Curtain Call (33 page)

Felicity stopped, glanced at her. ‘I see. Will we be invited to meet him?'

‘I don't know,' said Nina, hesitating. ‘There are – difficulties.'

Felicity's expression had turned thoughtful, and Nina knew her to be astute enough to guess what they were. But she only gave a little nod, and said, ‘Well, the path of true love, and so on. I hope it'll make you happy. Happier than . . .' A meaning look accompanied this uncompleted phrase. Happier than their mother? Or happier than the usual run of Nina's affairs? She would have liked her to continue, but Felicity was already on her way out of the kitchen, armed with the tray. Some moments later she heard her voice in the next room, solicitous again, calming their mother.

Nina remained standing where she was, her thoughts in a stir of remorse and resentment. On the one hand, she now felt shamed by that secret bat-squeak of amusement on hearing her mother's tale of dashed hopes. On the other, she sensed in her blood the slow-acting poison of genetic inheritance. She had dreaded becoming like her mother, and had striven, perhaps at a cost, to ensure she did not. She would not throw in her lot with a feckless man, would not shackle herself to domestic drudgery, would not sacrifice a career to her children and then resent them for stifling her. At the age of thirty-two, with a job, a little money and no dependants, it seemed she had succeeded. It had not mattered to her before that her most serious liaison had lasted ten months. Now she wondered if her flightiness was actually a deep-rooted fear of committing herself to a man.

Something else was bothering her. Why had she felt it necessary to tell Felicity there was ‘someone' in her life? Her hackles had been up, true, but she had no need to score a point in argument, or to eke a little mystery out of the unidentified suitor. The subject of her romantic life rarely came up between them. This time it was different. She had
wanted
to tell her about Stephen, wanted to say how mad she was about him, and so what if he was unavailable? He loved her, Nina, enough to admit his mistake – that he should never have got married, they were too young, and if he could turn back the clock . . . No, she mustn't torment herself with that. She would not whine or wheedle; she would simply be what she had always been to him – adorable.

When she returned to the living room she found the emotional temperature had cooled down. Felicity had poured them some tea, and her mother's trembling lip had returned to the stiffness of old. The mood had taken a philosophical turn, and the character of Mr Dorsch, so recently a fiend in human form, was now adjudged to be merely a pitiable wretch. Nina, in a sudden uprush of generous feeling, took her mother's hand and gave it a kiss.

Mrs Land acknowledged it in a queenly lift of her head, then said, with deliberation, ‘Of course, I realise the mistake I made. I should not have allowed myself to keep on giving. It made him think
I
didn't need anything.'

Nina absorbed the remark in silence, and calculated the moment it would be permissible to make her excuses and withdraw.

Madeleine had spent the afternoon at a picture house on the Charing Cross Road. The second feature, a sliver of romantic foolery whose title she had already forgotten, had nevertheless performed a vital service. It had banished her low spirits. She knew nothing like the pictures for taking her out of herself. The tatty circumstances of the place – the stale smoke, the threadbare velvet seating, the motes of dust teeming down the projector's wand of light – these seemed to enhance the truant nature of film-going. What
was
it called? It didn't matter; gaze uptilted, she was entranced by the silvered aquarium of light containing the two lovebirds, the marvellous clothes and the silly friends, the swooning music, the muddling of motives that threatens the couple's happiness, the interlude of repining, and the reconciliation clinched with a kiss. A fantasy, of course, though she wondered all the same if there might be people out there who did inhabit such a bubble of charm, with their gay parties and jaunts – people whose principal concern was how they should enjoy their life, rather than (more common, alas) how they should keep body and soul together.

She emerged into the roaring dark of London traffic, but her mood had been lifted by the film. She thought she might have a drink before clocking on, and started on a diagonal course through Soho. Roddy had been offish with her since the night of their dinner, informing her of this or that punter with a side-of-the-mouth brusqueness. There were no more offers of a lift. She didn't care, so long as he didn't put her through all that business again. In spite of the job, and a natural tendency to depreciate herself, Madeleine could not help being aware that to some men she was a romantic object, as opposed to a merely physical one. Roddy was the last she would have suspected of going spoony on her – the last, and the least welcome. But recently it seemed she had detected a certain softness in Tom's eye. It was at that lunch, when Jimmy had been descanting on the attractiveness of her ‘phizog', as he called it, and Tom had echoed his praise in a rather sincere way. It was confusing, their admiration, since they were both queer – only, now she thought about it, might Tom be one of those who also fancied women, like Oscar Wilde?

It had just gone five thirty when she arrived at the Blue Posts, its doors thrown back to admit the first customers of the evening. She sat at the bar and ordered a gin and pep. She was still working on her thoughts about Tom, and whether he had any inkling about what she did. He had seen her that one time at the Elysian, and had probably assumed she was some sort of showgirl or waitress. She had encouraged this assumption by declining any opportunity for discussing it. But what would happen if – well, if he actually fell for her? How long would it be before she was obliged to tell him? A common bond united them: they were both in their way outcasts, hiding in plain sight. In the eyes of the law they were criminals. Perhaps Tom, long used to concealing his sexual proclivities, would look on her as a kindred spirit, but she was not inclined to believe it. There were few men who would regard a woman of the streets in a spirit of equality, and fewer still who would choose to befriend her.

At the other end of the counter there had been a good deal of head-shaking and frowning among the habitués. The barman finally dragged himself away and brought her drink. He knew Madeleine by sight, and plied her with some inconsequential chat about the cold weather. She could sense, almost from the way he was drying a glass, that he was still preoccupied with the conversation he had recently abandoned, and to which he was keen to return. Or was he in fact trying to refresh that conversation's novelty by including her, a newcomer? Either way, he seemed to have something on his mind of greater moment than the weather.

‘S'pose you've 'eard the latest?' he said, lifting his gaze from the pint glass he had been wiping.

Madeleine, pausing over the gin and pep, shook her head.

‘Vicious,' he muttered, with a grimace that could hardly conceal his eagerness to continue. ‘That feller, the one who strangled them women – he's done another one in.'

Numbed with shock she half listened as he elaborated on the story. The killer had gone quiet in the last few weeks, prompting speculation from some that the police, always ‘questioning' suspects, had finally got their man. Others, like the barman, called it wishful thinking. Now there was no room for doubt – the Tiepin Killer was still at large.

‘S'like the Ripper all over again, I'm tellin' you,' said the barman.

She looked narrowly at him, wondering how he could remember that far back, and said, mechanically, ‘Where did they find her?'

He gestured with a vague tilt of his head. ‘Strand. Always 'ereabouts, see.'

‘But the Ripper – weren't his all in the East End?'

The man stopped cleaning his glass for a moment, and considered. ‘Right enough. Mebbe that's why he leaves a tiepin on 'em. Bit of West End flash, hur hur.'

Without thinking Madeleine finished her gin in one go. Feeling slightly dizzy as she stood, she put on her hat and headed for the door. More customers were coming in; she was preparing to brush past them when of a sudden her name sounded. She jumped, looking about her in alarm. It was Rita, her face drawn and strangely older. They sidled over to an unoccupied corner of the bar.

‘You've heard,' was all that Rita said.

Madeleine nodded. ‘The barman just told me.'

For some moments they gazed at one another, as if forlorn expressions might unlock some meaning from this new calamity. Then Rita shook her head.

‘That poor kid.'

‘What have they said about it?'

‘Only that' – she put a hand to her mouth, and dropped her voice – ‘they say he knocked her about before he . . .' The sentence trailed off into the unspeakable. ‘To think we was just sittin' here, the three of us.'

Madeleine was so sick and distracted with apprehension that it took her a moment to digest these last words. ‘What do you mean – the three of us?'

Rita stared at her, appalled. ‘Oh God, you mean you don't know?' Madeleine's uncomprehending look was enough to confirm it. ‘Maddy, the girl he – it was
Alice
.'

Nina had managed to get away from her mother's at last. She had caught a bus to the King's Road and was hurrying down Tite Street. Having told Stephen she would be there within the hour she was now so late that he had probably given up on her and gone out. But at the door she was answered by his housekeeper and directed up the stairs. Stephen presented himself at her knock, and the first syllable of her endearment (‘Dar –') was out of her mouth when she spotted over his shoulder that he already had company. The look of apology on his face warned her. On entering the large light-flooded studio she thought it was one of his fawn-like models curled up there on an armchair in front of the fire. But that wasn't the case.

She heard a strained note in his introduction. ‘This is Freya, my daughter. Freya, meet my friend Nina.'

‘Hullo. You're the actress, aren't you?' said Freya, unfolding her long legs and rising to greet their guest. She had been taught manners, it seemed.

‘That's right,' Nina said, trying to compose herself in the face of this surprise. She took in the girl's inquisitive dark eyes, catching a trace of Stephen in her long-limbed poise. She recalled him telling her that his children boarded at a ‘progressive' school somewhere, though the girl wore no uniform. ‘Have you got the afternoon off school?'

‘She has indeed,' Stephen cut in. ‘Her mother's out of town, so she's come to see her old dad!' Again, there was a ripple of tension in his good cheer.

Freya alone seemed unfazed by this unscheduled encounter, and flopped back into the armchair. She kept her gaze on Nina, who felt as though she had been thrust onstage without adequate rehearsal. ‘Sorry I'm late,' she said, turning to Stephen, ‘there was an emergency of my mother's I had to sort out. Um, I suppose you've already had lunch . . .'

‘Not at all,' said Stephen, who was also improvising. ‘I was thinking we might pop out for a bite. How about it, Freya?'

‘Can we go to a Corner House?' said the girl.

Stephen and Nina, with a quick glance at each other, agreed that a Corner House was a good idea. Out on the street they took a taxi, which eventually deposited them at Coventry Street. Nina sensed the peculiar nature of their outing, two adults constrained by the watchfulness of a young chaperone, but she did her best to appear relaxed. Once installed at a table they ordered tea and a sandwich, and Freya was allowed to have ice cream. The bustle of the cafe around them had for the moment diverted the girl's attention.

‘Have you talked to the lawyer yet?' Nina said in an undertone.

Stephen nodded. ‘He thinks he could get Carmody on embezzlement. I'd have to give evidence, of course.'

She shot him a sympathetic look. ‘He won't get away with it.'

‘Maybe not. But I'll still pay for it. I already am – you remember my telling you about that publisher, Voysey, who wanted to commission a monograph on me? Well, his office telephoned this morning. It's all off.'

Nina frowned. ‘What did they say?'

‘Oh, they pretended not to know – made some excuse about production costs. But I know it's this thing that's scared them off.'

‘What are you talking about?' said Freya, alert of a sudden.

‘Business,' said her father crisply. The waitress arrived at that moment with the tea and the ice cream, which Freya proceeded to spoon meditatively from its glass bowl. She gave Nina a sidelong glance before saying calmly, ‘Did you know that you made my mother cry?'

Nina, struck dumb, looked in panicked supplication to Stephen, who himself needed a moment to construe the question. ‘She means the play,' he said with a covering laugh. ‘As you know, Cora was moved – to tears! – by your performance onstage.'

‘Yes. I remember you saying,' said Nina, almost faint with relief. She added, for Freya's benefit, ‘There's a rather emotional scene, in the third act, when I – when my character – reads out a letter.'

Freya gave her ‘grown-up' nod, then said in the same even way, ‘You're the lover, aren't you?'

Nina gave a small gasp, but she wasn't to be wrong-footed a second time. ‘Yes, I play a lady named Hester Bonteen. She's a – You do seem to know rather a lot about this play.'

‘Only what I'm told,' replied Freya pertly. ‘You must be a bloody good actress.'

‘Freya,' said Stephen, ‘what have I told you? That is
not
polite language.'

‘Sorr-eee. I meant to say, you must be a very good actress.'

Nina smiled, then said, ‘Perhaps one day you'll come and judge for yourself. When you're older.'

‘I'm old
now
,' she replied. ‘Dad says you're going to be in films.'