Madeleine asks: Anthony coming too?
No, says Toby: that’s why I’ve got the spare ticket. Bit of a crisis. His stepmother’s been taken into hospital. He’ll ring me later, when I get home.
A warm late afternoon. She’ll walk to Bart’s. She dons the flat red satin pumps, with thick rubber soles, in which she can stride easily.
Before leaving she steps outside to water her pots of pelargoniums in the front area. Scarlet, salmon-pink, fuschia-pink, magenta. The clashing colours that her mother liked. That she chose in her mother’s memory.
Something not quite right. Green and yellow fronds curl above her. Greenery dangling in the wrong place. A wreath twined round by a black streamer hangs on her gate. Long twists of ivy, secured with a black bow.
She goes up the steps. A small piece of paper pokes out from between the ivy leaves. Please don’t force me to say goodbye. You will regret it. All my love – Emm.
Ivy torn from a neighbour’s front hedge perhaps. The black ribbon binding looks to have been cut from a rubbish sack. She pinches up the wreath, dumps it in the brown bin.
A crackly-looking plane leaf drifts down, lands on the tiny flowerbed Madeleine has planted around the tree’s base. Marigolds, asters, fuchsias and nasturtiums. Yellow marigold petals almost the same shade as the For Sale sign that has recently appeared, strapped to the railings. Who’s planning to move out? Perhaps the couple overhead with the screaming baby will leave. Good. But perhaps someone even noisier will move in. Toby has to endure a neighbour who watches internet porn half the night, grunting and yelling as he comes on the other side of a flimsy wall.
She addresses Emm’s lurking presence out loud. Fuck off!
She strolls over London Bridge, cuts across to St Paul’s and St Martin’s Le Grand. The sun, shining all day, hazy now behind golden mist, has brought out the pedestrians, dark buds just waiting for light and warmth in order to burst into bloom. The City streets flower with young women in bright summer clothes, men who’ve shed jackets and ties and unbuttoned their collars, massing on the pavements outside wine bars.
She goes through Postman’s Park, turns down Little Britain towards Smithfield. The narrow lane becomes an alley, debouches into a circular piazza. The market looms up opposite, a hefty shed. White neo-classical façade, metal struts painted red-purple-blue. On her right, the arched gateway of St Bartholomew the Great. She turns left, follows the wall round, through the high doorway into Bart’s courtyard.
On the phone Toby warned her about the play: it’ll be a strange piece. Possibly audience participation. I’m going to wear drab clothes and keep my head down.
Madeleine said: audience participation sounds like an encounter group. Scary!
A large crowd, three hundred people or so, buzzes about the stone portico of Bart’s Great Hall. The evening light gleams on the ornate pediment over the closed wooden door. Burnishes fair hair, a gold signet ring. Toby, standing to one side of the throng, putting up one hand to scratch his ear. White T-shirt and grey jeans, clean and well-ironed. One forefinger hooks his grey linen jacket across his shoulder. Bright blue eyes in his big pale face. Alert, light on his toes; ready. She kisses him on both cheeks. She says: excuse me, sir, but I’m afraid you don’t look drab at all.
Toby grins, preens. But I’m trying to blend in!
No time to tell him about Emm’s ivy wreath: the door to the Great Hall cracks open, revealing a young man with black hair and a chin-fringe of black beard, wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt. He balances a clipboard. He surveys the crowd. The buzzing subsides. He waits. Another beat, and another.
The man clears his throat, raises a forefinger. He calls: the audience will be separated into two groups, according to gender. The men will please line up here and the women over there. I shall take the men in first.
Toby rolls his eyes, glances goodbye. He joins the trousered cohort. The young man ushers them through the stone doorway.
After five minutes or so, the young man reappears. He beckons the women to follow him through the doorway, into the entrance hall. Madeleine sees again those 1940s photographs in the Foundling Museum: a line of cheery orphan boys in shorts marching diagonally across a courtyard, swinging their arms. A line of meek overalled girls behind a long table, heads down over their sewing. Her heart jolts. No, don’t be daft, we’re not orphans, we’re not abandoned, we’re here of our own free will.
Too late to flee. Hemmed in. They ascend a wide stone staircase with ornate iron balusters, which leads up around two left-angled turns, transporting them into the air under the stone vaults high above. They surge past a vast wall-painting on the first half-landing. No time to hang back, dawdle to study it: their guide urges them forward.
Narrow double doors, brown as hazelnut shells, split open, as though cracked with a hammer. They enter a long, high-ceilinged room. On the right-hand wall, dangling strips of white canvas veil what must be a series of tall windows, reaching down to the floor. In front of these banner-like hangings, parallel to them, stand rows of brown benches. The young man directs the women to fill these seats. Briskly he sweeps them in. Keep moving. Look sharp. Madeleine spots an empty place at the end of a nearby bench, darts into it.
On the far side of the Great Hall, directly opposite the benches, tiered cinema-style seats clamped onto a metal ramp hold the men, already in position, a separate mass, in gloomy shadows. A blur. No individuality. No Toby visible.
The women continue filing in, clutching cardigans and bags. Subdued nervous laughter. A hum of talk. Someone nudges in next to Madeleine. She scarcely notices. Just moves up a little. Like being on the tube: you can ignore other passengers. She goes on preferring the bus, where people still sometimes talk to one another. The theatre’s a bus, whirling them towards the unknown.
The lights dim further. The shadowy block of male audience opposite dissolves into pure blackness. A yellow glow illuminates the women’s side. Presumably the ranked men can still see the women, but the women can’t see the men. No more face to face: they’ve gone.
Flashes of pale movement. Here and there figures in long grey dresses, white pinafores, are taking their places among the host of female Londoners in their jeans and short skirts, fitting themselves into the gaps. Like watching an oil painting develop: dabs of lavender, grey and white laid onto masses of black, of dark blue.
At the far end of the Great Hall, opposite the door by which they all entered, a tall shape appears from the shadows. Corseted: hard outlines of waist and hips. Tidy black gown, white apron and white cap. She glides into the wide space of the floor separating the men’s and women’s places, stands still, waiting for them all to notice her, pay attention.
Some kind of nineteenth-century hospital matron? We’re in Bart’s Hospital, after all. A play about hospitals? Doctors and nurses? Aged five Madeleine played that all right, with her little friends. Pulling down each other’s underwear; peeping; showing.
The aproned woman says: you need to understand how things are run here, so that we can coexist in harmony. She draws a small book from her pocket, begins to read aloud. The women will. The women will not. The women must. The women must not.
Rise, in silence, at such a time. Retire, in silence, at such a time. Eat, exercise, scrub floors, work in the laundry, pray, sew.
Not a hospital matron. The Mistress of Postulants instructing would-be nuns? The superintendent of an asylum? Of a ward for female prisoners?
A bunch of keys on a black ring dangles from a chain at her belt. Yes: a sort of jailer. A maternal one, to some degree. She seems to care about her charges’ well-being. She looks over the edge of her book and studies their faces with a keen glance, as though she wants to understand them.
The woman is an architect. She changes the meaning of the Great Hall. She makes spike-topped walls rise, impossible to scale, puts bars on the windows, secures the entrance. No longer can the wide door in its stuccoed frame split apart into two narrow ones: locks and bolts prevent its openi
ng. The Great Hall vanishes, along with the oil portraits in their gilded frames, the marble busts, the heraldic shields and plaques. The woman summons a bleaker building. A blank place with no art, no decoration. An institution structured by hierarchies, built on principles of clear distinction between categories. Like the Dewey Decimal System for libraries. So here I am, amid the lunatics and gypsies.
The woman lists punishments for disobedience, insolence, self-assertion, loss of self-control. So many days in solitary confinement. So many days on bread and water. So many dunkings in cold baths. Do you understand me? Do you understand what I have said? Put your hand up if you have understood.
Everyone puts their hand up. The woman nods. Good. You may put your hands down.
A light pressure on her left foot startles Madeleine. She’s got neighbours. She’s seated in between two other women. Strangers. But this one’s not obeying the rules. Once the performance has started you should keep yourself to yourself. Don’t be a nuisance! Don’t cause trouble!
She smells her own fresh sweat, coursing down her armpits. The touch repeats itself, shy, polite. Delicate as a mouse’s paw, someone’s foot nudges hers. A conspiratorial foot. Sly. Pretend it’s not happening? Cautiously she turns her head. A young woman in a long grey linen dress, collar and cuffs fastened with black buttons, topped by a white sleeveless overall, perches at the very end of the bench, next to her. Close to her. Too close. Black hair in plaits tied behind her head. Pink mouth. Rosy cheeks. The black-haired girl smiles. Eager, appealing curve of her lips. She has stretched out her foot in its little brown boot and is pressing it on Madeleine’s red satin pump. Much too intimate. What’s she up to?
Intense gaze. Over-intense. As though they know each other, as though she’s trying to transmit some secret message. Madeleine almost chokes. An inmate of this prison-like place. She’s sitting next to a prisoner. A lunatic prisoner?
Sweat springs up again, flows down her sides. The young woman lifts her foot away, sits still, hands folded in her lap. She keeps smiling, as though to reassure Madeleine. A pleading smile. She whispers: my name’s Polly. What’s yours? She reaches for Madeleine’s hand, clasps it: Muddy Lane? Maddylane. That’s an odd name. Never heard that one before.
Audience participation. OK. Be brave. Go with it. She says: yours is a nice name. Polly beams, fondles her hand. Finger circling her palm. Like writing. Not unpleasant. She just wants human contact. She just wants a bit of affection. Polly seems very young in her grey frock with its high collar and long sleeves. Demure as a trainee nun.
Polly says: I like the red of your dress. Wish I had one like that. We’re not allowed colours in here. When you come in, they dish you out the uniform and don’t care whether it fits you or not. Same with the boots!
Curses, curses. Why didn’t she do as Toby did and put on a quiet colour? Because she liked how the dress made her feel: sensual, happy. Her red flag. See me! She wore it for Toby, to say let’s have a cheerful evening, enjoy ourselves, and now he’s been taken away and set apart with all the other men, invisible witnesses to this beginning drama. Too late. Red fish in the theatre sea. Polly’s trying to hook her. Reel her in. What will Polly do with her? Just keep swimming in these waves. Ripples of murmuring voices. Here and there in the massed rows of benches, other whispering conversations have begun, a stir of mutual interest, delicate nets being spun. She can’t push Polly away, tell her to shut up. Too unkind. She can’t walk out. Too rude.
Take a deep breath. Keep calm. It’s all right. Polly means no harm, just wants them to recognise each other. She forces herself to smile back. Horrid little smile it must be, tight and wrinkled as a dried-up chili pepper.
One by one, the young women in their grey frocks stand up, speak to the audience. Polly joins in. They toss out broken sentences; dislocated images. The smell of his cigar. A shilling in my palm, he closed my fingers round it. Good girl, be a good girl. The bottle of brandy by the bed. His beard, so soft. Fringed yellow curtains drawn. The smell of cold fog, of coal. Blue cushion. Ma shouted for me, but I hid. Jam tarts and sponge cakes, lemonade. The stopper flew out the bottle exploded all over the pantry floor. His cum all over my face. Piano music.
Polly’s voice, distinctive, with a little crackle to it, a little croak, rises above the chorus. The attention of the audience swerves, holds her. Madeleine crouches into herself, absorbing each contralto note. Oh, my baby boy. My pretty little one. I wash him, I feed him, I sing him to sleep. Naughty rascal. Fingernails like pieces of the moon. His darling willy. His naughty tricks you wouldn’t believe!
Polly turns, grips Madeleine’s hand, tugs her to her feet. Have you got children, Madeleine?
Her eyes plead. Join in, please join in. Help me out. Don’t let me down. Come on, you can do this.
Not an instruction. Just a request. You can say yes or no. She feels she must say yes. Cooperate. Be kind, be helpful, be nice. That was the rule for women in her family. Deep in her as a bone. How could you ever say no? Her open mouth makes no sound. Try again. The hall, packed with people, waits. Look, there’s Nelly, sitting in the front row, turning round to nod and smile: go on, child, have a go, it won’t harm you. White hair knotted behind her head. Blue-flowered crêpe blouse, blue cardigan buttoned over her heavy bosom. Nelly rests her elbows on the table, tips her tea into her saucer and blows on it, tells me tales of her childhood in London. My heart full of her words for ever. Shivers up and down my spine, along my shoulders. Enchantment: the past returns, glimpsed through a street doorway, and I’m walking towards it, I’m in the present and the past both at the same time, one delicately folded around the other.
Madeleine says: no, I’ve got no children.
Unknown women at parties sometimes ask her this. Often, perhaps shocked or embarrassed by her curt negative, they answer her with pitying looks. One woman mused: I really don’t understand how someone can not want children. Madeleine should have said: well, I’m sorry for you, because that just shows your lack of imagination, doesn’t it? As usual, she thought of the riposte too late. L’esprit de l’escalier. Thinking of something to say only when you’re on your way out.
Madeleine used to think l’esprit de l’escalier meant a ghost on the stairs. Ghosts liked transitional places; cross-over spaces, where metamorphosis can happen; they floated from one level to another. She has passed the threshold, climbed the stairs to arrive in this vast dark cave full of phantoms. Is Polly a haunting from the nineteenth century? Her dress suggests that; the swaying gathered skirt, the pleated yoke. You can’t touch ghosts. The flesh and blood actor Polly clasps Madeleine’s hand. Sorry I spoke! You look sad. Your eyes talk, d’you know that?
Madeleine says: I wanted a child with my husband, but it didn’t happen. I had a couple of miscarriages. So after a bit I just accepted being childless.
She rarely speaks of this. So long ago. Easier to speak of it now, in this context of theatre. A frame put round pain. Polly caresses her hand. We’ll be friends, shall we?
All over the women’s side of the hall the voices continue to spring up. They mutter, halt, intertwine. Come with us! The young women in grey pull their chosen companions into the central space in front of the benches. A dozen or so Londoners, stumbling, ducking their heads, blushing. Thirteen women, perhaps. A baker’s dozen in Nelly-talk. Polly’s fingers close around Madeleine’s. They cajole. Don’t resist me. Jump up. Take a risk.
She hesitates. Get on with you, child, says Nelly: if you come a cropper, so what? Madeleine rises from the wooden bench. Linked to Polly by their clasped hands, she follows. She steps out of the safe anonymity of the rows of female audience, onto the gleaming wooden floor.
Enormous space. The lights pinpoint her. Too visible. The floor takes her far away. Far out of safety. Into another place altogether.
The young women in grey sit the audience women down in the centre of the boards, take their own places in the ring. Legs tucked to one side, skirts smoothed over booted feet. You’re our guests! Usually we
have to stay mum when ladies come, they talk to us and we listen. But tonight we’re allowed to talk.
They turn from one audience woman to another. Where do you live? And you? When did you leave home? How d’you earn your living? Are your parents still alive? What did they teach you as you grew up? Do you believe in God? What do you believe in?
The audience women flinch. They hunch their shoulders round, let their hair fall over their averted faces. They mutter in turn. No. Nothing, really. No.
Polly, still grasping Madeleine’s hand, turns to her: and you? Do you believe in God?
A coaxing look. Their plaited fingers: a friendship knot. Polly’s oval nails, polished pearl, her face-powder, vanilla-scented, her own sweat. Madeleine says: no, I don’t believe in God. I used to, but not any more. Not since my adolescence. Polly’s black eyes shine. She asks: so what do you believe in now?
Everybody waits, hushed, for her reply. Madeleine remembers her walk through Smithfield, where heretics were burned alive, and she remembers her walk through the Borough, skirting Guy’s Hospital, where Keats trained as an apothecary. The silence and stillness of the Great Hall let inspiration rise. She lifts her face, calls out to the dark, listening masses of audience: I believe in poetry, and in what Keats said about the holiness of the heart’s affections, that’s to say I believe in the love between friends, and in the power, the sacred truth of the imagination.
Blimey, says Polly: that’s some speech. Don’t mind us, will you?
She releases Madeleine. Men friends? Much good may they do you! Screw you and hop it, most of them.
Madeleine insists: no, I mean real friends. Men and women both.
Polly says: whew! Go for it, darling! But we don’t read poetry in here. The matron reads us sermons. Three times a day, at meals. And we’re so wicked we have to say our prayers three times a day as well. Polly blows her nose. Now, what about this funny name of yours? What’s it mean?
Madeleine says: it means Magdalene.
The Walworth Beauty Page 19
