After the Cabaret
Authors: Hilary Bailey
Cabaret
Hilary Bailey
Chapter 1
A grey, damp November day in London.
Gregory Addams Phillips, BA UCLA, Rhodes Scholar, Cambridge University, now assistant professor (untenured) of modern English literature at Fraser Cutts, a small but prestigious university in Virginia, walked up the cracked steps of 11, Cornwall Street and approached, nervously, the peeling front door of the Victorian terraced building. He felt a twinge in his left, quarterback's knee. The British climate, he thought. Didn't the Brits invent housemaid's knee?
He stared at the left-hand side of the entrance, bewildered by an array of doorbells, of different styles and dates, some looking out of use, some unlabelled, none offering the name he was looking for. Then he rang one marked with a printed business card, much dirtied by London smut. He waited. He had a six-month working break from Fraser Cutts and a contract with a major publisher. He had flown the Atlantic to get here, not knowing what he would find,
what there was to find, whether he would be able to find it. This moment was the apotheosis of a year's work and arrangements; the ensuing moments could be the making or breaking of his career. And now as he stood on the stained concrete landing before a front door, he was too nervous to care what might happen next. He was tempted to duck down and look through the letter-box, but that would be an undignified attitude in which to be found when â if â the door was opened.
What happened next was that he heard feet coming heavily downstairs, not a young man's tread, then sounds in the hall of what his two years in Britain had taught him was an ironical exchange: âOh,
thank you
â thank you so
very much.
' The voice, a man's, artificial in tone, came closer to the door, âThank you, Mrs Bulstrode, that will be all.' It was a high, slightly unsteady voice with traces of a German accent.
Greg Phillips came to life. All his repressed anxieties leaped up like warriors from earth in which dragon's teeth had been sown. My God, he thought, it's Bruno Lowenthal. Bruno Lowenthal: the man no one had heard of, no one had thought to find, for fifty years. But I did. And in about one second he's going to open that door, and I'm going to talk to him â¦
Coming downstairs, Bruno thought, Yes, Mr Phillips, I suppose it is you, Mr Phillips. This is me, Bruno Lowenthal. And I'm going to tell you what I want you to know and no more. Then it will be goodbye.
The first time I set eyes on Sally Bowles it was June 1940, at Pontifex Street. I'd come in, I remember, with a string bag containing some peas and a rabbit. I'd been gone hours. I got caught in a raid. And there she was, standing in the middle of the room in a pink Chanel suit, filthy, oil stains on the skirt and an even more unpleasant smear on the jacket, her black hair all messy, as if she'd spent the night in an open boat â and, of course, she had. I noticed that the suit, though dirty, was new and that she'd hitched up the skirt, had her foot on the sofa, and was rolling on one of a brand-new pair of silk stockings.
She turned, fastening a suspender. She grinned at me and said, in her slightly husky voice, âBruno â darling â I bet you didn't expect to see me here, turning up like a bad penny.'
After the scuffle in the hall which involved, as Greg so dearly hoped, old Bruno Lowenthal, he was still waiting on the steps. Below him in the basement he noticed window-boxes with flowering geraniums on the sills. A fig tree was growing down there in a concrete tub, a bush he didn't recognise in another. He knew the strange way they lived over here, nothing purpose-built, houses converted into apartments then back into houses, warehouses redesigned as apartment buildings, churches, chapels, railway stations and post offices as homes, studios, offices. The dearest wish of all Britons was to live in a two-hundred-year-old hop mill called the Old Oast House.
Staring at the closed front door, Greg was surprised to find these thoughts drifting through his mind. He was confused, must be. Yesterday he had handed the keys of his office and apartment to the woman who would be taking over from him for the remainder of the semester at Fraser Cutts. Then he had driven his files, a lamp, a rug and some
suitcases to his parents' house in Oakridge, California, for storage. He'd caught the plane and travelled eleven hours to London, back to a country he had not visited for nearly seven years and had left with very confused feelings. He'd taken the underground to Bayswater and booked into the small hotel he remembered from vacations all those years ago.
He had jet-lag â and more. Probably he should not have phoned Bruno Lowenthal, he thought, on the evening he arrived, at two in the morning by his body clock, and asked to come round at eleven next morning. Now he was going into a crucial â
the
crucial â interview. If he blew it, everything, or nearly everything, would be lost.
He wondered if it would be better if Lowenthal, if it
was
him in there, didn't open the door at all. He could come back and try again when he was better adjusted to the time. Had he been standing there hours or minutes? His jet-lag wouldn't tell him. Should he ring the bell again? Or turn and run? How long had he been there, like a hopeful lover, or maybe like a hunter in the bush, prey sighted, finger on the trigger? Then he heard the lock turn. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, said a voice in his head.
The door opened a crack. There was a chain on it. He said through the crack, âI'm Greg Phillips. Are you Mr Lowenthal?'
And the accented voice said, âI'll open the door.'
The night before, a freak bomb had dropped nearby â some lonely, lost German bomber had overshot the coast, where the battle of Britain was raging.
Now plaster dust from the ceiling lay all over the room and one of the windows was blocked by a piece of cardboard that bore the words Tate and Lyle.
Having fastened her stocking, Sally produced a compact from somewhere and began to powder her grubby face. âBruno â it is Bruno, isn't it? Excuse, darling. Someone told me about you and Briggs. I'm so demoralised. The time I've had. Where's Loomie?'
She meant Adrian Pym, of course. Oh, those upper-class nicknames, those Biggins, Cocos, Dumphies, Heffers, Tatas and Simsims â but at least her use of the soubriquet made it less likely that she was a full-blown German spy. She couldn't be German, at any rate. No German could have been so unselfconsciously grubby in that particularly
English way. Bruno was still suspicious, though. âWhat's that got to do with you?' he asked.
She said desperately, âAnd where's Theo? I absolutely must find Theo. It's a matter of life and death.'
He had no chance to answer for from behind Sir Peveril's dusty white sofa, which was minus one seat-cushion and not improved by the ceiling plaster, came a thin, nasty, wailing sound, like a cat at night. Sally assured him, âHonestly, darling, it hasn't made a sound since St Malo. You haven't got a drop of milk in the house, have you? That would be lovely. And, please, darling, do tell me where Loomie is.'
Still holding the string bag, Bruno crossed the room and went to look behind the sofa, though he was pretty sure he knew what he'd find. There on the floor, lying on the missing sofa cushion, was a baby, bare-legged, barefoot and wrapped in a dirty yellow cardigan. Sally said, âIt's only a little one,' and laughed.
She was putting on lipstick now, but underneath the powder and the grime Bruno noticed that she looked quite worn out. She was about thirty, with short dark hair, a small nose, pale skin, very large brown eyes with dark shadows underneath. She would have been pretty, he thought, if she'd been a bit cleaner, a little less tired and a little more composed.
This was Bruno's first sight of Sally Bowles.
Greg was surprised by the figure he saw in the narrow, four-feet-wide, dark-painted hall. He knew that Bruno Lowenthal was nearly seventy-eight years old, Jewish, European-born, and had pictured a small, frail man, worn down by age â and Europe.
In the old black-and-white photographs of Bruno (in bathing trunks, at Cannes, or in a Homburg and suit, or dining in a London restaurant with friends) he had been a tall, apparently blond, muscular young man. Greg had believed â wrongly, he now saw â that Bruno would have changed over the years into a bent old fellow such as one might see walking the pavements of New York, or being helped along by a stronger wife in a retirement village in Florida. However, Bruno Lowenthal was still six feet tall, almost as tall as Greg, and his shoulders were still broad; he stooped only a little. His face was heavily wrinkled, his eyes very blue, sharp and unkind. His head was topped by a shock of unkempt white hair, yellow in front â from the
effects of nicotine, Greg supposed. Indeed, he now held a cigarette in a big, wrinkled hand, smoke streaming up to the discoloured ceiling, as he stared at Greg. In the other hand he had a large bunch of keys. He wore a black roll-necked sweater and baggy grey trousers. On his feet were tartan carpet slippers. He did not, Greg reflected, look unlike some of the older professors from his Cambridge days, smart, often nasty, known, though not to him, as having had a gilded youth in the days before the war, perhaps not having reaped all the rewards due to them.
âI'm very pleased to meet you, Mr Lowenthal,' said Greg.
âWell â you'd better come in, but quickly.' He turned abruptly and led the way along the passage, which was painted dark green up to the height of about four feet, then dirty primrose yellow above. They went up linoleum-covered stairs to the first floor. It reminded Greg of some old black-and-white British movie about gritty bad times and crimes in the 1950s. And this was a high-rent area. What was going on?
As he mounted the stairs, Lowenthal kept up a good pace, wheezing as he went, the smoke from his cigarette blowing back across Greg. The house didn't smell at any rate, thought Greg, who knew the mingled odour of cooking, cats and grime that often accumulated in these old, unventilated British houses.
The landing at the top of the stairs was covered with more linoleum, in the same dark red as below. Ahead was a door of dark, cracked varnish, the original wood showing through in strips. Lowenthal bent stiffly to release a stout
lock at the bottom of the door, then straightened to open another. He stuck a third key in a Yale lock, then turned the door handle. âPlease come in.'