The Wardrobe Mistress_A heart-wrenching wartime love story Page 27

  The nun inclined her head. Her lined face was framed by a linen coif and veil, the white not quite white, the grey worn shiny. Her brows were faded but the eyes fixed on Vanessa with guarded concentration. ‘Miss St Clair passed away on the last day of August, this year, in an alms house run by my own order. It was a release.’

  Vanessa’s mind soared away to a frosted graveyard where a maimed woman acted a dumb-show beside a grave. A show of tearing out her heart, casting it into an open pit. At the time, Vanessa had assumed it was grief at the loss of Johnny. But what if Eva had been demonstrating the loss of her child. Or the removal of her child?

  Sucking the idea back into herself, Vanessa murmured, ‘I think I am Eva’s daughter. I was fostered . . . brought up by a woman who was no relation.’

  The nun’s sympathy evaporated at her words. ‘You’re suggesting Father Joseph’s sister bore a child out of wedlock? You will un-say it.’

  ‘She did.’ Vanessa thrust out the birth certificate but the nun stepped back, arms crossed.

  ‘I will not hear it.’

  ‘Then at least tell me where Eva’s buried, sister.’ Vanessa needed something, anything! ‘At Kensal Green? That’s where London’s Catholics are buried, I think.’

  In an act of concession, the nun took the birth certificate. Twice, she looked from the page to Vanessa, her eyes and mouth refuting what she saw written there. Finally, she handed the paper back, shaking her head. ‘Put this aside, child. Go and be a daughter to the good woman who brought you up.’

  ‘That “good” woman never even liked me. What is good, exactly? Tell me. I want to know.’

  ‘Some things it is better not to know.’ The grey nun said a firm ‘goodbye’ and retired to the shadows.

  Furious, frustrated, Vanessa set out immediately for Kensal Green. The journey took nearly two hours, but it was early still, the frost silver on the ground. Leaves crunched underfoot like sugar crystals as she quartered the Catholic cemetery. A mean wind worked away at her ears. Soon, she was stumbling from the cold, her eyes weakening so that she had to lean closer to the graves to read their names. Telling herself that she’d check just ten more rows, and then return to the theatre, her eye fell upon the name ‘St Clair.’

  ‘Father Joseph St Clair, beloved of his parishioners, resigned this life 23 March 1944.’

  This was Eva’s brother. Her own uncle? Beside it was a grave to the memory of an Elizabeth St Clair, but she’d died in 1900. There was an Edith and numerous Marys, but no Eva. Nor was there undisturbed ground to suggest a recent burial. Eva wasn’t here, so where was she?

  Making her way back to the railway station, Vanessa reached out mentally to Alistair. She hadn’t confided her belief that she was Eva’s daughter, for fear he’d despise her. After all, that birth certificate proved she was illegitimate. Perhaps she’d suggest they have lunch. No, too late. She’d been in the graveyard longer than she’d realised. All right, supper together at her flat. She had four rashers of bacon to tempt him with. He could bring Macduff.

  At that moment, Alistair was dealing with that day’s mail which he’d been too busy for until now. A pagoda of bills soon built up at his elbow, though with the Blandfords’ cheque now safely in the bank, these had less power to depress him than they had a week ago. He marked some for Miss Bovary’s attention, then turned to the legal-looking envelope he’d left to last.

  In restrained language, Mr Cloud of Cloud, Maybridge & Dunch, Solicitors, Finsbury Pavement EC2, informed him that his client, Mrs Redenhall, was petitioning for divorce on the grounds of Commander Redenhall’s affair with an un-named female. Photographic evidence of adultery was in existence. The letter went on to say that Mrs Redenhall wished to proceed with all due regard for discretion, trusting that Commander Redenhall would co-operate – ‘In which event no third party need be cited as co-respondent.’

  In street language – play ball or we’ll name Mrs Kingcourt.

  Alistair allowed himself ten minutes’ silent fury, then put a call through to an old Navy friend. Kip Fuller had been a lieutenant on a sister ship, a ‘hostilities-only’ man, meaning he’d been commissioned for the duration of war. Fuller was now back in his peacetime profession, a partner in a firm specialising in matrimonial law. Or as he’d described it to Alistair, ‘Hostilities still, but on dry land.’

  He listened to what Alistair had to say and agreed to represent him, adding, ‘Cloud and Maybridge are an expensive outfit. Your best bet is to agree to everything as quickly as possible. We’ll organise you a professional co-respondent.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘A lady of pliant principles who will act as your short-term sweetheart. She will be the “other woman” to keep the courts happy. You’ll pay her.’

  ‘Kip, but this is all so bloody unjust.’

  ‘Until our divorce laws change, somebody has to be the guilty party and don the adulterer’s hat. Nobody likes to ask such a thing of a lady.’

  ‘You don’t know me,’ Alistair growled. ‘I’m only agreeing to it because I need to protect an innocent party.’

  ‘In which case, keep the “innocent party” at arm’s length for now. Would you jot down a list of your assets so we can plan for the future financial support of Mrs Redenhall?’

  ‘Her next husband can take care of that.’

  Kip Fuller chuckled. ‘You can’t let her go empty-handed. It looks bad. Didn’t your godfather leave you a bundle? Somebody told me that Wilton Bovary made a fortune backing Broadway hits.’

  ‘So he did, but he didn’t leave the cash to me. Perhaps he meant to, and died before he could put it in writing.’

  Kip Fuller sympathised. ‘I’ll put all I’ve said in a letter and dig out the telephone numbers of some professional sweethearts. Remember what I said; keep the “innocent party” out of this, even if it means walking past her with your nose in the air.’

  Alistair took his friend’s advice when Vanessa knocked on his door, asking him to supper that evening. ‘Sorry, far too busy.’ She responded by looking utterly deflated.

  The next morning brought a letter by hand. Alistair rang the operator, and reeled out the first number on Kip’s list. It was a Dollis Hill number belonging to a woman named Primrose Duckworth. Mrs Duckworth answered on three rings, listened to Alistair’s clipped account of his situation, and said, yes, she’d be happy to help. And yes, she’d sort him out, ‘nice and daisy’ if he’d be good enough to arrange the necessaries. She gave him the name of a sea-front hotel, the spectacularly unimaginative Sea View in Hove, explaining that they ‘knew the routine and only charged an extra five guineas for gents in his predicament.’

  Putting the phone down, Alistair felt a strong call to see Primrose Duckworth in the flesh, in case she matched the image conjured by her name; he pictured unnaturally yellow hair and a flat-footed waddle. The thought of explaining such a companion should he meet anyone he knew . . . He rang her back, suggesting a meeting at Euston station, the great hall. ‘Will lunchtime suit you?’

  ‘Lord, you’re a speedy worker! Lunchtime it is.’

  Mrs Duckworth proved to be a plump redhead, ten years older and several shades brighter than Fern. Her suit of red bookmaker’s check was a size too small. Alistair’s instant, ungallant desire to run gave way to a grit-toothed determination to see the business through. He took Primrose for a drink in the badly beaten-up Euston Hotel, where, over pink gin and port-and-lemon, they arranged the next leg on his road to divorce.

  She said, ‘We’ll have to go to bed together, dear. I hope you don’t snore.’

  At home that evening, he dialled the Sea View, Hove, and booked a room for two for the coming weekend.

  That week felt like the longest of his life.

  It was pretty much the longest of Vanessa’s, too. She saw nothing of Alistair, and knew he was avoiding her. Doyle made things worse on Friday evening by telling her that Alistair had gone off by taxi somewhere, carrying an overnight bag. By Sunday, Vanessa felt so pent
up with rejection, she slunk into Cecil Court, stopping to tie her shoe-laces when she drew level with his flat.

  If eavesdroppers hear no good of themselves, lurkers see their own deepest fears. In the dark windows of Alistair’s flat, Vanessa saw a movie reel of him enjoying a private weekend with some well-connected, sophisticated woman of his acquaintance. Or even, perhaps, with Fern.

  Come Monday, Vanessa went directly to Great Portland Street, spending the morning among Penny’s seamstresses. She got back to the theatre after lunch and asked Doyle, ‘Is he back?’

  Doyle didn’t trouble to ask who. ‘Late last night. He picked the dog up from my digs. A relief to be honest. The old fellow pines for his master. He has this whine –’ Doyle imitated it and Vanessa smiled for the first time in many days. It cracked open the cut to her lip which had almost healed. ‘Was Alistair alone when he called for Macduff?’

  Doyle’s careful neutrality did not falter. ‘Only him and his suitcase.’ He scratched his damaged ear. ‘He’s up on the stage, if you want to ask him.’

  Vanessa had no intention of asking anything, but she couldn’t resist heading to the auditorium. There she found Alistair, Ronnie Gainsborough and the director in conversation behind the proscenium. The issue was the casting of Mr Cecil Graham, the minor role that Mr and Mrs Rolf wanted for their son. A newcomer, Jeffrey Mardell, had been given the part and Gainsborough had misgivings.

  ‘Cecil Graham is supposed to be a smiling viper. Mardell smiles as if a loose woman has just made an improper comment to him. Has he even lost his cherry yet? Why aren’t we using Edwin Bovary? One glance at that red-lined cloak, my stomach curdles.’

  ‘Well?’ Aubrey Hinshaw gave Alistair an impish glance. ‘Why aren’t we using Edwin, Commander?’

  ‘No military service and his father is the producer, which is bound to ruffle feathers. Anyway, he’s up for Iago in a touring Othello. According to his mother, he was “born to the Classics”.’

  Hinshaw laughed. ‘We’ll work with Mardell, then. Pity we can’t whisk the lad off to some of the Cairo nightspots I haunted before the war. He could be deprived of his cherry, fleeced and given a mild dose of a sexual disease all in one night. That would change his smile. Why don’t you take him out some time, Ronnie?’

  ‘Corrupting innocence is far more Carnford’s style. Perhaps you could oblige, Commander.’ Gainsborough picked a hair off Alistair’s jacket. Real or imaginary, he held it up to the light. ‘Auburn this time. Somewhere good for the weekend?’

  Vanessa stopped breathing.

  Alistair answered in exasperating style. ‘Somewhere bad. One can have a good weekend any time. Bad ones take dedication and effort.’

  Vanessa slipped away. Later that week, as she passed the half-open door of the green room, she overheard Lawrie Weston speaking. Weston was playing a florid-cheeked Lord Augustus Lorton. They were discussing the newcomer, Mardell.

  ‘. . . dried completely on his Act Three entrance, poor lad. Can’t say I’m surprised, the way Ronnie glowers, though one has to admit that if Mardell has “it”, then it’s jolly well hidden. Know who’d have done Cecil Graham to a T?’

  Pure intuition, but Vanessa knew what was coming.

  ‘Johnny Quinnell. More smiles per mile than any other man I knew – when he wanted something from you. Once he’d got it, the smile was packed away. A brass clock for a heart had Johnny. It ticked, and that’s about all.’

  ‘I never understood why dear Bo put himself out for the fellow.’ It was Noreen Ruskin’s mezzo voice taking up the thread. ‘You can measure a man by the number who turn up for his funeral. By all accounts, Quinnell pulled in a crowd of three.’

  ‘Four, darling. The wife, his daughter, Eva and Billy. Don’t forget, he was competing against darling Bo.’

  Vanessa heard the clink of a bottle against glass, and a woman’s sigh. ‘That was the strangest Sunday I ever spent, and the saddest. How was it they both passed away the same night?’ This voice belonged to Irene Eddrich. Half-Swedish, Irene spoke with a lilt that was stronger off-stage than on.

  ‘The cold, dear one, the cold,’ Lawrie Weston answered. ‘They say Bo came here on foot the night he died. Cold air can be fatal to ageing lungs. As for Quinnell, blame the demon drink. They say he got the keys to the green room bar the night he died.’

  ‘“They say’’,’ Miss Eddrich echoed disdainfully. ‘I was in the audience that night, and went backstage afterwards. I did not find Quinnell to be drunk. He was out of sorts, I will admit.’

  ‘There has to be a reason the theatre paid for his funeral,’ Lawrie Weston suggested.

  ‘Miss Bovary paid. Her own money.’ This was Noreen Ruskin.

  ‘Miss Bovary paid initially,’ Miss Eddrich corrected. ‘But she got the money back from an actors’ benevolent fund, so it was no charity.’

  Vanessa kept out of sight, just close enough to the door to hear whatever came next. She’d finally learned the name of Eva’s companion at the graveside. ‘Billy.’ It hurt, hearing her dad spoken of with casual contempt but she wasn’t going to storm in and demand an apology. Johnny had been at best ‘good in parts’, not universally liked. That was becoming ever more clear.

  ‘Poor Eva is who I feel most sorry for, losing both men that she loved. And she’d lost so much already.’ Of those in the room, Miss Eddrich had the highest claim to human kindness. ‘I visited her after Bo’s funeral, did you know? She hardly knew me.’

  ‘Miss Bovary didn’t stump up for her funeral, I’ll be bound,’ Miss Ruskin snorted.

  ‘No indeed. Commander Redenhall paid for Eva’s burial.’

  Patrick Carnford swung into the corridor, and Vanessa leapt away from the wall. She hopped, pretending she had a stone in her shoe. Patrick kissed his hand to her, saying, ‘We must have dinner some night. Name the evening, Mrs Kingcourt.’

  She wanted to track down Alistair. He’d known all along that Eva was dead, and had said nothing. But she couldn’t walk away from Carnford’s flirtatious smile without inciting suspicion. ‘You do everything backwards,’ she told him. ‘We’ve already had our first kiss, and now you want dinner. What comes next, a stroll in the park followed by a light handshake?’

  Carnford laughed. ‘Go lest I drown in your eyes. Your mother’s eyes.’

  ‘You – you’ve guessed who my mother is?’

  ‘Within a minute of sharing a stage with you.’

  ‘Then, Mr Carnford, there’s so much I need to ask you.’

  ‘Patrick?’ Noreen Ruskin came out of the green room and placed a possessive hand on Carnford’s shoulder, saying slyly in Vanessa’s direction, ‘Do we need to beware of hidden cameras?’

  Vanessa hurried away. Thanks to those candid pictures, many in the company had marked her down as a temptress, a danger to unwary men. Even Tanith had tutted, as if Vanessa’s lapse were a sorry thing from which she was armoured by the wisdom of years. Peter Switt always smirked unpleasantly when they passed in a corridor.

  Maybe she was following in Eva’s footsteps. An all-too-human Wardrobe Mistress whose heart was doomed to break.

  Alistair didn’t deny having known of Eva St Clair’s death for weeks. He also confirmed that he’d paid the funeral expenses.

  ‘The matron of the almshouse where she was living telephoned with the news. She was concerned there’d be none of Eva’s old friends and colleagues at the funeral, but I couldn’t help. I was running The Farren pretty much single-handed, and knew nobody.’

  ‘Miss Bovary went?’ Invited by Alistair to be seated, Vanessa remained standing.

  ‘No. I went to Brookwood alone.’

  ‘Brookwood?’ How she wished people would tell her the truth! She described the thankless trip to Kensal Green that had left her with throbbing chilblains and chapped ears. ‘Can you at least tell me who else was at Eva’s funeral?’

  ‘A couple of nuns and some nurses. Two men, that being myself and her brother.’

  ‘Father Joseph?’ No. That didn’t
add up.

  ‘Billy Chalker, the comic actor. Eva had two brothers.’

  Billy, the man in the bowler hat at Johnny’s grave? ‘Why didn’t you say in front of Father Mannion that Eva was dead?’

  ‘I had other things on my mind. Fern visiting you at the theatre, for one. And because I’d rather walk with the living than constantly look over my shoulder at the departed.’

  She produced her birth certificate, almost tearing it in her agitation. She insisted he look at it. ‘Now do you see why I want to know about Eva?’

  She expected Alistair to express shock, or even disgust. But he leaned back in his chair and there was the same tightness in his face that she’d last seen when he confronted Fern and Highstoke.

  He said, ‘When we’ve launched our show and we have more time, we’ll talk about this document. But for now, may we let Eva rest? May I lock this certificate away?’

  She snatched it up. ‘Pardon me, but I want to spend half-an-hour at my mother’s grave. If you won’t take me, fine. I’ll ask Patrick Carnford. He’s invited me out to dinner, so I’ll suggest a trip to Brookwood instead.’

  From being intent on some invisible horizon, Alistair now looked at her with hard contempt. ‘Carnford won’t waste an afternoon driving you to Brookwood, but I will, if you’re so determined. Let’s make a day of it.’ There was a twist in Alistair’s voice that unnerved her.

  In spite of it, she accepted his offer. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t thank me. Just give me credit for trying to protect you.’

  ‘I don’t need protecting.’

  ‘No? Leave me, Vanessa. I’ll let you know when I’ve got fuel for the Alfa.’

  On November 14th, the final rehearsal took place under Aubrey Hinshaw’s direction. Afterwards, at the farewell drinks party on stage, Hinshaw presented Alistair with ‘The Book’, a sixty-page document containing the script and directorial notes. From now on, the company was on its own.

  Wedged in among a crowd of actors and senior staff, Vanessa joined in the cheers. As she took a glass of sherry off a tray – a tray carried by James Harnett in full butler costume – she saw Alistair threading towards her. It would be their first conversation since he’d agreed to take her to Brookwood, and his expression made her certain he was regretting his offer.