An Awfully Big Adventure - Beryl Bainbridge [27]
‘That Miss Allenby,’ she said. ‘Seeing you’re keeping her on, I hope you’ve mentioned the cut in salary.’
‘But of course. She was grateful for what she could get.’
‘And what about the new girl? How’s she shaping up?’
‘Very well indeed,’ Meredith said. ‘No complaints at all. Bunny says she’s quite an asset, even if she did have a disturbed schooling.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ asked Rose, and grimaced; she was wearing new shoes and they were giving her gyp.
‘She had a weak chest. She was kept at home a lot.’
‘Fiddlesticks,’ Rose said. ‘I know the family. She hasn’t had a day’s illness in her life.’
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘she’s become quite a favourite with the company.’
It was true. Dotty Blundell had grown especially fond of Stella. She was of the opinion there was more to the girl than might reasonably be expected. She had a boldness of manner, not to be confused with brashness, and an ability to express herself that was amusing, if at times disconcerting. She said as much to Bunny, who, after being furnished with certain examples of this refreshing trait, decided he ought to look into the matter.
He waylaid Stella in the paint-frame where she had been sent to boil rabbit glue on the Bunsen burner. He could hear her coughing half-way along the passage. He said, ‘You understand that in my capacity as stage manager it’s my job not only to train you in your chosen career but to guide you in other respects.’
‘I didn’t choose it,’ she said. ‘It was thrust upon me by Uncle Vernon.’
‘Be that as it may,’ he persisted, ‘it’s been brought to my notice that you’ve expressed somewhat vividly your dislike of a certain member of the Company.’
‘Have I?’ asked Stella. She looked puzzled.
‘Apparently you referred to Mr Fairchild in these terms,’ said Bunny, and dipping a brush in a tin of brown paint he scrawled the word ‘cunt’ on a piece of sugar paper tacked to the work top.
‘Is that how you spell it?’ she said.
‘You can’t use words like that, and certainly not in public. It’s extremely vulgar. This is a theatre not a barrack room.’
‘I was only repeating what George calls him,’ said Stella. ‘Hasn’t it got something to do with horse-racing?’
Bunny repeated the conversation to Meredith, who laughed.
‘Perhaps I ought to take her under my wing,’ he suggested. ‘Attend to her spiritual welfare.’
These days he was markedly buoyant. Hilary was telephoning him regularly, both at the theatre and the hotel. There was also a treasured, unprecedented letter, which he kept in his wallet and unfolded at least once a day, humbly asking his forgiveness.
‘You don’t want to overdo it,’ said Bunny nervously. ‘I’ve told her she must spend less time in the prop room.’
All the same Meredith began to pay some attention to the girl. He had already cast her as Ptolemy, the boy king, in Caesar and Cleopatra. It was an excellent little cameo, and as most of the dialogue was in the form of a rehearsed speech to the court of Alexandria it would hardly matter if, overcome by nerves, she forgot her lines. It was in the text that the eunuch Pothinus should prompt her. Suitably robed – the designer had already shown him drawings of an onion-shaped headpiece and a collar of gold – she would look more sphinx-like than most, certainly more exotic than Babs Osborne whose voice was pitched a little too high and whose features were a little too Frinton-on-Sea to suggest the perfect Cleopatra.
Stella seemed unimpressed at being given a role so early in the season. He overheard Geoffrey telling her she was lucky and her reply that luck didn’t come into it. ‘He wouldn’t have asked me if he didn’t think I could do it,’ she had retorted.
He took to keeping Stella at his side during rehearsals, ostensibly to jot down notes. Her spelling was deplorable and she had a habit of adding comments of her own. John Harbour is all right as Appolodorus, she wrote, but his eyelashes are a destraction, and, How old is Seaser