The Wardrobe Mistress Read online

  But just a joke, was it, done in the pub one night, some skit they put together and Gricey cast as a Blackshirt, or maybe as Sir Oswald himself? After the first shock wore off Joan tried to think of anything but that badge but she couldn’t. She’d never seen him as a political sort of a man, although he talked a bit when he’d had a few. He was a good Labour man, voted for Attlee after the war, or so he’d told her. That’s why she thought he wouldn’t mind Frank Stone having his coat.

  Later, this would be the Sunday afternoon, after Delphie, she stood in the middle of Battersea Bridge, gazing down at the river. What a sluggish, dirty old river it was that day, full of melted snow and all the detritus snow brings, chunks of grey ice, branches and leaves, rubbish. The Thames in winter, she thought, and at its very worst. The sudden unbidden idea of drowning in it almost made her cry out. Thoughts of suicide had occurred to her more than once in the last weeks, and she’d even considered how she’d do it. It was all this death. That cat, and Delphie on her last legs. Delphie had told her what the doctor said, she had to stop smoking.

  – Too late, I told him. It’s my only pleasure.

  There was a spasm of that truly dreadful hacking cough and her eyes streamed a little. It was all very upsetting so Joan did what she’d come down to the river to do, she tossed the badge into the watery mess below, and almost threw her wedding ring after it but at the last moment changed her mind.

  – Was he one of them? she’d said to Delphie.

  – Yes dear, said Delphie. Oh, he was.

  A pause, a silence.

  – Not a bad one, said Delphie.

  – Not a bad one? said Joan, who knew her own mind when it came to fascists. You saying there’s good ones?

  – I’m saying, not like some. They were proud of him. A famous actor on their side? You can understand it.

  Joan was not finding it easy to accept the fact that the man to whom she’d been married almost thirty years had withheld from her a truth about himself that she found frankly an abomination. Now it seemed that Delphie wasn’t too bothered about it, and the pair of them friends since Joan looked after her costumes back when Delphie was playing the music halls. She’d come to Vera’s wedding. Lord, if she couldn’t trust Delphie—

  – You know what Englishmen are, love. You remember how it was after the First War.

  – How was it, Delphie?

  Delphie sighed. She seemed to grow weary of the topic. She reached for her cigarettes. Joan was close to tears. She was fierce with a rage she could barely contain.

  – But why didn’t he tell me? she cried.

  – I think he was afraid to, dear.

  – He was afraid of nothing.

  – He was afraid of you.

  She thought, afraid of me? Him? Of me? Why? Because I’m a Jew? Was that it? Ha bloody ha. And she remembered once, out on the street, a Saturday morning, Vera was with them, fourteen years old, and some idiot stuck a BUF flier in her hand. Oh, Joan slapped him, yes, and really very hard. It made her so angry! A child! She wanted to hit him again, have a real go at him, but Gricey stopped her. Of course he did. He was one of them. He liked Mosley, he’d have voted for him, and how was she ever going to explain that to Vera? More to the point, how was she going to protect her from it?

  She sat in her kitchen with lowered head and wept. What before she’d concealed from herself she could no longer deny. What a fool she was. How could she have been so wilfully blind? But all through the war and the years leading up to the war never once did he say he wanted the Germans to win. But he must have wanted it because he believed what they believed, for why else would he wear the bloody thing pinned behind his lapel where nobody could see it unless he wanted them to? And how many times had she laid her head against it, all unknowing? In a loving moment, say. With her arms round his neck? Leaning into the fucker, loving him and trusting him, and inches, inches from her cheek, that horrible little tinny bit of evil? But she’d felt it, and never asked him what it was. Why? Because she didn’t want to know. At least he was dead, yes, and dead to her too, she thought so now. Where once she’d wanted him back under any conditions, even in the body of another man, not now, oh no. She was done with him now. Let him rot in hell.

  She lifted her head. She dried her tears. She’d surprised herself. Never could she have imagined thinking such a thing. But their beliefs disgusted her.

  Later that night Vera was fast asleep in bed and Joan again sitting at the kitchen table. She was drinking. She was trying to sort out her thoughts. To call people vermin, decent people like herself, and what was worse he’d known she’d feel like this, which was why he’d told her nothing. But to deceive her so. To live a double life, never opening his mind honestly to her, carrying his secret all that time and those hateful thoughts seething in his skull like corpse beetles in a coffin and pretending every day to be the dependable man, the warm-hearted husband and father, everyone’s friend – old Gricey, good old Gricey – and never once, not once saying what he really thought. She topped up her glass. Thank you, Uncle Alcohol.

  So could she trust a single thing he’d said? Their life together now seemed nothing but an elaborate performance of pretence and disguise, yes, his whole life a performance, he’d never stopped performing, the real man was visible only when fascists came together, this she now believed, but she had never seen it and those who were aware of it never spoke of it, not to her. All at once she remembered the men at the funeral she hadn’t recognised and didn’t know. Fascists! – and actors. Fascists and actors, all gathered here today in the sight of God – was every actor a fascist then? – every fascist an actor? – no, stop, that way madness—

  Oh Christ. Thank you, Uncle.

  13

  LIKE HER MOTHER, Vera Grice at this time was far from stable or tranquil or clear in her mind about anything, but she did have her work. She was becoming so thoroughly immersed in the play she was shortly to start rehearsing that the real world receded, and was experienced with immediacy only when it coincided with the play. But to this she did pay attention: the conviction that her mother was not only giving the actor Dan Francis her father’s clothes, she was having assignations with him. And him in her father’s suit, the father for whom she still grieved, and for whom her mother should also still be grieving, unless she lacked all human feeling, and with cold, heartless selfishness had taken up with this obscure actor who doubtless performed her father’s role in her mother’s bed as once he’d performed it on the stage of the Irving Theatre! There was a Jacobean tendency in this tortured line of thinking, but then it was a Jacobean tragedy that Vera was rehearsing at this time. For she’d agreed to perform the leading role in a play that dripped with treachery and madness and incestuous lust and blood. And a woman who refused to behave as widows should. She was going to play the lead in The Duchess of Malfi.

  When she returned to the flat that night she found her mother sitting in the kitchen. There was food warming on the stove. Joan had been crying. She rose from the table and moved to the stove, turning her back.

  – Sit down, love, she said, while I put the kettle on. Tell me what you did today.

  But Vera was in no mood for any of this, and not to be seduced with tears or cups of tea. She sat smoking and glaring, nursing her grievance. It was a mood Joan had known all her daughter’s life. She and Gricey used to laugh about it, Vera’s pets, they called them. She was in one of her pets, they said in a theatrical whisper. Little Hamlet, they called her. Vera heard them and hated it. She was about to give voice to her anger when her mother spoke first.

  – You’re not in one of your pets, are you, dear? she said.

  She knew it was a provocation but she was weary of ministering to her daughter’s needs when her own needs were becoming so very urgent. Vera sat in a state of stiffened outrage for a few seconds. With this too her mother was familiar.

  – I opened a nice tin of pink salmon, she said, with her back still to the table. It was only ninepence and there’s some cab
bage left from Sunday.

  The silence lasted a few seconds more, then Vera abruptly pushed back her chair and left the kitchen, and the door of what once was Gricey’s room, but now was hers, slammed. And with all I have to deal with now, thought Joan. Under her breath she said, she’ll have to go.

  She took her bicycle out the following Sunday afternoon and went to visit Julius in Lupus Mews. Not a meeting she relished, but it had to be done. They had to talk about Vera; also about Gricey. That conversation was long overdue and now of course everything had changed, what with the badge and all. She found him melancholy. There were others at the kitchen table, the man Karsh, also Peter Ryder. He’d been a Spitfire pilot in the war. Joan had met him before. The limping hero, broken in spirit after being shot down over the Channel. Right hand badly burned, hip broken in two places. The war was over now but Peter Ryder still woke screaming in the night. When Joan appeared he rose to his feet with some difficulty. She saw him wince when he put weight on the leg.

  – Peter, you don’t have to get up for me.

  Peter sat down. Joan suspected he’d come round to borrow money for drink. She also believed he had fascist sympathies. She’d seen him in one of the pubs they used, the Two Eagles. Peter Ryder drank in that pub, though to be fair you could say – and it wouldn’t be a stretch – what pub did Peter Ryder not drink in?

  She had a word with Gustl, who seemed as usual sad, damp, but warm. She turned to the morose Julius. She guessed at once that he missed Vera rather badly and still didn’t understand why she’d left him.

  – Julius, she said, we must talk.

  He lifted his head. She was positively civil, what was going on? She’d been snarling at him for weeks. Her tone was muted; conciliatory, even. Oh but look at him. His eyelids were heavy, his skin more sallow than ever, and the blond head that once had shone in wintry sunlight was lank now, and dull. He was smoking a desultory cigar.

  – I have to speak to you in private, she said.

  He got to his feet.

  – Garden too cold for you?

  Still warm from her bicycle ride she told him that no, the garden was fine.

  They went down the steps from the back door and sat on a wooden bench. They gazed at the bare hanging branches of the weeping willow at the end of the garden, where Vera had seen the creeping man. Julius had thrown a long grey coat over his shoulders but failed to button it or even put his arms in the sleeves. Let this be brief, Joan thought.

  – You want her back, Julius, is that right?

  His eyes flickered to hers for a second. He nodded.

  – How are you going to convince her?

  – Tell me.

  – Take flowers. Be humble. Say you can’t live without her.

  All at once a small black cat was picking its way along the top of the garden wall. Its tail was up like a stick.

  – I can’t.

  – Can’t what?

  – Live without her.

  He turned towards her, this clever, subtle, complicated man, and all she saw was helplessness and pathos. To her mild astonishment she felt sorry for him. What has changed? she thought, but she knew the answer to that.

  – It won’t be easy. She’s in rehearsal. It’ll be an upheaval. I don’t envy you.

  Joan watched a thrush pecking vainly at the hard earth. The cat paused on the wall and stared at the bird. The cold was getting into her bones now. The sky was grey and the earth was like iron. Julius stood up and lit his cigar, which had gone out, then walked back and forth with his head down as though contemplating a military campaign. Joan told him it was too cold, she had to go in.

  – One question. Does she still like me?

  – Oh you fool, she said. She’s mad about you.

  Dusk was coming on when she left Lupus Mews. There was a mist rising, and a damp chill. She mounted her bicycle. She hadn’t asked Julius about that last conversation they’d had, him and Gricey, nor had he volunteered anything, and now as she cycled east towards Mile End she thought about turning back. But no. It could wait. And Gustl, poor Gustl, who’d almost been murdered by the Gestapo, she knew Gricey was a fascist. So what then did they think of her? That she knew it too, and was complicit? This distressed her considerably. When she reached Archibald Street she wheeled her bicycle into the hall then climbed the stairs. Oh Uncle, I shall be requiring the pleasure of your company tonight.

  There was a pub on Victoria Street called the Prince of Wales. Frank had suggested it. It was the best he could do. We see them then, during that brief period when they met in the Prince of Wales, we see an island of silent intimacy within a noisy crowd, and odd, no, to think of silence as a conduit of love, and themselves theatre people? Joan had been somewhat reassured. Cycling up Victoria Street that first time, she’d seen him standing outside the pub in the cold, waiting for her. He didn’t want her to have to go in unescorted. She knew at once that her fears were unfounded, that no dark spirit resided in him, and it was a kind of awakening, she told us much later, because with Gricey being not in him any more, he was just Frank Stone.

  But after an hour, and with this new closeness between them, they knew it was no good. No good this sitting in a pub when it was becoming abundantly clear to both of them that they must be alone in a room, and not just any room, a room with a bed in it and a door that could be locked from the inside. Nothing else would do. Why not Frank Stone’s room, his bed? Joan often considered it but she couldn’t say this to him, and he didn’t suggest it. The absurdity of her position was evident to her when they parted on a cold pavement after last orders.

  One day later that week she went round to Lupus Mews again and Gustl let her in. Come in, love, she said, fancy one, do you? I know I do. Trink doch einen, dann wird dir warm, Liebste. Go on, love, it’ll warm you up. Gustl knew nobody understood her when she spoke German but it made her feel like who she was, a Berliner. Not that there was much of Berlin left any more, it was all rubble, worse even than London. Dear Gustl, Joan was glad to sit down with her, just the two of them, in Julius’ warm kitchen. It made it easier. So when they were settled, and had lit their fags, Joan told her about the shock she’d had.

  Gustl was wearing her painter’s smock. She’d been in the front room when Joan knocked on the door. That was where she’d set up a table and easel so she could paint in peace with the good morning light. Julius had had the carpet taken up and installed an electric fire, and he’d hung blackout curtains on the window to keep the draughts out in the evening. On the one occasion she’d asked Joan to come into her studio, Joan had laid a hand on Gustl’s arm and explained that she ‘hadn’t much of an eye for art’.

  – Ich habe einen Sinn für Kunst, aber das ist auch alles, was ich habe.

  – I didn’t understand a word, dear.

  – It’s all I do have, said Gustl.

  – Yes, said Joan, I think you do.

  – I would like to paint you, said Gustl, and added, quietly: Ich würde dich auch gern—

  Joan had thought this a bit off, painting her portrait, but she kept quiet and no more had been said about it. Now they were sitting at the kitchen table and Joan was telling her about the badge, and what Delphie had said, and how she’d thrown the filthy thing into the river off Battersea Bridge.

  – Did you know, love? said Joan.

  Gustl solemnly nodded her head.

  – You did not know, Liebste?

  – No. I’m so sorry.

  – Is not necessary.

  – I feel ashamed of myself. And after what you’ve—

  Gustl laid her hand on Joan’s and said again that it wasn’t necessary.

  – He wasn’t one of the bad ones, that’s what Delphie said, but I don’t know if I can believe her.

  Gustl shook her head. Gustl didn’t believe you could be ‘not one of the bad ones’ either. Now it was as though there had come into the room an unpleasant smell.

  – He had many friends? said Gustl.

  – Gricey? He knew everyone. Walk i
nto any pub in London and he always knew somebody. Hello, he’d say, here’s Tommy the Crow. Hello, Tommy, still being a cunt, are you? He knew Oswald Mosley. He brought his wife to Twelfth Night. They sat in a box.

  Joan fell silent. She’d thought at the time Gricey was simply amused that the great fascist liked Shakespeare. Now it was sinister; more than sinister, it was damning. They’d wanted to come round after but it didn’t work out for some reason. A problem with Her Ladyship. She was a bloody Mitford.

  – Come round to your home?

  – Backstage, love.

  Gustl then said Julius should hear this.

  – I don’t want him to tell Vera.

  – He won’t tell Vera. So long a secret, warum?

  – Warum?

  – Why? Why to tell her now?

  Joan set her elbows on the table and sank her head into her hands.

  Julius was in his study. Not a large room and made smaller by the books. Books floor to ceiling, books in heaps on the floor, and only a window over the desk that looked out over the back garden. He had his feet on the desk and was reading a new play and not enjoying it when Gustl appeared. She asked him to come into the kitchen, saying Joan was here. Julius swung his feet down off the desk, stood up and tossed the play into his wastepaper basket. He stretched and coughed. He lit a cigarette off a dog end smouldering in the ashtray and put his jacket on over his jersey. He rubbed his hands together.

  – Cold, eh?

  They went down the corridor and into the kitchen and there was Joan standing at the window looking out at the garden.

  – Hello Julius, she said.

  – Hello, dear.

  – Tell him, said Gustl.

  Julius sat at the table with his head bowed. His hands were laid flat before him. He nodded once or twice. It didn’t take long to tell, what Joan knew. Delphie’s remarks were included. Delphie knew that Gricey had been to a few meetings but Delphie didn’t think so much of it, said Joan. She said I shouldn’t worry about it. Just lads being stupid, picking on the Jews again. Giving them a bit of trouble, well, you’re not like us so they think it’s not so bad.