An Awfully Big Adventure - Beryl Bainbridge [25]
Privately he took St Ives aside and suggested he kept a friendly watch on Dawn Allenby. ‘Take her out for an hour or so,’ he urged. ‘On her own.’
‘Surely Dotty can accompany us,’ said St Ives.
‘Better not,’ advised Meredith. ‘You know what women are like.’ He found himself nudging St Ives in the ribs, man to man.
Prue told Stella to collect Dotty’s black frock from the dressing-room; she felt the hem on the right-hand side wasn’t hanging as it should.
‘She’s a perfectionist,’ cried Dotty. ‘What a treasure,’ and asked Stella to afternoon tea at George Henry Lee’s across the road.
‘Like this,’ Stella said, looking down at her overall, and Dotty said clothes didn’t matter, it was the inner person that counted. In spite of this, it was half an hour before she came downstairs dressed up to the nines in a pin-striped trouser-suit, her hair caught up in a turban of white silk.
Babs Osborne, huddled on the telephone in the doorkeeper’s cubicle, was attempting, yet again, to get through to Stanislaus. ‘Mr Winek has to be there,’ she cried, thumping the wall with her fist and dislodging a drawing-pin, sending a call sheet and a sheaf of addresses spiralling about the corridor. ‘He specifically told me to call.’
‘Go on ahead, dear,’ said Dotty. ‘Madame is having one of her turns. I shall have to see to her.’
Stella crossed the street and loitered outside the store window displaying haughty mannequins flaunting swagger coats.
In George Henry Lee’s restaurant a middle-aged lady wearing purple and accompanied by a string quartet sang ‘Tea for Two’, circling her hands in the air as though pushing away cobwebs. When it came to the line ‘. . . we won’t have it known that we own a telephone’, tears coursed down Babs Osborne’s cheeks.
‘Obsession is a terrible thing,’ said Dotty. ‘It devours one’s life. I still haven’t forgotten the misery I went through with O’Hara. I was a fool to myself; everyone warned me he was a philanderer.’
‘Stanislaus isn’t like that,’ Babs protested.
‘Of course he isn’t,’ soothed Dotty. She propped her elbow on the table and resting her chin on her hand gave her full attention to Stella. ‘I wanted to believe he was a tragic figure,’ she said. ‘More sinned against than sinning, if you follow me. That way it made his rejection of me easier to bear. You do see that, don’t you? He’d had a serious liaison before the war with a young girl whom he’d got pregnant. He was only a boy, hardly out of drama school and scared stiff and, by the time he’d pulled himself together and gone back to do the right thing by her, the girl had disappeared. She’d given a false name so he couldn’t trace her. I thought I could help him to forget. Dear God, how wrong can one be!’ Her chin slumped in the palm of her hand.
‘I don’t feel sorry for that girl,’ said Stella. ‘She shouldn’t have given herself.’
‘Stanislaus has a serious liaison with me,’ cried Babs Osborne indignantly. Dotty told her to hush. ‘You think you’ve got troubles,’ she said. ‘Think of poor Grace.’
‘What did happen to Miss Bird’s husband?’ asked Stella. She didn’t want any gaps in the conversation. Babs Osborne was now weeping quite loudly and her nose was running. A string of mucus hung from her left nostril and clung to the curve of her lipsticked mouth; the waitresses kept looking across at the table.
‘They made a pact,’ Dotty said. ‘Foolish of her perhaps, but one does these things in the grip of passion. He agreed to marry her on the understanding that he could bow out if and when something better turned up. And of course it did, albeit twelve years later – a woman older than Grace with a private income.’
‘Still,’ said Stella, ‘she had a good innings.’
‘Stanislaus loves me for myself alone,’ Babs whined. ‘He disapproves of inherited wealth.’
Stella thought of Meredith. ‘Has Mr Potter’s friend got money?’ she asked.
‘Hilary?’ said