by Kiley Dunbar
She’d pressed the doorbell of Blythe’s flat twice and had no answer when she noticed the faded note taped beside the little peephole.
Come to side door through garden.
The existence of a side door was news to Kelsey, so with an enhanced sense of curiosity, she made her way outside and around the back of the building, passing under the branches of the spreading oak tree in the centre of the communal lawn, her camera cases with their long straps slung across her body, bumping at her hips.
At the back of the building there was a dense shrubbery of fading purple buddleia choked with teasels and bindweed. She’d seen it before but hadn’t noticed the path worn through the weeds. Following it, she found it led to a rickety gate, half off its hinges and framed with a tumble of rambling roses, the blooms now turned to swollen red hips.
Lowering her head to squeeze through the gap in the greenery and getting her hair caught on a thorn, she passed into a small courtyard with lichen-speckled Victorian flagstones interspersed with colourful, cracked patterned tiles underfoot. There were wind chimes and birdfeeders hanging from the branches of densely packed small trees, and a chair and table by the door to a wood-framed glass lean-to which looked as old as the building itself. Its peeling mint-green paint contrasted wonderfully with the late sprigs of Cotswold lavender growing in great round clumps under an unkempt hedge bordering this little wild Eden.
Kelsey was just becoming aware of a sweet scent in the air; not a natural, floral, garden scent, but a strange, not-unpleasant, chemical tang.
Early autumn leaves made scratching sounds on the flags as they blew around her feet and, as she looked down at them, she realised they were joined by a black cat which had clearly come to suss her out. It was parading haughtily in front of her, its tail tensed bolt upright.
‘Hello, kitty.’ Kelsey crouched to pet it, but it fluffed its tail and gave her an outraged glare, a mixture of angry and afraid. It was just opening its jaws to hiss a warning to stay back when there was a loud bang from inside the house followed by the sound of shattering glass and a cry of ‘Bugger, bastard and blast!’ The cat scarpered up a tree, sending a startled blackbird squawking from under the hedge.
‘What on earth…?’ Kelsey made her way to the glass door, propped open with a pile of rain-damaged paperbacks, and as she went she became increasingly aware of the same hot, acrid smell in the air, now mixed with a slight odour of something singed.
‘Hell’s bells! Not again,’ came the voice from inside; an elderly woman’s voice, shaky and thin.
‘Hello!’ Kelsey called as she put her head inside the glass lean-to, which was full of faded books and red geraniums in pots, the scent of their leaves mixing with the burning smell and the white vaporous clouds now emanating from the gap between thick purple velvet drapes which separated the inner space from the green world outside.
‘Is everything all right? Do you need help?’ she called.
‘Bloody, bloody, bloody bastard and blast!’ This was muttered under the breath of the person behind the curtain and accompanied by the sounds of shards of glass being swept up.
Kelsey was about to cry out again and was reaching for her phone – in case she had to alert the authorities to a chemical spill or a gas leak on an epic scale – when the purple drapes twitched and a head poked out.
Kelsey took a step backwards at the sight of the woman, easily seventy years old, with long, thin white hair splaying messily around her face, and piercing, suspicious violet eyes peering through skew-whiff plastic goggles.
‘I thought I heard somebody snooping about. What do you want? I’ve told your lot already it’s perfectly safe and you should keep your sticky beaks out of an old lady’s private goings on.’
‘Umm, are you Blythe Goode?’ Kelsey managed, taken aback. The woman was surveying her from head to toe, the curtain still clasped shut beneath her neck so only her head showed.
‘You don’t look like you’re from Environmental Health.’
‘What? I’m not, no, I’m from the Examiner. I’ve come to take your picture to accompany the interview you did recently? Didn’t Mr Ferdinand ring a few minutes ago to let you know I was coming?’
‘He didn’t, no. Hardly surprising; man’s a buffoon. Makes a mockery of that paper. Clement Dickens would be spinning in his grave if he could see what’s become of that place. Fine man, he was, Clement.’
Kelsey could do nothing but shrug. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know anything about that, this is my first job for the paper.’
‘Hmm, well, make sure he pays you.’
‘You’re the second person to tell me that. Doesn’t exactly inspire me with confidence.’
‘Mind out the way.’ Blythe had released her grip on the curtain and was attempting to bustle past Kelsey, holding before her a dustpan containing what looked like lumps of congealed burnt sugar, still smoking slightly. ‘Marlowe! Where is that cat? Very sensitive, he is, always disappearing.’
‘He ran off under that tree,’ Kelsey said, distractedly, trying to peer between the curtains. ‘Look, has there been an accident? Are you all right?’
Blythe shuffled by, one hand moving a walking frame in front of her, the other shakily grasping the dustpan. ‘Open the bin, then.’
‘Oh, sorry.’ Kelsey dashed to the silver trash can tucked around the corner of the glass house, lifted the lid and watched as Blythe walked painfully slowly towards it and tipped the acrid contents in.
‘Just a small explosion. Nothing to worry about. Come inside, but mind your feet, there’s glass everywhere.’
She waited for Blythe to walk her way back through the curtains then followed her in. The smell was much stronger inside the cluttered kitchen. Kelsey looked around in amazement. ‘What’s all this?’ she asked.
Around the walls and from the pulley on the ceiling hung drying herbs and flowers, and there were two great pots with what smelled like fruit jam bubbling on an old stove. On the shelves lining the room stood many hundreds of books, all decidedly dusty-looking. What must have once upon a time been a fine oak kitchen table was piled high with glass beakers raised on frames, bell jars, strange metal coils and pipes, and in the centre, a tall copper rocket-shaped pot with some kind of pressure gauge, its needle fluctuating wildly from black to red – whatever that signified – on its cylindrical belly. Copper tubes led off from the device to what appeared to be an eccentric copper kettle. The whole kitchen gave the impression of a cross between Dr Jekyll’s laboratory and a Downton Abbey scullery.
‘Don’t gape. It isn’t polite,’ Blythe said as she turned the knobs on the stove. The gas flames died away but there were still alarming gurgling and banging sounds coming from the great copper device on the table. ‘It’s a still. Have you never seen one before?’ she said, a hint of terseness in her voice which, now Blythe was recovering from the blast, Kelsey registered as surprisingly commanding and theatrical.
‘Umm, no. What on earth is it for?’ she said.
‘Gin, of course. Would you care for a glass? I’ve had greater success with my other batches.’
‘Perhaps we should clear away the broken glass first?’
Blythe simply handed Kelsey the dustpan and a long-handled brush and shuffled out of the room.
It took ten minutes for Kelsey to sweep up the shards and wipe down the surfaces, and all the while she could hear Blythe singing, ‘the rain it raineth every day,’ in the next room.
‘Aren’t you done yet?’ Blythe called out just as Kelsey finished washing her hands and was on her way into the sitting room. ‘Oh, you’re not going to start gawping around the walls again, are you?’
Blythe was installed centre stage on a faded dusky pink velvet armchair surrounded on all sides by cabinets stuffed full of curious objects.
Kelsey could make out a pair of delicate lace gloves posed on elegant display hands reminiscent of a nineteen forties’ fashion house in a Hollywood movie, a white handkerchief embroidered with strawberries, a fan painted with an
Arcadian scene and a strange white mask that gave her the creeps. All of these were enclosed behind glass and arranged with a thousand other dainty objects, each more intriguing than the next.
‘Sit, down, Miss…’
‘Anderson. Kelsey Anderson. I’m your neighbour, actually. I live upstairs in 2B,’ she replied as she sat on a plump green upholstered stool with gold fringing. Blythe had arranged a silver tray on the low table between them and on it sat a dish of sliced Madeira cake and two small glasses with short stems filled to the brim with clear liquid. Kelsey could have sworn there were vapours rising from the drinks.
‘This is my finest. Heavy on the juniper. Try it.’ Blythe’s violet eyes sparkled. She had removed the mad scientist goggles and arranged her hair neatly in silky white curtains pinned back behind one ear with a large pink paper rose. Seeing Kelsey’s eyes pass over the bloom, Blythe said, ‘One should make an effort for cocktail hour, don’t you think?’ before reaching for her glass, raising it to her delicately painted pink lips, and muttering a quick, ‘Good health.’ She tipped her white head back, swallowing the whole measure in one gulp, like a student downing happy hour shots at the union bar. Her glass clicking back down on the silver tray sounded like a challenge to Kelsey to do the same, so as Blythe nibbled a slice of cake, a linen napkin spread daintily over her lap, Kelsey lifted her glass and tried a sip.
‘Hough!’ The words she was trying to say burned up in her throat as the spirit headed straight for her bloodstream, stopping to remove at least one layer of skin on the way.
Blythe chuckled and dabbed at the corners of her mouth with the napkin. ‘Delicious, isn’t it?’
‘It’s certainly strong. No tonic?’
‘Too much faff goes into serving gin these days. If you so much as put a slice of lime or a head of lavender anywhere near my gin, you’d send me prematurely to my grave.’
‘You’re a purist?’ Kelsey grinned.
‘I don’t go to the trouble of distilling my own liquor for it to be namby-pambied up with a lot of unnecessary nonsense.’ Blythe’s sharp nod told Kelsey this was her last word on the subject.
‘So,’ Kelsey cleared her throat. ‘Mr Ferdinand said you were an actress?’
‘That’s right, ten years without a break on stage at the Old Vic and Stratford… and other bits and bobs here and there. Interested in the theatre, are you?’
‘Very much.’ Kelsey couldn’t help her beaming smile.
‘Well, I made my debut in a leading role in nineteen sixty-three, just a child I was then, but I’d been discovered and I was going to be one of the youngest Ophelias ever to set foot on an English stage. Her Majesty the Queen was in the royal box on opening night.’
‘Wow!’
‘Exactly that. Now, where do you want me?’
‘Mmm?’
‘You’re here to take my picture, aren’t you?’
‘Oh, of course. Just there in your chair is fine. Mr Ferdinand asked me to photograph you with an old theatre prop. Is that OK?’
‘Darling, I am an old theatre prop.’ Blythe cast her eyes over the cabinets. ‘Pass me the veil.’
Kelsey followed Blythe’s gaze to a corner cabinet housing a dummy head in a long brown wig with a dramatic black lace headdress over it; half the dummy’s face was obscured with delicate black filigree.
‘Careful with that, it must be over fifty years old. I wore this as the Duchess of Malfi, you know?’
As Kelsey lifted it out of the cabinet, she spotted a picture in its frame of a young woman wearing the very same veil with a long black gown in a medieval Italian style, a swollen stomach accentuated by the folds of the dress.
‘Is this you?’ she said as she handed the veil over as though she were cradling a delicate new-born thing in her hands.
‘That’s me. Nineteen sixty-seven. I caused a stir because I was with child at the time. Handy, because the Duchess herself is pregnant for part of the play. The critics went wild. It was the Summer of Love, the height of the permissive society, supposedly. That’s what some people called it, anyway. You see, I wasn’t married, and there I was, barely nineteen, up in the spotlights, big-bellied and not a bit ashamed.’ Blythe’s eyes flashed. ‘I was magnificent. But, that’s when my career began to falter. The permissive society was only really for the boys. Shame nobody told me. I didn’t have many starring roles again after that. A lot of long memories in this town. It doesn’t do to rock the boat.’
As Blythe spoke, she arranged the veil over her hair, artfully folding the material without the aid of a mirror so that it framed her face without covering it.
Kelsey looked again at the picture. ‘You were beautiful.’
This was greeted with a loud tut. ‘You young ones assume that’s a compliment for an old bird like me. You were beautiful! I am still beautiful, if only people would take the time to see it.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.’
‘Tsk, tsk, little matter.’ Blythe waved the moment away with a studied flourish of her wrinkled hand.
‘May I open the shutters a little more, please?’ Kelsey asked, switching to professional mode, the place where she felt safest. Her camera was already in her hands, its lens cap unscrewed. She pushed the white wooden shutters apart and the afternoon light dappled by the trees surrounding St. Ninian’s Close seeped in, bathing Blythe in soft pink warmth.
‘Can I take a few warm-up shots with this one first?’ Kelsey held up her old camera. ‘I’ll give you copies to keep?’
Blythe simply shrugged her agreement and rearranged herself for the shot, saying, ‘Haven’t seen a camera like that in a quarter of a century.’
‘It was my dad’s. He left it to me when he died, and it was old even then.’ Kelsey mounted the square flash unit to the old camera, sliding it onto the hot shoe plate above the viewfinder and flicking its switch, sending the bulb within into a high-pitched frenzy as it charged up ready for the first shot. ‘I love this camera more than I could say.’
Blythe smiled, her lips pressed together. It wasn’t the kind of smile Kelsey was used to when she told people about her father. She usually got the lowered eyes, the awkwardness and the sympathetic thin lips. Instead, Blythe’s eyes sparkled. A look that said I know exactly how you feel, and it’s all right. Kelsey felt strangely comforted by it.
Raising the camera to her eye, she positioned herself in front of Blythe in a low crouch and let her breathing settle. Turning the focusing ring brought Blythe’s features into greater and greater clarity. Kelsey always found she could see people most clearly through a lens.
Blythe was right; she was beautiful. Beautiful right now; not just as some relic of a golden age of her beauty, but a truly beautiful woman. Her skin was thin and her flesh pale and plump. The lines around her eyes were lightly tanned from the summer and had the look of sunrays beaming out from her violet eyes which were soft-lidded and vibrant. Her hair was purest white and her nose long and Roman. Kelsey held her breath and pressed the shutter button, activating the bright flash of light, forcing open the aperture window inside the lens and closing it again in an instant, the light, and Blythe’s image, now impressed on the film.
The romance of old-school photography never failed to speak to Kelsey of better times, and she could tell from the look on Blythe’s face that she too had been caught up in it.
The actress turned her face to the window and tilted her jaw downwards, letting the natural light catch in her irises. This was a woman who, once upon a time, had been used to having her photograph taken.
Kelsey knew, even though she couldn’t see it there and then, even though she’d have to wait a few days for the film to be processed, that she’d caught a perfect shot. And she also knew she’d have to switch to her digital camera soon if Mr Ferdinand wanted his pictures emailed to him by five o’clock, but she still had time, and there was something in Blythe’s distant, dreamy expression that told Kelsey she needed to hear the sound of the flashbulb charging and the shutter
snapping again, so she raised the camera to her eye once more and Blythe posed, no longer a septuagenarian surrounded by dusty memories and remnants of a bygone era, but a woman bathed in flash light sinking back into the days when she was a sixties stage siren, the hottest new talent, a darling of the golden age of English theatre. Blythe Goode: beautiful, talented, fierce and fearless, the leading lady of the Old Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
* * *
The phone rang to voicemail, and Kelsey pressed it close to her ear so she could revel in the deep drawl of Jonathan’s voice. ‘Leave a message,’ he said with his optimistic upwards inflection. ‘And if that’s you, Kelsey, I love you.’
This never failed to make her smile, but she didn’t leave much of a message, other than an echo of his ‘I love you’. She’d call him again later. She wanted to tell him all about her meeting with her wonderful, eccentric neighbour, about the second and third glasses of gin that Blythe had pressed upon her, and how the two of them had sat chatting until nearly five o’clock, Blythe telling her increasingly risqué back stage gossip, all fifty years out of date, but still surprisingly shocking.
‘And Larry! Wonderful stage presence and so photogenic, but Kelsey, an absolute rogue and a terrible kisser,’ Blythe confided.
‘Larry?’ Kelsey had asked, squinting now, possibly very squiffy from the gin.
‘Olivier, darling. Like kissing a tailor’s dummy.’
‘You acted with Laurence Olivier?’ Kelsey had gasped.
