabble to it, eh?’ She put her cloak over her costume and, once in the street, grasped Lily’s arm. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked in a low voice.
‘I suppose everybody knows,’ Lily said.
‘Only us girls,’ Grace told her. ‘Ivy’s asked us to look after you.’ She paused. ‘Lily, we’ve nearly all done it. We’ve had to. Jenny the exotic dancer is only twenty, and she’s done it twice. She’s got one already, a little boy who lives with her mother, and she can’t manage any more. So – how do you feel?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lily told her.
‘Well, you will if it happens,’ Grace told her.
Lily, in the wings, watched Jenny’s act, a writhing dance done in Turkish veils and much silk drapery. Then Ivy and Harry Moran were on, in evening dress, singing a ballad. They provided the touch of refinement expected by music-hall audiences.
Lily was next. As she ran on stage in her short white dress, a thousand hungry, excited, lusting eyes on her, she felt a sudden pain go through her. The orchestra was playing the opening for her first number, ‘Pussycat, Pussycat, How D’You Do?’. By the end of the song her brow was beaded with cold sweat and she was in agony. She launched into her second song, ‘Oh Mr Porter’, got through it desperately, not showing a thing, then curtseyed, bowed, and, with the audience cheering and crying ‘Encore’, ran off the stage and fell against the side of the wings. The manager waved at her urgently: ‘Back. Back.’ Lily, very pale, shook her head. She could not speak. She could not return to the stage to bow and smile as the curtain went up and down, could not face the eager audience which craved another sight of her.
‘Leave her alone,’ said Ivy. ‘She’s ill. Can’t you see?’
‘That’s all very well,’ protested the manager.
It was Gus Elen, the Cockney singer who was on after Lily, who said, ‘Start up the orchestra. I’ll go on.’ He readied himself. ‘Good luck, Lily,’ he called after her as Ivy supported her up the narrow iron stairs backstage.
‘Let’s get to the stage door,’ Ivy said. ‘A couple of the girls went for a cab when they saw how you were on stage.’
The two women from the corps de ballet, still in their tulle skirts, tights and make-up, were standing by the cab outside. ‘Get in,’ one said. Then they raced back into the theatre. They had to be on stage for the finale.
Lily lay in bed at the hotel, writhing. ‘Fetch the doctor,’ she said.
‘He won’t come,’ Ivy told her.
‘He must,’ gasped Lily.
Ivy did not tell her that the doctor would not attend in case Lily died and he was held responsible. She just sent downstairs for a bottle of gin.
Soon it was over. Ivy covered up the traces, taking the sheets from her own bed and putting them on Lily’s.
‘You’re lucky,’ Ivy said. ‘Tomorrow’s Sunday. You can lie in bed all day and have your food sent up. I’ll tell the manager you’ll have to cancel Monday’s performance.’
But in the end Lily, worried not only about her job, but anxious in case Jack found out she’d been ill and began to make inquiries, appeared at the theatre on Monday. People in the business often wondered why, after that, hard-working Lily Strugnell never again appeared in Bath.
Chapter Twenty–Three
Elizabeth, slipping through the stage door of the Imperial, was suddenly very excited. She was inside the theatre.
The gentleman who had ushered her in now looked somewhat surprised. His eyes opened very wide. He smiled, showing his beautiful teeth, and half bowed. ‘I am Edward Stott, and you, I suppose, are the new young lady Miss Albury has promised us.’ His manner was studied; it invited admiration. He took her arm and said, ‘You should report first to Miss Albury. I expect she’s on stage.’ He led her along some corridors, past what she saw through a half-open door was a dressing room. The theatre seemed deserted. There was no sound. Elizabeth was beginning to feel nervous about being led through a warren of corridors by a strange man when suddenly they were at a flight of iron stairs. They climbed them – she was sure Mr Stott was looking at her legs – then went through the wings of the theatre and on to the stage.
Elizabeth had spent her summer holidays at Linden Grove reading plays, and had deduced that any established troupe of actors would contain the players needed for a basic drama. There would be, she thought, a leading lady, a leading man (this was where she had correctly placed Edward Stott), and two others, second leads. Then there would be an older man and an older woman. The nucleus of the company would be those six people. None of them, she thought, would be her. She was too young and inexperienced. There were four people on stage when she arrived, but to her alarm, Constance Albury was not one of them.
‘Gerry!’ called Edward Stott. ‘Here’s the new young lady.’
The four people on the stage all turned to look, and a tall man of about thirty, with hair almost the same colour as Elizabeth’s own, came towards her. His eyes were very blue, and he wore a tweed suit and a blue shirt which had not been fresh that morning.
‘Miss Armitage – Gerald Fitzgerald, theatre manager,’ said Stott. ‘Gerry – this is Miss Elizabeth Armitage, our new artiste.’ He looked from one to the other and remarked, ‘One more such head of hair and we can dispense with the footlights.’
‘Miss Armitage,’ said one of the women, advancing, a ship in full sail. ‘How do you do? I am Lilah Zakarova.’ Miss Zakarova, thought Elizabeth, must be thirty-five years old, though she appeared younger. She had big blue eyes and a great deal of very blonde hair, which escaped artlessly from under a blue bonnet.
‘How do you do, Miss Zakarova?’ Elizabeth replied. Lilah Zakarova dropped a stage curtsey and waved her hand elegantly. ‘Allow me to introduce our leading lady, Miss Edith Strutton, in private life Mrs Macdonald.’ Edith Strutton was short, with a marvellously erect carriage, and cold eyes. Elizabeth made a respectful bob to each woman.
‘Where’s Miss Albury?’ demanded Edward Stott.
‘Detained,’ said Gerry Fitzgerald.
‘Indeed?’ said Stott significantly.
‘You have some comment to make?’ asked Fitzgerald.
‘None at all,’ said Stott. ‘Harry!’ he then cried, as a young man with fair hair and a long, pale face came in. ‘Harry! Where have you been?’
‘Don’t ask me to tell you,’ the other replied.
‘Miss Armitage – Harry Hislop, low comedian,’ said Stott.
‘How do you do?’ responded Elizabeth.
‘He maligns me, of course,’ said Hislop. ‘I am not a low comedian. I am, in fact, quite a high one. I’m what is called the jeune premier, or youthful hero. I am often heard to ask people if they would like a cigarette. I say “Oh rot” a lot. In Shakespeare I come hither and hie thither to order. Oh Lord,’ he exclaimed, ‘she comes.’
The sound of rapid footsteps was to be heard. A cry, ‘Sorry I’m late’, and Constance Albury was among them. ‘Ladies, gentlemen – welcome, welcome to a yet more important season at the Imperial. For this season, I’m happy to say, Mr Shaw has written me a new play, a comedy, a drawing-room piece, in as much as anything by Mr Shaw could be so described. It is called Her Own Opinion. In this piece I shall be playing a New Woman.’
Laughter broke out, to Elizabeth’s bewilderment. ‘This lady, called Anastasia, is standing for Parliament.’ Here there was more laughter. ‘Our next production will be Dumas’ The Lady of the Camellias, then – we may need nothing else – we close for the Christmas period. In the New Year, we open with the Scottish play. Gerry – the parts for Her Own Opinion, if you please.’
‘Still being typed,’ Gerry told her.
‘What? Then what are we here for?’ Constance said, very clearly, in a voice which lowered the temperature by several degrees. At this point a tall man came in. She glanced at him. ‘Thank you, Mr Soames, for coming ten minutes late.’ Older man, father, king, Elizabeth said to herself. The tall, grey-haired man began to excuse himself. His dignity collapsed as Constance interrupted him. ‘No excuses are acceptable. One more infringement and out you go. Do you understand? As to the late arrival of the parts for the play, I find myself speechless.’
‘The typist has been up all night. She’ll come here in a cab as soon as she’s finished,’ Gerry Fitzgerald told her steadily. ‘It won’t be very long.’
‘So we hope,’ said Constance, more calmly. She paused ‘Very well, let me describe the play while we wait.’ The group of actors gathered round. Edward Stott urged Elizabeth forward. They stood in a circle round Constance. Constance spotted Elizabeth, whom she’d evidently forgotten. ‘Elizabeth Armitage – welcome. I will speak to you in my office later. In the meanwhile, ladies and gentlemen – the play. The principal characters: Anastasia Alloway, the central character – myself,’ she said, at which Edith Strutton looked glum, ‘is a thrice-widowed lady being courted by two gentlemen; one – you, Mr Soames – is a wealthy landowner with a secret source of income, and the other – you, Mr Stott – a penniless painter, or so it seems. You, Miss Strutton, are Anastasia’s friend, a lady manufacturer. Anastasia cannot make up her mind between her two suitors; that is the situation at the end of the first act. Due to the intervention of Anastasia’s mother – Mrs Bloomfield, who is detained by a grandchild with measles – and a second intervention by a Deus ex machina in the shape of Anastasia’s sister, Vanessa Greaves – that is you, Miss Zakarova – the positions of the two suitors are completely reversed at the end of Act Two. Act Three concludes the bouleversement.’
Elizabeth and Lily Page 23
