The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [50]
Lotta brought herself back from wherever her mind was, and smiled. ‘Two, madame.’
‘Do they ever conduct hole-and-corner affairs with unspeakable men whom they won’t bring home to meet their parents?’
‘They are only eight and ten years old.’
‘I see.’ Helen lost interest in Lotta’s family. ‘Where are you going tonight, Jinny?’
‘I don’t know. I might meet Joe.’
‘Well, tell him from me that this is his swan song.’ She flopped over on to her back as Lotta finished the massage, and lay comfortably on her pillows, softening towards Virginia. ‘I’m sorry, dear heart,’ she said. ‘It was nice for you to have someone to amuse you while I was away, but you’re starting a new life now. There will be plenty of young men in America, and one of them, you’ll see, will turn out to be a husband. There will be men on the boat, too, there always are. You won’t give this Joe creature another thought.’
*
Virginia went down to the theatre club in South Kensington to find Joe. It was an odd little place, a post-war phenomenon born of the price of West End theatre seats, with pretensions to culture that belied the fact that the back room was often used for poker games, and had for a time housed a roulette wheel, until there was a scare about a police raid.
There had been no raid, but the roulette wheel did not come back. William and Henry, who owned the club, were cautious, and they were doing well enough with the tiny, pretentious theatre, and the bar, and the little restaurant where everything was fried in oil and garlic to give the illusion of a continental cuisine. If those who used the club for convenience rather than culture wanted a poker game in the back room, or if Joe wanted to negotiate bets there, that was their own affair.
William and Henry were usually called William and Mary. Mary did not mind. He was an elderly homosexual, who had corrupted a few boys in his time, but was comparatively harmless now. His fangs were drawn, he declared sadly, and was content with looking perverted enough to provide a thrill for those who came to the club half fearfully, like tourists visiting the innocent show-places of Montmartre.
It is true that some of the plays that were performed in the theatre were noticeably salacious, but only because that was the only means the authors knew to achieve dramatic effect. The plays were usually ‘advanced’, which is to say that they were too advanced for any West End manager with an eye on his box-office. How much the audience enjoyed them is hard to say. The more abstruse the play the louder they applauded it, assuming that if they could not understand it, it must be very intellectual indeed, and why did they belong to the club if not to prove that they were intellectuals?
The theatre held about fifty people, on folding chairs that often made more noise than the actors. The performance was sometimes on the level of village hall drama, and sometimes surprisingly talented. It was never certain who was going to produce or act, because no salary was paid for the privilege. It was up to William and Mary to persuade any unemployed talent they could find that a spell at the club was just the experience they needed.
Mary, who had been vaguely on the stage a long time before, performed occasionally, when there was a Restoration play, which allowed him to wear a wig and display the calves of his legs. When he was not acting, he played the piano in a corner of the combined restaurant and bar, the pouches under his eyes shaking gently to the simple rhythm of his grubby little songs.
The customers at the painted tables would stamp their feet and call for their favourites, to show their guests that they were initiates. ‘Give us Banana Lil!’ they would shout. ‘Come on, Mary, good old Mary, do the one about the lamp-lighter.’
‘Shocking character,’ they would tell their guests nonchalantly. ‘Queer as a three-pound note, but he’s a lot of fun.’
When the show in the theatre was over, many of the audience would come through to the restaurant, eager for beer and inadequately-fried sausages, to mingle rather condescendingly