Elizabeth and Lily

by Hilary Bailey

  As she continued to speak, it seemed to Elizabeth that the play sounded uninteresting, the more so because there was clearly no part in it for her. She passed the time looking covertly at the others standing round Constance. Edward Stott, handsome but with a haggard air, was listening intently, as was Edith Strutton, her small, beaky nose pointing up slightly from under a very fashionable hat. Lilah Zakarova gave the impression of being shallow and Elizabeth thought that she was only pretending to listen. Her male counterpart, Frederick Soames, attended with narrowed eyes, and had a slightly disparaging air. It could not be his part which made him so discontented, since he had not seen it. It must be the play which discouraged him. Elizabeth, who was discouraged herself – how stupid to think she might have had a part – rather sympathised with Soames.

  Harry Hislop, thin, pale, with butter-coloured hair slicked close to his head, listened intelligently. The elegant Edith Strutton stood beside Elizabeth, looking appealingly up through darklashes. She said, in an undertone, ‘I feel a little faint, Elizabeth – I hope I may call you Elizabeth. Would you be so kind as to fetch me a chair from over there in the wings?’

  Constance was still speaking – ‘This lengthy speech by Colonel Newsom, Mr Soames, is the true denouement of the play’ – when Elizabeth began, as silently as possible, to make her way into the wings to get the chair. She had only gone a few paces when she was pulled up by Constance’s loud voice: ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  Elizabeth swung round. ‘To get a chair,’ she began to explain.

  ‘Tired? At your age?’ Constance interrupted. ‘So tired that you leave a group being addressed by the theatre manager on the subject of the first play of the season, especially written for this theatre by one of the most notable playwrights of the day-to get a chair?’ Her voice rose. ‘Miss Armitage – at the Imperial we do not sit on the stage, ever. And, though strolling players, we also make an attempt to pass as ladies and gentlemen, and so do not go wandering off when others are speaking. I must say I am surprised. Now, if you can contrive to stay on your feet for a second or two longer, I will conclude my remarks.’

  Elizabeth felt dreadfully ashamed and embarrassed. She stood quite still, trying to look as if she was listening, though she would rather have run away and gone home. It was awful to be told off in front of everyone. She was supposed to see Miss Albury later. What on earth would she say to her now? Beside her, Edith Strutton murmured, ‘So sorry.’ Elizabeth just shook her head. Edith gave a little sigh.

  ‘So, ladies and gentlemen, that is the play,’ concluded Constance. ‘I find the prospect of performing it most exciting. But still we have no parts.’

  ‘They’re here, Miss Albury,’ said a woman’s voice, and the typist handed up a sheaf of papers from the orchestra pit.

  ‘Aha,’ said Constance, pleased. She took them and handed them out. The last set of pages, a very thin one, Constance handed to Elizabeth. She said, in a good-humoured way, ‘It’s what we call a walk-on part. Can you manage the walking part of it, or will you need a bath-chair?’

  Elizabeth smiled and shook her head again, uncertain how to reply. She had been rebuked. Now she had a part!

  ‘Very well,’ Constance now said, briskly. ‘There we are – promptly at two, please, ladies and gentlemen; we have much to do. Miss Armitage – follow me.’ She turned and walked off stage.

  Elizabeth followed, clutching the few pages of her part in her hand as if someone were planning to snatch them from her. She yearned to read it. What role was it? Would she be able to do it well? They went down stone corridors and turned off through a door into one carpeted in red and blue. Miss Albury opened a thick oak door. Inside there was a small woman behind a desk on which stood a telephone, a blotter, an inkwell, and a pile of opened correspondence. Constance Albury sat behind another desk, Elizabeth in front. The telephone rang, startling Elizabeth. Constance picked up the receiver and said, ‘Good morning, Stanley, I have a new member of the company with me. May I telephone you at eleven?’ To Elizabeth she said, ‘A wonderful invention, but it intrudes. Now then – you need polish, Miss Armitage, as today’s episode with the chair simply proves. But I’m going to instruct Harry Hislop to polish you. He’ll introduce you to Mrs Bannerman, the wardrobe mistress, whom you’ll be helping, among other things. You’ll also be helping Miss Strutton and Miss Zakarova. Mr Hislop will show you the list. I hope you’ll be very happy with us.’

  Elizabeth, bewildered and anxious, realised that the interview was over. She had assured her uncle before leaving home that she would make arrangements to have her salary paid to him, but was too embarrassed to mention it. The telephone rang again. Constance picked it up. She said, ‘Good morning. Constance Albury speaking.’ She listened, responded crisply, ‘Certainly not, Jocelyn. Goodbye.’ Then, to Elizabeth, ‘You’re living at home, I understand?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Albury,’ said Elizabeth. ‘My family…’ Her voice failed her – but there would be trouble at home later if she did not make the arrangement. ‘My family,’ she stammered, ‘wonder if you might – if they could ask…’ Then in a rush she said, ‘My uncle would prefer my salary to be paid to him.’

  Constance’s eyebrows went up. But she replied smoothly, Of course.’ She added kindly, ‘Remember, dear, if you’re earning your own living, never be embarrassed to discuss money. Off you go, now – find Mr Hislop.’

  Still clutching her script in her hand, relieved that the interview was over, Elizabeth skipped through the bewildering corridors in search of Harry Hislop. More by luck than judgement she found the stage door, and the doorman, a thick-set man with a moustache.

  ‘Miss Albury has asked me to find Mr Hislop,’ she said.

  ‘You’ll find him and the other artistes in Gerrard Street. The Strangler.’

  Elizabeth walked out into Shaftesbury Avenue with no idea where Gerrard Street was. She found it by asking several times, and walked up and down looking for something called the Strangler. It seemed an odd name, and there was no sign above any pub or restaurant which bore it. Finally, a postman told her, ‘You mean The Jack Ketch. Some people call it the Strangler for a joke. Over there.’ And he pointed, a little higher up the street, to a public house bearing the name The Jack Ketch on an inn sign depicting a hangman and a scaffold.

  Elizabeth, who had never been in a public house before, pushed open the door. The pub was empty, apart from two old men in a corner with pints of beer, and a long table surrounded by the entire theatrical company of the Imperial, not only all the actors she had met, but some she hadn’t. Scripts were all over the table. Everyone was talking. Frederick Soames looked up from a debate with Edward Stott, spotted her in the doorway and got up courteously to greet her.

  She advanced timidly. At the table, Edith Strutton, her grey gloves off, a glass of port in front of her, was declaring loudly, ‘As to my part, it is no more than the principal character’s confidante. The author may have described her as a lady manufacturer, but she is nothing – a cipher, a mere butt for the central character, played, of course, by the inestimable Miss Albury.’

  As Frederick Soames led Elizabeth to the table, the rest of the gentlemen stood up. Harry Hislop claimed her. ‘My charge,’ he stated.

  ‘Your what?’ asked Soames challengingly.

  ‘My youthful charge – Miss Armitage. Miss Albury asked me to take care of her until she knows the ropes.’

  ‘How odd,’ said Edith Strutton, in a ringing tone.

  Lilah Zakarova said to Elizabeth, ‘Harry’s much the best choice as your mentor, if that’s the word.’

  ‘You’ll be safe as houses with Harry,’ Soames observed.

  ‘Well then,’ Harry said. ‘What will you drink?’

  ‘Lemonade?’ Elizabeth suggested tentatively. She was not sure if public houses sold lemonade. Perhaps they only had beer, port and whisky.

  ‘Nothing stronger?’ Harry asked.

  ‘No. I promised my mother,’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘One c
an’t argue with that,’ he replied. ‘Boy!’ An old man in a long stained apron came to his side. ‘Lemonade for the young lady. And a chair.’

  ‘Right, guv,’ agreed the man.

  ‘Sit down then, Miss Armitage,’ Harry said. ‘Listen and learn what queer folk we of the profession are. The profession,’ he explained, ‘is what we call acting, the stage. It’s a strange career, to pass your days pretending to be what you ain’t.’

  ‘People do it all the time in everyday life, I think,’ said Elizabeth. Harry Hislop looked at her in surprise.

  Soames announced, waving his script at Stott, ‘God – how I hate these modern plays. Never a decent speech. Something you can get your teeth into. All sacrificed in the name of “naturalism”, “modernism”, whatever you like to call it – the tradition of Shakespeare, Sophocles, all the rest, overturned.’

  ‘So you think all the world’s a stage, Miss Armitage?’ Harry asked. His narrow blue eyes looked at her from his pale face. His eyebrows were faint arcs, his smile generous but foxy, as if he knew his own kindness, and suspected it.

  ‘Doctors have to pretend to be more like doctors than they need,’ claimed Elizabeth. ‘“How are you today, dear lady?”’ she mimicked. ‘And everyone has to act as they’re expected to, or no one believes they’re really what they are. And sometimes people have to pretend to be shocked when they’re not, or sympathetic, or angry, or grieved…’

  ‘It would be a mad world if we didn’t,’ he said.

  ‘It’s for the sake of simplicity,’ she agreed. ‘So we all know who we are and who others are.’

  ‘And also a mask,’ he said, ‘behind which we can hide.’

  ‘Hide? Why, Harry, what have you to hide? Do tell us,’ Edith Strutton carolled. There was malice in her voice.

  Throughout all this, Edward Stott had been reading his script. Now he said, in a tone of denunciation, ‘Look at my part. Just look at it. It makes me want to hide. No speech over three lines, and each capped by the female lead – Miss Albury, no less. Who wrote the play, do you suppose – Mr Shaw, or herself?’

  ‘Eddie, if you were asked to play Hamlet you’d grumble that the part was too short,’ said Lilah.

  ‘What I find even more worrying, if that’s possible, is this extraordinary business of The Lady of the Camellias,’ Edith Strutton said. ‘I believe Miss Albury will be playing the youthful lead herself, as if to emulate the distinguished Sarah Bernhardt, who was at least thirty years too old for the part when she did it but made a huge success of it. Is Constance going to make a fool of herself in order to prove she can do what Bernhardt did?’

  ‘You’re only anxious that she won’t look a fool,’ Lilah Zakarova was heard to mutter.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Edith Strutton said sharply. She was very pretty, but Elizabeth was starting to wonder why she had asked her to get a chair when Miss Albury had said that no one was ever allowed to sit on the stage at the Imperial. Edith must have known her request would get Elizabeth into trouble. Why had she done it?

  At this point Edith, looking at Elizabeth, said, ‘Oh, my dear. I have some urgent matters to attend to this morning, and I shall be meeting my husband for luncheon at Simpson’s – he depends on my presence whenever I can manage it – but in the meantime, how, I ask myself, can I possibly get my gloves from the cleaners – four pairs of kid gloves, stranded there for quite a fortnight? I wonder, would you?’

  ‘Collect them, you mean?’ asked Elizabeth.

  ‘Yes – would you? I have the ticket here.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Elizabeth said mechanically, as Edith handed her the slip of paper.

  ‘Thank you so much. Don’t forget,’ she said. Then she stood up, made her farewells, and left. Harry Hislop called, ‘Edith!’ after her, but she either did not hear or took no notice.

  Elizabeth sat looking at the ticket. ‘The cleaner’s at Bruton Place,’ she said. ‘Shall I go now?’

  ‘She didn’t give you the money to pay for them, did she?’ Harry said.

  ‘Oh no,’ she replied, dismayed. ‘And I haven’t got very much. What shall I do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he told her emphatically. ‘Just explain that you couldn’t go as you had no money.’

  ‘She’ll be cross, won’t she?’

  ‘Yes,’ he told her. ‘But don’t forget, the more errands you accomplish successfully for Edith, the more she’ll give you to do.’

  Lilah Zakarova overheard and bent forward. ‘You can say that again,’ she said. ‘And remember who told you to fetch that chair. I heard her.’

  ‘Edith asked Elizabeth to get the chair?’ Harry asked quickly

  ‘She was feeling faint and decided to sit down,’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘Faint? She’s made of cold steel,’ Lilah claimed. ‘I’m sure it was she who sent the perruquier away with my new wig when we did School for Scandal, saying it wasn’t needed. Someone did.’

  ‘I think you’ve mentioned that before, my dear,’ said Edward Stott.

  ‘Be careful, Miss Armitage,’ warned Soames. ‘We’ll all be calling on you for something, all the time. It’s part of your training. We may, we will, be selfish and inconsiderate. But only Edith Strutton will go too far all the time, send you running hither and thither, often for no reason – perhaps even conspiring against you.’

  Elizabeth looked worried.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Lilah. ‘We’ll look after you.’

  ‘She’s a damn good actress, though,’ Soames mused.

  The conversation raged on, too fast for Elizabeth to follow it most of the time. There were anecdotes, jokes; Lilah stood and impersonated, to much applause, the wooden acting of Lily Langtree, the King’s mistress. Edward Stott left to put a bet on a horse, and returned. Frederick Soames went out to pay the cabman who had brought his dog, Toby, a spaniel, whom, he said, his landlady would only look after in the mornings. Toby sat under the table, thumping his tail on the floor, while the talk went on. More drinks were ordered, cigarette smoke filled the room. Nevertheless, wherever the conversation went, it always came back to the play. There would be a fortnight’s rehearsals; the play would go on in mid-September. Soames said there was too little time. The company had not toured that summer because Constance Albury had wanted a holiday. Now they were opening late because that holiday had been prolonged. But Harry Hislop said the delay was because George Bernard Shaw had been writing another play he liked better and had only completed Her Own Opinion under pressure from Constance.

  Elizabeth, having covertly glanced through her own scanty part, as the heroine Anastasia’s daughter Hermione, reflected that if the residents of Linden Grove could see Lilah Zakarova leaning back in her chair, showing a length of leg in grey silk stockings and neat grey suede boots, a glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other, they would be very shocked. Yet there might not be much difference in age between Bella, so worn and always in her widow’s black, and Lilah, who, Elizabeth knew, would be referred to at Linden Grove as a ‘flashy creature’. The difference, Elizabeth supposed, was that Lilah was not what they would call a lady. If Elizabeth stayed in the company, did that mean she would be no lady either? She had been brought up to believe in the necessity of being low-voiced, well-mannered, discreetly dressed; in short, a lady. Ladies, of course, did not usually earn their living, unless they were teachers or governesses. She felt confused.

  Harry Hislop touched her arm. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Come to lunch. You’re a growing girl. There’s the first read-through at two, so I must feed you first.’ He said to the table in general, ‘Look – we ought all to have a meal. The read-through will be a disaster if we show signs of having imbibed freely but not eaten. You know how Constance feels about that sort of thing. Remember Fanny Mercer?’

  This reference caused a silence.

  Frederick Soames said, ‘Come on, Hislop. No need for hymns and tambourines here – we are meeting on the subject of the coming play.’

  Hislop said remorselessly, ‘Fanny appeared
as Ophelia –intoxicated – with her chaplet of flowers over one eye. Whereupon she tripped and fell full length on the stage. We do not want a repetition of that episode, or anything like it. Do we, Frederick?’

  At this point, Gerry Fitzgerald, a lean and agitated figure, burst through the pub door, calling out, ‘Aha! I thought I’d find you all here, ladies and gentlemen. Miss Albury has booked a table for you at Potters. She’s standing you all lunch. Potters, as you know, does not serve strong beverages. You will be pleased to hear that Miss Albury has arranged a special rate there for members of the cast during the rehearsal period.’

  Edward Stott stood up. ‘Please convey our thanks to Miss Albury,’ he said. And the cast got to its feet, shook itself and made its way down Soho side streets, where prostitutes loitered on the pavements, a Chinese man with a pigtail sat on a chair outside a door, and three plump women with laden baskets stood on a corner talking to each other in French. Elizabeth had to skip as a barrel rolled down a plank from the back of a huge beer wagon drawn by two massive shire horses. She was breathless with excitement and nerves.

  At Potters, a dingy restaurant with dirty lace curtains at the windows, they ate a hearty meal of beef, or boiled ham, or roast pork, carrots and cabbage. Edward Stott and Harry Hislop then managed slices of treacle pudding with custard.