The Wardrobe Mistress_A heart-wrenching wartime love story

by Natalie Meg Evans

  The glass-panelled entrance was shuttered and a hand-written notice said, ‘All enquiries to stage door.’ An arrow directed her around the side, into a narrow walkway called Caine Passage. Recognition flickered. Brick walls and old gas lamps. She’d walked this way after watching Sleeping Beauty. Dad had bought her a choc-ice. And later, he and Eva had inked her fingers. Funny, how some details stay, like poker burns in a carpet.

  Scaffolding marred this side, while from the roof came a repetitive hammering. Repairs must be underway. The stage door was unlocked and she went straight in. The first thing she saw was a leather armchair backed into a niche, suggesting a doorkeeper was employed, though there was no sign of him. By instinct, she turned left, the wooden soles of her sandals scuffling on the concrete floor. Doors either side of the corridor were labelled ‘Dressing Room’ and one boasted a dog-eared bronze star. Another had a gold sign saying, ‘Green Room’. She was heading towards the back of the theatre, but the corridor ended in a locked door where a notice proclaimed, ‘Crew and performers only beyond this point.’

  She knew she could access the auditorium from here because she’d done it with her dad twenty years ago. But what if she barged in on a rehearsal? She’d try the next level up, she decided. A pointing hand etched on the stair wall advised ‘To Chorus Dressing Rooms, Props, Understudies’ Room and Wardrobe’. The stairs were painted flame-retardant silver, which meshed with her memory. She’d locked her hand in her dad’s because the rises had been too steep for her.

  The corridor above was identical to the one below, except that this one ran unhindered to the end of the building. As she passed the wardrobe room, she trailed her fingers against the door mouldings. Time to try her key? No – she was now two minutes late. At the end of the corridor she found a lift and a further staircase. Both would take her to ground level behind the stage, but the lift was little more than a bird-cage, wide enough for two at a squash. She didn’t fancy it.

  She went down stairs that were carpeted in canvas to muffle footfall. Was that a dog barking somewhere? She was now in the backstage realms, gazing up between walls of black-painted brick. Eighty or ninety feet above, the stage-house roof disappeared in shadows. Ethers of paint, fish glue and wood resin set her sneezing and she trod carefully over trailing wires. It would be easy to go flying in her new sandals. Or bump into one of the stage flats, or fall over the sawhorse protruding from a carpenter’s bay. She moved towards the sound of male voices.

  They came from the stage. Double doors took her into a walkway that must allow the actors to get from one side of the stage to the other. A backdrop of scrim fabric was all that separated her from the stage itself where bright lights glared. She heard a man ask, ‘Can you see what you’re doing?’

  She pushed through the scrim and found herself on a compact stage. In front of her was a proscenium arch where curtain linings shone unearthly white under an arc light beam. Pinching her eyes against the dazzle, she walked towards a male silhouette. Cleared her throat. ‘Good morning. I’m looking for the Company Manager.’

  A voice, impatient, came back, ‘We’re not calling yet. Not even the secondaries.’

  That was as clear as Mandarin Chinese. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘We’re not casting yet. And when we do –’ the voice climbed in exasperation, ‘we’ll use an agency. I’m sure you’re very talented, dear, but you’re wasting your time. And ours.’

  She walked towards the man, her wedge heels clumping. Every sound was amplified because the stage was a box within a box. Joanne had described The Farren as ‘intimate’, but to Vanessa, it felt as functional as an engine shed with its darkly varnished boards and layers of scrim defining the wings. She looked down at her yellow sleeves. The lights had turned them phosphorescent. ‘I have an appointment with Mr Macduff.’

  The man continued staring upwards into the fly tower. Finally, he swung round. He had reddish hair, savagely cropped, and was a few years older than her. A sucked-in belly suggested he hadn’t seen a square meal in a while. Taking in her outfit, the hat, the black-leaded eyebrows and crimson lips, he pasted her with loathing. ‘I said, buzz off. We’re busy.’

  ‘No, you aren’t.’ If she let herself be scared, she’d never come back. ‘I haven’t seen you do anything yet.’

  While the man gawped at her, Vanessa peered out into the auditorium, at raked seats draped in ghostly dust covers. They dwindled into blackness after the first ten rows but in the middle section, next to the aisle, was where she’d sat with her dad. ‘I’m here for the wardrobe post. My name’s Kingcourt. So – the Company Manager?’

  From above the proscenium arch came a sound like somebody cleaning a blackboard with wire wool and she cringed. The red-headed man went stage front, calling, ‘Ready for me to let it down?’

  A voice drifted down from the dark zones; ‘Let me get my hands clear of the cable.’

  A long ladder was propped in the corner and she made out a figure balanced two or three rungs down from the top, stretching forward into the arc light beam. She heard, ‘The line-shaft drum has seized. Moisture’s got in. All right, Cottrill, lower away.’

  This time, the hideous rasp had Vanessa covering her ears. The ropes and pulleys of the fly tower put her in mind of a sailing ship, while its lighting rigs stared down at her like frog eyes. Thirty feet up, a steel catwalk spanned the empty air. A hole in the roof showed a flash of blue sky. Dust trickled down through the arc light beam to join a circle of debris on the stage. She could hear men high above, bashing with hammers. She took her hands from her ears. Somewhere, the dog still barked. From up the ladder came, ‘She’s stuck! Switch off, Cottrill.’

  Fruity opinions floated down, followed by, ‘I hope it just needs greasing. I could use my old engine-room chief right now.’ Then, ‘Sod it.’ A rag flopped on to the floor. ‘Chuck that back up, would you?’

  Unthinking, Vanessa beat red-headed Cottrill to it. She made a ball of the rag and hurled it upwards.

  An hand shot out. ‘Thanks. Start it up again.’

  Once more, the mechanism protested and Cottrill killed the electricity. ‘Stuck fast, sir. I’ll fetch another ladder so we can attack it from both sides.’ As he strode by, Cottrill hissed, ‘Make yourself scarce, dearie. Women on stage before rehearsals are bad luck.’

  Vanessa subdued the urge to pursue Cottrill and whack him. Nobody had called her ‘Dearie’ when she’d been wearing uniform and kept to her post during a devastating air raid. She yelled into the air, ‘Can somebody please take me to the Company Manager’s office – or shall I ask the dog?’

  Coming down the ladder, favouring his left hand because he’d caught his right on the sharp edge of the pulley drum, Alistair Redenhall wondered if he’d just heard Tom Cottrill giving an unscripted reading of one of his plays-in-progress, battling out male and female parts. Cottrill’s ambition was to be a playwright, but his work was too raw for The Farren. For now, he was better employed as Stage Manager. Alistair called out, ‘The first job for the fly men will be to strip down the safety rig. That curtain should float up and down. Tom, are you hearing me?’

  Balanced on his ladder, Alistair saw somebody who definitely wasn’t Cottrill. She was staring at him, her jacket a searing, chrome yellow in the arc lights. She wore a golden halo on one side of her head which stirred a memory. Malta, a walk above Spinola Bay on a summer evening. ‘Fern? Is that you?’

  She stepped forward and he saw that she was nothing like his wife. Lots of brown curls. Lipstick, very red. Short. He climbed down and walked towards her, wiping his hands on his trousers. ‘Who are you?’ he asked, squinting into the light. He expected her to retreat at the same pace. She didn’t and he bumped into her.

  For a precious moment, he’d thought his wife had come to make peace and in the clawing disappointment, anger got a toe-hold. ‘Did I hear Mr Cottrill ask what you were doing here?’ He waited for her to wilt.

  ‘Of course you heard him. He was impersonating an offended foghorn.’
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  ‘Oh! It’s you, Mrs Kingcourt. I ought to have realised.’ Alistair turned the arc light around, cancelling its glare. ‘You’ve changed your hair.’

  ‘It is allowed.’

  Staring down at her, he reacquainted himself with eyes that could widen and soften or flash with irritation. The wrong eyes, because they were not Fern’s. Though she sounded composed, he saw that his appearance disorientated her. Well, she did the same to him. At Stanshurst, he’d assumed she must be a closet actress. He’d continued to think so, even after she’d written in requesting an interview for the wardrobe post. He’d felt baffled, then suspicious. And, he had to admit, intrigued. ‘It’s your interview this morning, isn’t it? Sorry. Things have run away with me.’

  ‘How fortunate one of us remembered. Is Mr Macduff going to interview me on stage?’

  He considered telling her that there would be no interview, that this situation was a cockup. He’d intended to advertise for a Props Master, and had dictated the wording to someone on the classifieds desk at The Stage. When the ad appeared, it said ‘Wardrobe Master’. His mistake or theirs, he wasn’t sure. Strange things happen when you’re tired, and he hadn’t been sleeping well.

  He now had a dozen hopeful men to interview – and Mrs Kingcourt. She was beginning to feel like the spider that keeps reappearing in the bath; every time you put it out of the window, it creeps back in. Although to be fair, nobody had forced him to invite her in. ‘Look, this is all a bit of a mistake. Come to my office and I’ll write you a cheque to cover your expenses.’

  ‘To cover your embarrassment, you mean? Like the fig-leaf that covers the nudity of David in the V&A?’

  His experience of young women was that they talked to a fairly predictable script. Vanessa Kingcourt steam-rolled that convention. She stirred something dangerous in him that he could not afford to give way to. ‘We’re looking for a Wardrobe Master with frontline war service. A man. I’m sure you have many great qualities, but there are a couple you entirely lack.’

  He presented his most freezing demeanour and waited for her to make her habitual apology and shuffle off.

  She instead retorted, ‘I’m Leading Aircraftwoman Kingcourt and you need to know that last night, I slept in your bed.’

  He’d thought the capacity for his jaw to drop had been erased by war, horror and a torpedo slicing into the bowels of the Sundew. Hauling his features together, he said curtly, ‘You’d better explain that remark.’

  What had she meant to say? Alistair was dressed like a naval rating in belted blue trousers and a serge blouse the same colour. The shirt was cut into a V at the front, plunging down to where dark chest hair began. The simple rig made sense for going up ladders, but how, Vanessa asked herself, did you deal with a Commander dressed as a deck-hand? Or an angry man who allegedly mistreats his wife, but from whom you want a job?

  There was no job, she reminded herself.

  ‘Meant to say what?’ Alistair looked on the point of exploding. Two weeks on, the marks of Fern’s fingernails had healed to calamine pink. It reminded her of Fern’s scornful appraisal, ‘the wounded hero.’

  She ordered her thoughts. ‘Last night I stayed at Ledbury Terrace, and I realised how deeply I’ve missed Fern. We were as close as sisters once, and she was with me at my darkest hour. I’m telling you so you know who and what I am. A bona fide friend of your wife’s, not an imposter or a hanger-on.’

  ‘What did my wife say when you told her about this interview?’

  ‘Um, that I was mad, though she conceded you’d be unlikely to bother with me. Oh, and last night, we drank wine from your cellar. I wobbled upstairs, actually.’

  ‘I hope my bed was comfortable.’

  As a cloud. ‘This isn’t a conspiracy, Commander Redenhall. My being here, I mean. I want the wardrobe job and I happen to know your wife.’

  ‘Well enough to borrow hats. I bought that one for her in Malta.’

  Oh, Fern. ‘I – I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have worn it if I had.’

  ‘I expect she was making a point. You must ask her –’ He looked up. Dust peppered his shoulder. He brushed it off. ‘We’ve already decided, haven’t we, that our continuous meetings are no coincidence? But what do you reckon to “fate”?’

  ‘Isn’t fate just coincidence with strings attached?’ She felt a dry tickle against her exposed ear. Dust was falling more thickly. ‘Perhaps we should move.’

  Alistair led her to the front of the stage. A moment later, the shriek of splitting metal burst above them and without knowing why, she was flying backwards. She hit the stage as a canon-fire crash shook the building. Afterwards, came silence reeking of engine grease and rust. Fern’s hat flopped over one eye and her nose was buried in Alistair’s chest. She felt his ragged breathing and the roughness of body hair against her cheek, the warmth of his skin. It sent a needling tide through her.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ he asked.

  ‘I walloped my elbow.’ Her lips grazed his skin. ‘What the hell was that?’

  ‘The Iron. Iron safety curtain. By law, it has to be capable of being lowered within a few seconds of a fire starting, but it’s rusted. Rain got in this summer after part of the roof caved in. It just proved it can move fast when it wants to.’

  ‘As did you.’

  ‘Is anybody hurt?’ Cottrill called from the rear of the stage. Seeing them locked together on the ground, he swore pithily. ‘I thought the building had caved in. You could have been crushed!’

  ‘At least then there’d have been one less annoying woman in the world,’ Vanessa answered. ‘If I hadn’t seen you leave, I might have imagined you’d deliberated dropped it, Mr Cottrill.’

  ‘Don’t be a bloody ignoramus!’

  ‘Why not? I’m female, aren’t I?’ She started laughing and couldn’t seem to stop. She laughed against Alistair’s breast bone and through her convulsions said, ‘I’m not sure this is the moment to say it, but I intend to have the Wardrobe Master’s job.’

  ‘Then you’d better come to my office and persuade me.’ Alistair helped her up and they stood close as the shock of their near miss drained out of them. Tom Cottrill looked on sourly.

  Alistair’s office lay on the opposite side of the theatre to the wardrobe room. It resembled a club lounge with its brown furniture, brass lamp stands and deep carpet. It even had a fireplace, though this was closed off with a screen. The jarring note was the modern portrait hanging on the wall behind the desk.

  ‘My late godfather,’ Alistair told her.

  Vanessa was curious to see the face of her dad’s employer. For some reason, she’d imagined Wilton Bovary as a fleshy bon viveur, fat and rosy. Perhaps with a monocle. The reality was a narrow-shouldered man, long faced, with eyes that goggled behind metal glasses. The face of a left-wing writer, not of a theatrical entrepreneur and actor. The painter’s brush style was vigorous. This was an impression of the man.

  ‘It’s a shame the artist didn’t capture Bo’s humour.’ Alistair seemed to read her disappointment. ‘His smile made his face. He enjoyed all the vices; drink, tobacco, affairs. Oh, would you like a drink? You’re not in shock, are you?’

  ‘Thank you, I’m fine.’ Taking a seat on the interviewee’s side of the desk, Vanessa removed her jacket and unpinned her hat, which was definitely in shock. It would need the attentions of a milliner.

  Alistair slipped into the chair behind the desk, and leaned his weight on his forearms. Papers were stacked in wire trays, crowding out a blotter and a desk diary. ‘Excuse my casual appearance. You’ll have gathered we’re still at the fitting-out stage. Why do you consider yourself qualified to take on wardrobe?’

  Gosh, he didn’t hang around. ‘Aren’t I supposed to be explaining this to Mr Macduff?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll fetch him.’

  By leaving the room, Alistair allowed her a moment to rehearse her qualifications. Her art studies. Her WAAF responsibilities, naturally. Her innate love of colour . . . perhaps she should p
ut her hat and jacket back on? She heard him shouting in the corridor, ‘Macduff? Where are you? Come on, old man. Shift yourself.’

  Was that how he’d ordered his ship’s crew around? ‘Commands from the bridge,’ Fern had said, and Vanessa prepared herself for an aged lackey to hobble in at his heels. She wasn’t expecting Alistair to return with a large, brown dog, which made a direct line for her, mouth wide and panting.

  She got up fast. Thank goodness I’m not wearing nylons. It was only as the dog cannoned into her, using her knees as a runaway train uses a buffer, that she saw he had only one leg at the front. Where the left one should be was a lump like a tennis ball, healed over with scar tissue. ‘What happened to you?’ She stroked his muscular shoulder. ‘But you’re a lovely boy.’

  The dog’s tongue sought the palm of her hand. He looked like a Labrador, big-headed, with silky ears and dark, trusting eyes, only she’d never seen a brown-coated one before. Lord Stanshurst had kept a few, blacks or light golden. ‘Is he a war casualty?’

  ‘He was hit by a car in the first week of the blackout. He slipped his leash to chase a cat.’

  Alistair was watching her closely and she stopped stroking. Some people hated their dogs being petted, believing it spoiled them. She sat down and the dog sat too, its head seemingly glued to her leg. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Macduff. Chief Macduff of Banchory, to give him his full title.’ Alistair returned to his seat, telling Macduff to stop bothering Mrs Kingcourt. The dog settled under the desk, resting his nose on his single front paw. ‘He was hoping you might have a cream cracker in your pocket.’

  ‘No such luck. Your dog?’

  ‘He is now.’ Alistair indicated Wilton Bovary’s portrait. ‘Nobody wanted him when Bo died – three-legged dogs aren’t on many people’s wish-list – and he ended up dependant on the goodwill of the janitor. That’s the first part of the story. The more complex part is that Mr Bovary has two sisters. Had. Do you say “has” or “had” when the man is dead but the sisters very much aren’t?’