The Wardrobe Mistress Read online

  He didn’t look affronted. ‘I go only as far as Liverpool, a long way short of Banff.’ He slid his gloves over her cold fingers, one hand then the other. He anticipated her objection. ‘I have other pairs and yours are probably in the pocket of some heartless traveller, irretrievably lost.’

  And so was she, she realised. Part of herself had split off, and was drifting towards this stranger. Her heart was a vacant lot and he’d taken possession. She could never have him. Not only was he wildly above her in status and rank, but by removing his gloves, he’d revealed a gold band on his wedding finger.

  ‘Good luck, sir,’ she said, her voice sticking in her throat. ‘I hope—’

  ‘Vanessa!’ Her mother called from across the road. ‘I don’t want to miss our bus, thank you very much.’

  This time, the man made no attempt to stop her but he said, ‘Your name’s Vanessa? Unusual. Pretty, too.’

  ‘Vanessa was my dad’s whim, though for some reason, he always called me “Toots”.’ She walked away.

  ‘What were you up to? Who was he?’

  The weather had deteriorated and needle-sharp sleet hit them slantwise because the bus stop had lost its roof. Vanessa sighed. ‘He’s a sea captain at an actor’s funeral. You work it out, I can’t.’

  ‘Are those his gloves? You’d better post them back to him. He might make out you pinched them.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Never let a man think he can call in a favour. You have a way of looking at men. You peer up through your lashes.’

  ‘Because they’re so much taller than me! I don’t like addressing their buttons.’ Please stop.

  ‘You rush in. That daft marriage should stand as a warning.’

  ‘A flighty bit of goods, am I? Don’t start on my marriage, Mum.’ Ruth had never once asked if she’d been happy with Leo. Ruth never asked anything that might open doors to intimacy. ‘I can speak to a respectable naval officer without being called “fast”.’

  ‘He’s almost certainly married,’ her mother said as the bus drew up, its windscreen wipers lashing noisily back and forth.

  ‘He is, and what does it matter? I’ll never see him again.’

  They found an empty compartment in the London train. As it huffed out of the station, Vanessa showed her mother the gold key. ‘That poor woman wanted me to have it. Have you ever seen it before?’

  ‘Not that I recall.’ Ruth turned it over, a frown digging between her brows. ‘It could be a theatre prop.’

  ‘Far too small. Nobody would see it beyond row three.’

  ‘Those two were theatrical types. Her coat came out of a theatre wardrobe and his smelled of lavender.’

  ‘What does lavender prove?’

  Ruth sniffed, as if to say, Everything. ‘That face.’ She shivered. ‘Awful. I’d wear a veil. Two veils.’

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘I won’t believe you stood in silence until I arrived, Mum. They must have said something, if only “Good morning”.’

  ‘The man came from London. I heard him saying that the mist was thick as onion broth this morning, and he walked smack into Covent Garden thinking it was Long Acre.’ Finding nothing of interest in the key, Ruth handed it back. ‘If this unlocked anything more valuable than a tea caddy, that woman would have emptied it by now.’

  ‘She’s Eva, not “that woman”. But I think you know her. You do know her!’ They were facing each other and Vanessa leaned forward, invading Ruth’s space. ‘Is she why he left us?’

  When Ruth turned her face against the question, Vanessa tried a different attack. ‘How did Dad die?’

  ‘His heart stopped.’

  ‘That’s how everybody dies, when you think about it. What caused it?’

  Ruth spoke as if the words were grit on her tongue. ‘He drank himself dead. Two bottles of whisky and he fell unconscious on the floor. Nobody knew for days. Clive never drank the hard stuff when he was with me. That’d be her doing.’

  At Waterloo, after the briskest of hugs, they separated. No time for a cuppa. Vanessa took the Northern Line tube for Euston. Sitting in a second class carriage, she ruminated on what she’d learned about her father’s death. Halfway through their silent journey, Ruth had finally cracked and given her the details. The real cause had been the cold weather. Clive, it seemed, had inhabited a rented room. ‘An ice-box by all accounts.’ His electricity meter had yielded the grand total of eight pence. ‘Nothing put in on the night of his death.’

  The building’s landlord had discovered the body on the Monday evening, three days after Vanessa had failed to meet her dad. The thought of it lacerated her.

  As did the fact that she’d been writing to him at ‘Room 7, Old Calford Building, Long Acre’ without ever questioning why he was reduced to that single room. I’m like Mum, she whispered under cover of the rumbling train. I don’t ask the big, grinning question.

  She slipped off the Commander’s fleece-lined gloves. They were quite worn, with a whitish scuff on the palm that might be salt and they smelled sweetly of leather. She dropped the gold key inside the thumb and wondered about Eva’s face. A terrible road accident, a fall, a bombing?

  Arriving at her stop, she told herself that Eva and even her father’s death were secondary to the real business of her life – being a Radio Telephone operator in the Watch Room at RAF Banff. It was her job to relay radio messages from Coastal Command’s strike wing, work that demanded intense concentration over long shifts. To take grief and confusion back with her would be unprofessional. Unpatriotic.

  In time, she’d unwrap her father’s last days. She would discover where he’d been rushing off to the night they nearly met. She might even push the little gold key into a lock somewhere and hear it click.

  At Euston, she received the dispiriting news that her train was delayed. She slid the key into her pocket and pulled the gloves back on. A four-hour wait was predicted, and she knew well enough that such predictions had elastic sides. She bought tea and a wad of bread and margarine at a WRVS van outside the station, and was so famished she drank the tea down in half-a-dozen gulps and queued up for a second mug. After that, she sat in the station hall and allowed herself to think about her sea captain.

  Not hers. Somebody else’s.

  At that exact same moment, Vanessa’s captain was leaving the theatre where Wilton Bovary’s wake had been celebrated. He flagged down a taxi and asked to be taken to a street near St James’s Park thinking he’d snatch some time at home with his wife, Fern, before catching his train back to Liverpool where his ship waited. Getting out on Ledbury Terrace, he paid the fare and asked the driver to come back in one hour precisely.

  Letting himself in with his own key, he was surprise to discover Fern in the hall, arranging winter leaves in a vase. She looked up. A little uneasily, he thought.

  ‘You’re early,’ she said. ‘Was it all right?’

  ‘As much as a funeral can be. A good-enough send off, though I wish my godfather had died at the close of a long life. Sixty-five seems a paltry innings for someone who approached everything with such zest. I didn’t stay long at the wake.’

  ‘Was it at the Hungaria?’

  He looked at her, puzzled. She’d asked the same question that morning and he’d told her, as he did again now, that the wake had been held on stage at Bovary’s own theatre, The Farren. ‘A throng of thesps, numerous agents, backers and critics. Elbow-to-elbow, drinks in hand, trying not to fall over the set.’

  ‘Actually on stage?’

  ‘Yes, though there was spillage into the orchestra pit and the front row stalls. You’ll remember that The Farren’s stage was built for intimacy.’

  ‘In 1780. Darling, I’m not that old.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’ He kissed her, inhaling the perfume she’d eked out, drop by drop, since their last Paris trip in the spring of ’39. ‘It’s set for tomorrow’s matinee and before you ask, the show goes on, albeit with som
e re-casting. My godfather’s sisters demanded it.’

  ‘The redoubtable Sylvia and Barbara. I lunched with them once. They chewed their pork chops to the bone.’

  ‘Good for them. I must say, The Importance of Being Earnest is a good play for a wake.’

  Fern looked blank, so he explained, ‘“Scene: Morning-room in Algernon’s flat in Half-Moon Street.”’ He evoked the setting with a sweep of the hand. ‘It includes a sofa, several chairs and lots of little tables. Somewhere for the older folk to sit down, and those who dived too deeply into Uncle Bo’s claret. What of you?’ His eye fell on a vase filled with russet stems. ‘How have you passed your day?’

  ‘I’ve just come back from a stroll in St James’s. I dusted off my Voigtländer and got some good shots.’ Fern patted the nose of the compact camera poking from her cardigan pocket. ‘The shadows inspired me.’

  ‘I cut through the park this morning and everything looked pretty grey. Was it wise to go out in this weather?’

  ‘Worried I might collapse from the cold, like your godfather? Incidentally, I wish you’d call him by his proper name. “Wilton Bovary” was a fitting name for an actor-manager. “Uncle Bo” sounds like a character from a nursery rhyme. You shouldn’t claim him as your uncle, either. People will gossip.’

  ‘Godfathers are honorary uncles. “Bo” was what my father called him from when they were schoolboys together. This morning you thought you were coming down with flu.’

  That had been Fern’s reason for missing the funeral. Alistair had wanted her to come. Though she hadn’t known Wilton Bovary as long or as closely as he had, her mother had been Bo’s very dear friend. ‘You were feverish, you said.’

  ‘So I was, but now I’m better.’

  Alistair unbuttoned his coat. He had time for a bath and he wondered if Fern had prepared anything to eat. No tell-tale smells suggested that a quick dinner for two was on the cards. Yellow cheese and day-old bread, then. He was hanging his coat on the hallstand when her abrupt, ‘Darling?’ made him turn.

  A stem of red dogwood quivered in her hand. His attention was hooked. He waited for her to continue.

  ‘Darling, if you were ever to be unfaithful – you know, a strange girl in a foreign port sort of thing – I just want you to know that I’d understand.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’d understand.’ She was all fluid curves in a day dress of soft Burgundy wool, the long cardigan belted around her waist. Then, oblivious to the fact that she’d casually violated something sacred, she added the dogwood to the vase and sighed, ‘I can’t wait until we have roses sent up from Stanshurst again. When I think of the flowers I had to play with— good lord, Alistair!’

  He’d stridden across to her and turned her to face him. In a voice that stripped the colour from her cheeks, he said, ‘If you’ve ever imagined me standing in line outside a port brothel, cast the thought out. When I’m away for weeks, missing you, it’s hellish. And yes, vows are tough but if they weren’t, they’d mean nothing. How about you?’

  She tried to wriggle away, but he kept hold. ‘If we can’t believe in loyalty, what the hell are we fighting for? What are we for? Have you any idea how many Navy wives have been left widowed? How many letters I’ve sent to mothers, wives and daughters, telling them their men won’t come home? Have you ever considered the girls in uniform, younger than you, who are risking everything?’

  He recalled the WAAF girl, whom he hoped was making good use of his gloves. Father buried, mother put on the train home, herself off to Scotland without breaking step. ‘Surely, we owe them a little sacrifice in return? Fidelity is the base line, Fern. Where it all starts from.’

  ‘Yes, yes, blanket agreement, Alistair.’ Pulling free, Fern stalked across the hall and faced him from a distance. ‘Stop glaring at me like a primitive head on show at the British Museum. I was simply saying—’

  ‘That you imagine I sleep with prostitutes.’

  ‘Oh, let’s forget it.’ She rubbed her shoulder. ‘You hurt me, though why should I be surprised? We all know you have no conscience.’

  ‘What do you mean, “we all know”? Who is “we”?’ His tone would have shaken most men. It undoubtedly shook Fern, but she’d gone too far to retract.

  She touched her upswept hair, bright as a polished sovereign against her pale skin. ‘Ask the crew of the Monarda.’

  Later, paying off the cabbie and passing under the Euston arch to get his train, he replayed the domestic scene and knew that a line had been crossed. That nonsense about infidelity was Fern being provocative and of course it disturbed him. But her final jibe was a kick below the belt. By referring to the HMS Monarda, Fern had passed judgement on his actions at sea that as a civilian she had no competence to make. And as wife, no right. ‘Everybody says.’ Who did she know in London who was fit to offer an opinion on something that had happened in the North Atlantic, in a force-seven gale with forty-foot troughs and a wolf pack of German submarines closing in? Gut instinct said ‘everybody’ was in fact ‘somebody’. But who?

  Striding through Euston’s great hall towards the platforms, his gaze cut through the milling crowds. He wanted no contact – until a pair of slim legs encased in hideous cotton lisle caught his eye. He’d seen those legs close-up today, as their owner squeezed out of a motorcycle sidecar. She was sitting on a bank of seats, looking half asleep. Still wearing his gloves.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Her chin shot up, and surprise made her eyes large. He’d noticed their colour at first meeting, light brown, like tide-washed amber.

  She stood. ‘My train’s delayed. Freight stuck on the line in Hertfordshire. Fate wants to make my time in London as rotten as possible.’

  ‘You believe in fate?’

  ‘Actually, I believe in . . . very little.’

  Her simple cynicism sliced through to his core. Meeting her in the cold outdoors earlier, he’d set her down as, ‘A nice girl, somewhat scattered.’ He now discovered the intelligence in her expression and a subtle beauty. Her face had the light strokes of a da Vinci – something her habit of looking away had hidden until now. Her mouth, undaubed by lipstick, was full and sensual, but turned down so unhappily he stepped out of character to offer comfort. ‘Things will get better, you know. In the end.’

  ‘I’m not sure they will. I’m drowning and the only ship that can rescue me is steaming away.’

  So soon after Fern’s accusation, her response struck like a blade. This girl must surely recognise a naval uniform when she saw one. At best, her drowning comment was grossly insensitive. He walked away.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  For two or three strides, he ignored her. Then, like an actor hearing booing from the stalls, he turned for a confrontation. She’d followed him, and looked devastated.

  ‘I don’t know what made me say that. I’m not myself. You have a ship somewhere—’

  ‘I do, the Quarrel. She’s at Pier Head.’

  ‘And you’ve seen drowning men.’

  ‘Too many.’ He nodded a farewell. ‘Good luck.’

  ‘And you, Sir. The best of British.’

  Vanessa arrived back at RAF Banff at six the following evening, having exceeded her leave by several hours. Her commanding officer was inclined to sympathy, however. Everyone knew what the trains were like.

  As the weeks passed, a veil of unreality thickened between Vanessa and those London visits, until she imagined her father was still alive, doing six evening shows and four matinees a week in one of the lesser theatres. One day, they might meet somewhere between Shaftsbury Avenue and Trafalgar Square.

  Another figure strayed in too. A figure who had no place in her imagination. A married man who might not survive the coming months, given that his profession was one of the most dangerous going. She didn’t send back his gloves but kept them in her locker, with the golden key and her dad’s letters. Life – and war – went on. Until . . .

  On the 8th of May, 1945, Germany surrende
red to the Allied forces. Victory unfurled throughout Europe. As Britain went wild with joy, the threads that linked Vanessa to her married captain – invisible to both – tightened. The same bands tied them to Clive ‘Johnny’ Quinnell, to a dissatisfied wife and to a dreadfully maimed woman. These threads were anchored to the stage of The Farren Theatre.

  Chapter 4

  Monday, May 28th, 1945

  The white ensign of HMS Quarrel made a chalk line against the dawn sky.

  Returning from her final voyage, she’d enjoyed swift passage and a stiff, onshore wind was pushing her faster than expected towards Liverpool Bay. As she passed between the Bar Lightship and Formby Point, the dusty shoreline hardened into the familiar sweep of their home port.

  ‘Looks like we’re a bit early, Pilot. Reduce engine speed,’ the captain instructed the navigator standing at the compass on the bridge. ‘Drop down to eight knots.’ The ship was entering the funnel-mouth of the River Mersey, cutting a creamy arrowhead. Seagulls wheeled out to greet them, celestially white against pink, crabmeat cloud. A fine morning for a homecoming. Would it bring what all returners crave – a welcome?

  The captain, Commander A W Redenhall, RN, flipped the question into the air like a philosophical coin. Will-she-won’t-she? He’d been sailing in and out of Liverpool on convoy duty since the opening month of war. Not once had his wife met him or spent his shore-leave with him here. Fern was always too busy with her welfare work.

  ‘Darling, there’s a war on in London too, you know.’

  With VE Day behind them, her one-sided rationale had run out. Alistair Redenhall was sailing towards a personal moment of truth. Two days ago, during the Quarrel’s refuelling at Londonderry, he’d sent a telegram:

  To Mrs Redenhall, 12 Ledbury Terrace SW1

  Home Monday. Please be at POL – Port of Liverpool – Take suite at the Leasowe.

  Confirm arrival by message at Admiralty Office, Gladstone Dock. New beginnings.