The Wardrobe Mistress_A heart-wrenching wartime love story

by Natalie Meg Evans

  ‘They want glamour. Fun. Colour.’ Miss Bovary beat her hand in time to each point. ‘And cucumber sandwiches do not make an appearance in Lady Windermere’s Fan.’ She asked Hugo to sit down, complaining that he made her giddy by towering over her. When he took a seat by Vanessa, Miss Bovary moved her chair so that she sat in front of the wall. There was something she didn’t want them to see. ‘Oscar Wilde never goes out of fashion,’ she said with finality.

  Terence Rolf nodded agreement. ‘Investors adore a well-trodden old favourite.’

  Hugo’s snort made everyone stare. ‘Sorry. Sorry, Mr Rolf. It’s a psychological condition, laughing inappropriately in small rooms.’ To Vanessa he whispered, ‘“Well-trodden old favourite”. Thought he was referring to himself.’

  ‘It has a huge cast.’ Alistair’s tone made it clear he was impatient to be out of this room. ‘Twenty characters, even after we cut non-speaking parts. The costume budget will be elephantine, as will the salary bill.’

  ‘Won’t matter if we play to full houses,’ Terence Rolf got in quickly. ‘Irene Eddrich has graciously agreed to take the part of Mrs Erlynne. Patrick Carnford and Ronnie Gainsborough are raring to go as Lord Windermere and Lord Darlington.’

  Mrs Rolf simpered. ‘The public adores them. Such red-blooded tension between them on stage.’

  ‘And off,’ Hugo said aside.

  ‘For the role of Lady Windermere, we’re hoping for Clemency Abbott. She’s under contract to a Canadian film company, but a little bird says she won’t sail.’ Rolf shook his head indulgently. ‘She’s dying to meet you, Commander.’

  ‘Clemency Abbott is a cow,’ said Hugo.

  ‘But so beautiful, one hardly minds. And one must always make allowances for talent.’ Terence Rolf’s smile acquired a dash of malice. ‘Aren’t allowances occasionally made for you, Hugo?’

  Alistair stood, drained his tea. ‘As I said, casting is your province, Terence. Choose whom you want, but it’s no to Edwin. We’ll meet again in a few days. Miss Bovary, any more comments?’

  Miss Bovary was tight-lipped. As they all gathered their things, Vanessa heard Alistair say, ‘Do you wish to add anything?’

  It took a few seconds’ silence to grasp that he meant her. ‘I – I don’t think so.’

  ‘Are you happy to work with Hugo, helping him meet his creative vision?’

  ‘Of course she can’t help him.’ Miss Bovary couldn’t resist one last thrust. ‘Costume-making is not an amateur pursuit.’

  ‘Would you let Mrs Kingcourt answer for herself?’

  Though she’d much rather make a swift exit, Vanessa understood the need to face Miss Bovary down. Otherwise, she’d be treading on tin-tacks for ever. She flashed a smile, bright as a rabbit’s tail. ‘I’m happy to work closely with Hugo.’ She’d probe her father’s life and at the same time, become a damn good Wardrobe Mistress. ‘And I want to make it clear that I won’t be sent to make tea at every meeting, Miss Bovary. Not until it’s my turn again.’

  Alistair nodded, satisfied.

  Miss Bovary took a notebook from her bag, and a pencil. ‘I might as well jot down your personal details while you’re here, Mrs Kingcourt. May I know your given names?’

  ‘Vanessa Elizabeth.’

  ‘Your date of birth?’

  ‘May 29th, 1920.’

  The pencil dropped from Miss Bovary’s fingers. Vanessa bent to pick it up and as she leaned forward, the gold key fell from her neckline. Returning the pencil to Miss Bovary, she saw Terence Rolf’s gaze fasten on her throat. He looked almost as shaken as his sister-in-law.

  They trooped out of the office, the Rolfs and Miss Bovary on their way to lunch in a restaurant nearby. Vanessa noticed that Miss Bovary locked her office door carefully.

  Suspecting Alistair would want to conduct a debrief on the morning’s events, Vanessa remained in the theatre and snacked on an apple. Wanting something to do, she begged a roll of sandpaper from the carpenter’s bay and spent her lunch-hour smoothing the nicks out of her cutting table. It would have to be planed to remove the worst of them, but that wouldn’t be beyond her. Her paternal grandfather had been Stanshurst’s estate carpenter and such things ran in the blood.

  A brisk knock had her wiping dust from her brow. ‘Come in.’

  It was Alistair. ‘Hugo asked if you could meet him at Anjeliko’s on Long Acre. It’s easy to find. Follow the smell of good coffee.’

  ‘I know it already.’ From outside the door came a muffled whine. Macduff. ‘Bring him in,’ Vanessa invited.

  ‘I’m not staying.’ Yet Alistair made no move to go. ‘Sorry about the green paint.’ He flicked a gaze over the walls. ‘It was the only light colour I could get in any quantity. Feel free to personalise. Family photos and such.’

  ‘We weren’t a family for photo albums and I have no wedding pictures. There wasn’t time.’

  ‘What year were you married?’

  ‘1940. October.’

  ‘In the thick of it.’

  She braced herself for follow-up questions, quickly preparing a bland answer or two. She had no treasured memories of her marriage, only deep hurt and a lingering sense of failure. But Alistair withdrew from the subject. He rested his hands on the table and in a mocking echo of Terence Rolf, glanced at her throat. She’d pushed Eva’s key deep inside her clothes and now waited for him to mention it. To distract him, she opened her handbag and removed the gloves he’d given her many months ago, laying them on the table. The tactic worked. Alistair pulled his eyes from her, saying, ‘You’ll have felt the cross-currents earlier.’

  ‘And you want to know my frank impressions?’ A nod gave her the go-ahead. ‘I didn’t care for Miss Bovary but I don’t suppose that bothers her. Her power lies in making others uncomfortable. And Mrs Rolf is her husband’s expanded shadow, though her son seems to be her chief concern. She’s blinded by partiality. Terence likes to charm and with plum acting roles in his gift, I’m sure he does so to great effect. He doesn’t know what to make of you, but he’ll chip away to get that part for Edwin and you can’t really refuse. A lot of actors avoided joining up. You can’t ban them all.’

  ‘I count ENSA as service.’ Alistair was referring to the Entertainments National Service Association, which had toured to entertain the troops. He picked up his gloves with a quiet fondness before pushing them into his jacket pocket. ‘What about Brennan, with whom, I believe, you are already in tight cahoots?’

  She couldn’t hold back a spurt of laughter. ‘“Tight cahoots” sounds like something Elizabethan gentlemen wore under their breeches. I’d say that Hugo wants to be left in peace to do the job he’s paid for.’

  ‘The last show Brennan worked on closed after four nights and he needs a success. He has a reputation for being good, but idle. Can you keep him in line?’

  ‘I’ll try. Where did he spend the war?’

  ‘Overseas missions – he can’t speak about it.’

  ‘Understood. Miss Bovary won’t be able to run him as she’d like.’ Nor will she run you, Vanessa added privately. At that moment, Macduff pushed the door open. He headed straight for Vanessa’s legs. She took hold of his collar. ‘Does this boy always howl at the Bovary clan?’

  ‘He’s confused. They come to the theatre, but his master doesn’t.’ Alistair reached down to stroke a silky ear, then lightly covered Vanessa’s hand with his. ‘Why, when you mentioned your birth date, did Miss Bovary look as though she’d seen her own ghost?’

  ‘I haven’t the foggiest idea.’

  Alistair’s gaze trapped her. ‘I think Miss Bovary fears something in you. She seems to know you.’

  ‘Perhaps we brushed shoulders at the gates of Brookwood Cemetery.’ If she confessed that she was here because of her father, the bold claims she’d made during her interview would ring false. Keeping Alistair’s good opinion mattered. Mattered ridiculously. She was rescued by her stomach which gave an intrusive gurgle. ‘Sorry. I haven’t had lunch. I’d better find Hugo.’
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br />   Hugo was tucking into a plateful of chicken by the time Vanessa arrived at Anjeliko’s, opposite the Old Calford Building. He waved down a moustached waiter and told Vanessa to be quick if she wanted the same. Discovering that the chicken was finished, she ordered percolator coffee and a slice of cheese and spinach tart instead.

  ‘Where does the proprietor come from?’ she whispered.

  ‘They’re Turkish here. Listen, you saw Miss Bovary beckon me over during the meeting?’

  ‘To give you a dressmaker’s business card. To demonstrate her authority.’

  ‘To stop me looking at the picture of a young Wilton Bovary with an even younger Johnny Quinnell.’

  ‘Together?’

  ‘I’ve no idea what play they were in, but they looked very deep into their roles. From the cut of their coats, I’d say the photo was taken sometime around 1910 or 11.’ Hugo shuddered. ‘That office is a shrine to a vanished past. I hate shrines.’

  Vanessa frowned, working out the timings. Johnny had let Stanshurst for London in 1926 but she knew from her mother that he’d spent time in London before the Great War, trying his luck as an actor before returning home to marry. Perhaps he’d worked for Wilton Bovary then too, crossing swords with a youthful Miss Bovary. She tried the idea out on Hugo. ‘She was an actress, wasn’t she? Perhaps she had a run-in with Johnny.’

  ‘Perhaps she was in love with him.’

  ‘Not she!’ Vanessa’s food arrived and she stared at it despondently. The tart was mostly pastry and the potato salad that came with it was crying out for some kind of dressing, but she was ravenous and ate it anyway. The coffee was divine, but her pleasure was overlaid by the thought of her dad’s empty file. Why was The Farren hell bent on erasing Johnny Quinnell?

  As the waiter cleared their plates, she leaned down to get her purse out of her handbag, and the cord around her neck slid out.

  ‘Why do you wear that?’

  She showed Hugo the key. ‘It unlocks something.’

  ‘Really? Never! Have you tried it on Miss Bovary’s chastity belt?’

  ‘Can you never be serious? Truth is, I don’t know what it unlocks.’

  ‘But you mean to find out?’ Hugo took her left hand in his. ‘No ring. Where’s Mr Kingcourt?’

  ‘I don’t know. I mean, his body . . .’ she took the breath she always needed at this point, ‘is in the English Channel. Leo was a fighter pilot.’

  Hugo’s humour vanished. ‘Now you’re trying to put it all behind you.’

  ‘New beginnings.’

  Hugo examined her key, turning it round several times.

  She asked him, ‘Did you ever meet Eva St Clair?’

  ‘Nobody could work at The Farren in the ’thirties and not know Eva. She and Johnny Quinnell were an on-and-off couple. When Johnny was off – and he often was – she kept Wilton Bovary company.’ He read her face. ‘That shocks you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Hugo shrugged. ‘Theatre’s a broad church.’ His eyes narrowed slyly. ‘What does our rugged Commander make of you being Quinnell’s daughter?’

  ‘Alistair doesn’t know.’

  Hugo tutted. ‘He’ll ferret it out.’ Signalling the waiter back to their table, he ordered ‘something to ward off the cold’. Then he continued, ‘Miss Bovary’s on to you. If you don’t satisfy her lust to know every corner of your soul, she’ll go above your head.’

  ‘To Alistair, you mean?’

  ‘No.’ Hugo pointed upward. ‘She’ll interrogate the higher planes. If there’s one woman who can’t leave the dead to their rest, it’s dear Barbara. The whole family is morbid. No –’ he corrected himself. ‘Bo wasn’t. He was the light in the tunnel.’

  The waiter set down two shots of white Sambuca. Hugo lifted his. ‘To Lady Windermere and a dazzling triumph.’

  ‘You drink mine, I have to go.’ Hugo’s ghoulish words disturbed her. There was something of the night about Miss Bovary. She paid for her lunch, saying, ‘Do we start work today?’

  ‘We don’t. I’ve already peaked. I have to conserve my life-force.’ Hugo downed Vanessa’s Sambuca.

  ‘Tomorrow, then,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ll come to your atelier. Great Portland Street, you said. Which number?’

  Hugo scrawled an address on the back of Mrs Yorke’s business card, which Miss Bovary had insisted he take. But his eye fastened on Vanessa’s golden key. ‘Eighteen carat, I’d say. Made to fit a musical instrument case, a jewellery box, something of that sort. Eva was Irish like myself, and we like a riddle.’ His voice changed, his accent deepening. ‘You’re after finding a hole for this key, but what is a hole? Tis nothing at all.’

  Chapter 12

  She found Hugo’s atelier locked the next morning and stood an hour on the pavement.

  Back at the theatre, she waited all day and finally went home, dispirited.

  She didn’t mean to quarrel with Joanne. She could have held her tongue when, as they drank cocoa in the kitchen before going to bed, Joanne interrupted her anxious soliloquy, saying, ‘Everyone’s splitting their sides over The Farren’s choice of Lady Windermere.’

  Vanessa had already gauged that Joanne was also in a rotten mood. One of the leads in High Jinx had left. ‘Pregnant without permission’. Joanne had been touted as her replacement, but in the end, the management had brought in a girl from outside. Realising she’d been hogging the conversation, Vanessa asked mildly, ‘Who is everyone?’

  ‘Everyone! “A woman wavers on the brink of adultery.” What a play for a cuckold! How will your lord-and-master sit through the first night, the world watching to see if he squirms? It’ll be toe-curling.’

  Cuckold? Joanne’s sneering tone triggered Vanessa’s protective instincts. ‘Alistair deserves respect, for what he is and what he’s been through. He’s strong. He cares. He’s . . .’ Vanessa groped for a word, ‘significant.’

  Joanne gave a tinkling laugh. ‘Oh, bless you, poppet, you’re overboard for him, aren’t you? Poor Nessie, you always do

  this!’

  ‘What do I do?’

  ‘A passably good-looking man only has to buy you a sherry and invite you to foxtrot and you’re his forever. Until he’s shot down – ’

  ‘Stop it, Joanne.’ Vanessa slugged down the rest of her cocoa, swilled her tin mug in the washing up bowl, and then dumped it upside down on the drainer. ‘Know what? I think you might be jealous.’

  Joanne’s eyes flashed and she swiped back with, ‘Jealous that you’re a skivvy in a tin-pot theatre? Come on!’

  The next morning, Vanessa was still seething while Joanne was brittle and unapologetic.

  Making toast only for herself, she said, ‘Vanessa, did I mention? A friend of mine from the show is looking for a room, so if you were still thinking of getting a place of your own, now might be a good time.’

  Vanessa took a room at the Old Calford Building. Not on the second floor where her father had lived and died, that would have been a nightmare in waiting. Her room was number two on the ground floor, and it had just become vacant. It boasted little refinement; its best feature was an industrial-size window that drank in light, and gave a straight-line view on to Anjeliko’s awnings.

  Heating was a two-bar electric fire with a pay-metre, a brutally ugly object that clicked with patient avarice. A sink, a compact kitchen, a table, two rickety chairs and an iron-framed bed completed the facilities. The bedframe creaked when she pressed down on it. A new mattress was a must.

  But . . . she’d lived in worse as a WAAF. The damp would dissipate once the room was warm. She might charm leftover paint from the scenery men and buy a rug. Best of all, she had beat the landlord down from eighteen shillings a week to twelve. As they sealed the deal with a gritty handshake, Vanessa congratulated herself at being an eight minutes’ walk from The Farren and finally living on her own. Nobody will tut-tut at me if I come in at two in the morning. Nobody will be watching my face for signs of worry. Nobody here knows of, or cares for,
/>   The Farren.

  She made no mention of her father while striking the deal. The landlord had made no mention of a tenant dying on the premises, either. This was a good decision, she assured herself. Being where her father had seen his last daybreak would keep him at the front of her mind.

  On Sunday the 22nd of September, she moved in. The following morning she had breakfast at Anjeliko’s, and to her relief and delight, Hugo joined her there. When she demanded, ‘Where have you been?’ he gave a warning growl.

  ‘You’re not my nanny, Vanessa. I don’t work to the rules, and scowling at me won’t change that.’ He waved. ‘Darling waiter, coffee please, before I die.’

  The coffee was, as usual, superb, though the omelettes they both ordered were like damp face flannel with the pallid bloom of powdered egg.

  When she pointed to her new lodgings, Hugo turned around in his chair to gaze across the road. ‘That place? Nessie, it isn’t decent.’

  ‘It’s snug.’

  She said the same thing the following Thursday when they finally got to meet in Hugo’s Great Portland Street atelier. ‘My room’s cosy, unlike this place.’

  The term atelier evoked an artist’s studio, romantic views over the rooftops. In reality, it was two rooms plus a basement, a sublet from a defunct firm of ‘gown and mantle-makers’, whatever they were. She said, ‘Get some paraffin heaters. In a month or so, we won’t be able to work, our fingers will be so cold. I will go on strike.’

  ‘March up and down outside carrying a placard? I’ll join you. I fancy a career in politics.’

  She growled, ‘Please let’s do some work. Alistair keeps asking me how things are going. He’s worried you’ll have nothing to show the director when he arrives. Let’s do some quick pencil sketches, break the ice.’

  ‘I have no pencils.’ Hugo’s previous studio had vanished in the conflagration of the East End, along with his portfolios. Vanessa found a stick of charcoal. Hugo took it and drew a cartoon of the Prime Minister, Clement Attlee.

  In exasperation, Vanessa went to the window and stared out at the slick pavement. It was late afternoon, a postcard London scene for those who liked rain. She’d walked here from the theatre – about two miles – protected by her WAAF greatcoat. She’d come expecting to discuss fabrics and patterns. Instead, they’d had a repeat of all their previous meetings. Plenty of talk but no actual work. This was what Alistair had been driving at when he’d said he wouldn’t employ Hugo.