by Rachel Malik
‘Hullo.’
She watched him raise his eyes and felt Vicky’s arms come to rest gently on her shoulders.
‘And hullo.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t arrive any later,’ he said, smiling, ‘we might have been frightened.’
Rene turned and looked back the way she had come. Behind her was a churchyard, a cluster of headstones and white dust everywhere, like snow. Vicky was veiled in dust, her own arms – brown from the summer heat – had been shocked pale: a pair of ghosts.
(‘Goodness, where have you both been?’ said Aunty Nora later, looking at Vicky.)
Rene and Vicky had found their way on to a half-dismantled film set. The young man’s deckchair was posed on a station platform, a fragile wonder; the sign above him read LONDON NECROPOLIS (the film was Murder on the Funeral Train – Rene had seen a poster). To Rene’s right was the platform edge with a shallow dip to a track that ran for no more than fifteen feet. The track itself was a sunspot; bees hovered lazily around the flowers that sprouted from the platform and there, between the rails, lying in the sun, licking her paws, was Tibby.
A loud clap of laughter took her eyes deeper into the garden, towards the house, and Rene walked to the end of the platform where she could take it all in. Two bathers with pink hairnets were sitting at the edge of a small, square, marble pool, their bare legs quivering in the water, fish-like, insubstantial; one was ruffling the water with her hand and they were talking, close, confidential. The house, still far away, in what seemed an enormous garden, was merely a backdrop, a windbreak for the garden and its worlds. There was a tiny orchard that started just a few feet from the pool, the setting for a tumbledown cottage. She reached out to clasp Vicky’s hand and found it reassuringly warm, then pulled her on through the garden and towards the house.
There was a group of people sitting at a table on the terrace, next to a glass extension, and suddenly the man stood up and waved them forward with a flourish as if he was the ringmaster in a circus, some kind of magician.
Vicky started to explain about Tibby; she sounded worried, but no one seemed to be listening. The man did most of the talking. He had an odd name, foreign – Rene didn’t quite catch it – and a slightly odd voice. She was more interested in the woman who was sitting next to him; her name was Estella Blake and she was an actress from the pictures. She was quite beautiful, draped in all manner of scarves and shawls; one had a shiny black fringe that trailed around her chair. Estella was also wearing what Rene didn’t recognize at the time were sunglasses. She offered them tiny fancy biscuits from a tin, her voice very slow and significant. There was an old lady too, very smartly dressed and sitting very upright, who refused the biscuits but in a foreign language – this was Madame something and she was the man’s mother. Vicky didn’t want any biscuits either.
The man, whose first name was Eric, asked Vicky a lot of questions, but because she was sitting on Vicky’s lap, Rene felt awkward, too close to the attention. It was Estella who asked her name, and everyone exclaimed at Rene’s accent. Estella in her scarves and shawls actually squawked, ‘Why, she’s from Manchester!’ For a moment Estella sounded like her mum, then the likeness was gone, wrapped away in the slow voice and the scarves. The talk carried on, but after a while the young man with the long eyelashes – Freddie, he was called – came over and took her to meet the girls by the pond; they pointed out the carp, bright orange, sleepy and stately. ‘Something’s going on,’ Freddie said, to no one in particular, ‘mark my words.’ Soon after, Vicky called her – she was standing up now and clasping Tibby. They were shown out through the front but they were coming back tomorrow.
Rene barely slept that night. After the two girls arrived home, to be scolded and hugged by a round-eyed Nora, they were sent upstairs to wash and change. ‘Say nothing,’ Vicky said to Rene, dramatic and excited. Vicky’s mother was away and Nora was in charge. Vicky got the worst of it: ‘You’ll be sixteen in September, what were you thinking of staying out so late?’ They were sent off to a warm white bathroom that Rene hadn’t seen before where they rubbed the dust off hard like a ritual. Then Vicky disappeared upstairs and Rene was put to bed with a story from Nora and drifted off to sleep.
When Rene awoke, her feet, for all the summer warmth, were cold. Nora was in bed, deeply asleep, with her hair in what Rene delighted in calling ‘crispy papers’; Tibby had colonized the pillow space between them. Fully awake, and half thinking it might be morning, Rene got up, went along the narrow passageway to the kitchen, and out into the garden by the side door.
Night, but it didn’t stop her; perhaps the afternoon’s adventure had opened a vein. The grass was still warm and crackled slightly under her feet. She walked slowly down to the end and climbed once more up on to the wall. It was not especially quiet or particularly dark. She went in the same direction as before, but with no firm motive of return. She just wanted to walk on the wall and see, and see. A few of the houses were shut up for the summer, but from others came sporadic sounds: a stranded clatter, the thud and squeal of shutters being closed against the cooling air, once a piano, never voices, she was never close enough. Many of the gardens followed the same pattern as the McCranes’: a pond close to the house, set in a lawn banked by shrubs. Some had a few fruit trees, newly planted, towards the back. To the edges: coal stores, sheds, neat rows of salad and onions, glasshouses, most packed with shoots and seedlings. At the back of one garden she saw a big cage, just like at the zoo, and peering in, she glimpsed a monkeyish creature with a long striped tail. For a moment they looked at each other, and then it sprang silently away, landing impossibly on a perch at the other side of the cage. One garden, larger than the others, was almost wholly taken up by a tennis court. Beyond this house was nothing, just churned-up ground. Turning back towards the gardens and the houses, she quickly discovered she had lost her way. The walls felt different to her bare feet, rougher, and the familiar smell of cement which had followed her earlier was gone. For the first and only time she panicked, so many times far from home. But she quickly adapted, crawling along the walls now, trying to find handholds in the sharp twines of ivy that had sprung up and spread before her. After the first moments, she didn’t really doubt herself. Finally, and tired, she reached a junction where four walls met and the ivy had been cut back, a reassuring crossroads.
So Rene sat and dangled her legs over the wall, wondering whether to jump on to the soft clay below. Beside the wall, on a small table, were two thin-stemmed wine glasses, forgotten. Reaching down, she carefully picked up one of the glasses by the stem – it wobbled briefly in her grasp. Then she brought it to her lips, sipping, practising; the actor Freddie’s mask-pale face and long lashes flickered in her mind. She could smell an invisible residue captured at the bottom of the glass. Moving the glass away from her lips again, she saw the faintest stain of lipstick.
In just a few days she would be going home, but she was as far from homesick as it was possible to be. Tomorrow they were going back to the strange house, the young man Freddie had promised to find her some clothes to dress up in and Vicky, Vicky was going to star in a picture, she was going to play a girl called Phoebe, such a beautiful name. Estella was the star of the picture, and Vicky got to play her maid. The film was called, and Rene would never forget it, Lady Audley’s Secret. Rene raised the glass to her mouth, more slowly this time, and smelt the musty sharp residue.
The following morning the two girls climbed the stairs to the front door of the house and Vicky, giggling, asked Rene to pull the bell. The man with all the questions came to answer it, but she knew his name now, Eric Stoller. He was more smartly dressed than yesterday and he directed them through the house to the studio (the glass extension of yesterday: Eric pointed out a thick curtain rail running right round the room and heavy drapes).
Maybe to indulge Vicky, or maybe to dispel his marked attention to her, Stoller decided that Rene should play Lady Audley’s abandoned son, Georgie – they were roughly the same age. So whe
n one of the girls took Vicky away to be dressed as Phoebe, Rene went along too and was togged up as little Georgie. The black velvet suit was a great success – just a little big – and everyone congratulated her, apart from Estella. When all the petting and smiling was over, Estella took Rene’s hand, smiled brightly and shook her head. ‘Oh no, Eric, oh no. This little girl can’t be my little Georgie.’ Estella shook her head again slowly, almost regretful, and stroked out her own bright locks to make the contrast: ‘She is so very small and dark.’
It was an awkward moment. Vicky looked down at her feet, Freddie raised his eyebrows, and Rene looked up at Estella, uncertainly. But Eric decided to be indulgent – ‘Whatever you think, my darling, whatever you think’ – and Estella went off to change, humming sweetly, clearly well pleased with herself. Freddie took care of Rene and Vicky. He and another young man had been setting up the drawing room of Audley Court, where the main action of the film occurred. They were in high spirits, posing a strange stuffed animal in various attitudes. ‘Mongoose,’ explained Freddie, ‘from India. They eat snakes.’ He didn’t look quite as pale as yesterday but his eyelashes were just as long. He had taken a shine to Rene, though he was uncertain of Vicky or her consequence.
Stoller hadn’t yet decided whether he needed a piano for Audley Court.
‘Pray not,’ said Freddie, ‘it’s on the second floor.’
‘Freddie’s stronger than he looks,’ said the other young man, and they both laughed.
Out in the garden the scene was more or less unchanged from yesterday: the two bathers were now fully clothed and sat at the table sewing, still deep in conversation. Somewhere nearby people were playing tennis.
Still togged up as little Georgie, Rene watched Vicky’s first steps in cinema, sitting on a heap of black velvet curtains. She had found Estella’s attention a little unnerving: used to being indulged or ignored by adults, attracting hostile attention was a novelty. But she didn’t wonder for long. She sank into the dark curtains, they smelt of smoke and home, and she soon fell heavily asleep. She was woken by Freddie to eat lunch – sardines on toast (never forgotten) – which they all ate together, sitting outside. She and Vicky were the only ones who did not drink wine.
And then she was looking through the glass and her face was cold and stinging from the window of the train. Vicky and Aunty Nora standing on the platform. Always trains, she thought, always trains and stations.
‘Tell your ma I can come up and help her in December, I’ve got a bit of holiday owing.’
‘Yes,’ Rene mouthed and nodded vigorously. The train jerked forward.
‘I’ll write,’ Vicky called, and her hand scrawled and flourished across the air, Rene was sure she could hear her. I’ll write. The train pressed on out of the station.
She remembered nothing else about the journey. Next thing, she was pushing on the heavy double doors of the Blue Elephant with all her strength; miraculously she squeezed through.
And there, at the bar, was Dad. She rushed over and he leant towards her, hoisted her up and over the counter and into his arms. ‘Rene, we’ve missed you so. You’re never going to believe the surprise. You’ve got a little brother.’
Rene didn’t understand.
‘A baby,’ he said.
‘There’s a baby here, upstairs?’
‘Yes, your mam’s had a baby, a little brother for you to play with.’
‘Can I go and see?’
‘Of course you can, but go up quietly, tiptoe.’
Everything was just the same, except that there was a baby in a crib in her parents’ bedroom.
‘We’ll have a big party, Rene, to celebrate, when your mam’s a bit stronger. We’re going to call him Leo.’ Her father was so happy it made her dizzy. ‘I’ll get you a new coat. Would you like that, Rene? What do you say?’
* * *
Vicky wrote, though it was nearly two months later, breathless, exuberant – her life was moving at speed.
Dearest Rene,
It seems such a long time ago since I waved goodbye to you at the station and so much has happened.
Rene, sitting on her stool in the bar of the Blue Elephant, didn’t doubt it.
I’m going to tell you all about it. I hope this letter won’t be dreadfully long.
Rene’s stool was a little high and she enjoyed rocking it back and forth as she read; it was precarious, but she never got seasick. As they came through the door, regulars called to her, half friendly, half distracted, and their voices wheeled like gulls through the huge, high room. So cold in winter – Siberia blew in when you opened the door.
At the restaurant with Eric last night, we drank champagne. I only had two glasses and it went straight to my head! I was so excited I hardly ate a thing.
The words were simple for the most part and she was a good reader, but the letter, with its thick paper and hurried hand, brushed a strange dust. Sometimes it made the words shine out, bright and gleaming, like the silver box her dad had given to her mum at the christening, but the dust could make the same words fade and wobble. She went back to it over and over, shining up what she could.
Eric took me to watch ‘Lady Audley’s Secret’ last week with Freddie, just off the Tottenham Court Road. It was just the three of us and it was so odd to see myself – Freddie said I had the perfect face for pictures. Please go and see it, Rene, I do hope it will be in Manchester! We’ll be starting the next picture soon, and this time I will play the heroine. It’s such a terribly sad story, you’ll cry when you see it and I think I may die at the end. Oh Rene, it’s so exciting, I can’t think of anything else that I want to do apart from make pictures, for ever.
Rene couldn’t wait to go to the Palace with her best friend Lily and see Vicky, Freddie and Estella in the TALE OF MYSTERY AND BETRAYAL. That’s Vicky, she would say, that’s my friend from London, she’s called Mona Verity. For Vicky had a new name, especially for the pictures. Rene rocked to and fro on her stool, but gently now, musingly. It was getting late and the stories around her were getting taller and slower. Her mother glanced over at her from the bar, and Rene held up her hand, begging five more minutes.
Upstairs, baby brother Leo slept too, watched over by her mum’s new friend and general help, Bertha Lane. By day Bertha managed the rooms and the commercial travellers who came and went with their heavy cases: Mr Skeat with his cutlery; Mr Frank with his sink fittings; Mr Cromartie with his measuring tapes and scales. In the evenings when her mum and dad were working in the bar, she took over the minding of Leo. Just a few years younger than her mum, somehow Bertha seemed years older – except she had all the energy poor Annie-Maria lacked. Bertha was also a marvel with the needle; she had sewn up bundles and bundles of baby clothes and now she had started with her knitting needles. When Rene went upstairs she could hear her needles click-ticking; she could hear them in her bedroom when she was trying to get to sleep.
Rene, by the time you receive this letter I won’t be in London any more … but I will try to write to you as soon as I can. I’ll send you a card with a picture – it’s a big secret and I haven’t told anyone but I think we’re going to the South of France. Wish me luck.
* * *
She stood up and brushed herself off, looking down at the Blue Elephant, stately and marooned at the point where the Chester Road ended. She and Lily were going to see the new picture show at the Palace – she’d be late if she didn’t hurry. Rene started down the hill, running, Stretford below and the city beyond. The hill pulled her forward, taking over her legs, a tangle of trees rushed past her, an old man, a dog barking. At the bottom she managed to pull up and paused to catch her breath; the light in the sky was changing. She pressed on, puffing. As she turned into Nelson Road the sun stretched out to meet her. Past the mission, with its rickety Jesus is Lord sign, it was uphill again. Mustn’t slow down. Lily was quite capable of flouncing off on her own, but she had a stitch and needed to catch her breath. Mustn’t stop. And suddenly there was somebody behind her
. She was running along a railway line, pursued by a man with frightening moustaches – he came right out of The Perils of Pauline. And she was Pauline, racing now through a narrow canyon; the man in his cape was just behind her on a galloping black horse. And now she could hear the badly played piano and the whole audience draw in its breath, blotting down the music. Faster. Rene found a final burst of speed, turned the corner and there was Lily. ‘You’re late, Rene Roberta,’ she shouted, chin in the air, mocking. Rene hated being called Roberta, and Lily knew it too, but she bit her tongue because Lily was still here, she had waited.
At the Palace, Lily and Rene clutched hands. The film they’d been waiting for was about to begin: Lady Audley’s Secret, a full seventeen minutes long. There was Lady Audley – Estella – impossibly pretty in the dark, wooden grandeur of Audley Court; the parkland view from her window wobbled a bit. Tense with secrets, she wasn’t who she said she was, she wasn’t what she seemed. And there was Freddie, his eyelashes even longer; he was playing the detective hero. And just out of shot of Audley Court was the main road with its trams, the smart street where Vicky lived, and Rene was the only one here who knew. A couple of minutes later, Lady Audley pulled a veil over her face and stepped on to a train. A couple of scenes later, she stepped down on to the platform and pulled it up, gasps, for it’s Vicky’s face staring out of the screen. Rene clasps Lily’s hand tighter, sitting on her knees to see. Vicky looks older, paler, impossibly different. She is playing the maid, but she is still a princess.
