The Wardrobe Mistress

by Patrick Mcgrath

  All this going through his head as he sat before his mirror on an old rickety bentwood chair with hooped curved legs and a round wooden seat with little holes in it. He stared at his face in the bright glare of the three good bulbs he’d been left. He turned his head this way, that way. He lifted his handsome chin, and after a few seconds he darkly frowned. He tossed his shaggy head. He pulled his lips back in a feral sneer to expose his strong white teeth. Then hearing his name called he turned to see none other than Vera Grice leaning in the doorway of the dressing room. She was in a baggy maroon sweater, and a tight black skirt. She was eating an apple and grinning at the line of actors each in front of his own mirror, all now turned in her direction.

  – Hello, boys, she said.

  – Hello, Miss Grice! Come to join us, have you?

  Frank could hear the distant shouts of stagehands as the company got settled, and he rose to his feet. He edged along the narrow space between the back wall and the costume rack and the long dressing table. He was grinning now. The other actors’ chairs were pulled in close to their mirrors, each with its light bulbs all burning at once. There was more banter. He was sweating and still grinning when he got out into the corridor. He was wearing one of Gricey’s heavy winter tweeds. He wanted to seize her by the hips, by the shoulders, crush her lovely splendid bosomy voluptuous body to his own, for he was aware of vigorous fresh business within his trousers. He asked her how it was in her dressing room.

  – Cold, she said. I might move in with you boys.

  – We’d like that.

  – I bet you would. This Daddy’s?

  She fingered his jacket.

  – The suit? Yes.

  He watched her reaction closely. All at once he was uneasy. Her smile was strange, cryptic. Oh, he was bewildered by this new friendship he seemed to have stumbled into and was powerless to control. If Vera Grice chose to toy with him, why then he would be toyed with. This at least was what he felt at that moment, being taken by surprise by her visit to what he thought of as the very intestines of the theatre. It was hard for him to forget how she’d pushed him against the wall in that alley behind the pub, the memory of which in equal measure excited him to madness and maddened him with guilt. How could he love the mother, and at the same time lust after the daughter?

  – Will I see you later, my fearless one? she said.

  She touched his sleeve, rolled the fabric between her fingers, and mouthed the word, Daddy.

  Such a look she gave him, and such a helpless, lost gaze he gave her in return, and we were all moved, just a little, but amused, of course, how could we not be? – she blinks her big dark peepers at him, calls him Daddy and reduces him at once to a wreck of carnal confusion and servitude – and there it all is, in his long, worried, happy, frowning face, as he looms over her, leaning in, and pushes his fingers through her hair – oh what a silly fellow—

  – Constant sanctuary, she whispers, and steps off down the corridor in the direction of the stage. Constant sanctuary? Discretion? Everyone knows now! The other actors gaze at him with smiles of sweet disingenuous curiosity as he comes back into the dressing room. Bastards, he thinks.

  He tells himself they’ll have a drink but he won’t go with her into an alley again, whatever she says. It was foolish, what happened. But what exactly did she know about his relationship with her mother – just that Joan had given him some of Gricey’s clothes? She surely couldn’t know that he was spending the night, not every night, but some nights, lots of nights, in her mother’s bed, the bed in which Joan had slept with Gricey – could she know that? But then how was he to tell her he couldn’t kiss her in an alley any more? From her point of view there was no reason for him not to want to kiss her in an alley, for he had no attachments, seemingly, and what’s more he needed her, because he wanted to play Antonio to her Duchess.

  If he kissed her in an alley again, would she tell her mother?

  Would her mother find out anyway?

  Was he doomed whatever he did? Doomsday not come yet, but just around the bloody corner, oh yes. Oh hell, thinks Frank Stone, and decides to wait and see what happens to him later.

  When he found Vera in the pub down the street from the theatre she wasn’t alone. He’d intended to explain to her that, for the sake of her own reputation, they must stop going into alleys. But actually – who’d be the wiser? He knew that the romances, quarrels, deceptions, heartbreaks – the rumours and scandals and betrayals – the revenge tragedies and high comedies that went on among us, among any company of actors, were not the exception but the norm. And that what we performed onstage paled in comparison to what we got up to backstage. So a couple of snogs with the leading lady in fact amounted to precisely nothing.

  And here was Vera with that idiot Harry Catermole, and their gossipy, odious stage manager, Jasper Speke, and there were one or two others, and what sort of a dalliance had this turned into now? What was he to do with himself now, his loins already eager, strident for an alley?

  – Hello, Frank darling, said Vera. Have a drink.

  Harry made room for him at the bar, and Jasper Speke insinuated his hand onto Frank’s shoulder.

  – Now you two behave, said Vera, Frank Stone is my friend.

  – Frank Stone is everyone’s friend, said Jasper Speke. How’s the dressing room, Frankie?

  – Too bloody hot.

  They laughed. What a wag. He was still finding his way with this company. They’d seen his work when Harry was away, and they knew he’d found favour with Vera, who was known to be difficult. After about ten minutes this dawned on Frank and he began to take their friendliness at face value. He started to enjoy himself.

  – Frankie Stone, said Jasper Speke, when they were on their second round, is it true you weren’t born in England? Nobody seems to know very much about you.

  And when was it, thought Frank, that they stopped calling me Dan Francis? When they heard Vera call me Frank.

  – A man of elusive mystery, a shadowy figure of dark intrigue, that’s right, isn’t it, Vera, said Harry, who was a tall, heavy man in a sweeping overcoat, unbuttoned and with the collar turned up, who stood with one hand on the bar and his large leonine head, with its splendid shining temples and lustrous golden mane, thrown back. He’d become a leading man, something of a matinee idol, in fact, on the strength of his fine legs and good hair, but as Vera well knew he rarely had both oars in the water.

  – I was born in Germany, said Frank Stone, and I came to England with my mother before the war.

  – Had to get out?

  – Yes.

  There. Now they knew.

  – Lucky to get out in time. That was the Committee, eh?

  – No, we got here without them.

  He was astonished that his story should be in the least familiar to them. Vera grinned at him. Did she know? Did she know she’d been snogging another Jew? Yes, he thought, she did. So did it matter? Apparently not. What luck.

  – Saved your bacon, did she?

  – Who?

  – Your mother.

  Some genial laughter here but Frank detected little malice. This Jasper Speke probably knew all about him. All at once the beer he’d drunk seemed to go to Frank’s head. He felt light-hearted; euphoric, even. They knew about him and it didn’t matter. It could still surprise him, to realise he’d become a member in good standing of the society of the London stage.

  Curious to think that at one time he’d felt he didn’t belong and would never belong. It was often said how tribal the English were, how closed off as a people, but it was only Gricey, now he came to think about it, who’d found ways of making him feel unwanted. Oh, he’d been curt, dismissive, never gave him the time of day or looked him in the eye. It had sharpened his resolve. But that evening in the pub with Vera and the others, Frank Stone had it confirmed that the theatre didn’t care who you were, or where you were from, all that mattered was that you worked hard. And didn’t behave like a shit.

  It was a good nig
ht, a happy night, but it made for difficulties in Archibald Street, of course it did. For he didn’t visit Joan after the pub, even though there’d been no snogging, and that was because Vera needed her beauty sleep, or so she said. He made his way home on foot. His step was less than steady for he was in the throes of various forms of intoxication. Rosza was asleep, the boy was in the bed with her, and Frank was soon on the couch and dead to the world. But when he awoke he felt as though he was awakening to a new dawn, like the man in the silent film, the early sunlight shining full upon a face once dismal but now radiant with hope.

  He sat on the edge of the old couch in the clothes he’d worn the day before, then slept in, and with his elbows on his knees, and his long hands hanging loose, he stared at his shoes and reflected on his good fortune. But oh, callow man, had he yet given a thought to the poor widow in Mile End? Did Joan Grice not pull at his swelling heart, did her voice not murmur to him in this happy dawn, but what about me? No, not yet it didn’t.

  Joan meanwhile sat in her kitchen waiting for the kettle to come to the boil. Again she had cooked a meal for him and he hadn’t appeared. Perhaps his mother was ill. Joan Grice was a proud woman. It was not easy for her to accept that she had become dependent on a man upon whom another woman had a prior claim. Of course Frank must care for his mother, but could he not stop in, oh, for ten minutes, at least? Didn’t he know that would be enough to reassure her in what was for her a most anxious time? No, he couldn’t know: nor had she explained anything of her predicament to him, of the risks she was being asked to take by her friend Gustl Herzfeld.

  Joan was not so foolish as to think she would hold Frank Stone for ever. But in some fond place in her heart she believed she would, and why? She still clung to his dark resident spirit. Not the fascist, no, but Gricey as she’d known him when they were at the Watford Palace together, before all that. In truth what she clung to was not a man but an idea. Its fundamental proposition was this: there had to exist that which she could love without reservation and forever, and it was the habit of a lifetime for that object to be Charlie Grice.

  When had he started to change? 1929. A very bad year. Hunger marches, street fights, police against the workers, no surprise there – and the government useless, quite unable to do a thing. That’s when Oswald Mosley started to attract so much attention. By 1932 the BUF was in existence, and Gricey stopped talking about these matters to his Jewish wife. Ironic then, she thought, that it was into the body of Franz Stein—

  Ah, but now Frank too was changing, thought Joan, and she didn’t know why, unless Gricey was turning him. Yes, the dybbuk, she knew about all that, the demon in Frank’s body, its sole entire purpose to do her harm. To not appear in the evening when he said he would, not once but twice! – and that first time with only a muttered apology when he did appear. She was not so foolish as to show disappointment or anger, oh no, that would do no good at all. No, what truly troubled her was that he should choose to abuse her like this, so soon. For barely had she given him her heart than he set about breaking it! Oh, she had been so very wrong about him. So it was all just an illusion, was it, just some piece of foolishness aroused by grief and with no foundation in the world? – or was it worse than that? She could hardly bear to think about it. Well, our hearts went out to her, yes they did.

  It had been a bad night, the second time he failed to appear. The first night he had come, yes, at last, but very late. The second night he hadn’t appeared at all. And desperate though she was, her mind writhing, oh, serpentine with suspicion, she believed that he was sure to come the night after, and tell her he’d had to look after his mother. But again – no sign of him. No note, nothing. She’d done what she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do. She’d pulled a kitchen chair over to the cupboard, climbed on it and reached down the gin. She needed a little comfort from Uncle Alcohol tonight, she told herself, oh, and why not? Why not? Who could blame her?

  It wasn’t the only forbidden cupboard she went into that night. Came a moment about an hour and a half later she decided to go into Gricey’s room. She was weaving and laughing a little, and crying too. She was clutching a tumbler in which a splash or two of neat gin was sloshing around as she made her way from the kitchen. It was hard to say what was in her mind exactly, for the balance of her mind was disturbed. It may have involved the decision to confront Gricey about Frank Stone, for although Gricey had spoken to her only twice, and she’d seen him only once, which was at the street meeting she’d attended – yes, she was sure of it now – she believed he would speak to her again if she talked to him in the right way. This is what some of us think anyway, those among us who have been through situations like Joan’s. Where the ghost of a dead husband won’t be still.

  So she went into Gricey’s room and turned the light on. She pulled closed the blackout curtains. She couldn’t remember where she’d put the key of the wardrobe and – a curious thing – it was late one night some days earlier that she’d decided to hide it, thinking no good could come of continued exposure to its influence; the wardrobe’s, that is. This was after she’d brought out a suit for Frank to try on. Gricey was displeased, she’d had no doubt about that, so she’d locked the wardrobe and hidden the key and it took Uncle Alcohol to retrieve the memory, for she’d been in his company that night. She went into the bathroom, stood on the toilet seat and opened the little window. On the window ledge she found it.

  Back in Gricey’s room she unlocked the wardrobe door. Her hand was trembling. She was afraid. She stood very still for a few seconds. The night was deathly quiet. She had no idea what time it was. The light bulb flickered as she hauled open the doors of the wardrobe, and it felt to her as though she had opened the gates of hell but that was just dread, she told herself. She swayed a little and stood gazing into the wardrobe, holding on to the doors.

  The clothes rail was less crowded than once it had been. Joan was familiar now with Gricey’s displeasure and it intimidated her when she was sober, but she was not sober.

  – Are you in there, dear?

  If he was, he made no reply.

  – I have to talk to you.

  The silence was unbroken. The wardrobe had little clawed feet that raised it three inches above the floor. Joan placed her own foot inside it, clinging for stability to the doors. She was shod that night in black laced ankle boots with a low heel. She wore a long black skirt and had a large shawl over her head and shoulders. Her hair was pinned up but strands were drifting free and there was a wildness in her fine pale sculpted face, most particularly in her eyes, and she showed her teeth, a rare thing, we all commented on it. Somewhere in there a noise occurred but it may have been her foot on the wardrobe floor.

  – Hello? Hello?

  She laid a hand on her breast and then as though swept forward by an impulse of unknown origin, but probably from within herself, she reached into the wardrobe, and seizing a hook behind the rail, stepped in – and the doors at once banged shut behind her.

  – Oh god, she cried out.

  But no god heard her, only us. She would have screamed at any other time but she was not sober. It was utterly dark. It was just a draught, she told herself. Without turning around she bent her knee and pushed at one of the doors behind her with the sole of her boot. It didn’t move so she tried the other door. It too was unyielding.

  – Are you in here? she cried.

  She heard a different noise now. The clothes on the rail were shaking on their hangers. For a few seconds it seemed to Joan that the entire wardrobe was shaking as the hangers, all wooden, began clanking against each other, and she was aware too of the rustle of agitated fabric. She turned around, bewildered now. There was a slit of light under the doors. She pushed with both hands but the doors still didn’t open, so she stood up straight with the back of her neck against the rail and tried to keep her breathing under control.

  – Gricey, stop this. Let me out. Let me out now.

  The shaking and clanking died away and all was quite st
ill in the darkness. Then something touched her throat and she gave a small scream. It was very terrible for her to hear her own scream in that constricted space.

  – I won’t have this, Gricey, do you hear me!

  Silence.

  Then it touched her again, this time high up on the back of her thigh.

  – What do you want? she shouted, slapping at it.

  For a few seconds she lost control. There were fingers everywhere, touching her all over – she beat at herself, then tore the clothes off their hangers, and flung them about as though she could drive off whatever was in the locked wardrobe with her, which was of course only the clothes themselves, Gricey’s clothes, but she was enraged now, shouting and cursing as she flapped about herself with a pair of trousers, then seizing a coat off its hanger and flinging it around, shouting: Fuck off, Gricey, leave me alone! Let me out of this thing!

  And then she heard him. His voice was quite distinct. It cut through the rage and the panic and the gin, everything. She stood as though turned to stone as the voice faded, and it was Gricey’s voice, of this she was in no doubt at all, and she should know.

  – Fucking hard-case East End Yids.

  Then with her renewed assault the doors were swinging open and banging against the sides of the wardrobe, and she staggered out of the shaking thing and into the freezing bedroom.