An Awfully Big Adventure - Beryl Bainbridge [8]
She admitted it wasn’t exactly an hotel, more of a boarding-house really, in spite of the new bath Uncle Vernon had installed two years ago. The sign had flickered over the door when Lily bought the house, and as the hotel was already known by that name in the trade it would have been foolish to change it. Lily had painted the window-frames and door cream, but the travellers walked past, bemused at the alteration, and Uncle Vernon reverted to red. Lily thought it looked garish. Originally Lily and her sister Renée had intended to run the business together, only Renée soon put the kibosh on the intention by skedaddling off to London. She wasn’t a great loss to the enterprise. Nobody denied she had style, but who needed style in a back street in Liverpool? The travellers, faced with those pictures in the hall, those taffeta cushions squashed against the bed heads, began to drop away. Several regulars, including the soap man with one arm and the cork salesman with the glass eye, were seen lugging suitcases of samples into Ma Tang’s next door.
‘What sort of pictures?’ enquired Bunny.
‘Engravings,’ Stella said, ‘of damsels in distress with nothing on, tied to trees without any explanation. Besides, her voice got on their nerves. It was too ladylike. She came back once and it was a mistake. After that trouble with the night lights, when the neighbours reported her, her days were numbered.’
‘What did the neighbours report her for?’ asked Bunny. He wasn’t the only one intrigued by the conversation. The women at the next table were sitting bolt upright, heads cocked.
‘Things,’ Stella said. ‘Things I can’t divulge.’ She looked at Meredith and caught him yawning. ‘Later on, Uncle Vernon stepped into the breach. He’s the power behind the throne. He says I’ll do least harm if I’m allowed to go on the stage.’
Bunny professed to like the sound of Uncle Vernon. He said he was evidently a man of hidden depths and it was clear Stella took after him rather than her mother.
‘Oh, but you’re wrong,’ she protested. ‘It must be my mother, for Uncle Vernon’s nothing to me.’
Meredith was still yawning. There was a glint of gold metal in his back teeth as he took a ten-shilling note out of his wallet and waved it at the waitress.
Excusing herself, Stella went to the ladies’ room where she made a show of washing her hands. In the mirror she could see the reflection of the attendant, red curls trapped in a silvery snood, slumped dozing on an upright chair beside the toilet door. There was no more than five pence in the pink saucer on the vanity table. It was not enough to pay for a share in a pot of tea for three, not with a tip and two cakes, and how could she slide it into her pocket without being heard?
Which was better, Meredith taking her for a gold-digger, or being arrested for theft? She supposed she could faint. Mrs Ackerley had taught her how to make her muscles go limp, and to act a wardrobe. Meredith was hardly likely to demand a contribution to the bill if she was laid out on the floor. But then she might fall awkwardly, exposing her suspender tops like a streetwalker. I’m my own worst enemy, she thought. Uncle Vernon had offered her money but she had turned up her nose.
She managed to slip three pennies up her sleeve, heart thumping, before she lost her nerve and trailed out into the café to find the two men, coats on, waiting for her by the exit.
In the street Meredith said they would meet again when the season started. Bunny would be in charge of her. ‘But you’ve not seen me act,’ she said, startled; already she had reconciled herself to a career at Woolworth’s. He raised his eyebrows and said he rather thought he had. He told her the theatre secretary would be in touch in due course. She blushed when he shook her hand.
‘I look forward to meeting you again,’ said Bunny gallantly. He kissed her cheek and offered to hail a taxi.
‘I’ve some shopping to do,’ she said. ‘I’ll pick one up later. Uncle Vernon