An Awfully Big Adventure

by Beryl Bainbridge

  George heard the screaming and ran upstairs and slapped Dawn Allenby hard across the cheek. Then he bathed her eyes and made her a cup of tea. By the half hour, when Dotty and Babs arrived, she was sitting quietly in front of the mirror making up her face.

  It was during Act Four, Scene One that she went missing. She was there to answer when Cleopatra asked her who she was laughing at, and gone by the time she was supposed to say, ‘Heigho! I wish Caesar was back in Rome.’ One of the university students said she had brushed past him in the corridor and gone out into the street. He was sure it was her because he had smelt the peppermints. The doorkeeper said nobody in costume had left the theatre.

  As soon as Stella had finished on stage Bunny told her to go home. For the time being she was excused from her prop-room duties and she needn’t wait for the curtain call. She must take it easy for the next few days. ‘I’m perfectly all right,’ she grumbled. ‘It was only a rotten old boil.’ But he said they were Miss Lipman’s orders. She was upset at missing all the excitement.

  When she was dressed she went out into the square to ring Mother. She thought at first somebody had left a bundle of washing in the telephone box. The door wouldn’t open, no matter how hard she shoved. She squatted down to peer through the glass and saw a head-scarf printed with Scottie dogs and a hand clutching a potted plant with its leaves torn off.

  8

  Bunny escorted Dawn Allenby to the station. She was going to Birmingham to stay with her sister who had just had a baby girl. It would be a nice rest and such a joy to hold the child. Professional women, women of the theatre, missed out on that sort of thing, didn’t they? Still, sacrifices had to be made, though sometimes one couldn’t help wondering whether it was all worth while.

  She looked rather well after her night in the hospital and spoke complacently of the bother she had caused. What confusion! She’d had one of her headaches, taken three aspirins and popped out to telephone her sister. She remembered nothing more until she woke up in the ambulance. Such an absurd misunderstanding.

  Bunny didn’t feel it was either the time or the place to mention the half-dozen empty aspirin bottles strewn about the floor of the phone box – their contents were later found heaped like so many loose sweets in the bottom of her handbag – or that she had ‘popped out’ in the middle of the scene in Cleopatra’s boudoir. Nor did he think it would serve any purpose to refer to the lipstick-smeared card, originally written by Dotty and still wired to the stem of the mutilated plant, which, in the heat of the moment and the fitful light of the streetlamps was mistakenly thought to have been dipped in blood.

  He bought Dawn a newspaper for the journey and carried her suitcase along the platform to the compartment. She ran in front of him, head high, as though someone important was waiting for her. When they reached the carriage he swung her luggage up onto the rack and said, ‘We had a little whip-round’, and thrust seven one-pound-notes into her hand. It was a lie; it was his own money.

  She thanked him without warmth and stuffed the notes casually into her bag. Rose had already given her two weeks’ salary. ‘That girl,’ she said. ‘Her mother left her alone in an empty house. You want to keep an eye on her. She’s trouble.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I must be off.’ And he escaped onto the platform, praying for the whistle to blow. At the last moment, when the engine blew steam, she let down the window and handed him an envelope addressed to St Ives; she looked at him with the eyes of one waking from a dangerous dream. ‘God speed,’ he cried, and ran a few steps alongside the departing train to show it wasn’t just a question of out of sight out of mind. She stared straight ahead as she slid away.

  He opened the envelope on his way back to the theatre. The scrap of paper it contained, torn from a telephone pad, was wrapped round the musical lighter.

  He read the letter not out of curiosity but to spare St Ives further embarrassment – the last thing he needed in his present introspective state was a love letter from Dawn Allenby.

  St Ives blamed himself for what had happened. In the interval she had apparently asked him to have supper with her, and he’d mumbled something about wanting an early night. He couldn’t recall his exact words – he suspected they were cutting – but he did remember holding his fingers against one nostril to blot out the stench of her Cologne. The memory of that gesture would never cease to haunt him. How could he have been capable of such cruelty?

  Dotty had sat up all night assuring him that Dawn wasn’t his responsibility. If he had accepted her invitation to supper she would have taken it for encouragement; he would simply have put off the evil day. Besides, she had only pretended to take an overdose. She was just drunk and seeking attention. Young Stella had said she was quite cheerful earlier in the evening, before she had her hysterical attack, and had talked of nothing but her sister’s new baby. St Ives’s name had never crossed her lips.

  St Ives said it was a mercy he hadn’t after all approached Meredith and asked him to give her the push. Thank God he hadn’t got that on his conscience. Still, he would have done if it hadn’t slipped his mind, and surely the intention made him culpable. Dotty told him he was worrying needlessly seeing he was a Methodist, a belief which favoured an artificial rather than a natural classification of guilt.

  She herself had spent a distressing and hectic ten minutes in Rose Lipman’s office helping to remove Dawn’s costume and button her into her street clothes. Dressed, Dawn could be passed off as a member of the audience. Dottie wasn’t at all sure the poor woman shouldn’t have been left in the telephone box until the ambulance arrived, rather than carried by George across the square in a fireman’s lift under an old blanket, but Rose had convinced her that a scandal must be avoided at all costs.

  The letter was brief and lacked punctuation – Dear Swine, I have no money no job no friends I hope you and the girl are satisfied Hail Caesar use this in memory of me.

  Bunny dropped the lighter into a china vase in the cocktail cabinet in the prop-room and burnt the letter on the fire. Then he washed his hands.

  Christmas was approaching and the shop windows began to fill with seasonal tableaux. In George Henry Lee’s an angel with silver wings spun above three Wise Men kneeling in cotton wool snow. A sixty-foot tree, a gift from the people of Stockholm in recognition of the hospitality shown to Swedish seamen during the war, arrived at the Docks and was ceremoniously welcomed by the Lord Mayor. In the middle of the Thursday matinée a Salvation Army band began to play carols in the square and Rose sent out a donation with a request for them to move further off.

  At home, Uncle Vernon ferreted out the laundry box from under the stairs and dusted off the streamers and the loops of coloured paper. He draped tinsel round the pink lampshades on the table. Lily took them off again. Most of the shades hung crookedly and were scorched on one side, and she said the tinsel constituted an added fire hazard.

  ‘It’s festive,’ he argued, ‘it’s Christmas.’ And she pointed out that not everybody wanted to be reminded of the fact. ‘Some people,’ she said, ‘would prefer to sleep through it.’ He could tell by the look on her face that she counted herself among them. He decided to take it personally and went straight out with the intention of buying a tree, just to spite her, until her remembered he could get one cheaper nearer the time.

  Lily wasn’t the only one who grew melancholy at the seasonal preparations. All of it, the tinsel and the trees, the hurrying shoppers with their packages wrapped in shiny paper, the children queuing to visit Santa Claus, the Star of Bethlehem on the roof of Blackler’s store, below which at dusk a crowd gathered and sighed with wonder as light ran through its six points and burned against the sky, made Stella more unhappy than ever. What was the point of living, let alone Christmas, now that Meredith ignored her?

  She’d noticed the change in him as soon as they began rehearsing in the theatre. She stood on the stage four mornings in a row, note-pad prominently displayed against her overall, waiting for his summons, and when i
t didn’t come she watched the smoke from his cigarette curling above the upturned seats and felt she herself was drifting into darkness. I’m cast out, she thought. I’m one of those souls in purgatory.

  He no longer bothered to talk to her when she brought him his coffee. He thanked her politely enough, but his smile was dismissive. When she passed him on the stairs his expression told her he scarcely knew she was there.

  She realised he was under a strain. The stage hands grumbled at the furious pace they were expected to work. Often George came in at five o’clock in the morning to hammer away at the pirate ship in the carpenter’s shop. He took a pride in his job and he didn’t mind how many hours he put in as long as he got paid for them. There was the rub – Rose Lipman complained they were exceeding the estimates. He’d demanded a man in charge of each wire and Rose had baulked at the expense. He’d told her he wouldn’t be responsible for safety if he couldn’t have them. The slightest kink in a wire and it would snap like a violin string, plummeting the flyer to the stage.

  Grace Bird reported that Rose was critical of Meredith mounting two big productions one after the other. In her opinion it was an error of judgement. Nor was she altogether satisfied with the box-office receipts for Caesar and Cleopatra. It was all very laudable wanting to bring culture to the masses, but if the masses chose to turn their backs on the enterprise it was the shareholders who stood to lose. At the rate things were going Meredith could swallow up the budget for the entire year before the season was a quarter way through.

  Stella was forced to hold her tongue when Dotty or Babs Osborne spoke slightingly of Meredith. She let fly at Geoffrey.

  ‘He’s sensitive,’ she shouted, after Geoffrey had recounted an incident in which Meredith had supposedly scuttled into the band room to avoid interviewing some out-of-work actor who had an appointment with him. ‘He doesn’t like disappointing people.’

  ‘In that case,’ retorted Geoffrey, ‘why did he agree to see him in the first place?’

  They were sitting in the Kardomah Café waiting to pick up paint and turpentine ordered by the stage designer from Haggerty’s warehouse in Seel Street. The paint frame had expected a delivery earlier that morning, until Haggerty’s had rung through to say the van had broken down. The order was still being unloaded.

  They shared a doughnut and bickered over which half was smallest.

  ‘Have the lot,’ said Stella finally. ‘I’m too miserable to eat.’

  ‘What about?’ asked Geoffrey, wolfing down both portions before she changed her mind.

  ‘Mr Potter, I’ve upset him in some way. You must have noticed. He’s stopped being friendly. It hurts.’

  ‘I’ve no wish to sound insulting,’ Geoffrey said, ‘but I hardly think anything you could do would upset Meredith.’ He watched her trembling lip, and added, ‘You shouldn’t put him on a pedestal. He’s not trustworthy. Windsor Rep sacked him, you know. He was an actor then . . . in the same company as Bee’s Knees O’Hara.’

  ‘Considering your low opinion of him,’ she snapped, ‘I’m surprised you spend so much time with him.’

  ‘It’s only pub friendship,’ he said, and flushed.

  ‘I wish I was older,’ she said. ‘I wish I knew how to tackle him. I know exactly what words to use but when I’m with him I can’t get them out. Nobody’s ever silenced me before.’ She was near to tears and relishing the feeling in a sad sort of way.

  Suddenly Geoffrey said, ‘I’m not sure I shall stay in the theatre. I might take my father’s advice and go into business.’

  ‘Silly ass,’ she said. ‘What would you want to do that for?’

  ‘I’m out of my depth. I don’t really understand them. They tell you important things, things you want to hear, and five minutes later they can’t remember what they’ve said. I’m only here because my uncle’s chairman of the board.’

  ‘I’m only here because of Uncle Vernon,’ Stella said. ‘He and Rose Lipman’s brother courted the same girl, only Mr Lipman won. I suppose he felt guilty.’

  She thought Geoffrey looked neglected. His shirt wasn’t clean and he had the beginnings of a pimple at the corner of his mouth and another about to burst above the knot of his cravat. He needed a mother.

  ‘I’ll never give up,’ she said. ‘I’ve nowhere to go except Woolworth’s.’

  ‘Don’t you ever have doubts?’ he asked. ‘Don’t you ever wonder whether it wouldn’t be easier to do what’s required of you?’

  She wasn’t sure she understood. They had marched along different paths. Uncle Vernon required something of her, but his expectations were similar to her own. ‘I never doubt myself,’ she said. ‘Only other people.’

  They returned to the warehouse and stood back as a boy carrying a sheet of glass under his arm came down the stairs. He was wearing outsize boots without laces. He tripped on the bottom step and, losing one boot, lunged forwards, cartwheeling across the pavement on that deadly crutch of glass. A man on the other side of the road raised his hat to a passing lady and distinctly said, ‘Grand day for the time of the year’, after which the boy fell down. He lay perfectly still, brows arched in surprise, bare toes quivering as the blood drained out of him.

  Stella and Geoffrey went back to the theatre without collecting the paint. Within ten minutes of their arrival everybody knew what had happened. Babs Osborne said it was odd the way Stella was always around when tragedy struck. She didn’t mean to be tactless.

  Freddie Reynalde urged Stella to blot out the memory of what she had seen. She must bear in mind she was in control of the pictures in her head. It was rather like being in charge of Tinkerbell, in that she was the one flashing the torch. What she must do, he maintained, was to substitute one image for another. He knew what he was talking about, having witnessed a man die from a heart attack while forking manure. She should swop the boy on the pavement for an empty room painted white, or possibly a vase filled with lilies.

  ‘I wish you hadn’t mentioned that,’ she said. ‘I’m very suggestible. Now all I can see is a room filled with cow muck.’

  St Ives was particularly affected by the incident. ‘Dear God,’ he said, ‘why does life have to be so bloody awful’, and he blew his nose emotionally. Dotty wasn’t there to cosset him, and presently he went upstairs to the wardrobe, where Prue made him a cup of tea.

  The afternoon rehearsal started late because Meredith was at a working lunch in Rose’s office. When he did arrive he strode across the stage and pushed his way through the pass door without a word.

  Stella thought the play peculiar. Considering it was meant for children it was surprising how many of the characters were unpleasant, even Tinkerbell, whom she supposed was some sort of bad fairy. And though at first it was quite funny, knowing that the child Slightly was so called because when his mother had abandoned him his vest had been slightly soiled, the more she thought about it the sadder it seemed. Babs Osborne didn’t look right as Wendy; she was too big. And although it was customary for the same actor to double as Mr Darling and Captain Hook the way St Ives played them there seemed little difference between the two – he romped in the nursery and he sky-larked aboard the Jolly Roger. Meredith told him twice to give it a bit more blood and thunder, but it wasn’t in him. He was too concerned that people should like him to be really frightening.

  Mary Deare as Peter was downright sinister. She was neither boy nor girl, neither old nor young. When she was on stage everyone else faded into the shadows. There was a scene between her and Wendy in the ‘Home under the Ground’ which caused Stella to tremble.

  It was soppy enough to begin with. Babs was telling the Lost Boys a story of how mothers always waited for their children to return:

  ‘See, (pointing upward) there is the window standing open.’ So they flew to their loving parents and pen cannot describe the happy scene over which we draw a veil. (Her triumph is spoilt by a groan from Peter and she hurries to him) ‘Peter, what is it? Where is it?’ To which Mary Deare replied in a low voice,
‘It isn’t that kind of pain, and then cried out with terrible conviction – Wendy, you are wrong about mothers. I thought like you about the windows, so I stayed away for moons and moons and then I flew back, but the windows were barred, for my mother had forgotten me and another little boy was in my bed.

  Bunny noticed Stella’s distress and patted her on the shoulder. ‘Try not to think about it,’ he urged. He imagined she was still dwelling on the accident.

  She missed the rest of the rehearsal because Mary Deare kept sending her out on errands. First it was a little bit of yellow fish for her landlady’s cat – the poor thing was half starved – then it was a bulb for her bedside lamp, and lastly she remembered that a friend of hers had just opened in a play in Manchester and there just might be a review in the evening paper. Would she be a sweetie and run out and buy one?

  Stella browsed through the newspaper under the lamp outside the stage door. On the inside page she was astonished to see a photograph of herself dressed as Ptolemy, accompanied by a short paragraph describing her as a ‘touchingly pert example of a young and ambitious actress’. She tore the photograph out and shoved the rest of the newspaper into the dustbin further along the road.

  She hid the cutting in the cocktail cabinet in the prop-room – if she took it home Uncle Vernon might get his hands on it and embarrass her by reading it out to the commercial travellers. She was going to put it in the china vase, only one of the stage hands had left his lighter there for safe keeping, so she stuffed it between two books on the top shelf. She told Mary Deare the newspapers had sold out.

  Mary was sitting in No. 3 dressing-room when Stella called the Overture for the evening performance of Caesar and Cleopatra. The little bit of fish for the landlady’s cat was beginning to stink. It appeared Mary would give her eye-teeth for a cup of tea with two sugars.