Wooden shelves lining the plastered walls bear stacks of upturned old terracotta flowerpots packed close together. A frieze of antique aluminium watering-cans and buckets runs round underneath. A blue bench holds multiples of plywood seed-trays, rolls of green twine, china beakers stuck full of plant labels, wicker baskets of wooden-handled trowels and dibbers. A row of folding metal chairs leans under one window in a grey concertina.
Toby brushes his palm over his close-cropped head, his long eyelashes, flicks wet from his lapels. Madeleine sidles nearer, and whispers. It’s like a stage set.
He purses his full, pale lips: straight out of a style mag. Nostalgia-chic. Boho-sheds. Lady Chatterley lives! Enter Mellors, chewing a straw.
Madeleine wanders over to a wheeled clothes-rail, its burden covered with a white sheet. She pokes at it: what’s this?
Francine swivels her white, powdered face. Her dark red lips compress as she shakes her purple nylon umbrella free of raindrops. She says: those are the costumes for tonight. Anthony decided to go Victorian. This will be the green room.
Underneath the rack, tumbled on the ground, lie a pair of handcuffs and a truncheon. Props for Shakespeare’s comic constable, presumably. Dogberry, that’s it.
Toby says: pity it’s Much Ado and not panto, Francine. You’d make a nice principal boy.
Francine sleeks back her short black hair. She wears a skimpy black tunic over black leggings, a wide black leather belt with silver studs slung round her hips. Her fur-cuffed black ankle boots with thick crêpe soles seem just right for a housekeeper who has to run up and down stairs all day long, in and out of a chilly, sopping garden. Madeleine, optimistic in long blue crinkled-silk skirt and T-shirt, skinny cardigan, wet soles sliding in her summer sandals, has no weatherproof clothes with her, no umbrella. The sun was out this morning when she left her flat, the street warm and humid, but she ought to have known it might rain.
Francine says: I did audition for Hero, but I didn’t get it. No worries. I’m hopeless at acting! But I’m going to be the prompter. And I’ll probably give them a hand with the bar in the interval.
Madeleine hangs her bag on a wrought-iron obelisk and bends to examine a display of mouse-traps. She says to Toby: I used to teach Much Ado. Part of my course on comedy.
Some of her students disliked Shakespeare on principle. Boring. Incomprehensible. Irrelevant. Coaxed to a performance at the Globe, they succumbed to stage magic, if not to all aspects of the plot. Afterwards, in the coach going home, they argued over it. Beatrice hadn’t got a boyfriend, was therefore desperate. OK. But why did it matter if a girl talked out of her bedroom window to a bloke standing underneath in the garden? Why would anyone care?
Francine says: Anthony’s a very experienced director. Just because we’re an amateur group doesn’t mean we haven’t got very high standards!
Toby gives the potting shed a final dismissive glance. It’s just for show! Completely useless! Francine flushes pink through her white makeup. She says: not at all. The owners do use it.
Her phone burbles. She claps it to her ear, listens, nods. She turns towards the oblong of rainy brilliance filling the doorway. The delivery’s arrived. Give me a hand?
She goes out ahead of them through the pergola, turns left onto the path, snaps up her brolly, plunges into the drizzle. Madeleine, following Toby’s grey raincoated back, pauses for another look through a clematis-hung arch at the steeply terraced kitchen garden clinging to the slope to the right.
Strands of red plastic tape, hung with a Keep Out sign, bar entry. Beyond this barrier apple trees, espaliered against the brick walls, show fruit beginning to swell. Peas and beans twine up rows of bamboo wigwams. Low box hedges, sheared into billowy, overlapping cloud shapes, reach up the short, ladderlike slope, bracing stepped beds of artichokes and asparagus, strips planted with spinach, cabbage and chard. Climbing roses, spiralling over willow trellises, tie the whole place together. The blown clusters of roses shower down white petals in the wind.
Toby turns round, waits for her to catch him up. One hand grasps the handle of his umbrella. Rain sheens the tops of his black leather shoes. He sniffs. Most of this place is over-the-top nonsense, but they can do vegetables OK. Sid would have loved it.
Toby’s pale cheeks wrinkle up like a bulldog’s, into folds of velvet, as he grimaces, and his lips compress to two lines, and his eyes to shining blue slits. Wet white petals, blown down from the roses, encircle his head, his fair curls that are just beginning to show again. Madeleine strokes off the little patches of white, like confetti, displays them in the palm of her hand. You’ve been wearing a wreath!
They follow Francine back along the way they’ve come, brushing between raindrop-laden gooseberry bushes. Down the tumbling zigzag of stone steps into the courtyard. The house presents its golden back.
Right, says Francine: let’s sort this lot out.
Rain-darkened cartons pile on the gravel. Curving ruts of tyre marks scooped in the course of skittered stones show where the delivery van reversed in the space, turned on top of the skid marks left by their own arrival some hours previously.
Francine checks her watch: two o’clock, still plenty of time.
They load trolleys with boxes of bottles and glasses, bags of ice, pull and bump them up the steep steps, back past the potting shed and the kitchen garden, up to the cedarwood verandah right at the top of the property. Bloody hell, Toby complains: you could do with a funicular.
Francine stoops over a carton, eases it off the trolley. She says: Anthony’ll be up sooner or later. He’ll want to know how we’re getting on.
She starts to tear open the boxes, lift out bottles. Toby smokes, pinching his roll-up between thumb and forefinger, while Madeleine stands on the edge of the verandah, scans the view once more. Antique urns sprayed gold, planted with white geraniums and petunias, rear in front of them. Mown camomile drops away, a green waterfall rushing down to the roofs and courtyard below. She says to Toby: nice, eh. Toby says: you can’t like it. It’s all so vulgar.
He grinds his cigarette underfoot, bends and picks up the mashed stub, looks around for a rubbish bin. She follows him in. He turns and gives her a quick, smoke-scented kiss on the cheek. Sorry I snapped at you. Madeleine waggles her thumbs at him: fainites, fainites. He picks up an egg whisk, flicks it against the black slate countertop.
Francine’s menu comprises a cold buffet preceded by canapés. Following her instructions, Toby and Madeleine have stuffed shop-bought mini Yorkshire puddings with pre-cooked pink shreds of roast beef, topped with horseradish, have dropped hardboiled quails’ eggs into nests of shop-bought croustades topped with hollandaise sauce out of a jar, arranged all these on black glass serving plates. Now Toby begins to unmould the country pâté: at least you allowed me to make this from scratch. Honestly, Francine. Madeleine fetches the salmon mousse: shall I turn this out? Toby waves her aside. Leave me be! Get on with the salad.
He rang Madeleine the previous day. Are you around tomorrow? Some theatre group’s putting on a play in the grounds of a mansion up in Highgate. They’ve booked me and another chap as caterers, but he’s rung in sick and nobody else is free on a Saturday.
Mansion? asked Madeleine: who owns it?
Couple of film directors, Toby said: the company’s sent them butlers before. Fantastic house, apparently. I wouldn’t mind seeing what it’s like.
Madeleine had just begun trying to juggle this quarter’s income against newly received bills. She said: done!
She set the alarm for eight. Its beep rescued her from her dream, shook her into the reality of daylight. The baby in the flat upstairs was crying again. Footsteps crossed the floor. Heels knocked on floorboards. Up and down. Up and down. The baby went on wailing. Madeleine returned to bed with a cup of tea. She picked up her library book, plunged into it, to distract herself from the anguish overhead. A volume of local history: descriptions of her part of Southwark as it used to be, from medieval times onwards. Maps showed the growth
of the streets, the pockets of development around the market gardens, the coming of the railway. Here was Apricot Place, abutting fields. Did Mayhew, or his researchers, ever get this far?
Leaving the flat, she found a bunch of flowers lying on the threshold. A few white daisies, well past their best, clumsily wrapped in white tissue paper. The edge of a white card poked up amongst the brown-tipped petals. Scribbled across it in biro was a phone number, and a message. You know you want to. Don’t be shy. I’m here for you. Love from Emm.
She winced. She ran up the area steps, threw the card into the rubbish bin, closed the lid, laid the bouquet on top of it. Let some passer-by take it? She certainly wasn’t up to offering it to Sally, explaining its provenance. She wouldn’t insult her neighbour with half-dead flowers, either. So throw them away. She opened the brown garden-waste bin, dropped the daisies into it.
Walworth Road felt sleepy, some shops still shuttered, few people about. The scent of warm spice, yeast and sugar drifted out of the Caribbean bakery. The newsagent’s door swung open and shut. She plunged westwards, through cramped backstreets of nineteenth-century artisans’ dwellings, each with its little bootscraper on the pavement just outside the front door. She headed towards the Imperial War Museum rearing in the distance.
The tap of a boot on paving stones; the flying ribbons on a bonnet. Women walked out of the pages of books and accompanied her. Mary Wollstonecraft, briefly domiciled, as a young woman, in Walworth, fretting about what to do with her life. Closer into town, Mary vanished with a wave of her hand, replaced by Elizabeth Gaskell strolling up to Hampstead for an evening picnic. Thick boots, my dear, that’s the answer.
Madeleine couldn’t match those ardent walkers. At Charing Cross, when the rain began, she gave up and sank into the underground. At the other end, popping up in Highgate, she felt she’d become a mole, and started smiling. There was Toby, her fellow mole, smiling back.
Francine arrived in her jeep, roared them further up the hill, through tunnels of green branches. Beads of water dashed down the windscreen. Good of you to come at such short notice, Madeleine. It’s so important to work with an agency I trust, and of course they vouched for Toby and Toby vouched for you. I don’t like hiring strangers. They could be anyone.
Toby said: foreigners, you mean? It’s so hard to get the servants these days, isn’t it?
Francine said: oh look, a magpie!
Toby turned, rolled his eyes at Madeleine. Shouting above the noise of the engine, Francine went on explaining: the owners only decided quite recently to make their garden available. But Anthony’s coped brilliantly. Just one rehearsal on site, and the dress rehearsal yesterday, and the tech., that was all he needed.
They approached the top of the rise, high brick walls running along on either side of the narrow road. Wasn’t Highgate cemetery near here? Madeleine should have arrived earlier, gone in for a ramble around the necropolis: overgrown paths winding past tumble-down monuments wreathed in ivy, Egyptian-style mausoleums, battered stone angels. She’d first visited the creeper-covered labyrinth as a student, wheeling her bike; books and sandwiches in the basket. A spring day, when blackbirds shook themselves into whirling patterns overhead in the strong wind. She studied cherubs’ heads, ornate crosses, weeping female figures, angels gazing heavenwards. She read the names on tombstones: the title pages of condensed books. Biographies bound in granite. Madeleine copied down some of the names in her notebook; the ones that took her fancy. Nathalie Benson. Beloved wife. Departed but never forgotten. Frederick Benson and Amelia Benson, buried together in a stone double bed quilted with moss. Next to them lay Joseph Benson. Madeleine brushed away dusty earth, sat on Joseph’s grave to eat her sandwiches. You don’t mind, Mr Benson, I hope.
Francine’s jeep smelled new. Leather and air freshener. Madeleine said to Toby’s back: I haven’t come this way for years.
She was temporarily lost. A pleasurable feeling in London. She didn’t expect it. Though perhaps to miss her way in the cemetery itself would be less beguiling. Shadows stretching out to drag her back into the thickets of ivy, black clouds rising up, the big iron gates locked. No way out.
Francine said: quite a way from the tube, isn’t it?
How will Madeleine get back later on? Home so distant that the connecting cord stretches too thin, snaps. Spend the night curled on a tomb half-buried between the roots of a tree. Bats tangling in her hair. Close her eyes so that she won’t see the flickering shades jumping from tree to tree, getting ever closer. Ghosts fastening themselves onto her like lost skins returned. Hey, she reminded herself: I don’t believe in ghosts. What about Nelly, then? Speaking to her whenever she feels like it? Nelly isn’t a ghost. Just Nelly.
The jeep swung to the left, along a paved lane. They nosed under overhanging green branches. No other cars. Francine said: my employers like it here because it’s so quiet.
They halted in front of a high wooden gate. Francine pointed her remote, and the gate swung open then shut behind them. The short gravelled drive, bordered by flowerbeds, swept them round a stand of yellow-speckled evergreens glittering with rain. Francine slowed the jeep. Here we are!
An early Victorian house built of golden stone. A scaled-down version of an Italian original. Austere shapes of windows, columns, capitals. The harmonious proportions conjured an illusion of weightlessness, made the house seem to float. Round to the left Francine drove them, to the servants’ entrance. From its porch they collected the overalls and caps laid ready on a stone bench. They climbed up the vertiginous approach to the verandah kitchen, surveyed the teak workbenches, the cooker and fridge-freezer crammed into the tiny space.
As they donned their overalls, tied aprons on top, Francine spelled out a time-table. As much prep and cooking as possible to be done now. Quick break for a working lunch, then I’ll show you the garden. Special guests for the private supper, our sponsors and patrons, will arrive at 6.30 p.m. and be given a tour of the grounds. At 7 p.m. they will come up here for Prosecco and canapés, followed by dinner. Then they will go back down to join the rest of the audience. The actors will be performing on the lawn, against the backdrop of shrubs and trees, it’s a perfect stage set. But the spectators will be under cover, Anthony’s hired a three-sided marquee.
She tore open plastic-wrapped trays of aubergines and courgettes. Toby plumped up his round white cap, flapped his chef’s apron, pinched up its hem between fingers and thumb, pointed his toe. The play must go on!
Madeleine swung her tea-towel, wanting to become Beatrice, saucy and witty and rude. Toby said: we did Much Ado at school. I played Hero. Nice costume, all muslin drapes. Masses of rouge, and a wreath of lilies, and silver sandals. He stroked his head, its delicate cap of fair hair. No need for a wig, though, with my darling curls. I grew them long, specially.
Francine said: Anthony wanted to do something a bit grittier at first, but he was overruled. People coming for a night out, our sponsors especially, they prefer comedy.
Some of Madeleine’s female students, watching Hero slandered and shamed, witnessing her father’s willingness to kill her for dishonouring her family, had nodded in recognition. At school they’d been called slags if they had sex. If they didn’t want to do sexting they got called prudes.
Toby patted his groin and squeaked: oh, sir, you do me wrong – I am a maid! Madeleine retorted: strumpet! whore! Toby threw a blue tea-towel over her head: enter the ladies, masked! They capered in the space between the cooker and the fridge-freezer, squawking. A pavane! cried Toby. Mind my veggies, said Francine: calm down!
After eating their lunch of cold ham on the verandah, gazing out at the rain, they strolled with Francine round the garden. They noted the marquee being erected on the lawn, inspected the shell-lined grotto, the carp pond, re-mounted the steep steps to admire the vegetable plots, the potting shed.
Back in the hilltop kitchen, wine boxes unpacked, Toby’s cigarette break over, Francine checks her phone again. 2.15. Plenty of time to get everything
done.
Traffic noises erupt somewhere below. Gravel crunches. Heavy-sounding vehicles chug in, rev and hoot. Francine blinks, says nothing. Madeleine assembles cartons of eggs, packets of sugar and chocolate. Toby says: shame we’re not allowed inside the house. Mean wretches. Madeleine says: I reckon we should break in, take a peep.
Francine frowns. Let’s get on! Black sleeves rolled above her elbows, she piles grilled slices of aubergine, peppers and courgettes into miniature towers, sticks pennants of basil on top. Toby shrugs at this mélange: airlifted! Chilled. Grown on polystyrene granules I have no doubt. Completely tasteless. You’ve got a potager bursting with produce. Why on earth don’t you use that? Francine says: everything’s had to be brought in specially. Anthony’s using the garden for free, but that’s as far as it goes.
Francine slices mozzarella. Toby points his whisk, clots of cream plopping onto the counter: that’s not even the real thing. It’s not buffalo. Francine seizes a sponge. She says: the guests won’t mind. They’re nice, polite English people. Not foodies like you. Even if they do notice they won’t complain. They’ll say everything’s lovely.
Madeleine’s chocolate mousse mixture bulks up. With a rubber-tipped spatula she scrapes the bubbly blackness into white porcelain ramekins, stows these in the fridge, next to the clingfilmed bowl of whipped cream. All done, she says: and it’s only three. What shall we play now?
Toby says: I need another cigarette. Come and keep me company.
The three of them stand on the verandah, faces lifted to the fine rain blowing in. Madeleine stretches out a sandalled foot, to capture wetness on her toes. The dome of a yellow umbrella bobs up the stone stairs towards them. Francine unties her apron, bundles it aside. Here he is!
Enter on cue Anthony, the play’s director. He bounds up the last step, pauses. The rain intensifies colour: olive green Barbour open over a round-necked grey T-shirt; blue jeans. Curly brown hair flying round his face. Tall and lean. Brown eyes under dark brows, big nose, mobile mouth.
The Walworth Beauty Page 13
