At Freddie's

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  Freddie knew very well, without leaving her armchair, what was happening upstairs. After a week or so, she levered herself out of it and issued forth to patrol her territory. She listened for a while outside the door of Carroll’s classroom. When the children had gone home she sent for him.

  ‘They were talking, Miss Wentworth,’ he explained, ‘just talking.’

  ‘Well; what about?’

  ‘The front row were talking about a film they had seen, The Young Ones. There’s a singer in it, it seems, Cliff Richards or Richard, who takes a leading rôle. I haven’t seen it myself, so I can’t offer you an opinion. The back row was discussing what they considered the overcharge for potato crisps in your canteen here. A boy in the back corner was asking one of the girls whether she knew how to give a French kiss. Let me see now.’

  ‘Why weren’t you giving them a lesson?’

  ‘They’re not disposed to listen to me, Miss Wentworth. They find these other subjects more absorbing. And there’s another point at issue here. It seems to me that these children don’t care about a formal education because they intend going on the stage. Now, if I tell them they must work hard at their books in order to earn a living, won’t that be showing them clearly that I don’t expect them to succeed in the theatre? Am I right now?’

  ‘Have they taken no notice of you at all?’ Freddie asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that, no, one of the girls showed me a pair of shoes she’d bought that morning and asked me didn’t I think them sexy. She struck me as an intelligent kind of girl, intelligent in her way.’

  Freddie was not annoyed, only curious about a kind of incompetence – or perhaps it was competence – that she had never met before. Curiosity always brought out the noblest in her.

  ‘I simply want you to go in there tomorrow and teach them something, even if it’s only how to blow their noses with their fingers. I’m being merciful, dear. We’ll forget about what has happened so far.’

  Carroll knew that mercy is a function of power. He replied gloomily, ‘I hope you haven’t it in mind to dismiss me.’

  ‘To tell you the truth, I’m rather surprised that you should want to stay here.’

  ‘I want to stay.’

  He was not seated in her other armchair, but standing doggedly.

  ‘Run along now,’ she said.

  ‘I’m in no hurry, as it happens. I’m waiting for Hannah to finish so that I can go in and ask her if there’s any little thing I can help her with.’

  Freddie now understood why this uncouth creature wanted to stay at the Temple.

  ‘Do you always do that? Do you always wait in case there’s something you can do for her?’

  ‘It’s the best part of my day, Miss Wentworth.’ A day had to have a best part, he added.

  Freddie’s eyes seemed to become opaque, like smoked glass. She did not notice when her employee left the room.

  In the main, she preferred the staff to be at loggerheads. They were easier to control then, or to urge into mild competition. If one of them felt unfairly treated, the other would not be displeased. But it was her habit to look for advantages. If Carroll had fallen in love with Hannah – and it seemed quite impossible to tell what he might take it into his head to do – then in his besotted condition he could be paid well in arrears, and even later than the Bluebell.

  With a royal gesture Freddie swept the bills on her desk towards her and began tearing them across, again and again. The sight of them – and one of them appeared to be a court summons – reminded her of the old days at the Vic; dear Lilian Baylis confiding in her creditors, ‘I’ve been praying all night, and God has told me not to pay you just yet.’ A Word had come to Freddie more than once, cautioning her against caution. In any case, she was not afraid. She knew that she was one of those few people, to be found in every walk of life, whom society has mysteriously decided to support at all costs.

  She looked round the office at photographs waiting to be looked at – a past generation of theatricals framed in blotched silver, a later one in leather, later still in leather-effect Rexine. Freddie, always, Freddie, who taught me all I know, Ever thine, Binkie, Lest we forget, Noël, à toi, Jean-Louis, Ciaou, Hi Freddie. Fixed by an indulgent camera in their best profile, they all betrayed the melancholy of those who depend on physical vanity. Their faces were waiting for the betrayal of the flesh. But none of the actors who dropped in avoided the sight of their old portraits. On the contrary, they singled them out at once, prepared to admire their own image in any form.

  There were other benefactors there, however, more important, though their photographs were smaller. Freddie had no need to depend upon her friends in the theatre. Neither did she have to dread time’s encroachments. The place could hardly get any shabbier, and Freddie herself had fulfilled the one sure condition of being loved by the English nation, that is, she had been going on a very long time. She had done so much for Shakespeare, one institution, it seemed, befriending another. Her ruffianly behaviour had become ‘known eccentricities’. Like Buckingham Palace, Lyons teashops, the British Museum Reading Room, or the market at Covent Garden, she could never be allowed to disappear. While England rested true to itself, she need never compromise.

  In a surprisingly short time the Temple children came to take Carroll for granted. At first it had not seemed worth while to try to impress him, then they saw that it was impossible. Joybelle was the last to give up. She told him that she had come round to him, and was even getting to like his haircut – she had looked it up in her Movie Hairdos and it was really a kind of Coupe Sauvage. Would he like her just to run her fingers through it for him, she often did that at home for her uncle, and he said it turned him on. Carroll replied that he was not her uncle. He sat there imperturbably, locked in his own preoccupations.

  Hannah missed her family and thought that Pierce must do so too, and that this might be what made him the way he was. It turned out that he had seven brothers and sisters all told and went regularly to see them, but – and this shocked her – without particularly caring whether he did or not.

  ‘I wouldn’t have taken you for a quarrelsome person,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve never quarrelled with any of them. It’s just that I don’t miss them. When I’m there, I don’t know to what extent they notice my presence.’

  He needed persuading, she thought, and putting right. ‘You can’t be expected to be equally fond of all of them. In our family, take the aunts, for example, they have their little ways, haven’t yours?’

  Carroll considered this carefully. ‘My aunts’ ways. Well they may have been little once.’

  ‘You’re too hard on them.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go so far as that.’

  ‘And too hard on yourself. You shouldn’t keep thinking about it.’

  ‘I don’t think about it at all,’ he said with mild surprise.

  He was absorbed, in fact, as well he might be, by the strange venture he had undertaken, unprecedented in his family, as far as his own knowledge went. His forebears were middling farmers who married when their financial position justified it, advertising at that time in the Castlehen Eagle for a well-educated young woman aged between 28 and 35, Protestant, and able to play the piano. And these practical arrangements, which had worked so well in their time, had finally produced this Pierce Carroll, who could fall in love. Not accustomed to be proud, he was proud of this, and particularly of the ease with which he had recognised the sensation when it came. One awkward thing, which he never remembered having been mentioned, was that though he wanted to talk to Hannah so much, he couldn’t listen to her properly when he did. That was why – although he was saying no more than the truth – he had made such a wretched job of telling her about his family.

  Beneath her confidence, which after all did not go very deep, he divined a gentle anxiety, though for other people rather than herself. He longed to bring her peace. A fair old chance I have of doing that, he thought, when have I been of use to anyone? And he fel
t the whole force of his life’s current running to waste.

  Meanwhile there she was, confronting life with a certain sunshiny grace, firmly presented in a neat Belfast blouse and matching cardigan. The proximity of the staff-room was a doubtful blessing, unavoidable because the place was no bigger than a cupboard. Indeed, except for the word STAFF painted on the door, it was a cupboard. If there had been four chairs, and four people had sat down on them, their knees would have touched. Every movement of the elbows was a threat. Much though he longed for closeness, he felt bound to apologise for brushing against her quite so often.

  ‘Just keep the count,’ Hannah told him. ‘You can beg my pardon every twelfth time.’

  In the evening he had not much chance with her, because she had set herself to see every play and every musical in London. The Bluebell, recklessly helping herself from the drawers full of complimentary tickets, was glad to come with her. When they reached the area of light and shadow between the foyer and the front of the house, both of them felt a keen fingering of excitement. Miss Blewett would tell Hannah that she had young eyes and hand her the tickets, so that she could make out the seat numbers.

  Carroll asked were not most of the shows very disappointing and she replied that on the whole they were, but there was always another one, always tomorrow. This word ‘tomorrow’ had recently, for the first time in his adult life, come to have a favourable meaning for Carroll. But he declined to come with them to the theatre. He wouldn’t make an exception even to see Dombey & Son, with Gianni in the chorus. Particularly, he thought, he would not enjoy that.

  The fact was that Carroll and Gianni had little esteem for each other. Gianni had told Hannah, with a warm rush of confidence, that he was far from satisfied with his education. ‘As I see it, there’s two things that aren’t right about Sir, I mean from the point of view of his job. He doesn’t know anything, and even if he did he can’t teach anything.’

  ‘I can’t listen to complaints about other members of the staff, Gianni.’

  ‘I want to begin trig. Joybelle shouldn’t be allowed into Mr Carroll’s maths class. Sex and trig aren’t compatible, right? My father’s not satisfied either. He’s very ambitious for me.’

  ‘Perhaps he could find time to come and talk it over, if he’s free during the day.’

  ‘He’s a tailor.’ There were plenty of customers, it seemed, because Gianni’s father could do the Italian styles, but the trouble was that he had no faith in himself, owing to his nerves. He’d sit in front of the lengths of cloth, it was all piled up in the front room, months passed, and still he couldn’t bring himself to make the first cut.

  ‘What do the customers say?’

  ‘That’s it, Miss Graves, you got it in one. They’re getting restive. That’s why I expect he’ll eventually be largely dependent on my earnings.’

  Hannah looked at him steadily.

  ‘Are you sure your father’s a tailor, Gianni?’

  He was outraged.

  ‘Christ, Miss, you don’t believe me. I’m not a liar. I’m not going in for acting, you know that, I’m a dancer, my style’s hat and cane like Frankie Vaughan, Frankie’s given untold sums to selected charities.’

  Hannah promised to see Gianni’s father if he came to the school. Fearing to give pain, she did not repeat any of the conversation to Carroll. But she need not have worried. Carroll had never had any illusions about himself, and now he had no hopes either. This made him a considerably stronger character than he looked.

  7

  DEBT collectors had long since given up waiting at the front and back doors of the Temple School. They knew there was no prospect of getting anything, and it was said that one of them, in the manner of the old comedies, had been persuaded to part with his waistcoat and jacket and donate it to the stock of costumes. ‘He gave them to Freddie’s Frocks, dear,’ said the Bluebell with loyal vagueness.

  The summons, however, which Freddie had torn up with her bills, returned not long afterwards in the form of a court order. The bailiffs arrived, representing a firm of sheet-music suppliers. They left empty-handed. Nothing could be distrained upon, because nothing, so it appeared, belonged to Freddie herself. The office furniture, to Miss Blewett’s surprise, was all of it, even the two armchairs, insured in her name. The bits of scenery, the tattered props, the hats and canes, were all untouchable because Freddie claimed them as her tools of trade, which cannot be seized. A British citizen has an inviolable right to his or her tools, and his or her bed. Where was Miss Wentworth’s bed? The bailiffs learned this when they tried to remove a couch, upholstered in dark red velvet, from the rehearsal room. It was of some value on account of its historic associations, having been given by Ellen Terry to her son Gordon Craig, and by him to his distant relations, the Gielgud family. But it seemed that Freddie, who lowered herself on to the whining springs, slept there always, if she slept at all.

  After the men had retreated to ask for further instructions, an atmosphere of high carnival reigned in the office. Miss Blewett could have done with a double whisky, but Freddie, exalted and glowing, needed nothing. The challenge had been enough for her.

  ‘A Word came to me, dear, but I don’t know where from. “It’s a great mistake to live with past victories.” I seemed to hear it when they were looking at dear Ellen Terry’s sofa.’

  ‘I know where it came from,’ said Miss Blewett. ‘It was something that Carroll said to you when he came to see about the job.’

  But Freddie thought this impossible. She was in splendour. It could not truthfully be said that she looked young again, but she looked indestructible.

  London’s theatre received the familiar news of hard times at Freddie’s. There are only two professions – the stage and the bar – where generosity is a habit. Contributions arrived at once from old pupils who had made it, and those who hadn’t dashed off cheques with the recklessness of the insecure. The cast of Dombey & Son had a whip round. The Old Vic audience sent just short of four hundred pounds, with a note from the gallery regulars, ‘Shakespeare would have made it five.’ No one knew how things stood about Freddie’s furniture. Vans pulled up in Baddeley Street and began to unload gifts of tables and chairs. The Haymarket, most congenial of all theatres, despatched the grand piano from a long run of Moonlight Sonata. To take it upstairs would have been risky, and so the fine Bechstein was urged into a mouldy salon next to the staff-room, where two of its legs sank through the floorboards and it remained as though wading ashore.

  Freddie looked on, with the calm of a born survivor, at the arrival of lesser pieces.

  ‘We shall get a good price for some of these, dear.’

  ‘They were gifts!’ Miss Blewett wailed. ‘Given from the heart.’

  ‘That’s so. That’s why it wouldn’t be right to send them back.’

  ‘But what will everyone say?’

  ‘They’ll say I’m just the same as ever. That’s all they want from me, you know.’

  Remaining the same requires an exceptional sense of balance. Was it possible – and curiously enough it was her refusal to worry which suggested this – that Freddie was losing this sense, if only to a small extent? Perhaps so, because it was now that Mattie Stewart’s father, who was a watcher of situations, chose to try something which he’d had in mind for quite a while. He asked whether he might introduce to Miss Wentworth a business acquaintance of his called Joey Blatt, who might like to invest something, he couldn’t of course say how much, in the school.

  Mr Stewart did this not out of affection, but simply from impatience at the sight of mismanagement; anyway, it looked like mismanagement to him. He had no complaints about Mattie’s progress, the boy got all the stage work regulations allowed him to do. But the goings on at Freddie’s, from a business point of view, were lamentable; one might say that they wouldn’t satisfy a child. He hadn’t much confidence in the accountant, Unwin, and couldn’t spare time himself to see what needed putting right, but he thought Blatt might be able to. At the very
idea of profits going to waste, even if they didn’t concern him directly, he felt a mixture of wistfulness and anger, like a poet conscious of all the roses that fall.

  Blatt confirmed the appointment Stewart had made for him, and didn’t think there would be too much difficulty. He had always been concerned with small businesses and couldn’t believe that it would be a complicated matter to buy himself into this one, which was scarely a business at all. This Miss Blewett, for example, although Miss Wentworth referred to her, when it suited her, as ‘my partner’, was in fact nothing of the kind. There was no formal agreement, if Stewart had got it right, no division of the profits, if any, and no consultation. Miss Wentworth, then (though the description hardly seemed to fit her), was a sole trader. The Baddeley Street lease was in her name and had another fifty-nine years to run. She had managed to renew it with the ground landlords during the war, when property did not look to be worth much, and had claimed enough War Damage to patch it together afterwards. Blatt was surprised that the old lady should have been able to put through anything as sensible as this; it had been one of the first things that induced him to look at the proposition at all. What he had in mind was a private limited company with himself as director and Miss Wentworth as the other shareholder. He was in the company registration business himself in a small way, so he could put the memorandum in hand at once. This Miss Blewett wouldn’t come out of it very well, but she probably wouldn’t be treated any worse than before. The important thing, if they were going into TV work, which was of course essential, was the business name. ‘Freddie’s’ or even ‘The Temple’ meant a lot, but they didn’t at all mean what Blatt wanted. Bright Kids, Kids on Tap, Movers and Shiners, any of these might get a good response, that was, they might motivate the consumer.