The Wardrobe Mistress_A heart-wrenching wartime love story

by Natalie Meg Evans

  Billy Chalker trudged in each day. ‘General Winter won’t see me off.’ Off-stage, he dispensed hot toddies wearing a flowered house-coat and yellow ringlets. One time, late for his cue, he dashed on without taking them off and won a roar of applause. He and Vanessa avoided each other. Knowing that she hadn’t caused Johnny Quinnell to drink himself to death freed her though she was no less alarmed by the true cause. Johnny would have been miffed at her lack of appearance. Through the years, he’d acted the role of a cheerful dad. While all along, he’d had a plan and the plan involved money. Bo’s money.

  As the first week of February limped by, The Farren became famous for its ‘We Won’t Close’ spirit, though they cut the matinees, as it took all day to heat the auditorium and defrost the water pipes in the cloakrooms. The seventh of February was a Friday.

  Vanessa hung costumes in dressing rooms, then checked the props because the Props Master had given up the struggle to get in. Ironing had become a favourite pastime because it stopped her fingers freezing – when there was electricity to do it by. She cleaned makeup marks off with Thawpit, and brushed and mended, keeping moving.

  As she walked by the green room an hour before curtain-up, Patrick Carnford sang out, ‘“Fresh lavender, buy my fresh lavender!”’ in the geriatric squawk of a street seller.

  Ten or so actors were inside, drinking tea and smoking. She told Patrick, ‘I rub lavender oil in your seams, as I can’t wash anything.’ All she got from her tap was a dribble of water. She couldn’t dry anything either. ‘Better to stink of lavender than other odours.’

  ‘Take tea with us, dear.’ Noreen Ruskin made room for her on a banquette. The revelation that Vanessa was Wilton Bovary’s daughter had swept through the theatre like Yellow Fever. Neither Vanessa nor Alistair had spoken of it, so who was the culprit? Miss Ruskin was prime suspect as she had recognised Vanessa’s resemblance to her dear friend Margery.

  No longer a Backstage Bessie, Vanessa had become everyone’s pet, Noreen’s most particularly. It had its advantages! Vanessa gratefully accepted the hot tea and a slice of cake made with butter from Miss Ruskin’s cousins’ farm.

  ‘Darling, you don’t wear your amulet.’ Noreen’s painted nail tapped where Vanessa’s key had hung until the previous day.

  ‘I have put away childish things.’

  From the doorway, a voice boomed the remaining lines: ‘“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face”.’

  ‘Knock the snow off your boots, Billy,’ Rosa Konstantiva chided.

  Vanessa said, ‘You put those words on Eva’s grave.’

  Billy found the largest, empty chair. ‘My brother Joseph explained them. It’s about the value of love, without which nothing profits a man. Or woman. Wear your little key. It unlocks your fortune and was a gift of love.’

  ‘Bo died loaded, I heard,’ Roy FitzPeter said from behind his two-sheet newspaper. ‘I’d try every keyhole in London, Nessie.’

  ‘Bo made his money transferring a show to New York,’ said Miss Ruskin. ‘Many tens of thousands.’

  ‘Anything would help,’ said Rosa, sadly. ‘Once a theatre goes dark, reviving it is the devil. I doubt even Commander Redenhall could do it twice.’

  ‘Do what twice?’ Alistair, on his way out to walk Macduff, paused at the doorway. ‘What’s the weather report, Fitz?’

  ‘Snow,’ answered FitzPeter. ‘On snow. On snow.’

  ‘I’ll walk with you.’ Vanessa drained her tea, burning her tongue.

  ‘“They may be some time”,’ Patrick quipped.

  Joanne arrived just then, swathed like a Muscovite and Vanessa slipped out with Alistair.

  That night, they had an audience of over a hundred. ‘Somebody upstairs loves us,’ said Patrick, who had called at Rosa and Gwenda’s dressing room to let them know. Vanessa was at her table, as usual. A few minutes later, Patrick was back. ‘Tanith hasn’t come in.’

  ‘Have you telephoned her?’ Rosa asked.

  ‘Her line is down.’

  Peter Switt announced the half. When he called, ‘Fifteen minutes, please,’ there was still no Tanith. When the five-minute call came, Patrick said to Vanessa, ‘You’ll have to go on.’

  ‘Me? I’m not allowed. I haven’t a card.’

  ‘To hell with that. Who will know? We cannot proceed without a Lady Agatha.’

  ‘What about Anne?’ Vanessa meant the understudy, Anne Aisleby.

  ‘She’s playing Lady Stutfield and she’s in Act Two with Lady Agatha. Nessie, just get into the dress, follow Rosa and say, “Yes, mamma” when she prods you. For me?’

  Why not? The audience would be semi-comatose anyway. Vanessa ran upstairs for Tanith’s costume. Rosa and Gwenda helped her into her corset and Vanessa discovered what it felt like to be reefed in like a sail and still have to move and breathe. They dropped the dress over her head, put the wig on her. Rosa pinned on her hat.

  As she stood with Rosa in the wings, Vanessa discovered the reality of stage fright, the gut-shimmie Gwenda had described. ‘We’re on,’ whispered Rosa. ‘Now remember, look out into the audience. Imagine you’re addressing one person right in the centre. When you say your line, open your mouth wide or nobody will hear. And enjoy yourself.’

  Vanessa walked on behind Rosa, and her nerves left her. With no time to think about how to be Lady Agatha, Vanessa simply recalled her own shy, frustrated youth. She clamped her eyes on Joanne, playing Lady Windermere, because, surely, a smothered, over-mothered girl would stare at a beautiful, sophisticated society leader. When Rosa, as the Duchess of Berwick, addressed her, she answered in a bell-like voice, ‘“Yes, mamma”.’

  Coming off stage a few minutes later, she ran into Patrick.

  ‘I did it!’

  ‘Course you did. You’re the total sum of Wilton Bovary and Margery Bowers. Next month Lady Macbeth, and St Joan after that.’

  The following morning, Lady Ververs’ butler telephoned to say that Miss Tanith had stumbled on the steps at home, and had strained ligaments in her ankle. She was unlikely to come to work until later in the week. ‘You’re on again,’ Patrick told her.

  Alistair thought it hilarious. ‘You’re ten years too old to play the part, you know that.’

  ‘Yes, Papa!’

  That night, disaster. Vanessa made her entrance with a sweep of a flounced skirt. Smiling at Lady Windermere, she walked straight into the table with the rose bowl. For the second time in its fragile life, the table broke in two. Vanessa saved the bowl, a papier mâché replacement of the original, and was left holding it, along with the lace cloth, for the entire scene. On her cue to exit, she faced the dilemma of walking off-stage clutching Lady Windermere’s possessions.

  Joanne helped not one bit. She smiled angelically, then leaned out towards the audience and ad-libbed, ‘Poor Lady Agatha! She is a known kleptomaniac.’

  Vanessa walked over and plonked the cloth and vase into Joanne’s hands.

  ‘Heaven be praised,’ Joanne declaimed, ‘she is reformed!’

  Vanessa exited to unearned applause. She reported her mishap to Patrick who cursed the table, explaining that it was what antique dealers called “a marriage”: two bits of furniture muckled together. ‘A bad marriage. It collapses at the most inconvenient moments.’

  ‘And its sharp bits rip Lady Windermere’s dresses,’ Vanessa said with feeling.

  ‘Yes, well, our carpenter thinks it was rescued after a bomb, and glued together from salvaged parts. I’d have him make us a new one, but he’s snowed up at home. God, this hellish weather!’

  Salvaged from a bomb blast? Though she was due back on in the next act, Vanessa raced up to her room and retrieved something from the corner of the mirror. What if . . .

  Her heart thudding, she sailed through her next scene, hardly aware of getting on and off. Later, when the safety iron was down and the actors were filing out into the snow, she slipped back into the wings. Alistair saw her and followed. He was in evening dress, as he was for eve
ry performance.

  ‘You shimmered, my star,’ he said, with irony, as he caught up with her.

  ‘Rewriting Wilde? Lady Agatha as an habitual thief is far more interesting. Never mind that.’ Switching on lights, she pulled Alistair on stage with her, handing him the blue vase, rose basket and lace cloth. Someone had repaired the table with yards of string and she turned it over cautiously. ‘It’s “a marriage”, Patrick said . . .’

  ‘“Marriage” and “Patrick” are not words I like hearing together.’

  ‘Shush. May I have your torch?’

  It hung from his wrist by a loop. He handed it to her. ‘Why are you trembling?’

  ‘Years ago, I saw Eva using a sewing box that reminded me of a big cake because . . . well, look.’ She pointed the beam at the table’s drum-shaped top. Aged cherry wood had gained the hue of molten chocolate, along with the nicks and scratches that might have resulted from a bomb exploding nearby. Within its rim was a small, gold keyhole. Alistair grew suddenly tense.

  ‘Your key . . . you have it?’

  In answer, Vanessa fell to her knees and jabbed Eva’s key into the hole. It fitted perfectly.

  Chapter 38

  Wilton Bovary’s lawyer, Mr Jackson, was asking Terence Rolf to kindly refrain from telling him how to do his job when Alistair and Vanessa entered his office. Besides Terence in the small room were Edwin and Miss Bovary.

  Alistair apologised for their lateness, which was owing to them having walked from Covent Garden. Temperatures overnight had dipped to minus ten and the tube was not running.

  Jackson welcomed them. Terence Rolf barely acknowledged their ‘good day’.

  Edwin smirked and inclined his head. ‘Sorry for your trouble, Redenhall. And you, Mrs Kingcourt. You’ve had a wasted journey as we’re here to claim my uncle’s fortune. My father has been reminding Mr Jackson of his legal duty to release the money in trust.’

  Miss Bovary, hatted, coated and gloved and as poker stiff as a guardsman, echoed her nephew. ‘I am co-heir to my brother with my sister.’

  ‘You would have been,’ Alistair said equably, ‘had Mrs Kingcourt remained ignorant of her parentage, as no doubt you hoped.’ Sylvia Rolf was absent, he noticed. He’d heard she’d had some kind of nervous collapse.

  Penry Jackson requested silence. ‘Commander Redenhall, is Mrs Kingcourt here to substantiate her claim?’

  Vanessa spoke for herself. ‘Yes, Mr Jackson. I found something in the theatre which proves . . . I believe proves . . . that I am Wilton Bovary’s daughter.’

  Alistair was struck by her calmness. She was on the verge of owning – or losing – a fortune, yet she might have been discussing an embroidered teacloth at a sale-of-work. He watched her take a large brown envelope from her shoulder bag and ask the lawyer for clean paper.

  When white paper was placed in front of her, Vanessa emptied the envelope over it. Out first was a curl of light brown hair. Child’s hair, tied with a filet of sea green ribbon. Next, a photograph of an attractive, though weary-looking, woman holding a tiny baby. The infant was wrapped in a shawl, only its face showing. The woman was Lady Stanshurst, formerly Margery Bowers, actress. She met the camera’s intrusion diffidently. For all that, there was pride in the way she held her child.

  ‘That picture was taken by the sea,’ Vanessa said huskily. ‘You can see the patterns of light on the room ceiling.’ The photographer was reflected in a mirror. He was positioned behind a portrait camera, a hand raised as if he’d just said, “Smile”. The man was a youthful Wilton Bovary.

  ‘The baby in the shawl,’ Vanessa said, ‘is me at a few days old. On the back somebody’s written, “Margaret Mary” and my mother’s name.’ Vanessa passed the photo to Mr Jackson. ‘Don’t read her name out, please. Her identity mustn’t be revealed.’

  The lawyer stared a long time at both sides of the photograph. He was seeing ‘Margery with Margaret Mary, July 16th, 1920’. Jackson was also seeing Bo’s handwriting, of which there was a great deal in existence.

  The lawyer frowned. ‘It’s a lady with a baby, with Mr Bovary present, but how do we know that baby is you?’

  Vanessa reached into her bag. ‘This is what I’ve been looking for, without really knowing. It’s my birth certificate. My real one. My birth was registered the day before this picture was taken and I agree, alone it’s no proof that I’m Margaret Mary Bovary – ’

  ‘So why waste our time?’ Terence Rolf was trying to see the reverse of the photograph, which Jackson put down when he realised what was happening. ‘Where did you find this stuff?’

  Vanessa pointed to the key at her throat. ‘In Eva St Clair’s sewing box, on stage at The Farren. Hidden in plain sight.’

  ‘What’s that confounded woman to do with anything?’

  Alistair answered. ‘Eva loved two men. She kept the secret of Bo’s affair with a lady, but also concealed items on behalf of Johnny Quinnell, who had a strong motive for ensuring Vanessa’s eventual recognition. He foresaw this moment and made sure that proof of the baby’s identity was preserved. Show him, Mrs Kingcourt.’

  With a jolt, because she’d forgotten what it felt like to be addressed so formally by Alistair, Vanessa turned the birth certificate to its blank side. She pointed out a row of purplish-black blotches. ‘I made those,’ she said.

  Penry Jackson angled his desk-lamp for better clarity. ‘I take it that these are infant fingerprints?’

  ‘The tiny ones are my baby prints. The larger ones were made when I was five, when I was taken to the theatre to meet Eva. Johnny rolled my fingers in ink. “Five little piggies”. Eva took the certificate to my father, Mr Bovary, to sign. See, there’s his signature against each set of prints. And the dates. He’s written, “These are the marks of my daughter, Margaret”.’

  ‘Utter rubbish!’ Miss Bovary pushed Vanessa aside, reaching for the certificate, but the lawyer prevented her from taking it. She slapped the desk in frustration. ‘Babies don’t have fingerprints!’

  ‘Mine did,’ said Jackson. ‘I spent half my life cleaning greasy little dabs off the lenses of my spectacles and the dashboard of my car. Have you compared these with your adult prints?’ he asked Vanessa.

  ‘Not officially.’

  Jackson took a magnifying glass from his desk drawer. ‘Would you kindly hold out your hands?’ He studied Vanessa’s fingertips, then used the glass to look closely at the prints. ‘The loops and whorls match, to my unprofessional eye. It will have to be proved, perhaps in court.’ Jackson folded the certificate into its grooves. ‘Mrs Kingcourt, can anyone testify to the circumstances of your birth?’

  ‘My foster-mother . . . I believe Ruth Quinnell could be persuaded. And a titled gentleman could be ordered to do so, but I’d rather not.’

  ‘Very good. In the meantime, shall we put these precious items in the safe?’

  Vanessa picked up the certificate, the curl of hair, and the photograph, while Penry Jackson unlocked a cupboard door that proved to be the false veneer of an iron safe. He turned a dial in sequence.

  Alistair saw Edwin Bovary tense. Predicting his next move, he seized Edwin’s shoulder, but a three-mile walk in compacted snow had slowed his reflexes. He got only a handful of Edwin’s coat. Vanessa’s enraged ‘No!’ told him that Edwin had seized something precious. A second later, came a howl of pain. Vanessa ran to the safe, and thrust her birth certificate inside. Penry Jackson closed the door with a snap and secured it.

  Edwin was hopping and Alistair tried to imagine what martial manoeuvre Vanessa had employed against him – until he noticed that she was wearing her doughty RAF beetle crushers. Edwin’s foot would be bruised for a month. Alistair smiled.

  ‘I take it you want Bo’s money after all,’ he said.

  ‘I want The Farren to have it.’ She came to him. ‘I want you to have it.’

  ‘On one condition.’

  She laughed. ‘Granted, probably.’

  ‘That when I’m free, you’ll marry me.’r />
  The freezing winter of 1947 persisted into March. When the final thaw came, one hundred thousand properties were rendered uninhabitable through burst pipes and flood damage. The Farren’s pipes burst, as did the water tanks in the roof. Suffering a catastrophic deluge, it was declared a dangerous building, its doors and windows clad in metal sheets to keep intruders out. Restoring it would dig deep into Wilton Bovary’s money.

  Three years later

  May 29th, Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey

  Butter yellow roses for Eva, bought that morning from the market. For Eva’s infant daughter, a bunch of fragrant pinks. Vanessa laid the flowers on each grave, then trimmed the grass. She took care that no part of her cinch-waist ‘New Look’ suit came into contact with grass clippings. Alistair waited nearby with two bouquets of roses. Packing away her things, she told Eva, ‘As of today, I’m Mrs Redenhall.’ She smiled across at Alistair, who didn’t know that he had confetti on his collar.

  When she walked over to him, he gave her his arm. ‘You couldn’t have chosen worse shoes for this.’

  Her pearly stilettos had left a trail of heel-marks in the grass. She made a rueful face. ‘Wearing flatties with a Paris-made suit is a crime.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Rosa, Gwenda and Joanne. One of them hid my beetle-crushers.’

  They walked through the grounds, the air fragrant with pine needles and tree blossom. One last task, after which they were being driven to the coast, where they’d sail to France to begin a honeymoon that would end in Rome.

  In the actors’ corner, Alistair placed roses on his godfather’s grave. ‘Hello, Father,’ Vanessa said to the headstone, which was a marble book, open at a stanza of verse. After a moment’s silent respect, she went to another grave nearby. This one had a simpler stone that read ‘Clive Johnny Quinnell, Actor’.