by Rosie Thomas
Vera got up from her seat and scuttled away like a rabbit, ducking around the tragic Sheila. She left the door considerably open, so that Mattie could hear everything.
‘Why not?’ John’s voice was expressionless by comparison. There was a long, palpitating pause, and then Sheila said, ‘You don’t really understand about love, John, do you?’ Hugging herself with pleasure, Mattie crept closer.
Sheila’s story came spilling out without any further prompting. Everyone knew that she was in love with the leading man of another of Francis’s companies. It was a love conducted on a higher plane, a rarefied and special thing. Sheila was fond of elaborating on the themes of it. Now, Mattie gathered from between the racking sobs, her leading man had abandoned Sheila for a thirty-five-year-old character actress.
‘I worked with her in Peter Pan,’ Sheila wailed. ‘She’s a woman completely without talent or refinement.’
Mattie stifled her laughter. She was thinking. Sheila was understudied by a mousy girl who took the part of the maid and two other walk-ons. The mouse had a heavy cold. She was practically voiceless, and her nose was swollen and bright scarlet.
‘I’m so very, very hurt, John. So crushed, and broken. I can’t work when I feel like this. I can’t …’ The sobs broke out again.
Mattie waited gleefully for John’s outburst. But if she had been thinking, he had been thinking quicker. She heard his chair creak, then the thump of his stick as he took two steps.
‘My poor girl,’ the rich voice murmured. ‘You poor, brave girl. And now you must learn about pain.’
Mattie was transfixed. She slipped closer, to the spot where she could peer through the crack in the door and watch.
John was towering over Sheila. He had taken her face between his hands and he was looking deep into her eyes.
‘You will suffer, my dear. But you can, and you must, cling to your art. Only by making that sacrifice can you grow, and it will reward you by growing with you.’
Sheila let out a low moan and her head fell forwards against John’s shoulder.
Mattie gaped. You clever old bugger, she thought. Admiration flooded through her, and swept away her short-lived dream of stepping on to the stage in Raina’s opening-scene nightgown and fur wraps.
She slipped back to the cubby-hole and clattered noisily with the kettle and cups. When the tea was ready she laid a tray and carried it back to the office. Sheila was nodding bravely, with her hands folded between John’s.
Mattie knelt beside her and poured her a cup of tea. When Sheila took the cup Mattie put her arm around her shoulder and gave her a hug of sisterly solidarity.
‘Oh, Mattie,’ Sheila broke out again. ‘It takes a terrible shock like this to make one realise how valuable friends are.’
‘I know, I know,’ Mattie saw warmly. ‘The door was open, and I couldn’t help hearing a little. Just remember that we all love you, and admire you.’ Not wanting to risk overdoing it, she tiptoed away again.
Ten minutes later, her face set in lines of sorrowful courage, Sheila was on her way to her dressing room.
Mattie went back for the tray. John was sprawled in his chair with his hands over his face, but he looked up when he heard her come in, and smiled at her.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
It was so rare for him to praise, and it was such an odd, conspiratorial moment, that Mattie didn’t know what to say.
‘I need a drink,’ John grumbled. He poured whisky into two glasses and handed one to Mattie. ‘Will you join me? To celebrate our success in going forward into another evening of theatrical mediocrity?’
They raised their glasses and drank.
With the spirits burning the back of her throat, Mattie blurted out, ‘What are you doing here?’
He turned his molten glare on her. His eyes were the colour of syrup, and because of their surprising glow they were the only part of him that looked healthy. His skin was grey, and the front of his ash-coloured hair was yellow with nicotine. Mattie noticed that his hands on the arms of his chair were knotty with pain. She might have felt sorry for him, if she hadn’t felt more afraid.
‘Doing?’ He laughed throatily and she relaxed a little. ‘Isn’t that obvious? Earning a few quid. A very few, I should say, thanks to your friend Francis. One has to live, and I do have a wife to support.’
‘You’re married?’
The laugh again. ‘Of course I’m married. I’m fifty-four years old, and one would have to be very clever, or very determined to escape the net, to survive as a bachelor for this long.’
Mattie thought back over the grinding weeks that had just passed. Her own time was fully occupied, but John Douglas was hardly less busy. How did he fit in a wife, unless he glimpsed her on Sundays when he drove off in his Standard Vanguard?
‘Where does she live?’
‘You’re an inquisitive little girl, aren’t you? Helen lives in our house, an attractive if chilly Cotswold stone edifice outside Burford, in Oxfordshire. To forestall your next question, she loathes and despises everything to do with the theatre, and prefers to live her own life while I pursue my spectacular career. It is a perfectly agreeable and amicable arrangement, and I return to Burford and to my wife whenever I can.’
If Mattie had had time to analyse it, she would have realised that the vaguely unhappy feeling that took hold of her now was disappointment. But John turned sharply to her.
‘And what are you doing here?’
‘I want to be an actress.’
She said it automatically, and she regretted it at once. His shout of laughter was hurtful, but it made her angry too. John Douglas saw both reactions.
‘Of course you do. Of course you do. Do you have any experience?’
‘Only amateur. But I’m good.’ She was stiff and red-faced now, like an offended child.
He nodded. ‘Tell me, did you think your big chance was coming tonight? With Sheila’s broken heart and whats-her-name’s laryngitis? I bet you know all the lines.’
Mattie shrugged. She felt too angry to give him the satisfaction of an answer. He waited for a moment, and then he drawled, ‘Well, then. Thank you.’
Both whisky glasses were empty. John glanced at the half-bottle on the table, and then snapped at her, ‘Haven’t you got work to do?’
Mattie swung round to the door, but he called after her. ‘Mattie?’
It was the first time she could remember that he had called her anything except You.
‘Yes?’
‘You’re not quite the worst stage manager I’ve ever had.’
She had to content herself with that.
The company moved on again. Two weeks before the Christmas of 1955 they were in Great Yarmouth. There was a sudden spell of clear, mild weather and through the usual smells of chips and sweaty costumes and smoke, Mattie caught the fresh salt tang of the sea. Early one morning she went for a walk along the beach. The world was an empty expanse of grey water and grey, glittering pebbles and sand. There wasn’t a sound except the sucking water, and the shingle crunching under her unsuitable shoes. The air tore at Mattie’s lungs.
She remembered that day, afterwards, and the scrubbed grey light of winter seascapes always brought the after-memories flooding back.
It was an ordinary evening, to begin with. It was a Shaw night, and Mattie noticed that John Douglas was hovering in the wings, watching the performance more closely than he usually did. Sheila was suffering an emotional relapse, and at the end of the first act she rushed offstage and flung herself against John.
‘I can’t,’ she whispered, loudly enough for everyone backstage to hear her. ‘I can’t do it. Why is it so hard? What have I done to be made to suffer like this?’
It was obvious to everyone except Sheila that the manager was only just keeping his temper. The edges of his nostrils went white with the effort.
‘You can’t? But your performance is only a little bit worse than fucking well usual.’
Sheila’s head t
ilted sideways, and her eyelashes made a dark crescent on her Leichner-pink skin. John looked down at her, and hoisted himself with the support of his stick. He took a deep breath that clearly hurt, and tried again.
‘My darling. Do it for me, if you can’t do it for yourself. It’s important for me, tonight.’
‘Is it?’ she breathed. ‘If it’s for you, John. I need to know that.’ She went on again for the second act, but watching her from the wings Mattie thought that the performance could hardly have been any more terrible without her. Sheila fluffed almost every line, and Lenny struggled to help her from the box. Hugh’s Bluntschli turned sulky and then perfunctory, while Fergus and Alan as Petkoff and Saranoff battled on with weary determination.
The final curtain came as a release for everyone. The applause was no more than a dry patter, extinguished by the banging of seats. John Douglas limped away without saying a word, and Sheila fled to her dressing room with her handkerchief pressed to her face.
I’ve seen worse performances, Mattie thought philosophically. Why the fuss? I wonder. She did her clearing up with the mechanical ease of familiarity, then went round the dressing rooms for the last time to turn off the lights. She was on her way down to the stage door, imagining she was the last person in the building, when she saw threads of light framing the closed door of the office. She tapped on the door, and when no answer came she opened it.
John was there, alone, although there were two other glasses on the table beside his.
‘I’m sorry,’ Mattie mumbled. ‘I was just doing the lights.’
He waved his arms at her, beckoning her in with a big, ironically florid gesture. The knuckles of his hand cracked against the wall of the poky room, but he didn’t seem to notice.
‘Come in, come in. I’m drowning. Oh, don’t look so fucking nervous. Just my sorrows. Nothing more dramatic than that. Oh, shit. Dramatic’s not the best bloody word this evening, is it? Here, come and join me.’ He held up one of the two empty glasses. ‘Don’t mind a dirty one, do you? That stupid bloody bastard had it first, but I don’t suppose that’s catching. Here.’ He pushed the drink across to Mattie and turned back to his own. He drank the three fingers of it in one gulp.
‘What’s the matter?’ Mattie asked. ‘Not Sheila, surely?’
‘Silly pre-menstrual bitch.’ He chuckled sourly. ‘If I could personally ensure that she never works again, I’d do it with the greatest pleasure. No, not Sheila specifically although she contributed in her special way.’ He poured himself another measure and drank again. ‘We both have our ridiculous ambitions, Mattie, you see. No, I don’t mean that. Yours is less risible than mine. After all, we have Miss Firth as our leading lady, don’t we? Why not Miss … ah, Miss …?’
‘Banner.’
‘Exactly. Well, since you asked what’s wrong, I’ll tell you. My little dream is to start up a company of my own. No more Welcome Home. No more pig-ignorant Willoughby. To this magnificent end I have been saving up my hard-won wages, and looking around for some financial backing. Tonight, two dear old theatre cronies of mine, who have been more successful in lining their pockets than I, travelled all the way up here from Town to see my show. My Shaw. Miss Firth’s shitty Shaw show, ha ha. I’m sure you can guess the rest?’
There have been worse performances, Mattie thought again. But not very many.
‘No money?’
‘Quite right. And not only no money, but suddenly no time either. Not even for an hour or so of food and wine and conversation. A pressing need to drive back to Town developed after just one small whisky apiece. As if I smelled bad. But nothing stinks quite like failure, does it? What am I doing here, to take your own question from you?’
Mattie went over and stood by him, looking down into the thin patch in the hair at the top of his head. She had never noticed it before. She thought, he’s lonely too; how cut off we all are, living so close together.
She leaned down, very gently, and let her cheek rest against the top of his head for a second. He didn’t move, either to shake her off or draw her closer, and Mattie’s courage deserted her. She was hardly in a position to comfort John Douglas as if he was Ricky or Sam. She went back round the table and picked up her drink.
John drank in silence for another moment or two, and then he roused himself. ‘Come and have some dinner,’ he boomed at her. ‘Would you like that?’
‘Yes, please,’ Mattie said simply.
He looked surprised, but he heaved himself out of his chair and shuffled around with his stick. He put on an outsized overcoat and a khaki muffler, and a hat pulled down over his eyebrows. Immediately he looked like an old man.
They went down the stairs to the stage door. Mattie turned the lights off behind them and John produced a bunch of keys from his inner pocket and locked the door. Outside in the street, with the wind slicing off the sea, into their faces, he asked her, ‘Where are your outdoor things?’
‘I’m wearing them.’
It was much colder in the bleak northern towns than in the cocoon of London streets. Mattie had discovered that very early on. But she needed every penny of her wages to keep herself sheltered and fed, and there was nothing left over for thick winter coats.
John Douglas exhaled, and Mattie saw his cloudy breath dispelled by the wind. ‘You’d better see Vera at the end of the week, then. Get a loan before you get pneumonia.’
Mattie raised her eyebrows, but he was already walking away and she had to move quickly to keep pace with his fast, lopsided steps.
They went to a little French restaurant, tucked away in the angle of two streets behind the sea-front. It was the kind of place that Mattie and Lenny and Vera would have passed without a second glance, knowing that it was out of their league. The head waiter showed them to a table laid for three. The third setting was quickly removed and Mattie pretended not to have noticed it. She looked round instead at the red flocked wallpaper and the little wall lamps with pink-fringed shades. The handful of other diners, red-faced men and permed women, were already finishing their meals. A waiter brought the menus. They were bound in red leather and hung with gold tassels.
‘What do you want to eat?’ John asked her.
‘Steak,’ Mattie said at once. ‘And chips. And soup to start with.’ She was always hungry, and she wasn’t going to hold back in ordering a free meal in a place like this.
John frowned. ‘And ice-cream to follow, I suppose.’ He ordered the food rapidly. ‘And bring me the best bottle of burgundy you’ve got. Do you like wine, Mattie?’
She thought of Felix and his careful bottles of Beaujolais and Chianti stored under the kitchen sink. ‘I love wine.’
It wasn’t an easy meal, to begin with.
Mattie was sharply conscious that her company failed to compensate for John’s missing friends. He leaned back in his chair, watching her without seeing her, turning his glass in his fingers in between draughts of wine.
‘Tell me about yourself,’ he ordered. ‘Isn’t that what usually happens on these occasions?’
‘I haven’t experienced an occasion quite like this,’ Mattie said. She wouldn’t let John Douglas browbeat her. But she talked anyway, to fill the silence, to distract him. She glossed over her childhood, but she embroidered her escapades with Julia and she described Jessie and Felix in lengthy detail. The bottle of burgundy was emptied and John called for another. Once or twice he laughed, the loudness of it making the other diners peer covertly at him.
Their food came. John barely touched the cutlets he had ordered, but he drank steadily. Mattie ate because she was ravenous, but she thought privately that this food was nothing like as good as the meals that Felix cooked at home.
‘It’s your turn now,’ she said, with her red meat cooling on the plate in front of her. ‘You talk, while I eat.’
John Douglas’s thick, grey eyebrows drew together. ‘I was an ac—tor,’ he said. The dark, resonant voice seemed to fill the room. Mattie resolutely didn’t glance at the surrounding tabl
es. John picked up his stick and thumped it on the floor. ‘But there aren’t many parts for cripples. You can’t play Dick the Bad for ever. I did have five or six good years, after the War. I was at Bristol Old Vic, Stratford for a couple of seasons.’
‘Tell me,’ Mattie implored.
‘Ah, it’s all bollocks. All of it. That’s my consolation. But I’ll tell you, if you want to hear.’
Mattie chewed her way through her tough steak and the floury chocolate pudding that followed, listening, entranced. He told her stories of Alex, and Sybil, and Larry, stories of first nights and tours and try-outs, triumphs and disasters.
When the burgundy was all gone he started on brandy, in a fat balloon glass. He had become briefly animated, embellishing his stories with comic accents and breaking into his thunderous belly-laugh, but the brandy seemed to puncture his euphoria. He sank back into his chair again, staring over Mattie’s head.
‘And now here we are. Washed up in fucking Yarmouth, dining out with a little girl stage manager.’
‘I’m not a little girl,’ Mattie said softly.
After a moment he said, ‘I know that. I’m sorry.’
Their eyes met, and it was Mattie who looked away first. She saw the waiters standing impatiently by the door. The chairs were stacked on all the other tables.
‘I think they want us to go.’
‘Who gives a fuck what they want?’
But he fumbled for the bill that had been placed at his elbow an hour ago. He slapped the pound notes on to the plate, and they stood up together. The waiter opened the door for them with an ironic bow.
Outside, the air broke over them like an icy sea-wave.
Even Mattie gasped, and John lurched sideways. His legs seemed to buckle under him and he clawed at Mattie for support. She leaned into him, trying to support his weight.
‘Oh, Christ,’ he murmured. ‘A cripple. A fucking legless cripple.’
They tottered together to the nearest lamp-post and leaned against it, washed by the impartial yellow light. John stared into the gloom. The waves crashed dully in the distance, but there was no other sound. They were alone, cut off by the lateness, the dark, and the muffled sea.
