An Awfully Big Adventure - Beryl Bainbridge [59]
During the second interval Geoffrey apologised, giving the excuse that one of the battens of the hollow trees had worked itself loose and that at the last moment Bunny had required him to fix it more securely into its brace. But then at the evening performance he again went missing.
This time Stella was there to heave O’Hara into the coat. He said, ‘Did you have a good Christmas?’, and not looking at him she thanked him for asking and replied that it had been quiet but nice.
She was being polite. Uncle Vernon, goaded by the presence of the traveller with the skin grafts, had ruined the festive meal with recollections of his march across France and an encounter in a partially demolished farmhouse outside Lille with a white-haired woman of thirty who as a small child had suffered atrocities in the First World War. German officers – second-line supply men – searching for food and told there was none had wrenched her from her mother’s arms and, dumping her in the washing boiler on the kitchen stove, threatened to cook and eat her.
On hearing the story Lily had retired to bed with a headache leaving Stella to do the washing-up. The traveller had dried the dishes. Tears ran down his cheeks, but that was because his eyes couldn’t blink. Uncle Vernon, wearing a paper crown jerked from a cracker, had nodded off in his armchair listening to a choral mass on the Third Programme.
Stella was in the prompt corner wielding her torch when O’Hara made his second exit. He loitered in the wings, although usually he sat in his dressing-room until the curtain rose on the Mermaid’s Lagoon. He noticed she was wearing a string of cheap pearls about her neck. On stage the First Twin had sighted the white bird and was declaiming, ‘See it comes, the Wendy,’ and Tootles, pointing at the gossamer light sailing across the painted trees, called out, ‘Tink is trying to hurt the Wendy.’ A child in the audience shouted a timid warning. Then Stella, responding to a signal from Bunny, swung her hand-bell.
‘Someone’s been splashing out at Woolworths,’ said O’Hara, tapping with his hook at the pearls. In the half-darkness his face with its rouged lips, its black cross stamped on the cheekbone, was ghastly.
‘Quiet please,’ hissed Bunny.
Frowning, O’Hara inched open the pass door and tiptoed into the prop-room. He was annoyed at being caught in the wrong.
George rolled him a cigarette. ‘Word in your ear,’ he said. ‘Someone should keep a weather eye on young Geoffrey.’
‘He’s let me down twice today,’ O’Hara said. ‘What’s up with him?’
‘No disrespect intended, Captain,’ said George. ‘But you’d best work it out for yourself.’
After the curtain call O’Hara asked Stella if she wanted a lift home on his motor-cycle. ‘If you like,’ she said. She kept him waiting and when she finally emerged from the stage door he had been waylaid by Freddie Reynalde. She walked past without looking at them.
‘What about a drink?’ suggested Freddie.
O’Hara said he couldn’t face Potter.
‘We don’t have to go to the Oyster Bar.’
‘Another time, old chap. I’m bushed.’
‘I can see that,’ Freddie said, and they both watched the girl trudging towards the corner.
O’Hara caught up with Stella at the bottom of the hill. She told him to go on ahead, that she didn’t want a ride.
‘Why not?’ he asked.
‘I just don’t,’ she said. ‘My uncle wouldn’t like it.’ He thought she meant she was going straight home and drove off with a sulky smile.
He was surprised when she rapped on the basement window. Entering, she circled the room, her expression hostile. He lit the gas-fire and made her kneel in front of it to warm herself. ‘I’m not stopping,’ she said, teeth chattering. ‘You ought to wrap up more,’ he advised. ‘Now that it’s winter. You’ve a terrible cough.’ She protested she’d rather freeze than wear the coat Lily had bought her. It was too big and it had a fur collar.