The Theatre Royal, Greenwich, had been hit twice in the war, once in the first blitz and once by a buzz-bomb in 1944. Repairs had been kept to a minimum but it had a friendly old face, redolent of cheerful queues, with boxes of chocolates in the stalls and oranges in the pit.
Stella started to mime them a kiss, then changed her mind and delivered a kiss on each young man’s cheek. It was a professional job, leaving no lipstick and hardly to be felt.
‘Thanks, boys. Come around to my dressing-room one night and we’ll have a drink. I don’t know where I’ll be living, the theatre is finding me a place. ‘Bye for now.’
She disappeared into the theatre where they could hear her voice calling out her arrival.
‘Well, that’s her settled. What about us?’
For an answer John Coffin produced a piece of paper from his pocket. ‘Mrs Lorimer, The Regency Hotel, Abigail Crescent. That’s me and, I presume, you too. There’s a map Come on.’
Coffin said he knew a lot about the district, he had a connection.
‘Mate of mine in the army, his dad runs a restaurant there. Vic Padovani.’ Coffin remembered Vic well. A willing man but clumsy, an unlucky soldier. But likeable. ‘We called him Robert Taylor.’ With looks such as his, Vic could get any girl he wanted, and did, but they never stayed with him long. Unlucky. ‘I’ll look him up.’
They walked together up the hill towards Blackheath, not yet friends but ready to like each other, while recognizing they might have to be rivals.
They had met at Morley College, South London, which had been the venue for a special training course for the new intake for the Metropolitan Police, coming straight in from the army. Alex was the one who had wanted to be a dancer. Both John Coffin and Alex Rowley were members of a group specially selected for accelerated promotion. They had done their time on the beat in another part of London, taken the Morley College course, and were now detective-constables sent out, almost like rations, to this part of South Bank London by the river. They knew that there must be a personal file on them in the police archives with observations on their character, intelligence and behaviour. They were both conscious of having covered up something.
Mrs Lorimer’s Private Hotel, over-grandly called The Regency, was part of a terrace of brick houses run up by a speculative builder in 1850 and maintained in dubious repair by successive owners ever since. Bombed in 1940, the hotel had not had a pane of glass in its windows for nearly five years, making do with yellow paper which let in some light but no views. Mrs Lorimer, a tall, grey-haired woman forever in a hurry, had been an air-raid warden and had not lost her air of command. She had personally doused fire-bombs in the great fire-raid of December 1940, remained calm when an unexploded land-mine descended on the roof of a crowded shelter, been awarded the George Medal, and been the scourge and terror of her neighbours.
She felt a certain stigma attached to having a police-constable (even if a detective) in the house. How would Lady Olivia feel? The old girl had a bottle of whisky at the moment and that was keeping her occupied for the time being, but when that was finished, she would be out and looking for battle. Mrs Lorimer sighed: she was difficult, but a ‘name’ and a family trust paid her bills.
She showed the young men to their rooms, almost with an air of apology, which prepared them for what they were getting: a low basement room for John and an attic for Alex.
Or they could choose. And could she have their ration books, please? Did policemen get extra, she had heard they did? She took their ration cards and departed triumphantly, muttering about individual butter dishes.
‘Toss you for it.’
They tossed and John got the attic. He had been buried for twelve hours by a mortar shell on the way to the Rhine and was mildly claustrophobic as a result. Also, given a heightened perception of the world. Being blown up seemed to have peeled a skin off his eyes. He saw everything, fresh and clear as if it was a picture drawn by a sharp-eyed stranger.
His room had one tiny window which opened outwards with a jerk that would have robbed it of any panes of glass if it had had any.
From where he stood he could look down on the district in which he would be working. Below were the usual number of spivs, black marketeers, pimps, prostitutes, con men, thieves, and probably murderers. He would get to know most of them and if he did his job well they would disappear from the scene. For a while, anyway.
He could see right down the hill towards the river. The Royal Observatory was to his right amidst the trees of Greenwich Park. Down there but not visible was Wren’s great palace, now a naval college, and a museum.
He found the view pleasing and touching. He noticed that the roof had an area with the tiles missing; when it rained his room would be damp.
Down there too was Stella and he meant to go on knowing her, but he wasn’t thinking of her. Down there also was someone else he was interested in. A faceless, nameless someone at the moment. He had his own problem there. Coffin’s own mystery, he thought.
There was the sound of music floating up from below. A window was open and in that room someone was playing a piano.
He closed his own window to go downstairs to call on Alex. As he went down the stairs he could swear that from behind one door he heard an old woman singing. She was singing ‘The Wearing of the Green’. That would have been treason once, he thought, might be even now for all he knew.
Alex was sitting on his bed polishing his shoes.
‘Bed’s hard.’
John Coffin sat down on the only chair. So was his bed hard. They wouldn’t stay here for ever, it was temporary while they looked around, but anywhere to live was hard to come by at the moment.
‘Hope she’s all right.’
‘Who?’
‘The girl. Stella.’
‘Oh, she’ll fall on her feet,’ said Coffin; he knew a survivor when he saw one. He was one himself.
There was a photograph of a pretty woman with a young boy on the table. It must be Alex’s mother.
‘You got a brother, Alex?’
‘No.’ He was the boy in the photograph, then.
‘Sister?’
‘A sister, yes. Half-sister. What about you?’
‘No,’ John Coffin considered. ‘Not as far as I know.’ He added, ‘Wonder if we’ll get anything to eat?’
Stella did not regard herself as having fallen on her feet.
She had run happily into the warm, dark womb of backstage Theatre Royal shouting that she had arrived, and straight into the arms of Joan and Albie Delaney who were standing briskly engaged in one of their arguments.
They broke off to welcome her warmly, and at once got down to the essentials. ‘Want you on stage with book this afternoon.’ Joan Delaney never wasted words or time. Two sharp,’ and she turned back to her argument with Albie, which appeared to concern Eddie Kelly who was sitting smoking astride a wooden kitchen chair, apparently indifferent to what went on.
‘Now, Eddie, about the bloody lighting in the last act.’
Joan and Albie worked as a team. Joan was said to be the practical one and Albie the artistic conscience, but Joan’s vaunted practicality existed only for theatrical purposes and did not extend to everyday life, where the pair lived in chaos. This showed itself at once with Stella.
‘What digs have you got me?’
‘Ah.’ Joan wrenched her head away from Eddie who was saying softly that it was his bloody face that the bloody lighting was turning bloody green and he bloody well wouldn’t have it. ‘I couldn’t get you in anywhere, dear. I tried old Madam Lorimer but she’d let her last room to two young men. You can share with us till something turns up. Doss down with us, Albie and me, in our sitting-room.’
‘That’s very kind of you.’ Any doubt in Stella’s voice was justified. The couple’s quarrels were famous and their cuisine notorious. Then she remembered that she was an actress and they were her boss. ‘Thank you,’ she said with false enthusiasm.
‘Poor girl.’ Eddie got up. �
��Haven’t we met?’
‘Yes. At the station. You took the cab.’
‘I had it ordered, my dear. In my permanent pay. More or less. My gammy leg.’ He had lost a foot at Dunkirk. ‘But I’d have given you a lift.’
Stella turned to Joan and Albie. ‘Can’t I sleep in the dressing-room. Just for a bit? While I look round.’
Eddie moved nearer towards her. ‘The girl will perish. All the dressing-rooms leak. Albie, assert your authority.’
Albie asserted his authority, and in a characteristic way. ‘Eddie, dear boy, you do something. Why not try Rachel Esthart’s? You seem to have influence with her. She must have more empty rooms than Buckingham Palace.’
‘Rachel Esthart?’ Stella couldn’t stop herself. ‘Is she still alive?’
‘Say that and she will love you.’
‘But she was a marvellous actress.’
‘Still could be, still could be,’ said Albie. ‘If she hadn’t hidden herself from the world.’
Eddie moved towards the telephone, carefully not limping. ‘I’ll try. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Don’t let her make a slave of you.’
Joan said, in a whisper, ‘He hates you to see him limping. The funny thing is – he’s all right on the stage. Wouldn’t know. That’s actors for you.’
At the door Eddie made a dramatic gesture. ‘Rachel Esthart and you – I hope I know what I’m doing.’
Afterwards Stella thought that Edward had known exactly what he was doing and he was doing it for Rachel Esthart.
Edward soon reappeared to say Mrs Esthart would receive her, she actually used those words, which was Stella’s first intimation of the regal way Rachel had sometimes. ‘But we’ll have to walk. I’ve got no petrol for my motorbike. Joan will send the bags up in a barrow with one of the men later on.’
On the way up Maze Hill, threading past the church, seeing the Royal Observatory on their left, Eddie walked fast, even while limping.
I’ll show you round, if you like. Interesting district. Where were you working last?’ The perennial question between actors, what really interested them.
‘Windsor Rep,’ said Stella. ‘Before that, Dundee. Albie saw me at Windsor. Offered me this. I wanted to be in London.’
‘Oh? Any reason?’
‘No. Just nearer the big managements. Tennent’s, and that lot. My agent said it was the right move.’
‘Ah. His right. Post-war theatre’s going to be different from pre-war. Lot of the old names will be on the way down now. There’ll be a new wave. Old management giving up, new ones coming in, new money, new ideas.’
‘I’m looking forward to it.’ Stella intended to be the new wave. Now the war was over, she felt a whole new world was beckoning to her with promise.
‘Meanwhile you can’t do better than be with Joan and Albie. They know change is coming. Watch them. If they go up, they may take you with them.’ Or they might go down; that too was possible.
‘I hope so.’ Stella was getting breathless, keeping up with his fast, limping walk.
‘They’ve got something good coming up. Marvellous publicity. A Masque for the Royal Family when they come to Greenwich later on. That’s why they’ve got you. You’ll be The Virgin.’
‘Good Lord.’
‘Don’t worry. Nothing personal.’ He laughed. ‘But your predecessor as junior female lead – ’ Joan always played the leading lady roles herself- ‘didn’t look too maidenly.’
‘Do I?’
He gave her a crooked smile but did not answer. ‘About Rachel Esthart, I’d better prepare you. The reason she’s doing this Miss Havisham act – which you’ll see for yourself when you get to Angel House – is she had a tragedy in her life. Lost her son.’
‘Dead?’
‘He was drowned. Rather mysterious. You’re too young to remember, I expect. But she has never accepted he was dead. And who knows? She might be right. Perhaps he isn’t dead. People do come back.’ Stella nodded. The war had opened minds to strangeness and wildness in the world. Nothing was quite as ordinary as it had been before 1939. Anything could happen now. She believed him. It was the way things could go. Nothing was too fantastic to be ruled out now. It was part of how the world was, not solid, but transient, movable. Edward went on, ‘She isn’t mad. Or self-deceiving. Nor so much of a recluse as she pretends. She sees me; old friends like the Delaneys; it’s the big world outside she’s frightened of. It chewed her up once and she can’t take any more. I suppose you could call it a depressive illness if you wanted. But she’s a great woman, Stella, never forget that.’ He stopped talking suddenly. ‘Here we are. This is Angel House. Don’t let her know I’ve told you anything. Let it be as if you didn’t know.’
Angel House was a handsome brick building, probably built at the end of the eighteenth century, with a plain, dignified face. During the Blitz the roof had been damaged but the house had suffered no real hurt. Yet, without there being anything wrong with it, the house looked closed, turned in on itself.
Over the front door was the figure of a kneeling angel, an unexpected and baroque touch, but which provided the name. He rang the bell. ‘I won’t wait. Just see you in, then go. You’ll be let in by Florrie. She was Rachel’s dresser in the old days. She’s no angel but you’ll just have to make the best of her and get on with her.’
The door was opened by a small, plump woman wearing a dark apron. Sharp brown eyes were set in a sallow face.
‘You’ve been quick,’ she said unpromisingly. It was at this point (the very moment at which the two young men at Mrs Lorimer’s were talking of her) that Stella felt her spirits dip. This wasn’t going to be easy; she was used to life not being easy, you did not join the theatre expecting a soft ride, but unwelcoming digs she did hate. ‘Madam said you’d be coming and where to put you.’
Inside, Angel House had a certain grandeur with a black and white flagged hall dominated by a curving staircase which rose splendidly, like a prayer, to a balcony above. But it smelt damp, and it was undeniably dusty.
‘Come on, Miss Pinero.’ She had the name off pat, a quick study, obviously. ‘I’ll show you where Madam wants you to go.’ She led the way down the hall with a determined, shrewd little manner that confirmed Stella’s belief that, as with so many dressers, she was an exactress. She threw open a door. ‘It’s where Madam used to sleep when the raids were on.’
The room was square with two small oval windows, decorated in the ’thirties style with heavy leather chairs and a big wooden desk, a kind of library, only instead of books the walls were lined with playbills, theatre programmes and photographs. A divan bed was pushed into a corner. Across it were thrown some sheets and blankets.
‘We’re a bit low on bed linen. You’ll have to make do. We lost a lot when the local laundry got a doodle.’
‘Thank you.’ The sheets were fine linen, apricot-coloured, hemstitched and embroidered. The blankets matched. To Stella, the child of war and shortage, they were luxury.
She looked at the photographs. Rachel Esthart in part after part. What she was seeing was a museum to Rachel Esthart.
‘She was lovely,’ Stella said. ‘Beautiful.’
Florrie’s face seemed to fill out, put on another layer of flesh. So that is what she looks like when she’s pleased, thought Stella.
‘Thank you,’ said a voice from the door, a true actress’s voice getting across every wave of feeling, and what it said to Stella was: I appreciate your compliment but I do not need it. I am above and beyond anything you can give me.
Stella spun round.
Rachel Esthart was as tall as she was and just as slender. Her hair was dressed in soft waves, falling on her cheek in a manner fashionable in the early 1930s. She was wearing a long silk marocain dress of dark blue with a spotted bow. A long jade cigarette-holder rested in her left hand.
She was beautifully made-up, beautifully groomed. About her hung a strong scent of Chanel No. 5. Where did she get it, wondered Stella, to whom French scent was a
n unobtainable luxury.
Later, she was to learn that the scent and grooming represented a good day, the best, and that there were days when all this elegance became dusty and neglected, and the scent of Chanel was replaced by a sour, sad smell.
She came to know the smell of the bad days. But this was a good day, and it was why she had got in to the house. On a bad no doors would have opened for her.
As she looked at Rachel Esthart she had the sensation of a great many doors opening for her, a vista through which she looked towards success, money and fame. At once she felt tremendously excited. Ambition stirred in her like a live animal. She had always known she was an ambitious actress; now suddenly she saw what she could be. She could learn so much from this woman.
‘Thank you for having me here.’
Rachel Esthart laughed. ‘Well, you’ll pay.’
‘Oh yes … You must tell me how much.’
‘I didn’t mean in money.’
Two pounds a week and your ration book,’ said Florrie swiftly.
Don’t be a slave, Edward had said.
‘I knew you at once. You’re Estella Beaumont’s daughter, aren’t you? Couldn’t be anyone else. She died.’
‘Yes.’
‘What about your father? A lovely man.’
‘Dead, too.’
‘Your mother had marvellous technique but not much heart.’
‘No.’ There seemed nothing else to say. Besides, it was true.
‘Your father was the other way. All emotion but not much technique. Which are you?’
‘I’m nothing much at all at the moment,’ Stella admitted. ‘More my father’s way, I think.’
‘I can do better than that for you. If you’ll learn.’
Stella had a moment of enlightenment. ‘You looked me up.’
‘Yes. In Stage. I always do when the Delaneys get someone new. You got the Ellen Terry medal.’ Stella nodded. It was her first intimation that although Rachel Esthart might be walled up inside Angel House she minded passionately about the theatre still. ‘But it wasn’t until you walked in the door I knew you were your father’s daughter.’
Coffin on the Water Page 2
