An Awfully Big Adventure

by Beryl Bainbridge

  At seven o’clock Stella was sent out to buy bacon sandwiches. It was dark and rain spat on the cobblestones. She ran to the café and fretted while the rashers sizzled on the stove; she couldn’t wait to get back to that make-believe room blazing with light. Returning across the square she felt she was going home; not for one moment did she confuse such a place with the Aber House Hotel.

  Meredith was sitting in the stalls with his feet propped up on the row in front.

  ‘The play’s awfully good, isn’t it?’ Stella said, handing him his sandwich.

  ‘In your opinion,’ he asked, ‘what is it about?’

  ‘Love,’ she said, promptly, for she had given it some thought. ‘People loving people who love somebody else.’

  He explained she was mistaken. Mostly it had to do with Time. ‘Think of it this way,’ he urged, ‘we are all mourners following a funeral procession and some of us, those of us more directly concerned with the departed, have dropped behind to tie a shoe-lace. Contact with the beloved has only been temporarily interrupted. The dead are still there, as are those we think we love, just round the corner . . . waiting to be caught up with.’

  ‘Of course,’ Stella said, ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

  For the life of her she couldn’t fathom where funerals came into it. Besides, not everyone wore shoes with laces. Still, she was pleased he had sought her opinion.

  Bunny told her to call the actors for the last act. He found it difficult to talk; having found a bottle containing tincture of iodine in the First Aid box, he held a saturated plug of cotton wool against his raging tooth.

  Grace Bird was already in the corridor outside the dressing-room she shared with Dawn Allenby. ‘Look here, dear,’ she said, ‘tell Bunny to pop up, will you?’

  ‘What’s the noise?’ asked Stella, although she knew. Someone was squealing and crying at the same time, as if caught in a trap.

  ‘Not a word,’ Grace said. ‘Go and fetch Bunny.’

  The actors paced in the wings puffing on cigarettes, watching the sliding door in case the fireman should catch them. Desmond Fairchild got a speck of dust in his eye and Dotty, tut-tutting with concern, lent him a tissue to blow his nose.

  ‘Any better?’ she asked, and he said, giving her a peculiarly defiant look, ‘My God, I suppose you think that solves everything.’

  ‘What’s wrong,’ called Meredith. ‘Why can’t we start?’ He sounded angry.

  Stella tiptoed from the proscenium arch, shielding her eyes from the glare of the footlights. She couldn’t see Meredith. ‘There’s a spot of bother,’ she whispered.

  ‘Speak up,’ he shouted, and repeated, ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’ve been forbidden to divulge,’ she said. Had she been alone she would have told him. It wasn’t right for a man in his position to be kept in the dark.

  The waiting was not prolonged. After no more than five minutes Bunny announced they could begin. It went very well. During a break in which the designer’s assistant smeared the mirror above the fireplace with vaseline – Meredith had complained it reflected too much light – Dawn Allenby apologised for the drenching smell of eau de Cologne that pervaded her person. ‘Bear with me, darlings,’ she pleaded, ‘I sweat like a navvy when nervous.’

  Nervy or not, she was particularly convincing in her role as Olwyn, more so than she had been in previous rehearsals. When she confessed to shooting Martin no one could doubt she had it in her to pull the trigger. Martin had considered her priggish, a bit of a spinster. He had shown her some naughty drawings, to test her prudishness. ‘They were horrible,’ she cried, wrinkling her nose in distaste; even so, her tone was that of a woman of the world and it was evident it was Martin she found disgusting, not the drawings.

  Which was why, at the very end, when Gordon tuned in on the wireless to a dance band and Robert was supposed to waltz Olwyn about the room, Stella had no patience with St Ives’s reaction to Geoffrey’s ten-second delay in putting on the gramophone record. Anybody with any feeling for the drama wouldn’t have noticed. Richard didn’t say anything; he simply stood there, every inch the martyr. Dawn Allenby seemed annoyed too, though that was possibly because she’d been cheated out of those extra moments in his arms.

  When they stopped for a beer rest before running through Act Two again – a fly-man was dispatched to the Oyster Bar with a hot-water jug stamped ‘Property of Sefton General Hospital’ – Meredith climbed into the orchestra pit to play the piano. Geoffrey said the piece was Sheep May Safely Graze by Bach. Whatever it was, it was very tinkly and repetitive, and often, just as he seemed to be getting somewhere, Meredith broke off and started all over again. Stella hadn’t suspected he was musical.

  Uncle Vernon had paid for her to study the piano. After three weeks, during which time it became clear she might be in her dotage before she mastered the Warsaw Concerto, she’d given it up. Mr Boristan, her teacher, had a shell-shocked leg. His knee jerked up and down to the clacking of the metronome on the piano lid. Uncle Vernon had flown into a paddy on account of the seven lessons left outstanding.

  She was stood in the wings refilling the whisky decanter, picturing herself seated at a concert grand on the platform of the Philharmonic Hall – Meredith was in the front row gazing up at her with adoration – when three men walking one behind the other filed through the pass-door into the auditorium. She ran to the prop room to inform George.

  ‘They’re dressed all in black,’ she said. ‘Like funeral directors.’

  ‘It’ll be the priests,’ he said. ‘Father Julian, Dr Parvin and probably Father Dooley . . . fella with carroty hair same as yours. They’re from Philip Neri’s.’

  ‘That’s at the end of the street opposite our house,’ Stella said. ‘It’s Catholic.’

  ‘What else would it be?’ said George. Strictly speaking, priests weren’t supposed to visit the theatre, but a blind eye had been turned to the attendance of rehearsals. Meredith had started inviting them last season. He was a convert to Rome. According to George, his sort were usually the worst; they were after redemption. Before the cast went home Dr Parvin would give a blessing.

  ‘Mr Potter’s a Catholic!’ asked Stella, shaken.

  ‘They all are,’ said George. ‘Apart from St Ives and that bloke Fairchild. I shouldn’t think he’s anything.’

  Stella had been brought up to believe that Catholicism was a plague rather than a religion. Its contaminated followers were one step removed from the beasts of the field. Angels at the foot of the bed and the devil at their back, they drank like fishes and bred like rabbits. After midnight mass on Christmas Eve the street was desperate with maudlin men with bloodied noses and bruised knuckles singing ‘Silent Night, Holy Night’ as they urinated through the railings. Uncle Vernon had telephoned the police on more than one occasion. ‘I’m the proprietor of the Aber House Hotel,’ he protested. ‘I can’t have mayhem round my premises.’ Lily said he was wasting his money, and he was; they were all papists down at the Bridewell.

  In summer, when the white trash Protestants from the rookeries of the Dock Road marched in honour of King Billy, the police put up barricades to stop the Catholic men from charging the procession. The women stood on the doorsteps with their rumps to the crowd, skirts lifted to flash tattered green knickers. When Uncle Vernon was a boy a Catholic had let off a firework in the path of the brewery dray-horse and it had lumbered sideways, the streamers of orange paper fluttering from its bridle rein and drifting to the kerb. The lad on its back, dolled up as King William, had been crushed to death against the wall. The rattle of the sword he had held aloft echoed across the cobblestones.

  It came as a shock to Stella, learning that educated people like Dotty Blundell and Meredith adhered to such a faith. She asked Geoffrey whether he knew the exact meaning of the word ‘convert’.

  ‘I don’t know about exact,’ he said. ‘It’s to alter purpose, to change from one thing to another.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  �
��In the religious sense,’ he said. ‘From sin to holiness.’

  It wasn’t much help. All the same, when the cast assembled on stage and stood with bowed heads as Dr Parvin gabbled his blessing, fingers raised to sketch that insidious sign of the cross, she found herself shivering. She had the feeling she must either give in to that showy and heady beatification or run for her life. She couldn’t just stand by; it was all or nothing.

  Uncle Vernon had waited up for her. He’d wanted to escort her home but she had threatened to commit arson if he came within a quarter of a mile of the theatre. He’d kept her supper warm in a pot in the oven.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t. It was thoughtful of you, but it would choke me.’

  He switched off the gas with a bad-tempered flourish, though his heart wasn’t in it. If his own life had been as full he too could have dispensed with food.

  ‘It was wonderful,’ she said. ‘I wish I could explain. You’ve no idea . . .’

  He had, but he stayed silent. She looked different since Lily had stopped curling her hair. It hung straight down, neglected, lank from the rain. It wasn’t altogether unbecoming.

  ‘When I came back across the square,’ she said, ‘and saw the trees swaying, I felt like Moley following Ratty through the Wild Wood, scenting his own little house on the wind.’

  ‘What trees?’ he asked. ‘What wood?’

  He’d seen her like this before, when she had her nose in those poetry books, and once when he’d sneaked up the stairs and caught her using the telephone. It had been one of those mornings when the early sun striking the coloured glass of the landing window had tinted the dark hall with amber light. The girl’s red hair burned against the mildewed wallpaper. She’d replaced the receiver instantly and refused to tell him who she’d been speaking to, but then, as now, there was something challenging in her expression.

  For a moment he saw her as someone outside of himself, another person, a stranger passing in the street with a face blazing with secrets. He felt uncomfortable; her eyes shone so.

  The following day the dress rehearsal went so smoothly that after giving out his notes – the pause at the end of the third act, before Olwyn opened the cigarette box for the second time, was a whisker too long, and her response to Robert’s line to the effect that she’d fabricated the person she loved a touch too quick – Meredith declared enough was enough. He didn’t want them to become stale.

  Privately he took St Ives aside and suggested he kept a friendly watch on Dawn Allenby. ‘Take her out for an hour or so,’ he urged. ‘On her own.’

  ‘Surely Dotty can accompany us,’ said St Ives.

  ‘Better not,’ advised Meredith. ‘You know what women are like.’ He found himself nudging St Ives in the ribs, man to man.

  Prue told Stella to collect Dotty’s black frock from the dressing-room; she felt the hem on the right-hand side wasn’t hanging as it should.

  ‘She’s a perfectionist,’ cried Dotty. ‘What a treasure,’ and asked Stella to afternoon tea at George Henry Lee’s across the road.

  ‘Like this,’ Stella said, looking down at her overall, and Dotty said clothes didn’t matter, it was the inner person that counted. In spite of this, it was half an hour before she came downstairs dressed up to the nines in a pin-striped trouser-suit, her hair caught up in a turban of white silk.

  Babs Osborne, huddled on the telephone in the doorkeeper’s cubicle, was attempting, yet again, to get through to Stanislaus. ‘Mr Winek has to be there,’ she cried, thumping the wall with her fist and dislodging a drawing-pin, sending a call sheet and a sheaf of addresses spiralling about the corridor. ‘He specifically told me to call.’

  ‘Go on ahead, dear,’ said Dotty. ‘Madame is having one of her turns. I shall have to see to her.’

  Stella crossed the street and loitered outside the store window displaying haughty mannequins flaunting swagger coats.

  In George Henry Lee’s restaurant a middle-aged lady wearing purple and accompanied by a string quartet sang ‘Tea for Two’, circling her hands in the air as though pushing away cobwebs. When it came to the line ‘. . . we won’t have it known that we own a telephone’, tears coursed down Babs Osborne’s cheeks.

  ‘Obsession is a terrible thing,’ said Dotty. ‘It devours one’s life. I still haven’t forgotten the misery I went through with O’Hara. I was a fool to myself; everyone warned me he was a philanderer.’

  ‘Stanislaus isn’t like that,’ Babs protested.

  ‘Of course he isn’t,’ soothed Dotty. She propped her elbow on the table and resting her chin on her hand gave her full attention to Stella. ‘I wanted to believe he was a tragic figure,’ she said. ‘More sinned against than sinning, if you follow me. That way it made his rejection of me easier to bear. You do see that, don’t you? He’d had a serious liaison before the war with a young girl whom he’d got pregnant. He was only a boy, hardly out of drama school and scared stiff and, by the time he’d pulled himself together and gone back to do the right thing by her, the girl had disappeared. She’d given a false name so he couldn’t trace her. I thought I could help him to forget. Dear God, how wrong can one be!’ Her chin slumped in the palm of her hand.

  ‘I don’t feel sorry for that girl,’ said Stella. ‘She shouldn’t have given herself.’

  ‘Stanislaus has a serious liaison with me,’ cried Babs Osborne indignantly. Dotty told her to hush. ‘You think you’ve got troubles,’ she said. ‘Think of poor Grace.’

  ‘What did happen to Miss Bird’s husband?’ asked Stella. She didn’t want any gaps in the conversation. Babs Osborne was now weeping quite loudly and her nose was running. A string of mucus hung from her left nostril and clung to the curve of her lipsticked mouth; the waitresses kept looking across at the table.

  ‘They made a pact,’ Dotty said. ‘Foolish of her perhaps, but one does these things in the grip of passion. He agreed to marry her on the understanding that he could bow out if and when something better turned up. And of course it did, albeit twelve years later – a woman older than Grace with a private income.’

  ‘Still,’ said Stella, ‘she had a good innings.’

  ‘Stanislaus loves me for myself alone,’ Babs whined. ‘He disapproves of inherited wealth.’

  Stella thought of Meredith. ‘Has Mr Potter’s friend got money?’ she asked.

  ‘Hilary?’ said Dotty, and laughed on her jam-filled scone. ‘Not a brass farthing.’

  ‘I expect she’s pretty though,’ probed Stella. ‘I expect she’s elegant.’

  Babs Osborne stopped crying. Dotty looked thoughtfully down at the tablecloth. Stella supposed they were taken aback at her knowing details of Meredith’s private life.

  ‘Mr Potter told me to send a telegram. It was of a personal nature.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Babs.

  ‘I don’t mean to pry,’ floundered Stella. ‘It’s just that Mr Potter is such an interesting man . . . I mean, he isn’t run of the mill, is he? . . . and I thought any lady friend of his was bound to be unusual.’

  ‘How very true,’ murmured Dotty. Suddenly she caught sight of St Ives seated with Dawn Allenby in a corner of the restaurant. She waved to him extravagantly, blowing kisses as though she was on board an ocean liner that was carrying her away from him for ever. ‘Poor Dicky,’ she sighed. ‘What a cross he has to bear.’

  ‘Some people like being burdened,’ said Stella. ‘It gives them an interest.’

  ‘And what does Mr Fairchild like, do you suppose?’ asked Dotty. ‘What is your estimation of him?’

  ‘He’s a cunt,’ said Stella.

  She was crossing the square an hour before the box office opened, sent by George to buy a bottle of milk from Brown’s Café, when she saw Dawn Allenby buying a bunch of flowers from the stall near the telephone box. She waved, but Dawn didn’t see her, being too engrossed in stuffing the flowers into a large carrier bag.

  Rose Lipman went round the dressing-rooms before the half-hour call to wish everyone goo
d luck. ‘I expect you to do your best,’ she said. ‘I ask nothing less.’ She was followed by Meredith who wore his monocle threaded on a silver chain. When he passed Stella in the corridor she could smell scented soap.

  A telegram from Stanislaus arrived shortly before curtain up; Babs was over the moon. Prue told George that Dawn Allenby was in high spirits because an admirer had sent her flowers. There was no card but Dawn said she had a fair idea who they were from.

  The Lord Mayor was in the audience and the Chancellor of the University. The first three rows of the stalls were filled with people in evening dress. There were six curtain calls and Rose Lipman came on stage to be presented with a bouquet. George said she only did that on the first and last nights of the season, unless there was a particularly successful production, like the time O’Hara had brought the house down in Richard II.

  Meredith made a speech about the civic pride the city took in its repertory company, and the importance of the drama. He said the gilded cherubs supporting the circle boxes weren’t simply decorative; they were baroque symbols reinforcing the lush imagination of the theatre. But the drama on its own wasn’t enough, or great performances, or symbols. They, the audience, were what mattered, for it should never be forgotten that it was their patronage and their applause which truly kept the theatre alive.

  Afterwards Stella waited in the passage until she heard Meredith coming downstairs. She would have picked out his padding footsteps among an army of marching boots.

  He said, ‘Well done’, as he went out into the street. He was joining the rest of the cast in the Oyster Bar. Stella didn’t go because she was under age, and besides no one had thought to ask her.

  She rang Mother instead, from the telephone box in the square. ‘You’d like the play,’ she told her. ‘It’s about nobody ever going away but always being just round the corner, waiting to be caught up with. At the very end, when the curtain comes down, they dance to that tune “My Foolish Heart”.’ And she sang a few bars into the mouthpiece, swaying a little, watching the lights go off in the theatre.