The Wardrobe Mistress

by Patrick Mcgrath

  – How was it tonight, love?

  – Ah, he said, everyone was sad.

  She didn’t reply. She was at the stove with her back to him. She knew why they were sad. It was more than the end of the run, when every actor feels the loss as he hangs up his costume for the last time and says farewell to his character. Like saying goodbye to a ghost, Gricey used to say, but who’s the ghost, eh? Me or him?

  – I walk away, Gricey said, and the clothes get packed up, and he’s the ghost. But when I’m dead, old Malvol will still be here.

  She thought of the stockroom where all the men’s costumes hung thick like headless horsemen, a ghost every one. As she added salt to the soup she could see him standing in the kitchen door, rolling a cigarette and enjoying his own joke. Oh, and it was a question of some peculiar significance that night, for in Joan’s mind, at least, Gricey’s ghost was present. She was leaning over the stove, her back to the table, and she experienced a small convulsion of grief. She heard her guest push his chair back, and as a teardrop fell into the soup there was a hand on her shoulder.

  – We remembered him, Mrs Grice.

  She lifted her head and turned to face him.

  – We were all in the green room. Mr Gordon said a few words.

  Albert Gordon was the company manager.

  – Albert would know what to say, said Joan.

  She wiped her eyes on her apron and became brisk.

  – Now sit down, please, Mr Stone – she paused – Frank, she said – and you can tell me what you’ll be doing next.

  – What will I be doing next? he said, with lifted eyebrows and half a grin, once more seated at the little table under the clothes pulley. The kitchen window was still curtained for blackout. His position in the company was not secure, as Joan well knew, and he had no idea what he’d be doing next. More work as a messenger, or the carrier of a spear. For actors like him the end of a job could mean a gap in life signifying nothing but empty days with now and then an audition for a part he wasn’t suited for, and wouldn’t be offered anyway, and an irritable agent who forgot his name and said with a shrug there was nothing out there. He had no money and, more critically, he had no decent clothes, and as Joan well knew, in the theatre, in the casting room, first impressions mattered. An idea had occurred to her. But first, food.

  – This is a cabbage soup, Mr Stone. It might need more salt.

  No, it didn’t need more salt. That single teardrop had been salt enough for this pot. It was months since anybody had given him a meal. He didn’t care how it tasted, for being a guest at a woman’s table was feast enough. All this he told her.

  – Better a guest than a ghost, said Joan, absently. Have some more.

  – You must eat, Mrs Grice.

  – I’m not hungry. You’ve been working. Gricey comes in ravenous, you’d think he’d been down the mines all night.

  She was trying to be gay. She touched her pearls. She so rarely wore them now. But they brought out the fineness of the flesh of her throat, and Frank Stone was not insensitive to her sad beauty that night.

  – It can feel like that, Mrs Grice.

  – You certainly sweat like miners. He comes home stinking. Some nights they’re both home late, him in from one theatre, Vera from another—

  She fell silent. Those days were over.

  – How is Vera?

  – Oh, Mr Stone, I do worry about her.

  She thought of Vera in her attic room with the sloping ceiling and the dormer window, her frocks hung among the rafters and her mirror propped up against the wall, where she had to stoop and peer just to get her lipstick on straight.

  – Mr Stone, I think I might join you. Would you mind reaching me down the gin? I’ve hardly touched a drop since Gricey died; well, he was the one who liked a drink after the show.

  So Frank got the gin down, and Joan had a stiff one while he ate his tinned sausages and potato salad with a nice piece of tongue on the side. It was as he was finishing his semolina that Joan made her suggestion.

  – Mr Stone.

  – Mrs Grice.

  – Mr Stone – Frank – I might have something for you to wear.

  She stood by the stove gazing fondly at him.

  – His clothes, she said. What am I to do with them?

  – I don’t think I can, Mrs Grice.

  Frank was taken aback. He was troubled, and for this reason. He’d found it disquieting to assume the role of Malvolio because a man died. At times he suspected that he’d come by it in an underhand way, or by false pretences. This was irrational but it was what he felt, and he thought, too, that others in the company were suspicious of him for that reason. Now he was being offered the dead man’s clothes.

  – But why ever not?

  Joan sat down at the table and gazed at him. She gave him her warm smile, then leaned in towards him and extended her hand. She was giving him the full womanly wattage, all she had, and Frank was at once aroused. Her fingers on his arm now, she told him that she had all these suits of Gricey’s and if they stayed in the wardrobe she would only get drunk late at night and bury her head in them so as to catch a scent of the man, and weep. Get rid of them! Get them out of the flat! – this was her thought, she told him, these intimacies designed only to help her get her way.

  – I don’t know.

  How helpless he looked for a second or two. Like a schoolboy, she thought. She stood up and came around the table. She reached for his hands and stood gazing down at him. She’d only had the one gin, but it had been a strong one on an empty stomach. She was wearing a pale grey wool cardigan, cashmere, which Gricey had bought her before the war when he was flush. She was also wearing white underthings.

  – No, you don’t know, and I don’t either. I’m sorry I suggested it, Mr Stone. Frank. It was a foolish idea. Let me fill your glass.

  – Thank you.

  She turned away to get the beer out of the cupboard. Frank was relieved but he felt embarrassed now. It troubled him, how she called him first by one name, then by another. It was late. He should go home. He said so.

  – Drink your beer before you go, said Joan. We should at least raise a glass to the show coming down.

  She poured him more beer, and a splash more of the gin for herself. They lifted their glasses and drank. At once she began to feel the tears come. He was alarmed.

  – What is it, Mrs Grice?

  He rose to his feet but she’d already fled the kitchen. When she returned a few minutes later, recovered, he told her he’d changed his mind.

  – About what, Mr Stone?

  – About the suit.

  She hadn’t expected this, after what he’d said. It wasn’t a pretence, her sudden breakdown, and the tears.

  – About what, Mr Stone?

  – About the suit.

  – Are you sure, love?

  – Look at me, Mrs Grice. I’m a scarecrow.

  – Oh hardly a scarecrow, Mr Stone.

  She shouldn’t have had that splash. She was all at once garrulous.

  – But Gricey did have a few nice things and what a shame to throw them out and it’s not as though you hadn’t already stood in his shoes, if you know what I mean—

  – If the shoe fits, Mrs Grice, said Frank, hopelessly.

  – If the shoe doesn’t fit, Mr Stone, I will have it altered.

  She took him into Gricey’s room and unlocked the wardrobe.

  Oh, that wardrobe. Give us the chills, it did. It was an enormous piece of pale green furniture with fading, flaking paintwork, old browns and rusts under a greeny-blue pallor, and with a broken pediment, and two door panels with carved vines twisting and twining around them as though framing works of art. Opening that wardrobe was never simple now. Her fingers trembled with the key. There was something – untoward – about that wardrobe, for she’d heard noises. There’d been noises she couldn’t explain. Mice, she thought, at first, or no, rats. Too big for a mouse, and then she thought no, it was her imagination. But this, now, felt
like the most egregious act of betrayal, unless of course – and this hadn’t occurred to her before – she was only giving him what was already his. She put the key in the lock, then opened the doors wide. They were stiff and they creaked. Shelving and drawers were up at one end, and a large trunk at the other with suitcases piled on top. And on top of the suitcases, the pot from under her bed, with his ashes in it, which had been giving her dreams. Down the middle ran a rail with clothes hangers on it, suits, coats, jackets, trousers, light to dark, summer to winter—

  Joan selected a dark lounge suit she’d always liked seeing him in. He’d had it since before the war, before cloth got rationed and there was nothing to be had unless you got it under the counter. It was navy blue, with a broad lapel, and double-breasted. Board of Trade wouldn’t let you have double-breasted, not after the rationing started, nor turn-ups on the trousers. When was it, the last time? They’d been up west for something or other and in the taxi, coming home, he’d slid his hand up her skirt and she’d seen the driver’s eyes in the rear-view mirror, and Gricey said, Sid, keep your fucking eyes on the road, and she couldn’t help herself, she started laughing, well, she’d had a drop or two, they both had—

  – Try this one, Mr Stone, she said. For ordinary day wear. It might do you very nicely.

  She laid the suit out on the bed and left the room, closing the door behind her. She went into the kitchen. She sat down with her elbows on the table and her face in her hands. What am I doing? This was what she asked herself, wishing now, oh, imploring Gricey, fervently, to speak again. Tell me what to do! Tell me that this is all right! Her heart was beating very fast. She was unsure what was happening. More gin? No. No. A very, very bad idea. She had a splash anyway.

  When Frank opened the door of Gricey’s room and called out to her she went back in and saw at once that the fit was not bad but not perfect. The trousers were a little too short and they needed taking in at the waist, also some minor alteration on the body of the jacket. A day’s work.

  – What do you think, Mr Stone?

  – It’s a good suit, Mrs Grice. This is very generous of you.

  Under control now, more or less, she became brisk. She regarded him critically, and in her mind’s eye she saw him as he’d look when it fitted him properly; and yes, for just a second she closed her eyes and Gricey was there.

  Then she was all business. Out with the tailor’s chalk for it was too broad in the shoulder, too deep in the chest. A pin here, a pin there, tighten up the trousers at the back, take it in a touch in the seat, and give him an inch of trouser cuff. She knew what she was doing when a man stood before her in a costume requiring alterations. She handled him with cool impersonality, stepping back every few seconds to see what he looked like. Frank hadn’t felt a woman’s hands on him since he was fitted for Malvolio and he wanted it never to stop. On her knees before him, working on the turn-ups of the trousers, she glanced up and caught the expression on his face. Yearning, she thought. He was yearning for something. She allowed her hand to linger on his ankle while still holding his downward dreamy gaze, and applied a brief, firm pressure while gripping the ankle as though it were the leg of a table, and how very solid he was, this was the warm hard flesh of a man she had in her hand, and when was the last time she’d felt that?

  Then she was standing before him, close to him, this tall, slim, elegant, fragrant woman – her fingers on his waistband and pins between her teeth. Each was of course acutely conscious of the other now. They had never been so physically close before. This was a woman who’d often found herself pinning men’s clothes but never late at night, and never alone with the man in a bedroom in her home, and fighting down the wild levity aroused by the gin—

  She assumed her most professional manner.

  – Just stand still, please, she grunted between teeth full of pins, I’ll soon be finished.

  – Take as long as you need to, Mrs Grice, said Frank, thickly.

  It was past midnight. Outside the window the city streets were deathly quiet. Widowed, alone, without attachment or responsibility, she stood close to this lonely man in a bedroom, and did it occur to either of them that should the electricity break down, as it often did in these days of frequent sudden outages, and leave them in a blackout—?

  But it didn’t happen, and the moment passed. Then she was done. She left him to get dressed, and when he emerged he was a scarecrow once more. The suit lay on the bed, pinned and chalked and ready for the tailor, herself.

  He left soon after.

  Now when a friendship develops between a man and a woman, much will occur during those periods when the two are apart. Did we say this already? Never mind. It’s important. Yes. For the imagination of each is put to work. Scenarios come to life in the mind, the narrative leaps forward, and when they meet again it’s with a certain excitement but also a kind of reserve, for there is a suggestion of trespass in the thing, particularly for the man; an appropriation of the other one that has yet to be admitted or condoned. Certainly this was true of Frank Stone. He wanted Joan’s hands on him again, just as when she’d held his ankle and looked up at him from down on her knees on the floor.

  Then when she’d stood close to him, face to face, her scent in his nostrils, her breasts in soft wool just an inch from his beating heart, it was only with some difficulty that he’d restrained himself from removing the pins from between her teeth, yes – with his own teeth – one by one – as though each were an item of her clothing, of her underwear – to be then spat onto the floor, and kicked aside.

  She’d told him to come by the following Sunday at six. The suit, she said, would be ready.

  8

  VERA WAS IN her mother’s flat the night Frank Stone came for his fitting. She knew him as Dan Francis who’d played Malvolio after her father died. She’d observed his discipline. Actors who covered for other actors were notorious for inventing new business, and it confused everyone else onstage. This hadn’t been the case with Twelfth Night. Dan Francis performed Malvolio exactly as her father had.

  She’d moved in earlier in the day. It was more than a week after the conversation they’d had in the playground, she and Joan. The previous night, back in Julius’ house, up in her attic room, she’d realised what was wrong. She’d been lying on her bed in the attic in her fur coat, staring at the stars through the dormer window. She’d screamed. She’d leapt off the bed, scattering the ashtray, then clattered down the stairs, waking the house, then fled, hailed a cab, told the driver to take her to Archibald Street, up by St Clement’s, and having rung her mother’s doorbell she then banged on the door with both hands. Being admitted she’d come trembling and wailing up the stairs, oh, in floods of tears, and Joan had no clue as to what had happened. Barely had Vera started to talk, gasping and crying in the accounting of it, than Joan stopped her, held her, told her to be quiet, to calm down and talk slowly.

  – My poor darling girl, listen to me. Now sit down. Do you want a cup of tea? Do you want a drink?

  – Betrayal!

  – But you haven’t been betrayed—

  – Yes!

  – You’d better have a drink.

  Then they talked. Vera sobbed as Joan reminded her what Julius had done, how he’d saved Auntie Gustl from the Gestapo then brought her to London and given her asylum in his house. This was all common knowledge. When she’d finished she saw her daughter’s head come up. She recognised the resilience that at times this girl could command even when total nervous collapse seemed imminent.

  – So this is how it feels, she whispered.

  She wiped the tears and snot from her face with a handkerchief. She flung back her fine head and ran her fingers through her hair. All at once she was calm, damp but calm.

  – What, my darling?

  – Betrayal. This is how it feels.

  – I’m so sorry—

  – Don’t be sorry, Mummy.

  She was sitting up straight now.

  – Don’t be sorry? But why ever
not? said Joan.

  Vera stared at her, astonished that she didn’t understand.

  – It’s not wasted. Don’t you see?

  Joan Grice was seldom surprised by her daughter but she was surprised now. All passion spent, and calm of mind, Vera sat in her mother’s kitchen tapping her fingernails on the table as she gazed out of the window into the night. The sound reminded her mother of a sewing machine with no fabric under the needle, the tap-tap-tap, the thunk-a-thunk-a-thunk. It was funereal to Joan’s ears. Vera was elsewhere, a thousand miles away, and Joan was able to study her in this rare abstracted state. The girl was thinking, but not about her marriage. Joan tried again to explain what Julius had done, and why Vera must not think she had been betrayed, but it was hopeless, because what mattered to Vera now was not whether she had or had not been betrayed but that she felt betrayed and she could use it. There were times, and this was one of them, when Joan wished her daughter possessed a more ordinary talent. But what was she doing, defending Julius Glass to her own daughter? And him the man who pushed Gricey down the steps, if she could only prove it. Trying to keep the girl on the rails.

  – I had to get out of that house, Vera then said.

  It was late in the afternoon. Joan was silent as she moved around the kitchen, unwilling to interfere with this reverie Vera was sunk into. Then all at once the girl seemed to wake up, and retrieved from her handbag her glasses and a well-thumbed Samuel French edition of a play she’d been asked to read. Joan could see her character’s speeches underlined in red and black, with pencil notes in the margin. Vera was turning the pages rapidly as some new understanding elucidated that which before had apparently been obscure. She looked up.