An Awfully Big Adventure - Beryl Bainbridge [17]
He identified several actors caught by the camera in poses of dramatic intensity and had judged from the frown between her heavy brows and the unsuitability of her responses that she would have been more enlightened had she worn spectacles.
‘I was in a season of Restoration comedy at Preston,’ she said, peering at a study of P.L. O’Hara with treacle ringlets playing Captain Hook in Peter Pan.
Bunny agreed with Meredith that there was nothing wrong with Dawn Allenby apart from her love of beauty, an affliction she was ill-equipped to fight. He put it in a nutshell when he said she was the sort of girl who, if there had been a meadow handy, would have been out there in a flash picking cowslips.
Meredith went up to the rehearsal room in a less tetchy state of mind. His brush with John Harbour had soothed him; it was always satisfying to the senses, however diminishing to the soul, to wield power. He even managed to compliment Dawn Allenby on the silk head-scarf, printed all over with the heads of Scottie dogs, which she wore twisted into a turban about her dark hair.
‘It is rather a find,’ she agreed. ‘But then I love beautiful things, don’t you?’ Beneath her jolly headgear her tired eyes momentarily sparkled.
Before rehearsal began Desmond Fairchild ordered the new girl, Stella, to fetch him a packet of cigarettes from the porter’s desk.
‘Just a moment,’ called out Meredith, and pointedly asked Bunny if it was all right by him.
Bunny mumbled it was.
‘It’s always as well to check,’ said Meredith.
They rehearsed Act One from the top. When Bunny clicked his fingers, signifying the rise of the curtain, Geoffrey, the student, was supposed to imitate the sound of a gun being fired. Given his military background, such a task should have been in the nature of coals to Newcastle, but in the event he was scrutinising his reflection in the mirror above the fireplace. Bunny banged on a table instead and the new girl gave a convincing scream.
Grace Bird, who had the smallest part in the play, that of Maud Mockridge the lady novelist, had still not memorised her lines and read from the script. Meredith wasn’t bothered. Grace had appeared in supporting roles in West End productions for the last twenty years and he knew she would be word-perfect when she felt it necessary. He had only managed to persuade her to join the company because her husband had recently left her for an older woman and she needed to get away from London. Everyone liked Grace. She was in pain, but she was taking it out on a complicated Fair Isle jumper that she was knitting for some nephew in Canada.
The scene towards the close of Act One, in which Dotty Blundell as the sophisticated Frieda tells her husband Robert, played by St Ives, that Olwyn is in love with him, went particularly well:
You wanted to know the truth, Robert, and here it is, some of it. Olwyn’s been in love with you for ages. I don’t know exactly how long, but I’ve been aware of it for the last eighteen months. Wives are always aware of these things, you know. And not only that, I’ll tell you what I’ve longed to tell you for some time, that I think you’re a fool for not having responded to it, for not having done something about it before now. If somebody loves you like that, for God’s sake, make the most of it before it’s too late.
Although Dotty had all the words, Dawn Allenby’s face spoke volumes; until love had struck she had been merely adequate in the role of Olwyn.
It was during the tea break that Meredith began to feel agitated again. Babs Osborne was dissatisfied with her digs. She was lodged in Faulkner Square with Florence O’Connor whose mother, Bessie Murphy, had been a famous theatrical landlady; supper on the table at eleven o’clock, a fire lit in the bedroom, a jug of hot water outside the door at eight-thirty sharp, Sundays excluded on account of Mass.
‘The Cock of the North invited her to his wedding,’ said Grace. ‘And there was a rumour that John Galsworthy once left her five guineas under the spine of his breakfast kipper.’
Florence wasn’t a patch on