The Wardrobe Mistress Read online

  Gricey invented that, thought Joan, and this man knows its value. He knows what treasure he’s been given and for that if nothing else she now continued to clasp his hand in both her own.

  Then Miriam Atkins, with the tears standing in her eyes, was asking her how she was getting on, and Joan became aware, as though awakening from a trance, of familiar movement backstage. The collecting of props, of costumes flung on hangers and racks, goodnights cried out as the cast dispersed, eager now to get home, or to the pub or wherever it was they had to be. Vera kissed her mother and went off with Miriam, and only Daniel Francis remained.

  – Go on now, said Joan, having blown her nose into a little hanky she kept in her handbag. Someone will be wanting those wet things.

  The wardrobe mistress, she meant. He’d been sweating into them all night.

  – It was all right, Mrs Grice? Not too much for you?

  – It was very good. Now off you go, dear.

  – Thank you.

  He turned on his heel and left her there, not pausing in the doorway to fling a look at her over his shoulder, as she rather thought he might. Small thing, she thought, this flicker of feeling between widow and cover, but all the same she carried the warmth of it with her as she left through the stage door and round the front to St Martin’s Lane.

  Later, standing at the window of her empty flat, watching the falling snow, she decided she would see it again. Watch it more carefully this time, with a cooler eye, properly extract from it what she’d merely glimpsed in Daniel Francis’ performance. Savour it more deliberately than she had tonight, for she hadn’t anticipated seeing Gricey there, it hadn’t occurred to her. But of course he was there, onstage at least if not back in his own home. Just like him, show up in a theatre first. But of course she hadn’t told him he could go yet.

  She went into her sewing room, turning the light off as she left the kitchen. She’d always had a sewing room where she could close the door and not be disturbed, but who’d disturb her now? she thought. She was alone. Alone in a small dark room, like poor Malvolio in Act IV, yes, and a very cold dark room it was, with a sewing machine and all her fabrics and scissors, bobbins and thimbles and spools of thread. Her shrunken world. She sat at the machine and with a listless toe she touched the treadle and heard the familiar staccato motif, the empty needle tapping at the plate, tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. A frantic fingernail inside a coffin, she thought. An icy draught entered the room. The flat had ceased to be her home. It was a crypt, she thought, although Gricey – Gricey! – seemed now to have come back from the dead. Yes, back to life, by way of Malvolio, and wasn’t that just like him?

  She heard the hour chiming, faint in the distance. It would be another two weeks before the old clock’s cogs and gears all froze solid and it ceased to move. Ah, Gricey, she thought. Who could forget you at the Watford Palace? Most of the world could, and had, was the answer, for you only played there three weeks to scant unfriendly houses, and not surprising, awful play, whatever it was, dull as Chekhov – except for you. Joan was working in the wardrobe, her first job, and she knew she’d never forget his performance.

  She told him so, and of course one thing led to another.

  She didn’t want to think about it now.

  But Malvolio, victim of small minds. Driven half mad and shut up in a dark room by drunken fools abusing the hospitality of the poor grieving woman to whom he is devoted in every way. Whose pens he straightens on her desk, whose every care he attends to, believing that only he can protect her, a young widow alone in the world, and all this with no thought of recompense. She would tell that actor what Gricey had said about Malvolio’s love for Olivia when they talked, just the two of them, over a drink or two after the show—

  Ah no. No, what she wanted – all she wanted – was to help Gricey come through. It was as simple as that.

  She sat in her chair at the sewing machine through the hours of the night, laughing and sobbing, remembering the man she’d lost.

  4

  SHE WENT BACK. She bought a cheap ticket in the balcony stalls and slipped into the theatre unseen, this time wearing one of Gricey’s overcoats with the collar turned up and his hat pulled low on her forehead, the soft homburg she’d got him in Lock’s of St James. She didn’t want to be recognised. She wanted to watch this Daniel Francis undisturbed. She remembered from the earlier visit that each time she recognised Gricey in his performance she’d felt a spike of emotion for which she had no name. She wanted more of that feeling.

  And she got it. Yes. It was there when he first stepped onto the stage and was so tartly put down by Olivia, being told he’s sick with self-love, and tastes with a distempered appetite – and doesn’t care, being blind and deaf with love. Joan remembered that in the face of these insults Gricey had arrived at an expression of the fondest simpering indulgence towards his mistress, and it aroused laughter. Miriam Atkins was in part responsible for this. With a large household to run, of course she needs a steward. Malvolio is indispensable to her. Not so miscast after all, perhaps. He’d always be a pompous ass, but Gricey thought he was something more, representative perhaps of an older order. He was a great one for tradition, Gricey. So proud of being an Englishman, always.

  By the time she heard Feste’s last song Joan was in tears. She sat very still, with her head down, the hat pulled low, and she let the audience stream out around her. Then she was alone in the auditorium. The usher came down the aisle, a cleaner appeared, the curtain was up and a stagehand was sweeping the floor. She rose to her feet and made her way down the stairs just as the theatre went dark.

  She stepped out into St Martin’s Lane.

  – Mrs Grice?

  She turned. Malvolio! Or no – Gricey! Or no – it was Daniel Francis.

  She was taken aback. She responded with unfeigned surprise.

  – Oh here you are, she said, Mr Francis.

  – Back again, then, Mrs Grice?

  Oh, just tell him, she thought.

  – It was you I came to see, Mr Francis.

  She saw the sudden flare of the eye, the wolfish pleasure and surprise. His coat was unbuttoned and a ratty scarf was wrapped around his neck. The coal-black hair had scarcely glimpsed a comb. A smear of powder still on his temple, and again the mascara, this time with a suggestion of the silent screen about it, ghost of Valentino. She wanted to spit in her hanky and wipe it off, as she would have done if it were Gricey. He was a lean, lanky, intense, untidy man in mascara and a darned sweater and baggy corduroy trousers worn through at the knees as though he spent half his life knelt down in prayer, and god knows, she thought, most of them did, praying for work.

  His shoes were of good quality, or they once had been, but they were worn out now, needed new uppers, needed new soles, there’d be holes where the snow came through and she could imagine the state of his socks. If he had any socks. Poor as a church mouse but a kind of actor she knew well, and she felt both a little uneasy with him, given who he was, or who he contained, rather, and at the same time curious. He had of course that fierce bright fire in his eyes, it was always there when they came off stage at the end of the night, when they were full of life and of themselves.

  Oh, and she remembered Gricey, how he’d sit in the pub after, start telling a story, and after a few seconds the people at the next table would be listening, so he’d bring them in, and then the people at the bar, they’d be turning to listen, and he’d bring them in too, and soon the whole pub was listening to Gricey tell his story, and how they’d roar and clap when he finished—

  – How was it tonight, Mrs Grice?

  – You were very fine, she said.

  She touched his sleeve and yes, the coat was as cheap as she thought. But how careful she must be – this delicate vessel!

  – Mrs Grice, may I buy you a drink?

  What a bold fellow. Could he buy her a drink? She’d buttoned her coat, turned the collar up and had planned to ride her bicycle back to Mile End and have a drink at home, but she knew
what would happen if she drank alone after watching Twelfth Night. But a drink with this threadbare actor in whom dwelled like a dybbuk the spirit of her dead husband?

  – Why not, Mr Francis?

  So they went into the pub on the corner there, and Joan sat at a table near the fire while Daniel Francis went up to the counter. The room was far from quiet. Three beer pumps and a group of men and women at one end, and a larger group at a table, many of whom worked in theatres nearby. A few overhead lamps, the room gloomy and not warm. It was an old pub, all glass and brass, seen better days. The group at the table hailed her new friend and she was pleased to see Malvolio complimented on his performance while he was paying for the drinks. She’d have liked to give him money but she didn’t know him well enough yet.

  He returned to the table with a small gin and a glass of mild. He didn’t talk at once, and seemed not to dislike a silence, as most actors do. So she watched him, the vessel, as she now thought of him, and wondered why Gricey had chosen him. It was their shared Malvolio, of course. He now appeared a serious man, grave, self-possessed, inward, one of those solitary actors perhaps, she thought. They do exist. He lifted his glass and inclined his head. She was aware that the people at the table were talking about him. One of them had turned in his chair and was staring at him. He seemed less friendly than the others, perhaps it was the mascara. But he was far from the most exotic man in the room.

  – What did you do before? said Joan.

  – Before Twelfth Night?

  – No.

  She accepted a Woodbine and leaned forward to the match.

  – Before you started acting, she said.

  – I was in rep, you see, and before that a theatre orchestra in Hampstead, third violin. Straight from school, Mrs Grice.

  – Knew what you wanted, Mr Francis.

  – I suppose I did, yes.

  – What’s your real name, love?

  – Frank Stone.

  He looked down. He fell silent once more. One of those. All he wanted was to work in the theatre, god help him, poor deluded bugger. That’s why Gricey chose him. Empty vessel.

  – Married?

  – No. I used to live with my mother, Mrs Grice.

  Not queer, though, she thought. There was a very slight something about his accent she couldn’t place.

  – But not any more. She didn’t like seeing you up on the stage. That it, Mr Stone?

  – No, it wasn’t that. She died.

  Of course. She recognised it now. It was obvious. It had been there in the handshake in the green room. Her own grief was too fresh, it made her blind. She didn’t see the suffering of others. But of course she wasn’t alone now, and a kind of relief swept through her.

  – You miss her, Mr Stone?

  – Oh yes.

  His eyes were on her. Dear innocent man, she could never tell him, of course.

  – See her in the street, do you?

  Now he laughed. He liked the idea. It brought her to life in his mind.

  – No, Mrs Grice, I haven’t seen her in the street. You’ve seen Gricey, have you?

  – I’ve heard his voice.

  Watching him close now she lifted the gin to her lips. She felt the familiar pain, for Gricey hadn’t spoken to her since the day of the funeral. Why would he not speak to her again? Or was this it now?

  – Yes, I have too. Not Gricey’s, I mean.

  – What was her name?

  – Rosa.

  – Rossa?

  – Rose-ah.

  – You have brothers and sisters?

  – No, he said, and frowned for some reason. Where was he from? She still couldn’t place it. Hadn’t been there onstage.

  – Just as well.

  – I don’t know.

  – Make the theatre your family, Mr Stone.

  – There is that, Mrs Grice, he said, and produced that grin again, the one that split his cheeks like two thin flaps of leather, oh, he could charm the birds out of the trees, this one, she thought.

  Then the landlord was calling time and Joan said she’d better be getting home. Her heart was full. She wanted to be alone. They stood outside the pub and shook hands on the cold pavement. A gust of wind came up from Trafalgar Square and she shivered. A dog was barking and high clouds blustered across the pale night sky. More snow on the way, said Joan. They’d reached her bicycle, parked beside a dustbin down the alley by the theatre. Someone had thrown out a bucket of water earlier and it had frozen and was now a little glacier in miniature, gleaming there in the moonlight.

  – Do your coat up, Mr Stone, you’ll catch your death.

  – I haven’t far to go.

  She’d pulled on her gloves and turned up the collar of her coat. She mounted her bicycle.

  – I do. Mile End.

  She almost said, but you know that, of course.

  – Goodnight, then.

  He wanted to say something more, seeing her on the saddle.

  – Wait, Mrs Grice—

  But Joan had lifted her head, looked both ways, pushed off and sailed away down the empty street, with him gazing after with his hand lifted.

  Joan rode home as though her bicycle wasn’t on the road but several inches above it, winged at the axles. Nor did she feel the cold despite the dropping temperature and the wind freshening as it came up off the river. It was often like this, flying by bicycle, in the weeks that followed, in what she would come to regard as the opening act in a comedy of errors, the first of those errors being in the minds of those who believed that Gricey was dead.

  It’s certainly what we thought, and to think otherwise was mad, frankly, and heartbreaking too, poor Joan. But it seemed she could think both things at once, that he was dead, and alive too, in the body of another man.

  5

  A FEW DAYS later she went to see Vera again. As she cycled across the city in the late afternoon she grew disconsolate. Her daughter’s continued occupation of Julius Glass’ attic depressed her, and it also distracted her from the quiet wonder of this man who’d entered her life, and who by some miracle carried her late husband’s spirit into the world and who, if not driven off, or otherwise estranged, could yet be persuaded to allow him to come through. Quite what that would look like Joan had as yet no idea. But she felt sure she’d know it when she saw it. And thinking this, she knocked on the front door of the thin house in Pimlico.

  Not far from Julius’ house there was a small public square. Elms and ashes had been planted in the last century, and an old synagogue stood on the far side, which some fascist had defaced with a swastika. The graveyard with its scattering of headstones was of more ancient provenance still. Nearby there was a narrow terrace of houses and a high brick wall with the railway yards behind, and a small pub on the corner called the Builders Arms. All but one of the houses had escaped the bombs and in summer it was pleasant enough, although at this time of year it was bleak. Children didn’t go in even though there was a stand of swings hung from a rusty structure, like a gibbet with chains. The Jewish graveyard was said to be haunted by a German soldier. Perhaps that was why.

  Joan and Vera had gone out for a walk. Vera said she was desperate for fresh air. More desperate, thought Joan, to get out of that house for a bit. She and Julius had had a late night, she said, but whether that meant carousing or what, Joan didn’t ask. Mother and daughter had found their way to the little square. They’d brought a few slices of the horrible grey bread we got that winter and were tossing crumbs to the pigeons. A few flakes of snow were drifting down.

  It was too cold to sit on a bench so the two women walked around the square arm-in-arm. Vera was bundled up in her black fur coat and was telling her mother how a few nights earlier she’d been out to the theatre and got home late. Joan was at once disturbed. Here it comes, she thought. It wasn’t so much what Vera was saying as her manner. The tone was feverish. Her eyes were too bright, and she was clinging too tightly to her mother’s arm. She’d come into the kitchen, she said, and saw at once t
hat there’d been people round. Chairs pushed back from the long kitchen table. Empty teacups, a few beer bottles, and oh, a lot of cigarette smoke, it was like a fog in there. She was about to open the back door, let some air in, when she heard someone coming downstairs. It was an old house and the stairs creaked, and she said she felt at bay for some reason. He hadn’t told her he was having people in.

  – Go on, dear, said Joan, a feeling of weary dread gathering in her breast now.

  Well, suddenly the door was thrown open, said Vera, and with a click of the switch the kitchen was illuminated, but only dimly, just the single bulb in the yellow shade. Vera shrieked, she couldn’t help it. But it was only Julius, and he didn’t seem to hear her shriek. Oh it is you, he said, yawning. Why didn’t you answer? What are you doing down here in the dark, love?

  Vera, still clutching her mother, fell silent.

  – What did you say? said Joan.

  – I told him to go away. I thought it was someone else!

  – Who?

  – I don’t know.

  Apparently he sat down at the table anyway and pressed his hands to his face. Don’t make so much noise, he said, Gustl’s asleep. He’d been asleep himself, he said, and Vera said she was sorry if she’d woken him, she was trying to be quiet, but please would he just go away? He then said she hadn’t woken him, he’d been having a dream. The dream had woken him.

  – Did he say what he was dreaming about?

  – The Blitz. Swinburne’s.

  – Then what?

  Then he yawned again. Vera had stood there with her back to the back door, still in her coat. Terrified of him for reasons she couldn’t explain.

  Vera was becoming more upset now. Why she was in high heels was a mystery to Joan, for even with her mother for support she was tottering on the gravel. But that wasn’t important.

  – Now be calm, dear, said Joan, I want to understand this.

  She thought it was just the girl’s nerves playing up again.