An Awfully Big Adventure - Beryl Bainbridge [32]
A small pale woman with a pink bow in her hair sat in Grace Bird’s dressing-room for most of the evening. George told Geoffrey she had been engaged to play Peter Pan in the next production. Babs Osborne was too tall for the part, and besides the woman had played the part before, the time P.L. O’Hara had appeared as Captain Hook. Out front, yawning in the stalls, sat the priests.
On the first night Rose Lipman came backstage as usual to wish the cast good luck. Bunny complained of a fearful draught coming from the front of the house. ‘There’s nowt wrong,’ she said. ‘It’s just the wind from the gents.’
Uncle Vernon and Lily were in the audience. They thought Stella was wonderful, though Lily gasped audibly when, in the middle of her speech, she had to be helped out by a man in a white toga. ‘Don’t act soft,’ whispered Vernon. ‘She’s meant to hesitate.’
During the interval they bumped into Mrs Ackerley in the foyer. She was with a man in plus-fours who, she claimed, was her husband. She pronounced both Stella and the production excellent. ‘I didn’t recognise her at first,’ Lily told her. ‘She looked very haughty, didn’t she?’
Mrs Ackerley introduced Vernon and Lily to no less a personage than Freddie Reynalde. He wasn’t on the piano in this intermission because in the next act they were using the orchestra pit as part of the scenery. Mr Reynalde, on realising who they were, said that Stella was an interesting child.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Lily asked Vernon, when they were queuing to buy a round of drinks. She would have preferred Stella to have been labelled as ‘nice’ or ‘well-mannered’; ‘interesting’ was a shade ambiguous. ‘Get back and be social,’ hissed Vernon.
Afterwards they waited outside the stage door to take Stella home. Other people went inside, including the Ackerleys, but Vernon knew Stella would hide in a cupboard or show them up if they were bold enough to enter. Once, the doorkeeper popped his head out and asked if they wanted to hand in autograph books. Lily said, ‘No, we can get Miss Bradshaw’s signature any time we want it’, and Vernon shouted that they had a perfect right to loiter on a public pavement.
The leading man came out arm in arm with a girl with corkscrew curls, followed by a chap in a duffle coat, who wore a monocle and flashed a sardonic smile as though he was a member of the SS.
Stella kept them waiting a long time, and when she did appear she sprinted off down the street ahead of them. They caught up with her in Cases Street, crouching on her haunches outside the tobacconist’s.
‘For God’s sake,’ cried Lily, ‘stop making an exhibition of us.’ Stella compromised by walking behind them. Every time Vernon looked back she was striding with her chin tilted theatrically, her eyes fixed on the smoky heavens. ‘I can’t take much more of this,’ he confided to Lily, and she told him to shush. ‘It’s not as if she’s ever been any different,’ she said.
Though it was late when they reached home, he felt compelled to ring Harcourt.
‘You must be pleased,’ Harcourt said, ‘her playing Cleopatra’s brother.’
‘Husband,’ corrected Vernon. ‘Even if he is ten years old.’
‘I think you’ll find he’s also her brother.’
‘I’m not all that familiar with the play myself,’ Vernon admitted. ‘Naturally it’s set in foreign parts. You will go and see it, I trust?’
‘Wouldn’t miss it for worlds,’ Harcourt enthused.
‘She’s lost weight,’ said Vernon. A sparrow eats more. Leastways when she’s home. Consequently she’s got the beginnings of a nasty boil on her arm.’
‘Oh dear,’ Harcourt said. ‘That should be nipped in the bud.’
‘It’s in hand, rest assured,’ said Vernon. He cleared his throat. ‘There’s a picture appeared in her room, the size of a postcard, of a fellow with a crown of thorns. You know the sort of thing.’
‘Jesus, you mean?’ said Harcourt.
‘He’s holding a lantern.’
‘That’ll be him,’ Harcourt said.
‘One of her lines . . . as the king . . . goes on about the Gods not suffering the unpiety of his sister to go unpunished. They’re heathen gods, you understand.’ He cleared his throat again.
‘It’s