An Awfully Big Adventure - Beryl Bainbridge [26]
‘I expect she’s pretty though,’ probed Stella. ‘I expect she’s elegant.’
Babs Osborne stopped crying. Dotty looked thoughtfully down at the tablecloth. Stella supposed they were taken aback at her knowing details of Meredith’s private life.
‘Mr Potter told me to send a telegram. It was of a personal nature.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Babs.
‘I don’t mean to pry,’ floundered Stella. ‘It’s just that Mr Potter is such an interesting man . . . I mean, he isn’t run of the mill, is he? . . . and I thought any lady friend of his was bound to be unusual.’
‘How very true,’ murmured Dotty. Suddenly she caught sight of St Ives seated with Dawn Allenby in a corner of the restaurant. She waved to him extravagantly, blowing kisses as though she was on board an ocean liner that was carrying her away from him for ever. ‘Poor Dicky,’ she sighed. ‘What a cross he has to bear.’
‘Some people like being burdened,’ said Stella. ‘It gives them an interest.’
‘And what does Mr Fairchild like, do you suppose?’ asked Dotty. ‘What is your estimation of him?’
‘He’s a cunt,’ said Stella.
She was crossing the square an hour before the box office opened, sent by George to buy a bottle of milk from Brown’s Café, when she saw Dawn Allenby buying a bunch of flowers from the stall near the telephone box. She waved, but Dawn didn’t see her, being too engrossed in stuffing the flowers into a large carrier bag.
Rose Lipman went round the dressing-rooms before the half-hour call to wish everyone good luck. ‘I expect you to do your best,’ she said. ‘I ask nothing less.’ She was followed by Meredith who wore his monocle threaded on a silver chain. When he passed Stella in the corridor she could smell scented soap.
A telegram from Stanislaus arrived shortly before curtain up; Babs was over the moon. Prue told George that Dawn Allenby was in high spirits because an admirer had sent her flowers. There was no card but Dawn said she had a fair idea who they were from.
The Lord Mayor was in the audience and the Chancellor of the University. The first three rows of the stalls were filled with people in evening dress. There were six curtain calls and Rose Lipman came on stage to be presented with a bouquet. George said she only did that on the first and last nights of the season, unless there was a particularly successful production, like the time O’Hara had brought the house down in Richard II.
Meredith made a speech about the civic pride the city took in its repertory company, and the importance of the drama. He said the gilded cherubs supporting the circle boxes weren’t simply decorative; they were baroque symbols reinforcing the lush imagination of the theatre. But the drama on its own wasn’t enough, or great performances, or symbols. They, the audience, were what mattered, for it should never be forgotten that it was their patronage and their applause which truly kept the theatre alive.
Afterwards Stella waited in the passage until she heard Meredith coming downstairs. She would have picked out his padding footsteps among an army of marching boots.
He said, ‘Well done’, as he went out into the street. He was joining the rest of the cast in the Oyster Bar. Stella didn’t go because she was under age, and besides no one had thought to ask her.
She rang Mother instead, from the telephone box in the square. ‘You’d like the play,’ she told her. ‘It’s about nobody ever going away but always being just round the corner, waiting to be caught up with. At the very end, when the curtain comes down, they dance to that tune “My Foolish Heart”.’ And she sang a few bars into the mouthpiece, swaying a little, watching the lights go off in the theatre.
Mother said what she always said.
6
Two weeks into the new season Rose Lipman, sitting in her office on the first floor, heard a cry pitched like the squeal of a snared rabbit coming from No. 1 dressing-room. It was three minutes to Overtures and Beginners. She was in the middle of writing a report for the monthly meeting of the board of governors