‘I do rather, but I’m getting used to it. It’s quite warm on the stage because of the lights. It’s waiting to go on that’s so ghastly.’
‘I saw the play. You were quite right. It is awful, isn’t it? Poor you.’
‘I did my best.’ She felt faintly, and perversely nettled that Stella hadn’t added, ‘But you were good.’
‘You want me to say you were good. Well, you weren’t bad, and I don’t think you could be more than that. Do you have this room to yourself?’
‘I do for this play. But in the next one, one of them is playing the lead, and I’m just crowd, so I’ll certainly be sharing.’
‘In love with anyone?’
‘Nope. Are you?’
Stella shook her head. ‘I think I’m the kind of person who not many people would go for and then one day just one person will, and I shall be completely bowled over from lack of practice. Unlike you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, my darling, that you are the kind of person who millions of people will go for.’ She leaned back in the basket chair and crossed her ankles: her thick grey stockings in no way spoiled their elegance.
‘I’ve brought us a picnic,’ she said. ‘Can we eat it here?’
‘No. They’ll turn us out any minute. The doorkeeper wants to lock up and go home.’
‘At your digs, then?’
‘Well, it depends on whether Fred is drunk and up, or out or in bed. And I’ll have to talk to Doll – ask her if you can stay and so on. It’ll be all right, unless Fred is drunk and up.’
‘In which case?’
‘We’ll be up and out.’
‘Well, is there anywhere else we could go?’
‘Not really. The towpath by the river, but apart from anything else, it’ll be freezing cold. We might just have to eat the picnic very quietly. I must say it’s heroic of you to bring it.’
‘We may turn out to be heroic to eat it.’
‘You ladies finished in here?’
‘Coming, Jack.’ She spread a face towel over her make-up, picked up her bag, wound her muffler round her neck, and they went back up the concrete stairs and through the swing doors into the pitch dark street.
‘Take my arm,’ Louise said. ‘I have got a torch, but I know the way.’
‘He’s not back from the pub,’ Doll said when she let them in. ‘I don’t mind,’ she added, when Louise had explained about Stella. ‘Why don’t you sit in the kitchen and have it, then?’ she said when Louise explained that her friend hadn’t eaten and had brought a picnic. ‘I’ll make you a pot of tea. After all, it’s not the same as if you were a gentleman,’ she said.
‘Which of us would have to be that for it not to be the same?’ Stella muttered as they took off their outdoor things in Louise’s room.
‘You, I think. But she’s nice, isn’t she?’
‘Very nice,’ Stella answered affectionately. ‘Bit frightened of her dad, though.’
When they came down, Doll had laid the table with two cups and saucers, sugar bowl and a jug of milk. ‘The pot’s warming,’ she said. ‘I’ll shut the door and happen he won’t notice.’
She untied her faded flowered overall and hung it on the back of the door. ‘I should just lay off talking when you hear him come in. It is Friday, you see.’
She had a tired, kind face that was full of lack of expectation.
When they were alone, Stella said, ‘Are Fridays especially bad?’
‘He gets drunk on them. He doesn’t on the other nights.’
She made the tea, and they sat, rather subdued, eating cheese rolls and apples, and some pieces of chocolate.
‘I very nearly wish he would come, just to see what it would be like,’ Stella remarked, as Louise rinsed out their cups.
‘I don’t. I vote we go up now and get safely tucked up.’
‘Is there an indoor lavatory?’
‘Yes. It’s sort of built onto the back, half-way up the stairs.’
He came back while Stella was in the lavatory, and Louise hoped that she’d have the sense to stay there while Doll helped him up the stairs to bed. But Stella, of course, did have the sense. They undressed quickly – Stella had bedsocks: ‘My feet are always freezing, they’d be a real hazard for anyone to encounter in the night’ – and lay whispering, about nothing very much.
‘It was lovely of you to come,’ Louise said. How long can you stay?’
‘Just to tomorrow afternoon, I’m afraid. I’ve got to put in an appearance at home before I go back to Oxford.’
The next morning they went out early. Stella said she’d treat them both to breakfast at the Swan and Doll said she could manage lunch for Stella.
‘Oh, good! Then I’ll see her old dad,’ Stella said.
‘He’s quite mild and boring in the daytime,’ Louise said, ‘and they never talk at meals.’
‘Never?’
‘Well, pass the salt, but that’s all.’
It was a crisp clear day – blue sky, pale yellow sun, rime on the pavements. They went by way of the theatre, because Stella said she wanted to see it in daylight.
‘I’ve heard people say it is so ugly,’ she said, ‘so naturally, I want to see for myself. Although an Elizabethan theatre would have been stupid, wouldn’t it? I must say I think the Tudor houses look frightfully ersatz. They keep reminding me of houses on the Great West Road.’
‘I’ve never really thought about what houses look like.’
Stella always made her feel narrow-minded, but when Louise said this Stella said, ‘Well, Oxford has made me notice buildings. It’s rather like having a sense of smell, it cuts both ways, but the lovely ones are so breathtaking, and noticing the monstrosities might mean that we have less of them in future.’
Outside the theatre there were bills advertising Moiseiwitsch playing a programme of Beethoven on Sunday.
‘Last time I heard him he made me laugh he was so awful,’ Stella said. ‘Bang, bang, bang. As though he was trying to make Beethoven hear by shouting.’
‘How’s Peter?’
‘Well, he’s in the RAF – just. His first week, he washed up a hundred and eighty plates each night. He said his hands got like swollen sausages encased in chammy leather. And they expect him to play.’
‘To them in the evenings?’
‘Oh, no. At concerts. He’s joined up in a bit that has a lot of musicians but the joke is that although the orchestra is composed of amazing professionals – like the Griller Quartet – they are all, at best, leading aircraftsmen, so a squadron leader who used to conduct a band at the end of a pier does the conducting. But Peter says they just all take no notice of him so it’s all right. They do expect him to play a lot with hardly any practice and his hands are in a bad way. But it could be a lot worse.’
They were walking by the river now – slate-coloured in its reflection of the sky.
‘Well? And how do you think the war is going?’ Stella asked.
‘The war? I haven’t thought about it much.’
‘You mean you haven’t at all. I know you. You don’t read newspapers, I don’t suppose you listen to the news – you haven’t a clue what’s going on. I suppose you know that the Ark Royal has been sunk. By Italians, which almost makes it worse. Rather a blow, with the north African offensive.’
‘I didn’t know,’ Louise said. She had no idea what sort of ship Ark Royal was. ‘A battleship?’ she ventured.
‘An aircraft carrier.’
Louise suddenly imagined being on a sinking ship. ‘It must be frightening. A horrible way to die.’
‘They didn’t lose many people. Lucky it was the Mediterranean. In the Atlantic it’s too cold for people to last in the water long enough to get picked up.’
‘Michael is in the Atlantic,’ Louise said.
‘Are you in touch?’
‘He writes to me. Do you mean …’ she felt hesitant and appalled, ‘do you mean that if a ship goes down, the people in her have no hope? Don’t they have lifeboat
s and rafts and things?’
‘Of course they do. But sometimes it happens very quickly, and sometimes it is a long time before they get picked up. And sometimes there aren’t enough boats, and people have to hang on to them in the water.’
‘How do you know so much, Stella?’
‘I don’t know nearly as much as it sounds. But a cousin of mine was in an escort to a convoy, and he was torpedoed. He told me a bit.’
She did not enlarge upon what he had told her because she recognised that Louise was starting to feel anxious when there would be nothing she could do about it.
When they reached the Swan, who were prepared to let them have some breakfast – scrambled dried eggs, rather muscular sausages and curiously grey coffee, Stella said, ‘How do you feel about Michael?’
Louise thought. ‘Well – apart from my famous vanity – you know he goes on telling me I’m marvellous, which does make an alluring change, I must say – I don’t know. I suppose writing letters makes me have some idea. I write to the family – well, Mummy, because she expects it, and sometimes a letter just saying “dear family”. That’s one kind of letter. Then I write to you, which is a quite different kind of letter. I mean I can tell you anything – you’re not going to say I shouldn’t be here or order me home. Well, Michael is sort of in between. He feels half like a grown-up, and half like an equal. I suppose that’s because he’s fourteen years older.’
‘Do you think you like him because you have some sort of father complex?’
‘Strewth no!’ As she said that, Louise realised that there was one thing that she had never told Stella – and never would.
‘I suppose’, she said lamely, ‘that I just feel sort of safe with him.’
She saw her friend’s face, the shrewd, ironical smile softened by affection, and they dropped the subject.
She asked Stella about Oxford, and Stella said that in any other circumstances it would be the perfect place for her: ‘As it is, I feel I’m just marking time before I have to do something completely different where everything I’ve learned will be about as relevant as you and me learning to make a chocolate soufflé was at our cooking place.’
‘Except, I suppose, that everything comes in handy some time or other.’
‘You mean, like learning to be good with sharks, and then getting shipwrecked? I think life is one long shipwreck and you learn about the sharks after you’ve been rescued. Anyway, my father wants me to be a secretary to an admiral or something respectable like that. My mother thinks I should nurse.’
‘And you?’
She shrugged her thin shoulders. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I wish we could do something together.’
‘I’d like that. If either of us thinks of anything, let the other one know.’
After a silent lunch of ox liver and onions – Fred was pale but relatively affable and chewed his food very slowly gazing at Stella with an unfathomable expression – Louise walked to the station with Stella. Feeling the impending separation, they found it more difficult to talk – asked about each other’s families. Each said that they were just the same. ‘They are, aren’t they?’ Louise said. ‘They just go on in the same old way.’
‘I expect they change but we don’t notice. At least you don’t have too many of them to contend with.’
‘I was just thinking that at least you have a nice variety.’
She felt sad when Stella was gone. My best friend, she thought. Well, actually, my only friend. This was rather a bleak thought, and she wondered whether it was because she was not much good at friendship. There was Michael, of course, but somehow, his admiration made it rather hothouse: they weren’t exactly friends, it was more as though they were playing a game where he knew the rules better than she did. She had thought that Jay was going to be a friend, but when she’d got back from her stay with Michael’s family, she discovered that he was sleeping in Ernestine’s room; he avoided her, or made faint, gibing remarks that sounded as though they were of a general nature, but she felt were intended for her. He never read poetry to her, or stroked her breasts again. And Ernestine had been noisy and flamboyant about being the only person in the company who was having an affair. Having Stella – even for twenty-four hours – made Louise know how much she missed her. She decided that even a boring war job would be all right if they did it together.
She realised that her throat was sore and that was the beginning of being quite ill, missing three nights of Maria Marten, and getting sacked for it.
Mrs Cripps and Tonbridge sat side by side in the dark. They were in the next row to the back, and behind them she could hear the heavy breaths and surreptitious shiftings of romance. They were watching King Kong, and glancing at Tonbridge, Mrs Cripps could see that he was really taken with it although, speaking for herself, she thought it was all rather silly – a huge great ape soppy about a film star. She would have liked a proper romance, with someone like Robert Taylor or Clark Gable in it, or a nice Fred Astaire—Ginger Rogers film with a lot of dancing. But when he’d asked her to the cinema, she’d said yes without caring what was on. It was the outing that she wanted, and the chance to sit in the dark with him without interruption or anyone knowing who they were. She’d put on her best clothes – her maroon winter coat and her fox fur, where you opened the animal’s mouth and it clipped onto the tail, and her best hat, nigger-brown velour with some pheasant’s feathers draped round the brim and a mustard petersham bow (she’d been asked to remove that as soon as she sat down and now she was too hot, because she couldn’t keep the hat and the fur on her lap at once). This had been a mistake, because underneath she wore her best sateen blouse – a lovely blue – not a garment she would choose to perspire into but there was no help for it. The ape was wrecking some tall building in New York now – she gave a little gasp in the hope that that would get his arm round her, but he only reached out in the dark and patted her hat which, of course, was where he thought her hand would be. He was backward in coming forward, she had to admit. ‘It’s only make-believe,’ he whispered. Her face gleamed phosphorescently at him: it was not possible to tell whether she was reassured.
He wondered what she would do if he reached out and held her hand. He’d missed the obvious opportunity because her hat was in the way. He tried again and this time succeeded. Her hat fell on the floor but she paid no regard to it. Her soft fat fingers enveloped his – he could squeeze them without feeling the bones. She was all of a piece: the thought of squeezing her anywhere else chirped up his old ticker no end.
‘He’s only a gorilla,’ he whispered; he wanted to add that he’d never let a gorilla near her, but he was afraid of sounding a bit soft.
After the film, she retrieved her hat and they went out into the raw cold. She was glad of it – in her experience ladies did not perspire. He took her to the best teashop where the individual cakes were threepence each and a plate of scones – with marge and jam – was ninepence.
He said he thought it was a good film and she agreed that it had been very nice. He was wearing his civvies: a dark blue pinstripe suit that was a bit wide on the shoulders and a very smart tie with diagonal stripes of blue and red. The teashop was warm: the windows being blacked out meant that there wasn’t much air, but she could take off the fur and her coat so she didn’t mind. The scones were rather heavy, and he was quick to point out that they were not a patch on hers.
‘They wouldn’t be,’ she said, sipping her hot, weak tea. If there wasn’t a war on, she would have sent the tea back.
They had never found conversation during meals easy. Usually, she sat and watched him while he had one of his innumerable snacks – and he never put on an ounce, stayed as scrawny as ever.
Feeling the strain, he talked about the war: gave her his opinion about the Japanese and the United States. ‘There’s no doubt, Mrs Cripps,’ he said, ‘mark my words, no good is going to come out of that. And it’s my opinion that there was no call for Mr Churchill to say we’d join in if they go
to war. “Within the hour,” he said. In my opinion that was going too far.’
‘I suppose it was.’ She was deeply bored by the war and what foreign countries did in it which seemed to be none of their business.
‘But we have to remember that Mr Churchill knows what he’s doing.’
‘You can say that again,’ she said, hoping he wouldn’t.
They had finished the scones now, and both had been eyeing the plate of cakes, always a worry, since no two were the same, and one, at least, noticeably more desirable than the rest. He was a gentleman. He handed her the plate.
‘Which do you fancy, Mrs Cripps?’ he asked. She had seen him eyeing the jam tart, and took the cocoa sponge instead. Then they could both relax, and, she hoped, talk of more interesting things. She knew he’d had a letter a day or two ago, because Eileen had brought it in and put it on the kitchen table. She’d never known him get a letter before, and this one had its envelope typed, Mr F. C. Tonbridge and the address on it. As soon as he came in for his elevenses she had pointed it out. He had picked it up and looked at it for a long time before putting it in his pocket. He had never said one word about it. ‘I hope you haven’t had bad news, Mr Tonbridge?’ she had prompted over tea in the evening.
‘I have and I haven’t,’ he had replied. She had later tried saying that troubles shared were troubles halved, but he had seemed, or affected, not to understand her. She watched him chewing, wincing a little as the jam reached his bad tooth, and then a thought occurred to her.
‘It’s a wicked war all right,’ she said, ‘and the worst of it is the way it keeps loved ones away from each other. Mrs Rupert without Mr Rupert; Mrs Hugh missing Mr Hugh all week, Mrs Edward hardly ever seeing Mr Edward …’ she paused, ‘and then there’s you, Mr Tonbridge. I sometimes wonder if you don’t miss your wife …’
He swallowed the last of the tart, and cleared his throat. ‘Mrs Cripps, I wouldn’t say this to most people – well, I wouldn’t want to let it slip to anyone – but the honest truth is, in strictest confidence, mind – I’m not one for bandying my private affairs in public – that I don’t miss her. Far from it. Quite the contrary. She’s become a weight off my mind. I wouldn’t mind if I never set eyes on her again. Which I shan’t, if yours truly can help it. She’s a – well, you’ll have to take it from me, that she’s turned out to be not a very nice type of person.’
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 97
