Curtain Call (47 page)

On the Friday of Coronation week a small gallery in St James held a private view of new paintings by Stephen Wyley. These were all of people, though the artist decided that the exhibition should be titled not ‘Portraits' but ‘Faces'. In the run-up to this he told Madeleine not to bother coming to Tite Street: the studio was in such disarray with paintings and dust that there was no use in cleaning the place. He did ask her, however, to come to the private view. When she enquired as to what her duties would be he looked appalled.

‘I'm asking you as a guest! There's an entire staff there to serve the drinks.'

‘But I don't mind serving drinks –'

He insisted that she was a guest. It was his first public showing since his brief experience of notoriety. Gerald Carmody had gone to prison for embezzling charitable funds. The British People's Brigade were struggling on in his absence; their membership, never very large, was already in decline. No mention of Stephen's alleged affiliations to it was ever made again. The matter had been laid to rest after a letter from Stephen's father appeared in
The Times
, in which he pointed out that his late wife was Jewish-born. Did this not make ‘rather a nonsense' of claims that his son supported an anti-Semitic organisation?

There was already quite a crowd by the time Madeleine arrived. On the upper floor of the gallery she found a little more space to move around, though there was nobody here she knew either. It didn't matter – she was happy to look at the paintings. As she paused over one of them she felt a presence hovering near, and turning found a girl candidly gazing at her. She was fair-haired and long-limbed, with a fineness of feature that was but slightly compromised by the wilful set to her mouth.

‘What d'you think of these?' she said.

‘I like them. Very much. And you?'

The girl nodded, and gave a little pout of approval. Then she resumed her gaze. ‘You're Madeleine, aren't you? I'm Freya. These paintings are my dad's.'

‘Ah.'

‘Dad says you play the piano. You give lessons.'

‘Actually, I've never given a piano lesson. But I could try to teach you.'

Freya took a moment to consider this. ‘My last teacher, Miss Skinner, was bloo— she was quite disagreeable.'

‘Oh dear.'

‘She used to pinch me whenever I made a mistake.'

Madeleine responded with a grimacing smile. ‘I won't pinch you.'

‘Do you think we might get on with each other awfully well?'

Madeleine looked at her, measuringly. ‘I should imagine so.'

Freya smiled, too. ‘That's what Dad said.'

Stephen had noticed the dark-haired man taking notes as he stooped towards each painting. He sidled over to him.

‘Seen anything you liked?'

The man used his pencil as a bookmark in the catalogue. ‘A good deal. I only wish I could afford it.'

‘Are you press?'

‘Not officially. But I want to write a piece about . . .' He waved a hand around the room in illustration. ‘I especially liked the portrait of Nina Land. It gave me rather a shock.'

‘Did you know her?'

‘We met only once, a few weeks before she – I admired her greatly as an actress. And you?'

Stephen turned to the painting. ‘We were close,' he said quietly.

‘I'm very sorry. I had the impression she was – much loved.'

The current of painful sympathy between them might have been prolonged had not László just then arrived. ‘Ach, I am too late! It was my particular intention to introduce you to one another.'

Stephen turned to his interlocutor. ‘As a matter of fact we haven't yet been introduced.'

‘Then allow me!' cried László. ‘Stephen Wyley – my dear friend Tom Tunner.'

They shook hands, and Tom said, ‘I gather there's a picture that my friend here is particularly keen for me to see. László, lead on.'

They shouldered their way through the scrum until they came to it. László looked at Tom expectantly. It was a small, squarish portrait of László himself, his expression an enigmatic half-smile, with his hands in the foreground of the picture appearing to shield something – a playing card, perhaps.

‘
After Parmigianino
,' said Tom, frowning at the title.

Stephen nodded. ‘I painted it a few weeks after I met László. He had told me about Parmigianino's
Self-Portait in a Convex Mirror
– in fact it was more of a lecture about truth and deception in art. Well . . . it haunted me. So I did this by way of a tribute.'

Tom scrutinised the picture. Of all the people he had known he would never have bet on László as the first to be immortalised in paint. And yet as he glanced at his friend's pug-like face, eyes alight with innocent childish pride, he could think of no one who deserved the honour more.

‘That's one for your memoirs, László,' he said. Jimmy would be incandescent with jealousy, of course, having always hankered after an ‘important' artist to paint him. Tom was about to make a joke of this, but then decided not to. It would only spoil László's moment to think of a friend's chagrin, even a friend as conceited and selfish as Jimmy.

The ground floor was filling up again, and other guests were congregating around Stephen. László was still in front of his portrait, holding forth to somebody. He should probably go, he had work to do. First, though, he would have another scout through the place –

‘Tom?'

He jumped at the sound of her voice. ‘Hullo . . . I'm – this is – erm . . .' He was finding it difficult to form a sentence, so abruptly had Madeleine appeared before him.

‘How are you?' she said.

He was still staring dumbly at her. ‘I'm, um, fine. How are
you
?'

She nodded encouragingly. ‘I left the Elysian. I'm working for Stephen – just cleaning, you know. Oh, and it looks like I'll be teaching his daughter the piano.' What a life of surprises. He didn't even know she could play the piano.

‘Strange – I was thinking of you' – he was about to say ‘yesterday' and swerved away, it sounded too desperate – ‘a while ago. D'you remember the night the Crystal Palace burnt down?'

‘Yes, I read about it . . .' She wondered why he had thought of her on that of all nights, but from his dazed look he seemed to have lost his thread.

‘Well, I had an accident that night – I nearly choked to death. And I remember thinking I'd never be able to tell you how sorry I was for – for the night –'

Madeleine's gaze softened. She thought about letting him go on, and instead took pity. She reached out to touch his arm, and he felt in the gesture a release. He wasn't sure if she was forgiving him, or asking for forgiveness.

After some moments he spoke again, with a change in his tone. ‘I didn't stop thinking about you.'

She paused, then she said, ‘Really?'

‘Honour bright. I couldn't even when I tried.'

They stared at one another, oblivious to all else around them.

‘It's funny, I kept wondering whether you – with Jimmy and everything – I couldn't tell –'

‘You thought I was queer?' His eyes were wide with surprise. Then he gave a little gasp of laughter.

‘For a while. It was after that lunch at Jimmy's. I began to think maybe – maybe he's not . . .'

‘You gave my hand a squeeze, just before you left,' he said, smiling and taking her hand. ‘That was the moment I began to hope.'

She nodded. ‘So did I. I thought, please let him be true. Please don't let him give up on me.'

He shook his head. ‘I wouldn't give you up for all the jade in China.'

‘Is there much jade in China?' she asked, and when she saw his face cloud with doubt she laughed. A waiter was passing by with a tray, and she plucked a couple of glasses from him. They clinked.

Tom said, ‘You know, another thing about that night Crystal Palace went up in flames. I could see it from miles away, in Highgate, and I remembered the dream you told us about. Everything engulfed in fire. People's heads . . . I thought you must have second sight –'

‘I don't think anyone's head was on fire.'

‘No, but it was like you'd had a premonition of it. The terrible force of that conflagration – d'you see?'

Madeleine nodded, though in her heart she knew that wasn't it at all. She hadn't even seen the Crystal Palace fire. The scale of what
she
had dreamed was vast, unearthly, terrifying. A rolling tide of flame. It reduced buildings to matchsticks, it consumed cities and plains, and it incinerated people in the blink of an eye. It was a thing hovering on the edge of your vision, a black, shapeless thing. But she didn't want to think about that now.

She would concentrate on Tom, right there, talking to her. She had never seen his face so animated! Maybe it was to do with all the royal fuss, but it felt like the beginning of something. There was so much to live for.

From the
Chronicle
, October 1946:

The Distinguished Thing

by Thomas Tunner, Harrap, London. 8s 6d

What is good writing? What, to refine the question, sets good writing apart from the merely competent? The subject should be meat and drink to a critic, yet even for one who has eaten and quaffed his fill over forty-odd years it admits of no easy explanation. We know good writing when we see it, or rather hear it, for so much of its quality resides in a command of rhythm; it is defined not only by the choice of words, but by their musical arrangement within a sentence. ‘After-comers cannot guess the beauty been' wrote Hopkins of his Binsey Poplars, a line so perfect in its melancholic lilt I shiver just to recite it. The essential purpose of writing must be to please.

These musings were brought into renewed focus on considering the novel in front of me. I should declare an interest at the outset. The author, himself a critic of note, was for nearly ten years in my employ as secretary, editor and amanuensis. His keen-eyed diligence saved me from many an infelicitous phrase and clumsy repetition. He understood the pains required to make a sentence sing. One trusts, starting out, that he has observed the same exacting standards on his own prose.

The story concerns a young stage actor who comes to London from the provincial theatre at the end of the 1920s. Of course he yearns for acclaim, and endures trials and setbacks in his quest. Perhaps this smacks of triteness. But so many stories in precis
are
trite. A young lady takes against a man, then learns she has been mistaken and marries him. Yawn! A cathedral city becomes agitated over the appointment of a new bishop. Pass the smelling salts! And there you have just dismissed
Pride and Prejudice
and
Barchester Towers
. The point is that good writing transforms the commonplace into the remarkable; it sees something old in a new way. Take this little passage of Mr Tunner's in which a character's death is pondered: ‘She had gone, from this place, and from every place that had once known her. Paul felt he had grown up too suddenly, faster than nature intended; now all he had was a kind of pollen that clung to his fingertips, the traces of what he had loved in her. And he knew that this would also, in time, be gone.' Here is Henry James's ‘distinguished thing' – death – expressed in words of radiant concision.

Our thespian hero, Paul Wolcott, becomes understudy to Algernon Jenks, actor-manager and
monstre sacré
of the English stage. ‘Algy' turns out to be the novel's other distinguished thing, a man who fears the eclipse of his legend as the years pass. He fears also being usurped by his protégé Paul, whose career he has promoted and undermined in equal measure, his base instincts at war with his natural generosity. Of course one may speculate (as others have done) on the identity of Algy's real-life model, partly from physical detail – his loud checks, his cigars, his cane – and partly from his habits and manner of speech. I myself detect some Irving in there, some Gielgud, possibly one or two others. The flaws in his character – abrasiveness, conceit, overweening self-regard – hardly narrow down the list of suspects. The man is an
actor
, for crying out loud.

Will it pain whoever the fellow is to recognise himself? As Maugham's Ashenden has remarked, ‘It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.' I say with hand on heart that Mr Tunner has earned the right to call himself both. And let me quote the advice of a dear friend, to wit – always be reading something that will reflect well on you if by chance you were to die in the middle of it. I should be very pleased to have
The Distinguished Thing
with me at the last.

James Erskine

I would like to thank Dan Franklin, Beth Coates, Rachel Cugnoni, Suzanne Dean, Katherine Fry, Carmen Callil. Likewise my friend and punctilious reader Doug Taylor. Thanks also to Anna Webber, my agent, and David Clasen, music maestro.

The character of Jimmy Erskine is based largely, though not exclusively, on the critic and diarist James Agate, as revealed in his superb
Ego
Vols I–IX (1935–1948). I also much enjoyed James Harding's biography
Agate
(1986).

The book that remained at my side while I wrote this novel was Juliet Gardiner's brilliant and enthralling tour d'horizon
The Thirties
(2010). I am indebted to her.

My most profound thanks go to my wife Rachel Cooke, without whose company life would be dull, cheerless and possibly insupportable.

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