The Wardrobe Mistress Read online

  – You get what you need, don’t you, Mum?

  – Do you, my love?

  – I needed to know what loss felt like, then I needed to feel betrayed and I got that too.

  Was that why Gricey died, so Vera could experience loss? And play the part of a tragic woman? She dared not ask the question. She was afraid what her daughter would say.

  The next morning the two women were in a cab turning into Lupus Mews.

  – Here they are, said Julius when Vera marched through the front door with her mother behind her.

  – I’m leaving you, said Vera, setting off up the stairs. Don’t try and stop me.

  Julius turned to Joan, as though to say, what’s this? Joan lifted her eyes to the ceiling and flattened her mouth in weary resignation, and reached for a cigarette.

  – Don’t ask me, she murmured. She still here?

  – Who?

  – Your refugee.

  – Gustl? She’s asleep.

  Vera’s voice floated down the stairs as she ascended.

  – I’m leaving you, Julius!

  Joan followed her up the stairs, pausing only to glance down at Julius’ sallow, bewildered face. In the attic Vera rapidly took a few frocks on hangers from the cupboard under the eaves and threw them into a suitcase. She seemed careless of what she chose to take and what she left behind. No cabin trunk would be hauled by sweating men down these stairs; or not yet. Vera’s mind was clearly on fire and she had no thought for possessions. When they came down again Julius was at the bottom of the stairs. As Vera descended in her black fur, on high heels, stepping slightly sideways on the stairs, Julius asked her what was going on. He appeared not angry, but distinctly annoyed and genuinely astonished.

  – I’m leaving you, said Vera for the third time.

  – Why, for Christ’s sake, darling? What’s happened?

  A light blazed in Vera’s large eyes then, which for a second resembled black lakes on fire.

  – Don’t pretend you don’t know!

  Julius didn’t know and he turned towards Joan with his mouth open and his shoulders lifting, his hands outspread. Is she out of her mind? he seemed to say, but Joan wasn’t going to get involved in this. Vera meanwhile had reached the bottom of the stairs and with head held high, and a suitcase in her hand, was making for the front door.

  – Tell me, Vera!

  He seemed about to fling himself against the front door so as to deny her passage out of the house. Vera paused with her hand on the door handle and turned to him. Here it comes, thought Joan.

  – There are many injustices I’m prepared to tolerate, Julius, she said, but betrayal is not one of them.

  She swept out. Joan thought a round of applause was in order. She followed her daughter in similar manner, glancing at Julius as she left. He had his hand on his head and his lips were pulled back from his teeth in a rictus of aggravated incomprehension. What most concerned Joan now was Frank. He was due for his fitting at six.

  Later mother and daughter sat together in the kitchen of the flat in Archibald Street but Vera was again elsewhere and had no wish to talk. She’d come to live in the flat with no thought for Joan’s feelings in the matter. She’d assumed her acquiescence. She needed shelter. But darling, thought Joan, could you not at least have asked me?

  The bed had been made up in Gricey’s room, and although it troubled Joan to have her in there, it had once been Vera’s room, and there were still a few of her books on the shelf. The wardrobe was locked, to Vera’s surprise, but Joan was firm about this, at least: she’d have to hang her clothes in the hall cupboard. They’re all Daddy’s things in there, she said, it’s still full. One suit was missing but Vera would be told nothing about that just yet, for Frank wasn’t expected for several hours. There was at least a decent mirror on the back of the door. But now they were back in the kitchen, where a small moment of grace occurred when Vera looked up from her play.

  – Thank you, Mummy, she said, leaning across the table to touch Joan’s cheek.

  Joan was still troubled. For once in her life she was unsure what was for the best.

  – Oh of course, dear.

  – I’ll need to be quiet here.

  – I know you will.

  What did she think? That there’d be wild parties, dancing, wine, song? There might be Frank Stone, of course.

  It was five o’clock and he was due at six. One scenario had unfolded in Joan’s imagination and it troubled her. It involved Vera’s reaction to her father’s suit being handed over to a stranger.

  – Darling, he’s a stranger to you but not to me.

  – I know who he is, Mum, he’s Daddy’s cover.

  Yes, Daddy’s cover. Scorn would be the least of it. The conversation would have to be had before Frank arrived for on no account would she have him embarrassed. Joan was not the woman to defer an unpleasant task in the hope that it might somehow go away, and so she sat down across the table from Vera, who was still reading her play.

  – I have something to tell you, dear.

  Vera looked up and took her glasses off.

  – What is it?

  She was alarmed. She was too excited, too alert, altogether too alive. It was the play. Now she sensed danger, or bad news. Joan was familiar with this mood.

  – I’m giving one of Daddy’s suits to an actor.

  – Oh is that all? You had me worried.

  – He’s coming in an hour for a fitting.

  – Do I know him?

  – He was Daddy’s cover in Twelfth Night.

  – Oh him.

  Yes, oh him, and for a second Joan was elsewhere, standing on a wet pavement after the pub closed and a damp snow just starting to fall, herself on her bicycle halfway down the street, turning in the saddle to look back and yes, there he was, oh him, under a street lamp with his hand lifted in farewell and on his face an expression of, oh what? – yearning. And how long had it been since anyone yearned for her?

  – Then you don’t mind?

  – Mummy, why would I mind?

  An hour later Frank arrived. Vera was still in the kitchen with her script. Her hair was piled up with a pencil stuck through it and her glasses were on the end of her nose. She was wearing a black jersey, a black skirt, thick stockings and plimsolls. On the table were scattered her tea things, rolling tobacco, ashtray, pencils, script and a high-heeled shoe. A shoe on the table. Joan might have made a fuss but decided that when Frank arrived they would go straight to the sitting room. She was still in the kitchen with Vera when she heard the doorbell. He was early.

  He’d brought a small bottle of gin. She was embarrassed and a little annoyed. She took him into the kitchen. Vera was polite to him. She had no idea why Joan was giving her father’s clothes to this man but as it didn’t concern her she gave it no further thought. Frank told her he’d seen her Doll’s House and enjoyed it very much.

  Joan watched them with a cold eye as they talked, Vera sitting at the table and he standing in the dim yellow gloom of the one bulb in its shade overhead, in his thin black coat. He told Vera the actor who’d played Dr Rank to her Nora was in a play at the Wyndham and picked up a rat trap backstage and broke his finger.

  – Which one? said Vera.

  – Measure for Measure.

  – No, which finger?

  He held up his middle finger. It all suggested that he moved in her circles and knew the same people. Joan was irritated – more than irritated, for how much more attractive to him was her daughter, well, how much more attractive to anyone, really, we all agreed, what with her creamy skin and those splendid tits, lucky girl, and of course her teeth, like ivory – not like her mother’s poor old tombstones. Oh, but then Joan recognised that it was all irrational, this great flurry of anxiety, just nonsense, for the very premise from which it arose was irrational, the idea that he was in any sense hers. But all the same she wanted to get him out of the kitchen. She considered their friendship a private matter.

  The radiator sputtere
d, and watery steam spat up out of the valve.

  – Dear, you have to work. I’ll take Frank away.

  – Who is Frank? Oh I see.

  They went down the passage. Joan had earlier hung the suit on a hook on the back of the door. She ushered him in and followed, closing the door and leaning her back against it.

  – You shouldn’t have brought gin, she said. Listen to me, Frank. I don’t want you spending your money on me. So please, no more gifts.

  How he liked her using his first name and being strict with him. He wanted more of her reprimands.

  – I don’t like to come empty-handed, he said, when you’re doing so much for me.

  – I’m doing nothing for you, it’s all the other way.

  He still hadn’t taken his coat off. The little sitting room was wallpapered in green floral patterns with swirls of heavy yellow that caught what little light there was, and an oval mirror hung over the mantelpiece with dark carved acanthus-leaf encrustations on the frame. A small coal fire burned in the hearth. Frank was kneeling in front of it, stirring the coals with a poker. He stood and turned to face Joan who had her back to the window and her hands on the sill.

  – No, don’t thank me, I don’t want Gricey’s suits here. I get upset when I look at them. They make me think he’s coming back.

  He’s already back.

  Frank had asked himself if he could really be doing her a favour by taking her dead husband’s clothes. Now he said this to Joan. She laughed and came towards him, pointing a finger.

  – Will you please just take my word for it? Don’t be difficult, Mr Stone.

  – I’m not sure I can help it, Mrs Grice.

  The diffident, twitching grin appeared again.

  – You’re being difficult. Go and put it on. Use my sewing room.

  He left with the suit, and Joan wandered about the room, wringing her hands. Vera was in the kitchen and her presence irritated Joan, for she felt constrained. She and Frank, each time they met, they advanced, she felt, but with Vera nearby Joan was less than fully herself. He must be aware of it. He was such a perceptive man, she thought. Nothing, surely, escaped him. He was a very good actor. He must work more. She must help him. She began to think who she could mention him to and a name occurred to her.

  But no, too soon.

  Then, silently, suddenly, he materialised in the gloom of the corridor and stood in the doorway. She hadn’t heard him. Turning, she suffered a most violent shock. The resemblance was magnified a thousandfold – never had she been so sure of him.

  – Come in where I can see you!

  She was suddenly full of awe and very frightened.

  She moved to the switch on the wall and turned on the overhead light. That was better. But how odd, how very strange it was, to see him standing in the doorway there, and holding himself as he once did—

  – You look as if you’ve seen—

  He thought better of it.

  – Heavens, she said, with a hand on her lifting breast, you did give me a shock. For a second I thought you were him!

  – Mrs Grice, it fits me perfectly.

  – Oh, Joan, please, for Christ’s sake call me Joan. Let me look at you properly. Come here in the light.

  Later, when he’d left, and Vera had gone to bed, Joan sat in the kitchen with a glass of the gin he’d brought and saw him again in Gricey’s suit. It did fit perfectly, of course it did, she’d done the alterations herself. Of course it was a shock to see it on Frank Stone but still the feeling was there and yes, he was right. It was like seeing a ghost.

  – Sit down, she’d told him, and cross your legs.

  She’d watched the trouser leg rise a little over Frank Stone’s raddled wet sock. It fell so nicely, the jacket. How elegant he was now, her scarecrow, how darkly dashing he looked in that navy blue over a white shirt and that old spotted blue tie. And his untidy coal-black hair, of course. Raffish, she’d thought. Dashing.

  – Stand up and walk about.

  He’d stood up and walked about. Yes, it suited his lanky frame well, the trousers flapping like sailcloth around his long legs. She’d done a nice job, just pulling them in an inch in the seat. Very nice hang.

  – Walk like Malvolio.

  – Oh, Mrs Grice, he said.

  He refused to use her first name.

  – What is it?

  He was grinning at her again, his long face split into those lovely leathery flaps. The eyes became warm narrow slits with fine lines spreading out like little darts. It didn’t happen often. His hair flopped over his forehead and he pushed it back with fingers that were slender and strong like a musician’s. She thought him too handsome for words.

  – What? she said.

  – I’m not Malvolio.

  – It doesn’t matter. Just do it.

  So he pretended to be himself playing Malvolio after the manner of Charlie Grice. It was Gricey stepping onto the stage in the first act, and Joan failed to conceal her flush of warmth.

  – Not too tight in the seat?

  He’d sat down and again crossed his legs. With one arm thrown over the back of the armchair, he half turned towards her where she stood by the door. He pretended to be suave. He made a face like a matinee idol, a smouldering Valentino now. She regarded him with her hands clasped at her waist and her head a little to one side.

  – Perfect in the seat, Mrs Grice, he said.

  But at that moment of pleasant intimacy the door had opened and Vera, with a cup of tea and her script, and her tobacco, came in to say goodnight and appraise the fit of the suit.

  – Oh it’s fine, she said. You look just like Daddy.

  She yawned.

  – I’m off to bed then. Night, Mum. Night, Dan.

  Frank left soon after. Joan had sent him into the night in a double-breasted, navy-blue suit, with the clothes he’d been wearing neatly folded and packed in a brown paper bag. She sat at the kitchen table and felt relieved that it had all gone off as well as it had, meaning Vera had behaved herself.

  Frank got off the bus in the Strand and walked past St Martin-in-the-Fields and on up the Charing Cross Road to where he liked to turn into the alley, and past the stage door of the Irving Theatre, where he would remember his brief encounters with Mrs Grice, and their visits to the pub nearby. But tonight – he’d been in her flat, where she’d given him the suit he was wearing now.

  He’d felt at home in her flat. The two women, mother and daughter, and the father gone. He entertained a wistful fantasy. He needed not to possess these women but to take the place of the man they’d lost. He paused a second as the idea took shape, briefly, but he didn’t pause for long. Far too cold. On he went towards Seven Dials in the belief that if he walked fast enough his quickening heart would heat the blood in his veins and hold off the worst of the cold. He passed down the alley and a couple of tired prostitutes asked him if he’d like to go to a party. He stood before a narrow front door and put his key in the lock. He entered the dank narrow hallway and began to climb the stairs. He heard a scream from out the back of the building. There was no light. There was something unpleasant on the stairs and he almost stepped in it. Up he went to the top floor.

  Later that night he remembered he was now a man in possession of a navy-blue suit. He’d been sunk in a chair. Now he sprang to his feet and walked up and down the room, and it felt good, yes, for it had been such a long time, and if he only had a mirror, a long one, floor to ceiling, in which he could properly see himself, for it changed everything. New suit, new man – this was the feeling. He seized up his violin from the top of the piano, and sure now that herself and the boy, his mother, that is, and his sister’s child, were asleep, he played a little Mendelssohn, and then, yes, a little of the late, mad Schumann.

  Soon he forgot how cold it was up there. He played as he rarely played any more, that is, with real feeling, for he seemed to himself as inspired in that moment as he’d ever been, and there beyond the cracked window, with London’s roofs and chimneys bla
ck in silhouette against the pale night sky he saw his audience, and it was vast, yes – all of London was out there listening to him! – and in front row centre Joan, dear Joan, dear Mrs Grice, with her daughter Vera beside her.

  He grew tired at last. He put away the violin. He hung his suit with care on a wooden hanger, pinching the creases as he’d seen Joan do, and then climbed in under the blankets on the couch. He fell asleep in anticipation of opening his eyes in the light of day to the suit on the hanger on the hook on the back of their peeling, splintered front door.

  9

  JOAN WAS NOT finding Vera easy to live with. Her hours were unpredictable. Items of clothing and footwear were all over the flat, every cup and glass ending up in Gricey’s room, which was now hers again, of course. The ubiquitous flotsam of an actress in rehearsal, this Joan had seen before, but it made it no easier. Then a strange and, oh, a rather ominous development. A few days later she was visited by Gustl Herzfeld. It seems Gustl had caught wind of Vera’s suspicions and wanted to clear up any misunderstanding.

  Auntie Gustl was a little faded now, a little bit wilted, and it was hard to say if she was closer to thirty or forty, and some days she looked older. She was blonde, like Julius, but there all resemblance ended. Her features were fine but puffy at times, bloated even, as though she were a serious drinker. Perhaps she was, thought Joan, although she’d never yet seen evidence of it. Which wasn’t to say it wasn’t the case. Some women drink only by themselves, and late at night.

  It wasn’t so late the night Gustl came round to see her but it was cold, although of course every night was cold then. Joan heard the bell and went to the window in Gricey’s room from where she could see the street below. Gustl was down there gazing up at her. It was snowing again and she had no umbrella. Joan Grice was not entirely without sympathy for Auntie Gustl, for despite everything she recognised that whatever her mistakes, this woman was not responsible for the collapse of Vera’s marriage. Vera could collapse a marriage all by herself.

  And here she was, Auntie Gustl, thanking her, tripping a little on the doormat, apologising, somehow getting up the stairs. She was in her good black flannel coat, broad in the shoulder, fringed with black felt, and a gaily patterned headscarf knotted like a turban and damp with snow. She smelled of coal smoke and cigarettes and Joan knew she’d been in a pub. She brought her into the kitchen where it was warm by the stove, and took her coat and hung it steaming on the pulley. There was a tin of biscuits on the table and all the tea things. She thought, I am grieving, bereaved, I am a shadow of the woman I was. Now I have to look after Gustl Herzfeld?