She felt rather stung. ‘That’s not true.’
‘Daddy can’t really either,’ said Cord, helpfully. ‘Oh, I miss him,’ she added, moodily sweeping her hand across the dining table. ‘I wish he was here.’
‘I know. Look, we’ll try our best to eke out some scant seconds of muted enjoyment for ourselves without him,’ said Althea, evenly. She glanced at the blue Bakelite clock on the wall, wondering when, whether, if the phone would ring.
‘It’ll be hard,’ Ben sighed. ‘Is Aunt Isla coming at all?’ Althea’s sister, a brisk, jolly headmistress who retained the accent and flavour of her own upbringing, was a great favourite with the children. They had been to Kirkcudbright to stay with her in the white Georgian terraced house in which the sisters had grown up together. It was a beautiful spot: Isla had converted their painter father’s old studio at the bottom of the long rambling garden into a playhouse, below which flowed the River Dee, where the tugboats and fishing vessels slid past the glistening brown waters out to the Solway Firth.
‘No, Aunt Isla’s away with the school.’
‘Ohhhh,’ said Ben and Cord together, exaggeratedly. ‘Ohhh, nooo, that’s awful.’
Althea paused. ‘Perhaps we’ll have some other people down. Like Mummy and Daddy’s old friend Simon. Do you remember Simon?’ she added, carefully.
‘No,’ said Ben.
‘He used to live with Daddy. He has blonde hair and Daddy gave him a haircut on the porch once, and we could see the goldy hair through the slats for the rest of the summer,’ said Cord, pachyderm-like. ‘He brought you a scarf, Mumma. And he helped you with the washing-up all the time.’
‘That’s him. He might come. And – Uncle Bertie.’
‘Yippee!’ said Cord. ‘But, oh, I’m still sad about Aunt Isla. I wanted to show her my new book.’
‘I wanted her to teach me to fish again,’ said Ben. ‘If Daddy’s not going to be here to do it. She’s great at catching little fish.’
‘I can do that,’ said Althea. ‘I used to fish all the time.’
‘No, Aunt Isla knows how to fish properly. Her house has a river at the bottom of the garden.’
‘Oh, good grief. I grew up in that house,’ said Althea, exasperatedly. ‘I know how to fish. In fact,’ she added, wildly, ‘I was much better at fishing, and crabbing. Aunt Isla only liked playing dolls.’
The children stared at her in a politely disbelieving way; Ben rubbed his nose. ‘Oh. I thought you were just pretty, Mumma,’ he said. Althea closed her eyes, briefly, and then gave a huge start as Cord flung her arms around her waist.
‘You can’t help not being awfully good at some things,’ she said, seriously. ‘I’m sure we’ll have a great time without Daddy and Aunt Isla, Mumma.’
Althea hugged her fiercely, and after a moment said, ‘Thank you, darling. Now, for the last time, go and wash your hands. And get changed into shorts, please. You can go to the beach afterwards. No, just go, otherwise there’s nothing to eat.’
Tony loved an audience: that was the great difference between them as actors. He looked forward, through them, past them, seeking to connect, to draw people along with him. At home in London he knew the names of the river boatmen, he remembered every cabbie, the rag-and-bone men who often made a special detour to see him; he leaped aboard buses and talked genially to conductors and passengers who didn’t know who he was. Here, down at his beloved Bosky, he was even more in his element, greeting old friends, tickling children under the chin, scurrying up the steps of beach huts to help women down with their wicker picnic baskets, joshing with the old men sitting on the bench outside the pub – he was theirs, and they all loved him. He was very lovable.
‘What a shame Mr Wilde can’t get away till later,’ said Mrs Gage, putting the crockery down on the table.
‘Yes, very sad. Children!’ Althea called, raising her voice. ‘The eggs are nearly done. Come up for some food, please.’ She turned to Mrs Gage. ‘It’s been a huge hit, and they’ve extended the run.’
‘What play is it, then?’
‘Antony and Cleopatra.’
‘Oh.’ Mrs Gage didn’t seem that impressed. ‘I read it at school, long time ago now. We saw a play at Christmas, I wanted to tell him about it. Ever so funny it was. No Sex Please, We’re British, and it’s about this wife, and she orders some smutty magazines by mistake, and they start—’
Althea interrupted. ‘Could you get the children, please, Mrs Gage?’
‘Anyway, that Cleopatra was a nasty piece of work if you ask me,’ muttered Mrs Gage, moving slowly towards the door. ‘I’ll tell him when he comes.’
Althea nodded. She stood up and glanced into the mirror, then past her reflection at the newly positioned portrait of Aunt Dinah. She peered at the older woman’s eager smiling face and long pointed noise, the disconcerting familiarity of her that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She stared at the picture.
‘What’s got into him, in the last year or so?’ she said quietly. ‘Do you know? Oh, I wish you could tell me.’
The tread of the children’s feet crescendoed and they appeared, skidding into place at the table. Althea smiled at them and poured them each a glass of milk, then sat down, smoothing a napkin over her dress.
‘Here we are. Eggs, bacon and fried bread.’
Ben glanced at his younger sister. ‘Thanks, Mumma—’ he began.
‘Mother,’ Cord said. ‘We want to tell you something.’ Ben picked up a piece of bread and crammed it into his mouth.
‘Go on,’ said Althea, as she seemed to pause.
‘We are changing our names. Aren’t we, Ben.’ Cord looked at her brother, as if for reassurance. ‘We don’t like our names any more. It’s silly having names after Shakespearean people.’
‘They call me Dick at school and I hate it.’
‘They call me Lime Cordial.’
Althea said nothing, but nodded.
Taking encouragement from this, Cord said, ‘So can you please tell everyone. That . . . da-durr . . . please hear a drumroll now –’ Ben tapped gently on the table – ‘that our names are now Flash Gordon and Agnetha.’
Althea let out an unintended burst of laughter. ‘No, I can’t,’ she said, and they both turned their faces towards her in astonishment.
‘Well,’ said Cord, solemnly, ‘When we are back from the Bosky we are going to go to the Council and get a form to change them in law. You can’t say no.’
‘Yes, I jolly well can.’
Ben shook his sister’s arm.
‘Cordy, you said she would . . .’ he hissed, and Cord shook it off.
‘I’m not calling you Flash Gordon and Agnetha, and that’s the end of it,’ Althea said. ‘Your names are fine. They’re lovely names!’
‘But we don’t like them, Mumma,’ Ben said, too loudly, the sign that he was getting upset. ‘And we’re not babies. You can’t stop us.’
‘I jolly well can, darling. Now, eat your food.’
‘I hate you,’ said Cord, suddenly. Althea’s eyes snapped open.
‘How dare you,’ she said, her patience gone. ‘Don’t ever say things like that.’
‘It’s not rude, it’s true. And you – oh!’
She gave a small sharp cry.
‘What?’ said Althea, sharply, swivelling her head round.
Cord had jumped up. ‘Who’s that? Oh – is it a ghost?’
Ben clutched his mother’s hand fiercely. There came the pattering echo of footsteps, beating on the porch steps down to the beach, and Althea stood up. ‘Who was it, did you see?’
Cord’s face was red. ‘It was a ghost. It had silvery hair. It was staring at us.’ She pointed out of the window with one shaking, nail-bitten finger. ‘It was Virginia, the witch like the one I saw that time in the grass. Virginia Creeper. Come back to kill us and then to haunt us.’
‘Sit down, darling, it’s not. It’s a little girl, not a witch. I saw her running away. She’s not going to kill you.’
‘I�
�d be upset if you died,’ said Ben. ‘And Cord.’ He slid his hand into hers. She squeezed it.
‘Agnetha, you mean.’
They both gave a small smile. ‘Yes, of course I meant that.’
She stood up, and dropped a kiss on both their foreheads.
‘Daddy’s coming, isn’t he?’ Cord asked, almost under her breath.
Althea kissed the crown of her daughter’s head fiercely, so she couldn’t see her face. ‘Yes, darling. Of course he is. In a few weeks. And in the meantime we’ll have an absolutely glorious time, I promise.’
Chapter Two
A few weeks later, in a muggy, distempered dressing room in the bowels of St Martin’s Lane, Anthony Wilde OBE let the door slam behind him. He advanced towards his companion with a smile on his face, deftly peeling off his thick, moss-like black beard as though it were a rubber mask, then threw it on the dressing-room table. ‘Now, my dear –’ he said, and, pulling her towards him, he kissed her neck. ‘Well, well.’
She dimpled. ‘Well, well,’ she whispered.
‘It’s jolly nice of you to pay me a visit,’ he said. ‘Can I get you anything to drink?’
‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘Where’s Nigel?’
‘I got rid of him for the night.’ Nigel was Tony’s loyal dresser of many years’ standing. ‘So we’re all alone.’ His hand slid up her firm leg. ‘Oh, I say – what have we here, darling?’
She gave a small, nervous giggle. ‘But you told me not to wear anything underneath,’ she said, whispering in his ear, pressing her young, firm body against his. ‘All evening, I’ve been waiting. It was quite hard, in the bit when I have to fall down dead – I was worried the skirt’d fly up and leave me showing my . . . um . . . to the whole audience.’
‘Naughty,’ he said, kissing her creamy neck, the tendrils of hair escaping from her cap. ‘Very naughty. You were wonderful tonight. I was watching. Finish, good lady, the bright day is done / And we are for the dark . . . just terrific.’ He unfastened her cotton bodice, deft, experienced fingers sliding the buttons out of the holes like pips from a juicy lemon. ‘Terrific.’
‘That was Iras. I’m Charmian,’ she said, slightly discouraged.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Tony, sharply. ‘I know that. But I love that line. Favourite bit in the play actually . . .’ Rosalie’s head snapped up as he teased her small, plump breasts out of their bodice.
‘Did you mean to ask Rosie in here instead?’ she said. ‘She gave me a funny look – I saw it. Well, I say. Anthony, did you?’
No, because I had her last week and she was rather a let-down. Nice girl but lank hair. Awfully moany, he wanted to say. Tony inhaled, telling himself to ignore the slight whiff of drains, and the sound of the Tube rumbling underneath their feet. Concentrate. Come on, old boy. Instead, he answered, ‘Course not, darling.’ He pulled her towards him so they were facing each other, and cupped her chin in both hands. ‘You, it’s you I wanted, you sweet, innocent angel. I’ve been watching you all night. I couldn’t wait to get you in here.’ He kissed her, gently. ‘To touch you –’ He ran his hand between her legs again, and she shivered in surprise, then blinked. ‘It was agony.’
‘Yes,’ she said, swaying slightly. ‘Oh – yes, Anthony.’ She ran her hands through his hair.
‘Ow,’ he said, sharply, gingerly touching his forehead. ‘Sorry. Don’t. Got a bit of a bump there.’
‘Oh!’ Her brown eyes were troubled, her adorable cherry-pink lips parted. ‘You poor thing. I see it, it’s a real lump. How did you get that?’
‘Oh, doesn’t matter,’ he said, hurriedly, then he smiled wolfishly at her. ‘I am dying, Egypt, dying. Now, where were we . . .?’
He supported her with one hand around the waist, and then, pushing her very gently backwards, walked her to the table that ran along one whole wall. He settled her on it, lifting up her serving maid’s skirts – the production was eccentric, with Cleopatra in full Ancient Egyptian regalia, her maidservants in Elizabethan costume, and the Romans wearing business suits to a man. Tony tugged off his jacket and tie, undoing his fly button with deft haste.
‘Oh, Anthony—’ she said again as he tugged her dress down over her shoulders, and he rather wished she wouldn’t.
‘Darling, I said, call me Tony.’
She stuck her chin out. ‘I couldn’t. That’s what she calls you. And Oliver.’
‘“She”?’
‘Helen.’
‘Oh, her.’ Tony dismissed his co-star with a murmur, and kissed her again.
She hung her arms around his neck and her hard little nipples scraped against his shirt as he struggled out of his trousers; he tried to keep calm; he felt woozy, high on the thrill of it: it was always like this for him. Beforehand, anyway.
‘Oh,’ she said, dismissively. ‘She’s so rude about you behind your back. In that American accent. I want something else to call you. My own special name.’
‘It’s what everyone calls me, my dear,’ he said, kissing her swiftly. She was a darling, really, but – he was meeting Simon and Guy later, and he didn’t have all evening . . .
She bared her little teeth at him, breasts pressed against him, nipped deliciously at his ear, and then she said softly, ‘Ant.’ She nipped at him again, and moved against him. ‘I’ll call you Ant, it’ll be our special name for you.’ She breathed in his ear. ‘Ant—’
‘No.’ Tony pulled away from her so roughly his fingers caught in her hair and she yelped. ‘Don’t – sorry. Don’t ever call me that.’
‘I’m – I’m sorry,’ she said, flushing red. ‘Tony – I didn’t mean to—’
‘It’s nothing. Just don’t. Sweetheart,’ he added, caressingly, and he carried on stroking her, with increased attention, almost too much. Now he just wanted to get inside her, for it to be done with. He eased his way in, feeling sick, his head throbbing more than ever.
She clutched him, pulling him closer to her, further into her. ‘Oh – oh, my God.’
Suddenly, unbidden, the image of Althea, lying sprawled on the bed, came into his head, and nausea rose sharply in his gullet. Her large creamy thighs, her auburn hair loose, covering her shoulders, the hooded eyes, her supreme indifference until the point of entry when she would become frenzied, ecstatic, possessed – her need for chocolate, or booze, or some sort of luxurious consumption afterwards . . . Jesus Christ, not now, not now . . .
The room she had made safe again . . . his sobs, the smell of a lit match in the dark . . . He touched his throbbing head. The scent of wild flowers outside, inside the gritty smell of oil lamps . . . a candlewick bedspread, bobbled and pink, that first time . . . tape criss-crossing the windows . . . sirens . . . Tony blinked, as he thrust harder inside Rosalie, and she gasped, and moaned loudly. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about the room, dammit. Why now, after all this time? Dammit . . . The bedspread . . .
He came inside her, crying out, slumping over Rosie – Rosalie? Rosalie. She cried out too, a little too loudly. In the silence afterwards, broken only by his heavy breaths and Rosalie’s small, panting gulps of air, he could hear tinkling laughter and conversation, coming from Helen’s dressing room. Damn her. Damn it all.
Tony sat scraping his make-up off with almost vicious haste, as the sound of his co-star’s honeyed tones drifted through the paper-thin dressing-room walls. The sultry summer heat seemed to be doing half the work for him, as the greasepaint had melted and slid off in parts: Tony peered anxiously into the mirror, to assure himself that the stuff hadn’t collected in his pores, and around his nose. It wasn’t vain, was it, to want to go out to dinner with a few friends and not be caked in stage make-up? Especially Simon, who loved to mock. One of Helen’s vacuous acolytes said something in a low voice and a silvery peal of laughter reached Tony again. He flinched, resisting the urge to bang on the wall and tell them all to shut the hell up.
He hated London in August. Why was he here, when he could be at the Bosky? Sweating away in this awful broken-down theatre
on disgusting wages while Clive over at the National was absolutely packing them in with Othello? Because he wanted to do Antony, because it was working with Oliver Thorogood, the director of the moment, and Tony couldn’t possibly have turned him down. Because he was forty-two, and convinced his looks and virility and talent were going and Antony was the perfect role to prove to himself – his worst critic – that it was otherwise. Because he’d wanted to work with Helen O’Malley, damn it. What a fool he’d been.
He and Althea had one rule only – no jobs that interfered with August at the Bosky. That lead part in the Thames Television mini-series Althea had been offered last year – he’d been coldly angry with her for suggesting she even take it, even though it had been the first decent TV thing she’d had come in since the children. So she’d said no and taken that awful part as the simpering halfwit mother instead and hated it, and Tony knew she was better than that, knew probably more than she did how good she was . . . It terrified him, the idea she might be better than him.
And then in March came Thorogood with his offer of Antony and Cleopatra at the Albery, one of his favourite theatres – he was superstitious about everything but particularly theatres – and the chance to star alongside the one and only Helen O’Malley in her first appearance on a London stage and he’d said yes, and then had to explain to Althea. She’d been utterly furious. At the memory of the fight they’d had, Tony closed his eyes, briefly. He was still taken aback at some of the things she’d said. They’d rowed before – oh, they had – but this was another level, something quite different . . . Tony leaned forwards, resting his weary head in his hands.
It felt like months since she and the children had left for the seaside and he hated being alone in the Twickenham house. He was never on his own, couldn’t stand his own company. Aunt Dinah used to say he had to stand on his own two feet:
‘You’re all alone in the world apart from me, Ant dear. You have to learn how to jolly well get on with things if I’m not around. Life’s a gamble. You hold the dice.’
His great-aunt had played dice with a Foreign Office solicitor for a place on the last boat out of Basra when she had to come back for him. She’d won, and presumably the young man hoping to return to Aldershot was abandoned by the quayside for the duration of the war. It was in Dinah’s blood, gambling, and in his, too. Tony’s father, an actor like Tony, used to tell his son of the time she came to his first professional engagement, as Bluebeard, on the London stage – and, having forgotten her reticule (so she claimed), bet the lady at the Alhambra box office she could keep her eyes open without blinking for a minute. She won the bet and Tony remembered his father’s description of her, pushing past disgruntled theatregoers to the middle of the front row, sitting down and watching him with her eyes wide open, almost on stalks, as if she’d forgotten she was allowed to blink.
The Wildflowers Page 4
