An Awfully Big Adventure - Beryl Bainbridge [60]
‘It sounds rather glamorous,’ he said.
‘That’s as maybe,’ she retorted. ‘It’s too much trouble. You have to paint your face if you wear a fur. It draws attention.’
He found himself involved in an argument about silver wrapping-paper only serving to accentuate the paltriness of a gift. It was best, she said, to encase cheap goods in brown paper. Shaken, he imagined she was feeling guilty at having given herself so easily. He heard himself saying it was surely the thought that counted, and was astonished at the banal words that hurtled from his mouth. She crouched on the lino, her face flushed from the fire, fingering that string of Christmas cracker beads.
He asked who had given her them, and she said they were a present from her mother. He apologised for having suggested they were bought at Woolworths. She looked at him without blinking and said they probably had been. That was why her mother hadn’t wrapped them up but had left them on her pillow twined around a single rose.
‘What a lovely thing to do,’ he remarked and, appalled at his patronising tone, told her that her ears should have been burning on Christmas Day. Several of the company had dined at the Adelphi Hotel and during the meal Dotty Blundell had sung her praises. Dotty considered her performance as Ptolemy exceptional for someone so inexperienced. ‘I’m devastated I missed it,’ he said. ‘Did you enjoy doing it?’
‘Was Mr Potter with you?’ she asked.
‘He and Bunny went to an aunt in Hoylake. You should have played Cleopatra, you know. You’re the right age. By all accounts Babs was miscast.’
‘Has Bunny got an auntie in Hoylake?’
‘Bunny’s from the South,’ he said. ‘Potter’s the local boy.’
She stared at him in disbelief, as though suspecting him of flattery. ‘You could have played it,’ he insisted. ‘Dotty isn’t the only one who thinks you’re talented. But you have to look after yourself a bit more, take a little more trouble with your appearance.’
‘Mr Potter’s never from Liverpool.’
‘Of course he is,’ he said. ‘His mother attended the same elementary school as Rose.’
Still she stared at him, hugging her knees. ‘Acting,’ he continued, ‘is an extremely physical profession. It’s not enough to know how to speak the lines. There’s breathing and stamina and control of the body. One has to stand properly, take care of one’s eyes, one’s skin. Even a painting by Rubens can be enhanced by the correct frame.’
‘Did Dotty tell you about my boil?’ she said.
Exasperated, he took her into his arms to shut her up. She was so near to him that he had to close his eyes.
Afterwards she was more friendly. He put a record on the gramophone and she sat on his lap, wrapped in a blanket, and lolled affectionately against his shoulder. She said she thought she was beginning to get the hang of it. It was no different from learning the piano or the ukulele; it just needed practice.
He rocked her in time to the music, tugging sleepily at the pearls about her throat. As if reciting endearments, she whispered into his ear, ‘You don’t want to take too much notice of anything I tell you. Sometimes I say whatever comes into my head. It’s why Uncle Vernon wanted me to go on the stage.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he asked, not really bothered.
‘I play-act,’ she said. ‘I always have. I mourn people in my head. I go to funerals and chuck earth. Sometimes I have to choose who I’m going to bury. I like to rehearse the bad things so that I’ll know how to behave when they really happen.’
‘Silly goose,’ he murmured fondly, scarcely listening.
‘It’s on account of my background,’ she said, and shivered.
He offered to buy her a coat. She could choose it for herself – money was no object. She jumped from his lap and struggled into her clothes. In her haste to be gone she stuffed Dotty Blundell’s brassière into the pocket of her overalls.
‘For God’s sake,’ he cried. ‘What did I say?’
She wouldn’t speak to him and was out of the door in an instant. He thought of following her and then changed his mind; he was too old for that sort of gesture.
Rattled, he fell back onto the truckle-bed