An Awfully Big Adventure - Beryl Bainbridge [45]
Meredith was drinking alone in the Oyster Bar, thinking of Hilary, when a small man with sideburns and an anxious expression approached him. ‘Sorry to intrude,’ the man said, ‘but I’m impelled to speak. My name is Bradshaw. Vernon Bradshaw.’
It meant nothing to Meredith. Still, he shook hands with the stranger as though they were old aquaintances. He was glad of the distraction, having earlier received a wire from Hilary who, at the last minute and in spite of cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die promises, found it impossible, after all, to come down from London for the first night of Peter Pan. Something had cropped up, something wildly important.
‘I recognised you from your photograph in front of the theatre,’ the man said. ‘I don’t mind admitting I’ve been wanting to meet you for some time.’
‘Excellent,’ cried Meredith. ‘What will you have?’
‘It’s civil of you. A shandy would be acceptable.’
‘Come now,’ Meredith protested, and ordered a whisky.
‘I enjoyed the play. So did Lily . . .’
‘I’m so glad,’ said Meredith. He had a picture in his head of Hilary floundering in quicksand while he stood by, watching.
‘We thought our Stella acquitted herself very well. But then that’s natural, isn’t it?’
‘Good Heavens,’ said Meredith, ‘you must be Uncle Vernon.’
‘Thing is,’ Vernon said, ‘she’s very young, very impressionable. I’d be failing in my duty if I didn’t make it my business to know who she’s consorting with.’
‘Quite,’ said Meredith.
‘I don’t mind admitting that sometimes she’s a little hard to understand. She’s got her head screwed on, I can’t deny that, but she’s complicated . . . in herself. There’s reasons for it, of course . . . there always are . . . but she could take the wrong step . . . out of cussedness.’
Meredith looked thoughtfully down at his glass.
‘I suppose you see her differently,’ said Vernon hopefully.
‘No,’ Meredith said. ‘I’m not sure that I do.’
‘Lately she seems a little low in spirits.’
‘Does she?’ said Meredith. He looked surprised.
‘It’s nothing you could put your finger on . . . nothing definite . . . little things . . . the way she looks at the photographs on the mantelpiece. She’s turned one or two of them round, you know; to face the wall. And she gets up in the night and sits by the telephone in the hall in the dark. Well, it’s not entirely dark . . . there’s a lamp outside that shines through the fanlight. Mind you, she’s done this sort of thing before. She was always one for secrets . . . we never got to meet any of her school-friends. I had to make enquiries behind her back, so to speak. I think you’ll agree I was within my rights . . .’
‘You were indeed,’ Meredith assured him.
‘Lily thought you might be able to enlighten us . . . as to why she’s feeling so glum . . . she might have mentioned something . . . you being the one she spends most time with.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t be of much help,’ Meredith said. ‘There was that little upset with one of the actresses, but I don’t believe they were particularly close. I suppose finding her like that could have been disturbing, but then again Stella isn’t easily disturbed, is she?’
‘Finding her like what?’ asked Vernon, but at that moment a young man rushed in from the street. He was wearing some sort of outlandish costume and his lips were rouged.
‘Come quick,’ he cried, and tugging at Meredith’s arm he toppled him from his stool and ran him out of the door.
They cancelled the rest of the performance. There was no other alternative. Desmond Fairchild flatly refused to go on in St Ives’s place, with or without the book. He said he would be a laughing-stock; he hadn’t the legs for it.
The girl who worked the front of house had already gone home and Rose had to take the money out of the safe and open up the box office to give the patrons their money back.
Nothing as terrible had ever happened in all her years in the theatre. Neither miscarriages nor broken hearts, feuds or fainting fits, had ever managed to extinguish the footlights. Not even the inebriated actor