Another short silence, then she said carefully, ‘I feel about you as I did when we — when I didn’t marry you last time.’
He laughed, a sound full of real amusement. ‘That’ll do. That’ll do fine. Can you tell me the impediment?’
‘I’m not sure I understand it myself,’ she said, suddenly irritable with herself, with him, and with the delay of the train. She got up and went marching to the edge of the platform to look down the line, and after a moment he followed her.
‘Try,’ he said invitingly. ‘Have a go. You’ll be surprised how easy it is once you start.’
‘Stop being so bloody professional with me,’ she flared. ‘I’m not one of your blasted clients —’
‘Touché,’ he said and grinned. ‘It’s a bad habit lawyers get into. All the same, it’s good advice. Try it.’
Again the little silence, then she turned and stared straight into his face, sick of the evasion, tired all the way through of the whole confused state she was in. She let the words rip out of her, making no effort to control or modify them in any way, not trying to make herself seem any better, just throwing out raw honest facts, and he stood and listened as she talked, never taking his eyes from her face.
‘I’ll tell you why,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you why. Because I’m a failure at the moment. Because I’m forty-four. I’m getting old and I’m on the bottom. If I get married it has to be when I’m on top, when I’m winning. No one, no one at all, is going to save me from failure but me, do you understand? I want no help from anyone. I’ll give myself as a great prize when I’m ready and the person I marry will know not that he’s saved me, not that he’s being good to me, but that I’m being good to him. I’m going to America, back to Broadway. I was a star there and I can be again. I’m going to be again. Then, when I’ve shown you and I’ve shown Molly and I’ve shown all of them what I am and what I can be you can ask me again — if, that is, you want to be given a gift, rather than to be the one who does all the giving. All right? Do you understand? No one helps me but me — so I can’t marry you.’
She stopped as suddenly as she’d begun. He stood looking at her, his hair blowing a little in the light breeze that had struck up, and she saw the hurt in his face and hated herself for it. But she felt better, hugely better, certain now that she’d made the right decision. Broadway. That was where she was going, as soon as she could get there. No more lousy suburban tours, no more aching at the sight of photographs of Molly in the paper. Her own life again, her own career.
But again her own words let her down. ‘I’m sorry, Max. You deserve better,’ she heard herself say. ‘I’m a lousy bitch, you know that? A lousy, greedy bitch. You deserve better. Go and find another Laura, Max. You don’t want to waste time on me.’
At last the train came, rattling into the station in a glitter of light, and she said desperately, ‘I’ll get into the last carriage — for Christ’s sake don’t come with me. It’s a big train — go sit somewhere else. Pretend you never saw me tonight. It’s really the easiest way. Forget you ever saw me.’
42
‘It was wonderful, really wonderful,’ Bessie said, and tried to get to her feet. ‘Now I’ll leave you to get yourself ready and go to your party and —’
‘No!’ Lexie said, pushing her back gently into her chair. ‘You sit there and Tina’ll give you some coffee or whatever. Then we’ll go together. And it isn’t a party, exactly, to start with. It’s supper. At Sardi’s.’ She looked sideways at Bessie to see if she understood the significance of that, then shook her head. Clearly she didn’t.
‘People always go to Sardi’s after a Broadway opening,’ she said as Tina helped her out of her costume and gave her her wrapper. ‘It’s a sort of tradition. If you’ve got a hit, they applaud you — all the people there. It’s quite a moment. Of course, if they don’t applaud you, you want to die.’
‘They’ll applaud you,’ Bessie said confidently. ‘They’ll applaud you all the way. You were marvellous. So’s the show. Sometimes a performer’s good and a show’s bad, and sometimes it’s the other way round, but this one’s got everything. Good music, good show, and you.’ She nodded wisely and Lexie leaned over and hugged her.
‘Oh, it’s so good to have you here, Bessie,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell you how much. I never thought you’d do it. God knows I’ve tried hard enough to persuade you —’
‘Couldn’t spare the time,’ Bessie said, a little pink about the ears but clearly pleased. ‘Alex — Mr Lazar needs me, you know how it is. He’s not so young any more and now with all this work he does for Israel and all —’ She shook her head. ‘Couldn’t get away before.’
‘Listen to her, Tina!’ Lexie said to her dresser. ‘Do you hear her? This Mr Lazar she’s talking about — her boss — he’s eighty-two, eighty-three or so, I grant you, but she’s not exactly a spring chicken any more herself! Flew here, would you believe! There are men half her age terrified of crossing the Atlantic by air, but this one won’t come any other way, because she couldn’t spare the time by sea —’ Tina grinned and began to brush Lexie’s silk grosgrain suit, ready to help her into it.
‘I thought there’d be a lot more people in here,’ Bessie said hastily, wanting to change the subject. ‘Don’t they all come round after a first night the way they do in London?’
‘They do if you let ’em.’ Lexie was leaning close to the mirror, applying her street make-up in long careful strokes, covering the fine lines that traced their patterns round her mouth and under her eyes. She frowned a little as she looked at herself — fifty? Damn it all, fifty] — and she added a little white highlight beneath her eyes to soften the smudges there. ‘But I don’t let ’em. They just get in the way while I change and jabber, and anyway I like to get myself looking right before I go on show again.’ She leaned back in her chair and looked at herself appraisingly. ‘Will I do?’
‘You look lovely,’ Bessie said. Lexie flashed a grin at her and began to climb into her suit. She wasn’t just being polite when she said she was pleased to have Bessie with her — she really had been warmed and excited when she’d arrived. In the six years since she’d come to New York and begun the painful climb back to her old pinnacle, she’d asked Bessie many times to come and see her, but she’d always been evasive. There was Alex, she’d say, and she saw a good deal of his niece Hannah these days too, which was nice, and the business had grown, and — excuse had followed excuse, and Lexie had fretted over that. Always at the back of her mind had been the fear of losing Bessie, the conviction that one day illness would eventually overcome that crooked frail little body, but somehow Bessie just went on and on.
She’d had a severe attack of flu that had turned to pneumonia in 1948, and Lexie had been frantic when Alex had cabled to beg her management to let her go home to see her. And she had flown back, braving the terrors and discomfort as well as the huge expense of the flight over the Atlantic, only to find Bessie at home from hospital and getting ready, as usual, to go to the office. Lexie had sailed back to New York feeling more lonely than she would have thought possible. She wanted Bessie’s company as she never had before; needed her reassuring commonsense, her unquestioning support, the essence of her, almost physically. She would lie awake and think of her and worry over her and then be angry with herself for being so stupid. Wasn’t life going well for her now, better than she could have hoped? It hadn’t been the easiest thing in the world to get back on the Manhattan theatre circuit, but she’d done it.
Now, getting ready to go to Sardi’s after the opening of her biggest and most ambitious show yet, one in which she had actually had a share of the production responsibility, she felt happier than she had for a very long time indeed. The early years in New York had been marred, often, by news of Molly. The combination of feeling that could be aroused in her by a newspaper photograph, a magazine interview, a radio show, was as queasy as it had ever been; the bitter sense of loss combined with the sharp bite of resentment that her daughter clearly
had Hollywood by the tail, the sick sense of failure as a mother mixed with her pride in Molly’s success as a performer — it had all dogged her, but for the past year or so it had been easier. There had been less about Molly in the popular journals, and more about Lexie. The balance had been restored — and now here was Bessie, right here in Manhattan, and again she looked across at the small figure perched on the edge of her chair and grinned at her.
‘This Sardi’s place we’re going to,’ Bessie said casually. ‘It’s where everyone goes, you say, after a first night?’
‘Absolutely everyone! Lexie picked up her bag and looked for the last time in the mirror. ‘Even if there’s a party. You can go on to the party afterwards, but going to Sardi’s first is a must. So, come on, Bessie! Hold my hand. Your baby needs you!’ Bessie laughed, reddened and got to her feet, tucking her claw of a hand into Lexie’s elbow.
‘Do you have a table booked? A special one, I mean? Or do you just get put where they’ve got space?’ Bessie asked as they came out of the theatre into Shubert Alley. She shivered and moved closer to Lexie as the bitter cold of the February night air bit into her. ‘And can everyone in the restaurant see everyone? I mean, will they all see you?’
‘They’ll see me,’ Lexie said a little grimly. ‘Have no fear about that. They’ll see me. Hold on to me, now, I tell you. This makes my knees shake — Peter wanted to come with me — you remember? I introduced you, he’s the director — but I told him I had you and we’d be fine on our own. So, here we go —’
The noise inside the restaurant was discreet, a pleasant hum of voices and clatter of glass and silver, and Lexie stood there for a moment in the doorway taking in the rich flavour-filled scent of gin, flambéd food, expensive cigars and brandy and then she tilted her chin, pulled Bessie a little closer to her, and walked forwards.
For a dreadful moment she was afraid it wasn’t going to happen, feared they’d all sit at their tables with their heads together studiously staring at the pictures of famous performers on the walls, at their menus, at their waiters, at anyone but her. Then at last it started: a small spatter of applause from a table to the left of her, and then another as people saw she had arrived and then, finally, it went all round the big elegant space, like long grass bending before an affectionate breeze, and she felt the smile start to grow on her face all by itself, completely out of her control, widening until she knew she was grinning like a Cheshire cat.
Memory sparked in her, and she saw herself as though she were a long way away down a vast corridor, a small remote figure on a brightly lit stage. She was walking into a big restaurant, where people glittered and chattered and paid her no attention at all, and she was wearing ordinary street clothes, a beret, a simple dress, and was embarrassed because of that, but Bessie, who was with her at the end of that long vista, she wasn’t embarrassed at all. She walked jauntily into the great threatening room, towards Alex at a table, and suddenly Lexie laughed to be standing here in Sardi’s in 1951, and thinking of London in 1918 — it was absurd.
‘Bessie,’ she said joyously, turning to look down at her. ‘Bessie, do you remember that time we went to the Trocadero, after going to a show one night? To see Alex? And he introduced me to André Chariot’s chap and —’
But Bessie wasn’t looking at her. She was walking beside her with her head in the air, clearly searching for someone.
‘What is it, Bessie?’ Lexie said as the applause went on and on around her. ‘Who are you looking for?’
At once Bessie went crimson and ducked her head. ‘No one,’ she muttered. ‘No one — this is lovely. Lexie, I told you they’d all applaud, didn’t I? I told you —’
‘You told me!’ Lexie said and laughed, letting Bessie’s odd behaviour go, putting it down to the excitement of the moment. ‘You’re never wrong, Bessie, my love, you’re never wrong —’ And then they were there in the centre of the restaurant where Peter and Danny the choreographer and Bruce the costume designer and Frankie who’d done the music and all the rest of them were at a big round table all applauding as hard as they could, and she and Bessie sat down in a great flurry of excitement.
It was, Lexie told herself deep inside her mind, the best moment she’d ever experienced, but as the thought came into her head it was followed by a sharp pang of anxiety, as though in just thinking it she was disposing of it, as though in labelling the moment as a peak she had doomed herself to a headlong fall into a trough out of which perhaps she would never be able to climb.
She almost shook herself at the absurdity of the notion, but the chill remained with her and made her more vivacious, more glittering and more sparkling, as the praise for the star that was an essential part of the proceedings was heaped on her. The director, the designer, the musicians, all deserved as much credit as she did; she was well aware of that, and knew how big a debt of gratitude she owed them, but it was traditional to lay the credit for all the success at the star’s feet, and she’d earned it. She smiled and smiled and gloried in the moment and wondered, somewhere so deep inside herself it was almost inaccessible, why she felt such a sense of emptiness.
They had reached the coffee stage when at last Bessie beside her seemed to wake up. She had been sitting quietly, eating little, only smiling and nodding when people spoke to her, seeming content to sit in Lexie’s shadow, silent and unobserved. But now, suddenly, she sat up very straight and began to chatter very rapidly and totally inconsequentially to Danny, who was sitting on her far side. Lexie, who had been talking to Danny across her, was a little startled for a moment, but, then remembering that Bessie rarely drank and now had a glass of wine in front of her, turned to speak to her other partner. But he was occupied with the girl on his other side, and for a moment she was alone in the middle of the big party and could catch her breath.
Ahead of her she could see a mirror on the far wall and she moved her head slightly, to catch her own reflection. And saw instead two people sitting at a table against the wall. She sat very still for a long moment and then whirled in her chair to look back over her shoulder.
‘Oh dear,’ Bessie muttered. Lexie flicked a glance at her and said incredulously, ‘Bessie? You knew they were here? Together? You knew?’
‘Once you said everyone came here, I knew they’d come. I thought there was a party after the show, like they have in London, and I thought they’d go there, and it’d all be a lot — well, I didn’t know about here, how it would be. But I thought, well, he’s a sensible man, he’ll know what happens, he’ll know what to do — where you’ll be —’
She was gabbling now, totally unlike herself, and her face was as bright a red as Lexie had ever seen it.
‘I saw them come in just now,’ Bessie was murmuring. ‘I got worried at first when they weren’t here, but then I saw them and I got even more worried — Lexie, don’t be angry with me.’
‘Angry?’ Lexie said and she knew her voice sounded flat and dull. ‘Angry? Should I be?’
‘Well, I don’t know. Maybe. But it seemed to me to be so silly and he told me what you said about if you were a success again you’d — anyway, I told him about this show and all you’d said about it. It sounded like it could be the hit you’ve been wanting — and —’ She shrugged. ‘So I told him he ought to come —’
‘More wine, Lexie?’ Danny leaned over and filled her glass. ‘And you, Bessie? You’re some lady, you know that, Bessie? We’ll have to find a show that’s right for you, and make you a star like your baby sister here — come on, have some more wine — it’s the best. French. None of your domestic stuff —’
It was a few minutes before Lexie could escape from the general conversation, could turn back to Bessie and demand more, and all the time she answered mechanically to what people said her thoughts were whirling. It was crazy, it was impossible, it was ridiculous and what had Bessie done, for God’s sake? How could they be —
At last the talk shifted, became less general and she was free to talk to Bessie again. She turned her he
ad and said stiffly, ‘Why together, Bessie?’
Bessie reddened even more and ducked her chin. ‘Because it was so wrong,’ she mumbled. ‘All wrong. I couldn’t bear it. You were so miserable and — it wasn’t right, so young as she was and so far away, so I told him —’
‘When?’
‘When? Oh, a long time ago. After Barbie died and you were so miserable and —’ She shrugged. ‘A long time ago —’
‘Did he know when —’ Lexie swallowed. ‘Did he know before he came back to England after the war?’
‘Yes, he did.’ Bessie looked at her defiantly. ‘It wasn’t right, that child going so far away and not knowing who her father was and no one to look after her properly. So I told him — and I told her, too. I wrote her a long letter all about it and explained how it all was, to the best of my knowledge. Barbie had said to me how it was. We were together a lot, Barbie and I, when you were in ENSA during the war. You must have known she’d talk to me about the old days when you two were here in America. You must have known she would. So, I understood how it had been with you, and I told Molly. And then, after you went to America, Max went to see her —’
She peered up at Lexie anxiously. ‘You’re not too angry, Lexie? It just wasn’t right, you see. Someone had to tell them both. They’re entitled, aren’t they? A man’s entitled to his child — and she’s entitled to her dad.’
But Lexie sat in silence. Around her the party was breaking up as people made complicated plans about cars and taxis to take them on to the party that Peter had organized for the cast over at his hotel. Lexie sat in the middle of the flurry letting them go, assuring them that yes she’d follow on, she’d get there, no problem, but she just had some people to see first; and then she saw in the mirror that behind her he had got to his feet and was watching the table where she sat. His image disappeared and reappeared as people passed in front of him and then, at last, there were just herself and Bessie left as he came purposefully towards them.
Family Chorus Page 44
