The Wardrobe Mistress_A heart-wrenching wartime love story

by Natalie Meg Evans

  He wouldn’t or couldn’t bail, though I begged him to. Later, I realised that in my panic, I’d forgotten to press my ‘broadcast’ button. I could hear him but he couldn’t hear me. He was brave, packed to the brim with focussed rage. That’s good in a fighter pilot. What made that day different was that he’d gone on duty having had no sleep. Alistair, he – ’

  The next phrase was crossed out, replaced with:

  I had to get out of that marriage but throwing him out mid-tour was unforgiveable. I’ve only ever shared this story with Fern. I trusted her. Unwisely, it seems. Only I know the burden I carry or the other side of the story.

  V K

  Unforgiveable. How often people used that word to attract the pardon they were confident of receiving. ‘Darling, I forgot our lunch. Unforgiveable!’ He believed here that Vanessa had applied it literally. Unable to escape her actions, her confidence had been gnawed away. He picked up his telephone – it had fallen quiet – and asked to be put through to the Ledbury Terrace number.

  Fern answered after about thirty rings, the croak in her voice implying she’d been dragged from sleep yet again. He said, ‘I want you to tell me something in confidence.’

  ‘What’s in it for me?’

  ‘What could there possibly be? I’ve already conceded every-

  thing.’

  ‘There’s money. I ought to have a share of Bo’s fortune.’

  Knocked off track, he told her not to talk nonsense. Bo’s money was in a trust that was not written in his favour.

  ‘I know. His lawyer guards it.’ Fern sighed raggedly. ‘Father told me. But if it’s just sitting there, you must make a bid for it before it goes to the crown or the tax collector.’

  ‘It will go to Bo’s sisters, if nobody else comes forward to claim it. This isn’t why I called. Tell me about Vanessa’s husband. What kind of man was Leo Kingcourt?’

  ‘I never met him. Dashing and racy, I should imagine. Spitfire pilots were every girl’s dream, weren’t they? I know what he did to Vanessa, though.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  Fern did so, matter-of-factly, and he could find no response more intelligent than, ‘Shit.’ As he replaced the handset, he felt he finally had a window into Vanessa’s soul. Too much of a window. What could he say to her now? Something must be said. He was about to go find her when his phone rang. It was Terence Rolf, peeved that he’d been ringing all morning. Miss Abbott’s agent had called, complaining of the state of the path to the stage door. ‘Wrecking the heels of her shoes, old boy, and that is serious to Miss Abbott. Any chance you can speed up the outside repairs?’

  Alistair agreed to accelerate the work, which required more phone calls that amply digested his morning. Civilian life, he was discovering, was a balls-aching tapestry of minor frustrations. When he finally found a moment to call on Vanessa, she’d left to visit Penny Yorke. Right, I’ll pay a call on Miss Yorke myself, he thought. But Doyle stopped him as he left by the main doors: a gang of ‘funny-looking coves’ had just arrived with crowbars to re-lay cobbles in Caine Passage. Did Alistair know anything about it? By the time he reached the Great Portland Street premises, Vanessa had already left.

  On the 21st of November, the theatre began to hum early as the crew set up the first technical rehearsal. The flymen raised and lowered back-drops, practicing their cues. Lighting riggers went aloft, scripts in hand to set lamps and spots to opening positions. Peter Switt flitted between the prompt box and the winch that operated the curtains, timing to the second how long it took him to cover the five strides between the two. Tom Cottrill, supposedly the glue holding the performance together, stood in the wings like Moses with his stone tablets – or rather, his copy of The Book – clamped to his chest. He claimed to have seen Back Row Flo in the upper circle the previous evening, even though Miss Bovary had explained that it had been she sitting in the Gods, judging the quality of the orchestra who had rehearsed in situ for the first time.

  Terence Rolf knocked at the wardrobe room and in his courtly way, asked Vanessa to sit in the auditorium and be part of the audience. ‘Knowing they’re being watched gives cast and crew something to bounce against. My wife and the Commander have taken their seats already.’

  ‘Do you really need me?’ Vanessa glanced at the rails of shrouded dresses and suits that all needed to be checked, ironed and allocated. Since writing her letter to Alistair, she’d used her workload as an excuse for avoiding him.

  ‘Oh, do join the fun.’ Rolf’s eyes were on her throat, on the outline of something small and hard beneath her jumper. He lunged without warning, and fished out the ribbon, staring at the golden key. ‘Tell me why you wear this?’

  ‘It was a gift.’

  ‘From?’

  ‘Miss St Clair. As she gave it to me, she said it was rightfully mine. I’ve never understood.’

  ‘But she spoke?’

  ‘With difficulty. Answer a question for me, please, Mr Rolf. Why does your son Edwin wear my father’s cloak?’

  ‘Your father’s?’ Rolf’s waggish smile vanished. Giving Vanessa no time to jump back, he gripped the ribbon tightly. In a panic, she grasped his wrists to shake him off, accidentally loosening one of his cufflinks, which clinked to the floor. He released her suddenly and went to find it.

  By the time he’d retrieved it, his urbane smile was back. ‘Never hang things round your neck, Mrs Kingcourt. I knew of a girl who died getting her necklace caught in the door of a lift. Do come down and watch with us. This will be the first tech rehearsal you’ve ever seen and first times are always the best.’

  She slammed her door on him, but in the end, decided to do as he asked. For the first time at The Farren, she felt scared of being alone. Taking her seat beside Alistair, two rows in front of Mrs Rolf, Edwin and Miss Bovary, she toyed with revealing what had just occurred. Terence would deny it, of course. Or claim she’d somehow misunderstood him. Rolf took his seat just then, calling heartily, ‘This is Mrs Kingcourt’s first time, Commander, she was telling me a moment back. Oh, to be a theatre virgin again!’

  ‘Ignore him,’ Vanessa mumbled. ‘Who turned the heating on?’ She wriggled out of her coat.

  ‘I did. We can’t let the paying public freeze.’ Alistair leaned closer and whispered, ‘I read your letter. Should I burn it?’

  ‘Paste it to a lamp post on Shaftsbury Avenue.’

  He pinched her shoulder gently. ‘I deserve that. I was brutal to you the night you took me home. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted – ’

  ‘Don’t.’ She sensed the others straining to listen.

  The orchestra began tuning up, the snare drummer vamping noisily while the strings scraped. Cottrill, on stage, clasped his hands to his ears and bellowed ‘Stop!’ The orchestra faltered, then started up again.

  Alistair said in Vanessa’s ear, ‘Was the traumatic end to your marriage the reason you never claimed your widow’s pension?’

  An odd moment for such a question, an odd connection of subjects, but the darkness helped her answer. ‘I never felt I deserved it. Leo’s savings came to me too, once his bar-bill was paid. I used that money to buy the costume designs off Hugo. It was a relief to give it away.’ She paused to watch Cottrill jig in frustration at the orchestra’s off-notes. ‘I hope your stage manager makes it to the first night.’

  ‘My stage manager now he’s going doolally?’ Alistair grunted. ‘I thought I was doing a good thing, employing a man nobody else would. The idea was that he’d write his plays while also being paid. I sometimes think kindness is a form of delinquency.’

  Cottrill began pacing the stage, his gaze fixed on the top seating levels. Searching for Flo? Vanessa was struck by an idea. ‘Why not ask Father Mannion to come in and bless the upper circle?’

  Alistair chuckled. ‘Or I could ask Miss Bovary to hold another of her famous séances.’

  Vanessa couldn’t resist a glance behind. ‘She’s a spiritualist? So that’s what Hugo was driving at.’

  ‘She and
her sister are well known in those circles.’

  ‘Hugo said something bizarre to me, that Miss Bovary prefers the dead to the living.’

  Alistair nodded, the movement just discernible in the semi-dark. ‘She and Sylvia are convinced we have three ghosts. Flo, Bo and Elizabeth Farren herself. They conduct séances in dead of night trying to reach them. Terence joins in.’

  Behind the stage, pacing the crossover, Ronnie Gainsborough could be heard declaiming, ‘The steel butterflies, how they torment me.’

  From the wings, a male voice called mockingly, ‘A little stage-fright is a good thing, Ronnie. An excess is hilarious.’

  ‘They say you never get nerves, Carnford,’ Ronnie Gainsborough hit back disdainfully. ‘Sign of a complacent soul.’

  ‘I’d rather be infected with calm than with woodworm, dear boy.’

  ‘Ronnie, darling, ignore him,’ Clemency Abbott intervened, her voice disembodied balm.

  Alistair murmured, ‘Dress rehearsal tomorrow, Vanessa. Are you prepared?’

  ‘Ask me again tomorrow night.’

  ‘Is that an invitation to coffee? I’ll be better prepared this time. Is this play ever going to start?’

  It did, but not for half an hour. After calling for the stage curtains to be closed so that Peter Switt might practice opening them on cue, Cottrill walked smack into the drum-shaped table set for Lady Windermere’s opening scene. The blue glass bowl crashed on to the stage, and the table top broke in two, the top section seperating from the stem and rolling like a wagon wheel into the orchestra pit. The lead violinist almost skewered the viola player. Peter Switt marched from the wings, shouting importantly, ‘Take care! Broken glass on stage!’

  As Alistair left to check that Cottrill was unhurt, Terence Rolf commented gleefully to his companions, ‘Flo’s up to her tricks. Watch for a run of ill luck leading to an early closure.’

  Vanessa guessed she was meant to hear. She turned in her seat, saying in a clear voice, ‘We, the cast and crew, will make sure you eat your words, Mr Rolf.’

  The carpenter hastily repaired the table and the tech rehearsal finally began. The orchestra came in tightly and the curtain swished back like the sound of the sea. Lights rose on a wittily resourceful set. The first lines rang out confidently, the chemistry between Clemency Abbott and Ronnie Gainsborough swelling like volatile haze. Five minutes in, James Harnett made his entrance as Lady Windermere’s butler and Vanessa smiled. Harnett had perfected the senior servant’s puffed-out walk, half pigeon, half duck. He’d get a laugh on his first entrance.

  PARKER: The men want to know if they are to put the carpets on the terrace for tonight, my lady?

  LADY WINDERMERE: You don’t think it will rain, Lord Darlington, do you?

  LORD DARLINGTON: I won’t hear of its raining on your birthday! Bugger! Now what?

  The stage lights had gone off with a loud snap, prompting Ronnie Gainsborough to his un-Wildean language. A moment later, there came a crash and a howl of pain. ‘Man down,’ Gainsborough shouted in the darkness. ‘The carpenter put the sodding table back in the wrong position. Idiot! Lights and first aid, please. Harnett’s fallen. His breathing doesn’t sound too good, either.’

  Chapter 27

  The lights had gone out because the gang re-setting the cobbles in Caine Passage had put a pick-axe through a power cable. James Harnett was stretchered out by ambulance men and when news came that he’d suffered a broken thigh and was in a special ward due to shock, a jittery mood descended. A chain of ill-luck was forming. Flo’s doing?

  The tech rehearsal was abandoned, the cast asked to come back the following day.

  In a candle-lit green room, Tanith held forth. ‘Back Row Flo hexes anything to do with Oscar Wilde because the lover that jilted her made his name playing Lord Windermere. Think about it: when they did The Importance last time, Wilton Bovary died and some other actor, too. On the same night.’

  Vanessa, who had been walking past, was provoked to a savage response but Rosa raised a pacifying hand and gave a reprimand in her customary, measured way. ‘It’s loose talk like that which hexes a play, Tanith. Do you intend to wash your first big chance down the plug-hole?’

  Groping her way upstairs, Vanessa collected her bag and hat. She might as well go to Great Portland Street and round up the last of the costumes. Before leaving, she ran her torch beam along the costume rails. ‘Operation Windermere’ had produced fourteen gowns. All that was missing were of the minor characters’ ball dresses, and Mrs Erlynne’s Act Two dress, which had been sent back for alterations. With the dress rehearsal postponed to allow for another Parker to be engaged, she’d be able to give Penny Yorke an extra twenty-four hours.

  Penny would be pleased, but Vanessa wasn’t. Tomorrow was the sixth anniversary of Leo’s death and she’d been relying on frenetic activity to bundle her through. In Caine Passage, in a spitting wind, she saw Alistair briefing men in boiler suits. Come to repair the cable, with luck. Luck. One large injection, please. Alistair didn’t see her slip past, her collar pulled high.

  The Great Portland Street atelier smelled of hot grease from the whir of so many machines. Vanessa couldn’t help comparing today’s scene with the barren table tops of Hugo’s tenure. She greeted Penny, walking between a double row of energetically treadling women. Heads were bent low over work, fingers pushing seams along at maniac pace, braving the needle-blur. Lemon, ochre and ivory silk spilled over table edges, making Vanessa imagine a mass-production of scrambled egg.

  Penny hugged her, and cheered when she learned she had a day’s grace. ‘Our bobbins are on fire but bless you, darling. I prefer not to make my girls sew all night. I often had to, when I worked for Warner Brothers.’ Penny had spent the war years in New York costuming propaganda films. With strong, wide cheekbones and hair falling in graduated waves, she resembled her heroine, the actress Katharine Hepburn. She’d returned to London at the end of the war, after her war-reporter fiancé was killed on his way home from Europe. While her aunt Daphne designed and created from a sofa in their Curzon Street salon, Penny raced around the satellite shops and workrooms, energising the business. She had high ambitions. ‘Yorke of London, Paris and New York. Just watch me.’

  Vanessa had never seen Penny succumb to stress. If a task seemed overwhelming, she would interrogate it in her American accent until it yielded to logic. One of her regular sayings was, ‘Don’t react to troubles, respond to them.’

  I should have kept that in mind when Alistair told me about Primrose Duckworth, Vanessa admitted as she followed Penny from machinist to machinist, assessing the quality of each woman’s work. I reacted because I couldn’t believe he’d done it to protect me. A response would have been to throw my arms about him and kiss him half to death. Next time, next time.

  They went through to the back, where Mrs Erlynne’s ball gown was displayed on a papier-mâché dummy. Vanessa caught her breath, as she did each time she saw it. A miracle, its bustier bodice was secured with fine gilt chains that would be invisible to all but the front row audience. Mauve velvet, clingy as plum jam, it would elevate Irene Eddrich’s Nordic beauty to a different level. ‘When she stands under the follow-spot,’ Vanessa sighed, ‘the audience will gasp. If they’ve a pulse, they will. Gosh – ’ Terence Rolf’s attack and a lack of lunch had caught up with her. ‘Any chance of a cup of something?’

  Penny called her assistant and ordered English tea, good and strong. ‘You’re feeling the strain. Theatre is tough.’

  ‘It’s more than that.’ Vanessa described her recent visit to Brookwood, finding her own name on a gravestone.

  Penny looked satisfyingly shocked. ‘Weird. Do you imagine perhaps the grave was empty? It might have been a ruse, to pretend you were dead.’

  ‘Why would anybody need to pretend that? I’m not a

  Romanov princess.’ Vanessa showed Penny her golden key, describing how she’d come by it.

  ‘A gift from the old Wardrobe Mistress. Wow. And what does it unl
ock?’

  ‘I don’t know. And before you say “wardrobe”, I’ve already tried.’

  ‘How about a sewing box?’ Penny chuckled at Vanessa’s reaction to the throw-away remark then switched back to business. ‘I’ll have the mauve gown wrapped so you can take it with you. Shall we agree a time for my girls to deliver the last consignment tomorrow?’

  Two miles away in his Mayfair office, Terence Rolf was concluding a telephone call. He’d secured his first choice of actor to take over the role of Parker, though it had cost him, as he’d had to compensate a rival management. But it was worth it. His chosen man was renowned for being difficult, with a roster of human vices that were bound to aggravate his fellow actors. Terence Rolf badly wanted to punish Alistair Redenhall for inheriting The Farren, and wrecking Lady Windermere was his chosen method.

  As Rolf terminated his call, the threads linking Vanessa Kingcourt to her married captain, to family members known and unknown, grew tighter. A band of players was gathering to act a final scene on The Farren’s stage.