An Awfully Big Adventure

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘The Cock of the North invited her to his wedding,’ said Grace. ‘And there was a rumour that John Galsworthy once left her five guineas under the spine of his breakfast kipper.’

  Florence wasn’t a patch on Bessie. She had marital troubles. The uproar in the middle of the night when Bernard Murphy rolled home fighting drunk from the seamen’s club had to be heard to be credited. Babs could have borne all that if other standards had been maintained. She waved her right hand feebly in the air, as though the bone in her wrist were broken. ‘Last week,’ she said, ‘my nail snapped off. I was struggling to set a mouse-trap.’

  ‘Dear God,’ said Grace, ‘vermin are the responsibility of the landlord.’

  ‘I don’t receive any messages,’ wailed Babs. ‘Stanislaus telephones and they never tell me. And if I ring him we get cut off in the middle of the call.’

  ‘Time hurries,’ Meredith said, clapping his hands. He could hear the irritation in his voice. It’s killing to love, he thought. And death when love stops. Everyone, save Babs Osborne, understood that her Polish lover was trying to give her the push.

  Five minutes into the First Act Dotty Blundell forgot her lines and snapped her fingers for a prompt. The new girl was so lost in the action of the play that she cried out, ‘It doesn’t matter, go on, go on’, and everyone laughed, even Meredith. In spite of this, sitting on his Empire chair beneath the window, head tilted to one side at an angle of acute concentration, he had the curious sensation that if he shifted his gaze from the little group mouthing in front of him his head might fall off. He felt for the monocle dangling against his shirt front and tumbled it between his fingers, over and over as though telling a Rosary.

  St Ives was confessing to Olwyn that he and Frieda had never been happy together. Not really. ‘Somehow our marriage hasn’t worked. Nobody knows.’ This was the moment when Dotty gave her shrug expressive of pity. For the umpteenth time the leopard-skin coat which she wore slung about her shoulders slid to the carpet. At which Bunny fussily swooped to retrieve it. ‘For God’s sake,’ shouted Meredith, ‘leave it. Stop behaving like an old Queen.’

  Almost immediately he beckoned Stella and stood with his back to the room. Outside the window sounded the thin blast of a whistle as a train prepared to leave the platform. It was as though he himself had screamed.

  The girl came to him at once, her face a reflection of his own, eyes wide, her teeth biting on her lip. He told her to fetch a pencil and paper and when she brought them scribbled down several sentences in capital letters.

  ‘Do you know where the General Post Office is?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  ‘Can you read my writing?’

  ‘I believe I can.’

  ‘Run all the way and don’t change a word.’

  Soon afterwards he announced it was lunchtime. He pretended to be engrossed in making notes until the actors had left the room. He expected Bunny to stay behind, but he was the first out of the door. Desmond Fairchild was the last to leave. ‘Care to join me for a snifter, old boy?’ he said, buttoning on his chamois leather glove with the hole in the thumb. Meredith ignored him.

  Below the window a crocodile of children in striped caps marched across the booking hall. The flower-seller who kept a stall in the mouth of the granite arch leading to the subterranean tunnel into the street was bent over, dunking tulips in a galvanised bucket. Passing beneath the arch the children felt the slope beneath them and tumbled into a trot, the echoes of their stamping feet sending the pigeons plummeting from their perches. When the birds spewed out of the darkness the flower-seller flapped her great shawl like a matador to ward them off; they broke formation, circling the massive clock stopped at ten to ten, floundering upwards towards the whirling sky framed in the shards of glass set in the iron ribs of the shattered roof. Then Bunny, battling his way against the flow of the children, appeared in the hall and halted for a moment, the belt of his mackintosh undone, looking up at the windows of the rehearsal room. Meredith waved; he didn’t think Bunny saw him.

  They had met in a railway carriage in the third year of the war. Bunny was going home on a twenty-four-hour pass and Meredith returning from a week’s leave in Hoylake. They had sat opposite each other in a compartment crowded with able seamen, he watching the darkening fields flying outside the window and Bunny staring down at a single sheet of notepaper, pale blue in colour, which he held on his jigging knee and from whose fold poked a spring of crab apple in bloom. At intervals, re-crossing his cramped legs humped on the hassock of his kit-bag, his boot struck Meredith’s shin and he muttered an apology, to which Meredith responded with a polite shrug of the shoulders. But then, as night fell and the lights were switched on in the carriage, illuminating the sepia photographs of Morecambe Bay at dawn and donkeys trotting Blackpool sands, he felt his privacy was being invaded and had stopped making those conciliatory gestures. Besides, from the pallor of his fat cheeks, those nails bitten to the quick, the splodge of oil on his trouser-leg and the button missing from his tunic, it was easy to distinguish to which class the man belonged. Though they both wore the uniform of a Private it was plain who was of superior rank.

  He had tried to sleep but the gambling sailors made too much noise. Instead he studied the reflections in the window; the blurred beak of his own nose, that thong as if of an Indian brave imprinted across his brow by the absurd cap which he had removed at Crewe and which now lay among the cigarette butts at his feet; the jutting shoulders of the poker players who sprayed their cards like fans beneath their mouths. Madame Butterfly, he thought, for he had sneaked a glance at the soldier opposite and seen that he was now weeping, the letter crumpled in his fist, scrunching apple blossom.

  At Wolverhampton the carriage had all but emptied, leaving only a sleeping woman cradling a badminton racket. Some miles from Nuneaton, as the train jolted with drawn blinds between an embankment, the man gave an audible sob. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. His voice was educated although he was wiping his nose on his sleeve. ‘Bad news?’ Meredith asked, and lent him a handkerchief.

  The letter was from Bunny’s father, telling of a bomb that had exploded in the garden. Thinking in terms of his mother’s back yard in Hoylake, the washing sagging between poplar trees, Meredith had prepared himself for details of death. In his head he saw the hung sheets dotted with coal-smuts torn from their pegs and ripped into bandages as they sailed above the foxgloves. He assumed a melancholy expression and said, ‘I’m so sorry. No, please keep the handkerchief.’

  ‘There was a 300-year-old oak,’ Bunny said. ‘And a yew hedge even older. It wasn’t a raid. The bomber released its load because it was having difficulty reaching the coast. Another mile or so, another thirty seconds at the most and they would have dropped harmlessly in the Channel.’

  ‘What rotten luck,’ said Meredith.

  ‘Robyn was found in the orchard with his leg blown off.’

  ‘What can I say,’ murmured Meredith. ‘There aren’t any adequate words.’

  ‘My father had to shoot him.’

  Meredith still hadn’t forgiven him – not for the big house, the holidays touring France on bicycles, the expensive schooling, the mutilated pony or the affectionate parents. He himself had never known a father, being the issue of a man who smoked cigars and a girl plucked from the typing pool of the Cunard buildings in 1913.

  Desmond Fairchild was loitering in the corridor when Meredith emerged from the rehearsal room. He demanded to know when they would have the use of the stage. Like a beggar, he went so far as to pluck at Meredith’s sleeve. ‘Sorry to go on about it, squire,’ he said. ‘I just find it impossible to get into character here.’

  ‘So I’ve noticed,’ said Meredith, and he pushed past him impatiently and ran down the grand staircase in search of Bunny. He found him in the station buffet slouched against the counter eating toasted tea-cakes. Beside him stood a man whose boots had burst asunder at the toes.

  ‘No wonder you look ill,’ Meredith
said. ‘You should eat proper food.’

  ‘I don’t have your appetite,’ said Bunny. ‘Nor your taste buds.’

  ‘My God, what a stench,’ cried Meredith and, snatching up Bunny’s plate, took it to a table near the door.

  Bunny followed. ‘You don’t have to be so unkind,’ he complained. ‘People have feelings, you know.’

  ‘If you’d stood next to him much longer you’d be scratching by teatime.’

  ‘I haven’t got your sensitive skin either.’

  ‘That’s true enough,’ said Meredith and, unable to apologise directly for his outburst at rehearsal, invited him instead to dinner that evening at the Commercial Hotel.

  ‘I’d rather read,’ said Bunny.

  ‘Come early and leave early,’ coaxed Meredith, and as though it had just occurred to him wondered aloud whether it would be a good idea to include young Harbour.

  ‘Better not,’ said Bunny, avoiding his eye. ‘It’s as well not to rush things.’

  ‘I wasn’t very nice to him this morning.’

  ‘You weren’t very nice to quite a few people,’ said Bunny mildly.

  His amiability irritated Meredith; it made him spiteful. He referred disparagingly to Bunny’s demob suit. ‘Own up,’ he demanded. ‘You sleep in it.’

  ‘Only in the winter months,’ conceded Bunny. ‘I suppose this has to do with Hilary.’

  ‘I telephoned twice this morning. I couldn’t raise a dicky bird.’

  ‘People go out, you know.’

  ‘At eight in the morning!’

  ‘Hilary’s mother could be ill. From what you say she’s very frail.’

  ‘Could be,’ sneered Meredith. ‘But I bet my bottom dollar she isn’t.’

  ‘The phone could be out of order. Perhaps the bill hasn’t been paid.’

  ‘I’ve paid the damned bill,’ shouted Meredith. ‘I pay for everything,’ and he lit another cigarette and exhaled furiously, glaring through the smoke at Bunny munching on the last of his tea-cakes.

  The man in the worn-out boots limped towards the door carrying an ancient suitcase. Meredith, noticing Bunny fumbling in the pocket of his mackintosh, leaned across the table and seized him by the wrist. ‘Don’t you dare,’ he hissed. ‘By the state of you, it’s you that needs the hand-out.’

  ‘I was looking for my matches,’ said Bunny crossly. He pursed his big mouth into such a babyish pout that Meredith found him comical; he sniggered.

  ‘You lack consistency,’ said Bunny. ‘You blow with the wind.’

  Meredith couldn’t deny it. Often he suspected he hadn’t the capacity to sustain either love or hate.

  Encouraged, Bunny suggested he would be doing himself a favour if he asked Desmond Fairchild to dinner. The man might be something of a bounder, dispatching young Geoffrey every afternoon to that bookie in the Nelson Arms, not to mention the way he tapped his cigarettes on his thumbnail, but he was, after all, a favourite of Rose Lipman. Leastways, he was a distant connection of Councillor Harris, and he had made an enormous success as Cousin Syd in that comedy series on the Light Programme, quite apart from his role in Charley’s Aunt on Saturday Night Theatre. Appreciative letters were still arriving at the stage door from listeners to the Home Service. Meredith might not like him but he was a box office draw and bearing in mind that unfortunate incident in Windsor . . .

  ‘Like him!’ said Meredith. ‘I detest him. The man’s a sartorial offence. That camel-hair coat with the velvet collar . . . that vulgar hat.’

  ‘It’s possibly a mistake to make an enemy of someone on account of his trilby,’ warned Bunny.

  ‘I wouldn’t stand him dinner if my life depended on it.’

  ‘I despair,’ said Bunny. He actually looked as though he did.

  A young woman came in from the booking-hall trailed by a ragged child, its legs pocked with the marks of vermin. Beneath a man’s jacket the woman wore a gaudy satin slip streaked at the hem with blood. Meredith clapped his hand over his nostrils.

  ‘If I could,’ said Bunny, only slightly smiling, ‘I’d take you away from all this.’

  Stella had run all the way on her errand to the Post Office; rather than let Meredith down she would have dropped in her tracks. She was quite composed copying the address onto the telegraph form, but when she came to the words: Am in Hell. Does ten years count for nothing? You must ring. Reverse charges. Devotedly Meredith, she experienced such a choking sensation of jealousy – she thought it must be like parachuting from an aeroplane, in that she couldn’t breath and the world dropped away – that she scrumpled up both scraps of paper and flung them into the metal basket beneath the counter.

  She was half way up Stanley Street before she recovered and her heart stopped sinking in her breast. She retraced her steps just as swiftly, only to find the wastepaper basket had been emptied. Fetching another form, she wrote: Don’t bother to telephone. Will not accept reverse charges. Yours Meredith. She gave the money for the words not used to a boy with ringworm throwing stones at a cat on a wall.

  5

  The cast was allowed onto the stage five days before the opening night of the season. Meredith apologised for the delay. A leak had developed in a portion of the roof above the flies; there was still a slight pinking of water-drops splattering behind the flats of the living-room set. Rose was suing the builders.

  The actors, now they had the use of the theatre, grew noticeably more confident. Dawn Allenby presented Richard St Ives with an oil-painting of a bull in a tortoiseshell frame which had caught her eye at the back of a butcher’s stall in St John’s Market. It had been a bargain because the butcher was thinking of throwing it out in favour of a signed photograph of Field Marshal Montgomery. St Ives, while agreeing with Dotty that Freud might have something to say about the choice of subject, was rather taken with the gift. In return Dotty, on his behalf, bought Dawn Allenby a pot plant to which was wired a card saying: ‘To Dawn, with great affection from Richard and Dorothy.’

  The ‘stopping rehearsal’ of Dangerous Corner began at ten o’clock on Monday morning. Not until twelve o’clock, by which time no more than five minutes of the drama had been enacted, did Stella understand the meaning of the phrase. She hadn’t known the lighting would play such an important part. Bunny, wearing a knitted Balaclava and carrying a clip board, called out commands to the chief electrician in a voice muffled with pain. Geoffrey said he had complained earlier of toothache. There was some trouble with the follow-spot attached to the balcony rail of the upper circle. Then a whole bank of dimmers on the switchboard unaccountably fused.

  Sometimes the actors went back up to their dressing-rooms for an hour at a stretch while she and Geoffrey stood in for them, posing languidly at the fireplace or leaning back on the settee, twirling empty wine glasses. Behind them a young man with a paint-flecked beard followed the designer about the set, twitching the hem of the velvet curtains hung at the window and rearranging the ornaments on the mantelpiece. Twice, when Meredith ordered ‘Two steps stage left’ and Geoffrey moved to the right, Meredith came bounding down the centre aisle shouting ‘Left, left, ducky’ and leapt onto the apron to seize him by the shoulders and shove him into place. Stella was torn between getting it right and being manhandled by Meredith. Geoffrey was also in charge of the effects record on the Panatrope; he was better at that than moving about the stage.

  The prop-room became crowded with elderly men; stage-hands and fly-men, none of whom were needed for this particular production but who were there just the same, heating cans of baked beans in a saucepan on the fire. George said that Rose Lipman, having climbed from slop-girl at Kelly’s Melodrama Theatre in Paradise Street to manager of the repertory company, didn’t hold with casual labour. Any day the D’Oyly Carte could disembark at Lime Street station and hire every available hand. Geoffrey said it was altruistic extravagance. ‘It’s not your bleeding money,’ George reminded him.

  Someone called Prue, who until today had remained hidden in the wardrobe-room on the f
irst floor pedalling her sewing machine, had a chair allocated for her use in the prompt corner and a space reserved for cotton reels and safety pins on the props table in the wings. Every time the actors passed in their evening dress she was there, flicking at their shoulders with a dampened clothes brush.

  ‘That’s my wardrobe mistress,’ cried St Ives, winking suggestively and hugging her until she squirmed.

  ‘I’m nobody’s mistress, you daft beggar,’ she countered, beating him with mock ferocity about the head, cheeks burning with delight.

  St Ives had pencilled a little red spot at the corner of each eye, to make them look bigger. Wearing grease paint, he appeared younger and yet more sinister. But then they all did, even Grace Bird. They looked both sly and exhilarated, as though they were off to some party that would end in tears.

  At half past one Geoffrey confided he was worried about Dawn Allenby.

  ‘Why?’ asked Stella.

  ‘She’s got a bottle in her dressing-room and it’s almost empty. And she’s sitting in a peculiar way, staring at herself in the mirror.’

  ‘That’s not peculiar,’ Stella said. ‘You do it all the time.’

  He flounced off, tugging at his hair.

  Stella’s main job was to sit in the prompt corner with the book. Earlier, supervised by George, she had added a tablespoon of Camp coffee to half a pint of water and poured it into the cut glass whisky decanter on the sideboard. She had polished the glasses and checked there were seven Capstan in the cigarette box set on the low table beside the settee. George said that if she put in more the whole lot would be gone before the curtain rose on Act Two. The box was a musical one and made of silver. When opened it played the chorus of ‘Spread a Little Happiness’, although the book stipulated it ought to be the ‘Wedding March’.

  Dotty wore a sleeveless dress of black velvet caught at the hip with a diamanté buckle. The flesh of her upper arm hung down when she reached for a cigarette, but it scarcely mattered. She was beyond that sort of upset. Her mouth was a red gash in her powdered face and when in Act Two she told her husband that the degenerate Martin had never loved her, never ever, even though they’d conducted an affair, real tears trickled from her tragic eyes.