The Foreigner

by P. G. Glynn

  “None,” he answered warily, tucking into fillet of beef. “This is tasty, I must say. It beats beer for nourishment and no mistake. I’m finding, too, that I’ve a liking for fine wines.” In illustration he sipped some full-bodied red Burgundy. “Yes, I could learn to like dining in style. You two had better watch that I don’t learn or else you might end up lumbered with me as your millstone.”

  Ignoring his self-pity Marie told him: “I had a reason for asking. You see, if it weren’t for your job at Simpson’s you could be immensely useful to Otto and me.”

  “The day I’m useful to anybody … ” John began, stopping himself from sounding pathetic and finishing “ … is a day for celebration. If I can help you in any way just tell me how and I’m your man.”

  “It won’t interfere with your work if … if we ask you to find us a place to live?” Marie smiled at Otto who, seated opposite, looked somewhat shocked. She had not discussed this with him for the simple reason that she had only just thought of it. While feeding Carla it had occurred to her that Uncle John had probably lost his job, which would at least partly explain his gauntness and general air of defeat. Well, if he had lost one he needed another … and she and Otto would need a permanent home once they returned from Monmouthshire. “The thing is that, what with one baby here and another on the way, I’m in no fit state to go house-hunting, besides which you know London better than Otto or I will ever know it. I doubt there’s an inch that you haven’t visited, so you’re in an ideal position to decide on the best area for us to live in … and on the best house for us. Added to all that is the fact there’s no-one’s judgment I’d sooner trust.”

  “Then you’re in a minority of one,” John told her, fighting both his disbelief and an almost overwhelming need to weep. “Let me get this straight. You are actually asking me to find you a home … and trusting me enough to leave the choice entirely to me?”

  Marie saw the tears threatening and said: “I trust you absolutely but warn you that if you blub I’ll be forced to blub too. It’s almost unbelievable to be back in London with you, hearing English instead of a hotchpotch of German and Czech, and feeling a sense of belonging again. Except for occasional visits to Monmouthshire and Bohemia, this is where I’m staying … and once you’ve found us a house you can come and live with us if you like. That’ll rid you of your trouble-and-strife and I’m sure Otto won’t mind.”

  A stupefied Otto told John: “I find it hard to keep up with Marie sometimes. But you’ll always be welcome in our home … wherever it might prove to be.”

  “Bless you both!” John said, his shoulders straightening perceptibly and his eyes now tear-free. “Between you, you’ve made a new man of me.”

  “That’s settled then,” said Marie. “Obviously you’ll be needing some funds … ” Seeing him stiffen, she said quickly: “We’re asking you to work for us and it’d be unrealistic to expect anyone – even you – to work for nothing. We all need to keep body and soul together and the wolf from our door, besides which you’ll be incurring expenses, what with taxi fares, meals out and so on, not to mention a deposit for securing our future home. Would fifty be enough to be going on with?”

  “Fifty quid?” John queried disbelievingly. “That’s my Marie, always thinking big! But a fiver will do me, buses being cheaper than taxis … and shoe-leather cheaper still. As for meals out – I reckon I can even tolerate eating with Gwen now that, thanks to you, I feel like a man again.”

  Wondering what he had felt like, if not a man, Marie said: “We want no economies on our account … and want our home to be very special. So treat yourself and us well, with the ten fivers Otto will supply … and live a little while you’re scouring dear old London Town!”

  +++++

  Nell had been invited to join them for lunch but had not turned up. Her absence had afforded a better opportunity to talk to Uncle John than perhaps her presence might have done, but now Marie had begun to worry. It was odd that Nell had not even sent a note of welcome, nor telephoned to say when she would be along. Having expected her to be here, come hell or high water, Marie felt let down by her friend and increasingly anxious lest something was wrong.

  It occurred to her suddenly that they could be rehearsing a new play at the Tavistock. If they were, Charles would be putting the Company through its paces all day and it would be impossible for Nell to get away. Yes, although it wouldn’t explain why she hadn’t rung or written, the chances were that she was in rehearsal … just a mile or two from Claridge’s, as the crow flew!

  So instead of waiting for Nell to come here, Marie could go to her. The prospect set her trembling, for as well as seeing Nell she’d be seeing Charles again. Already she was in the same city, breathing the air that he breathed. It would take so little to be with him. One short taxi journey and she could be in the haven of his embrace …

  The temptation was too great. Nobody could be expected to resist need such as this. It was overwhelming. She must heed it. She had no choice but to run to him.

  “Carla isn’t crying, is she?” asked Otto as Marie suddenly sprang to her feet. Luncheon over, they were now seated in the exquisitely appointed salon, where vases of vivid autumn flowers enhanced every available surface. A large bowl of these faced Marie from the ornate Directoire table on which they were positioned. “If she is, I can’t hear her.”

  “Nor can I,” John said, listening intently.

  Looking from the flowers to the men with some difficulty, Marie told them: “I’ll check that she’s still asleep before I leave … and I shan’t be gone long. I’m off to find Nell. It isn’t like her not to be here and I’m growing … concerned about her.”

  “She’ll have her reasons,” said Otto, noting Marie’s odd manner and heightened colour. “It’s surely simpler to wait for her to do the finding, bearing in mind that she knows where we are whereas she could be absolutely anywhere. Or were you intending to start your search at the Tavistock Theatre?”

  “That seems as good a place as any,” she shrugged, knowing she was fooling no-one, “and I can be there in a jiffy, so I’ll be back before any of you three have had time to miss me.”

  “What are John and I to do,” asked Otto evenly, “if Carla wakes and wants you?”

  “Just tell her that her Mama will be hurrying back to her and then keep her amused till I am back. I’m not chained to her, Otto, nor to you … and simply have to go.”

  “Go then,” he said, “but remember whom you’re married to.”

  +++++

  As Herbert summoned a taxi for her, Marie rather wished she could forget she was married. She wished she were free to follow her heart and be with Charles in the way she was surely meant to be with him. She wished she did not feel such discomfiture at the memory of Otto’s and Uncle John’s perplexed, questioning expressions. She was perfectly justified in setting off to find her friend. There was no need for them to look at her as if she were about to commit adultery.

  “Marie!”

  Stepping into the taxi Marie heard her name called and, turning, saw … “Nell! At last!” Then they were clasped in each other’s arms and Marie was asking: “How are you … and where were you? We were expecting you to have lunch with us.”

  “Yes.” Nell bit her lip. “I was sorry to miss it, but … ” Her worried expression changed and suddenly there was a smile on her face. “Honestly, trust you to be out here when I expected you to be in there! You know how to take a person by surprise all right. But then, you always did! Oh, it’s so good to see you again! Are you going somewhere?”

  “I was heading off to the Tavistock, thinking you’d be there. Now that you’re here, I’m going nowhere except inside to talk to you forever. On second thoughts,” Marie said, recalling Nell’s frown of earlier, “let’s go for a walk first. We can talk better without the men and Carla listening in.”

  “How many men are there?” Nell looked startled.

  Marie answered with a laugh: “Just Otto and Uncle John. Gosh, can
you believe we haven’t seen each other for a whole year? We’ve plenty of catching up to do, haven’t we?”

  “Yes, plenty,” Nell agreed as, leaving Herbert to deal with the bewildered cabbie, they set off, arms linked, in the direction of Grosvenor Square.

  Knowing from her friend’s demeanour there was something wrong and reluctant initially to know what the ‘something’ was, Marie answered Nell’s questions about Carla and about the baby that was on its way and about her life with Otto in Bohemia, before finally asking: “How are things … at the theatre?”

  “Oh dear!” Nell looked up at her forlornly. “I was hoping, with you only just back, to avoid having to answer that. They … they aren’t grand.”

  Marie shivered involuntarily. Standing stock still she said: “Let’s get this over with, Nell. Tell me the worst, starting with Charles. How is he?”

  “He’s … not the man he was. He was never the same, Marie, after you left. I reckon his heart went with you to Czechoslovakia. As for Dolly, she … she hit the bottle and never stopped. Whether she set out deliberately to destroy him or not … well, who can tell what went on in her head? Whatever, audiences soon began dropping off and, what with that and then the new Entertainments Tax on top … ”

  “When?” Marie said. “When did Charles lose the Tavistock?”

  “Last week. He closed it when it came to the end of its lease.”

  Nell’s words hung so heavily on her that Marie found it hard to breathe. “So I’m a week too late to see him.”

  “You are, dear, which is a blessing, with him being a proud man and everything. I mean, with his theatre gone … well, he was the Tavistock, wasn’t he?”

  32

  Lucy had been reading about Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s Academy but hadn’t told Mam or Alice that she wanted to be an actress. They thought she was fortunate to be starting an apprenticeship next year with Miss James, the dressmaker, and would be horrified to hear that she had ideas of following in Marie’s footsteps.

  At the very mention of London Mam’s face changed and she went on and on about white slave traffic and underground trains. According to her, if a girl walked unchaperoned in a London street she would disappear and never be heard of again, while the trains that ran in tunnels under the ground had doors that opened and closed automatically, so that one had to jump on and off quickly to avoid being squeezed to death. But Marie had neither ended up in a sheik’s harem nor come to grief through jumping too slowly, so perhaps the city wasn’t as wicked or as dangerous as Mam made it out to be.

  It was thrilling to think that Lucy would be seeing Marie tomorrow … and actually talking to her instead of having to rely on letters. Marie wrote marvellous letters from Otto’s home in Czechoslovakia, describing everything so well that Lucy could picture the castle almost as if she’d been there, but speaking was still better than reading. If she could talk to Marie she could also ask questions … and enlist her help in convincing Mam there was nothing wrong in wanting to be an actress.

  “Haven’t you finished rolling that pastry yet? It doesn’t take all day to make pastry –unless your name’s Lucy.”

  As Mam bustled disapprovingly into the kitchen Lucy protested: “I haven’t taken all day. I only started after making up Marie’s and Otto’s bed.”

  “And you took too long on that job, as well. Speed up, do, or we’ll never be ready for them. I doubt your sister has any idea just how much work, not to mention expense, is involved in preparing for her and her family.”

  “But you don’t mind, do you, Mam?” Lucy asked worriedly, pushing a strand of hair back from her forehead with a floury hand. “As it’s for Marie?”

  “Not as long as she appreciates that we aren’t her skivvies, here to wait on her hand and foot like she’s used to in that castle of Otto’s. Why she didn’t stay there I really don’t know. With a baby and another on the way it seems potty to me to leave all that luxury on the Continent and travel to Wales, but then Marie was never content to stay long in one place. Speaking of babies, if anyone asks how old Carla is, be vague.”

  “Why, Mam?”

  “Because I say so. It’s too bad of Marie not to have considered this complication when she took it into her head to come home for the birth of her next baby. She doesn’t think of others, though, and never did. Just mind that you don’t grow up to be selfish like she is.”

  Useless telling Mam that Marie wasn’t selfish. That would bring a ticking off for impertinence and wouldn’t influence Mam’s opinion. So Lucy simply said: “As Carla’s aunt I’ll look silly in the village if I pretend not to remember her age ... and since everyone knows when her birthday is, anyway.”

  “They don’t know.” Janet’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “How could they?”

  “I told them. You never said … ”

  “I didn’t think it needed saying, not with your sister so far away.” Janet had waited a month before mentioning locally that Marie had made her into a grandmother … and then had said that the baby was premature. Alice had unquestioningly gone along with this, but Janet should obviously have cautioned Lucy more strongly about blabbing in the village. The trouble was that she was too young yet to understand such things and Janet didn’t wish to stir her curiosity. Oh, the trials of bringing up daughters and keeping them pure! Oh, the horror of discovering that the whole of Gilchrist probably knew Marie’s purity had been in question by the time of her wedding and that villagers must have been casting aspersions on the Jenkinses! Come to think of it, Janet did seem to recall some odd asides and sniggers. “You really should have more sense, at your age, than to tell people things that don’t concern them.”

  “I was proud of becoming an aunt,” Lucy said.

  “I’ve told you till I’m tired of the telling that pride goes before a fall. Marie was too proud by half, which was how she came to … ”

  “ … marry Otto and go to live in a castle?” Lucy asked.

  “Better to be virtuous than rich,” Janet rasped. “Remember that, my girl, whatever else you might forget and there might be some hope for you yet.”

  +++++

  Marie had forgotten the extent of Mam’s small-mindedness. Odd that she could forget, given that she had grown up with it. Odd too how over the past year she could have been periodically homesick for Beulah, given that Mam was Beulah much as Charles had been the Tavistock.

  It had been impossible to be in London knowing that Charles’s theatre was gone. London and the Tavistock went together like bread and butter. There was no thinking of one without the other. As for the fact that he had sacrificed her for the sake of his theatre and ended up losing everything – this thought didn’t bear the thinking either. What was he doing … where was he … now that he had disbanded his Dickensian Company?

  Such questions preoccupied Marie to an extent that helped her cope with Beulah’s narrow confines and Mam’s petty complaints. Many of these went over her head as she struggled to come to terms with all that had changed. Even so, she frequently felt like screaming at Mam’s insensitivity with Lucy and at her limited vision. Mam’s world began in Abergavenny and ended in Brynmawr but consisted chiefly of Gilchrist. Marie wanted to shock her mother into seeing that it extended considerably further than this and had succeeded in shocking her quite a bit.

  With Janet holding forth about hardship as if personally afflicted by it, Marie had related a story learned from Charles regarding Ellen Terry’s cook who, when the air raids were on, had emerged from the kitchen in a quivery state to ask her mistress: ‘If they come here, ma’am, will they cut me breasties off?’ While Mam was still recovering from the mention of breasts at her breakfast table, Marie had regaled the family with tales of the suffering in post-war Vienna. Omitting mention of Fritz Meyer’s unpleasant character, she had told of his having to beg because he and his family had lost everything in the war, and she had described some of the other beggars, telling of their limbless or faceless states. And Janet had merely commented that it
was their own fault for being foreign - adding that Marie should know better than to upset her sisters with ‘such coarse talk’. Mam was a bigot. Until now Marie had not realised the degree of her bigotry. What was Lucy saying, though, about Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s Academy?

  Otto, Marie and Lucy were pushing Carla in a borrowed pram along the canal bank at the back of Beulah and suddenly talk was turning to the possibility of another Jenkins girl going off to London and becoming an actress. Marie asked her sister: “Did I hear you correctly? Are you really set on following in my footsteps?”

  “Yes, except … ” It had taken all Lucy’s courage to broach the subject and, now that it was broached, she hoped Marie would not think her presumptuous. “I know you didn’t, but I’d like to study for the stage. I doubt I’d have enough talent just to … to stand up and act.”

  “It wasn’t quite like that,” Marie smiled. “My stock company in Swansea gave me a good grounding in the rudiments of acting, after which I felt equipped to spread my wings. How long have you been thinking of heading for London instead of for an apprenticeship?”

  “Ever since I first read about the Royal Academy,” Lucy said eagerly. “The thought of dressmaking just bores me. Of course Mam will never agree … ”

  “If you’re serious about wanting to act, you’ll stand up to Mam.”

  “Will you help me?”

  “Of course I shall! And if you smile nicely at Otto he might even agree to pay your fees.”

  “Fees?” echoed Lucy.

  “Such studies will hardly be free. They might prove to be quite expensive, actually.”

  Lucy’s face fell. “Oh dear, there’s a pity! I didn’t think … ”

  “Don’t worry,” Marie interrupted. “Money need never be a worry, not when you’ve a brother-in-law who thinks the stuff grows on trees. Isn’t that so, Otto?”