Marking Time (61 page)
‘It always seems to get in the way of love, don’t you find?’ Miss Milliment said it as though Polly would have thought of this first. ‘Judgement’s rather a
tarnisher in my experience,’ she finished. A small smile twitched her little mouth and then disappeared into her chins. ‘Now, Polly, I think you should go somewhere warmer. But before
you go, would you help me find the Greek primer? The binding is dark green, but the writing on the spine has faded so much that I am unable to read it on the shelf.’
When Polly had found it, Miss Milliment said, ‘I am grateful for your confidence. I need hardly say that I shall never betray it.’
So she didn’t have to ask her not to talk to other people.
Louise sat in her dressing room (shared with one other girl) with her dressing gown over her shoulders – it was cold – the room with its concrete floor and its
cracked basin and its small, curtainless window always had a faint smell of damp. She had turned on all the dressing table lights because they gave some warmth. She was between shows, and writing
to Michael.
‘Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon’ she’d put at the top of the paper.
Darling Michael
It was lovely to get your letter so soon after I got here. In fact, it was waiting for me. I’m sorry you haven’t got enough guns – or not the kind you want
– in your destroyer – that must be awful. I suppose the people who give out the guns are never
in
a destroyer, so
they
don’t really know what would be most
useful.
(That was rather good: it sounded interested, and as though she had thought about it. Actually, his letters were so full of naval stuff that she found them rather boring; she
wanted him to write more about his feelings – and, of course, how he felt about her. He always did a bit, but only a sentence or two after pages about Oerlikon guns or the weather –
always awful – or what his captain was like.)
Well! It feels quite grand to have got here at all, but it isn’t remotely how I imagined. To begin with, the theatre seems enormous, and there are whole pockets of
seats where people can’t hear a word whatever you do about it. The average age of the company – including me – I have worked out is sixty-nine. That’s because two of the
actors are in their eighties, and the youngest one is forty-seven! The younger actors have all been called up, I suppose. There are only three women in the company, one quite old, and one sort
of middling. It’s the winter season – they don’t do Shakespeare, worse luck. I am the
ingenue
– ugh! I have an awful part. I’m called Ethyl. The play is
called
His Excellency, the Governor
and Bay played the hero when he was young a million years ago, and Ethyl was played by his wife. So that is who I am opposite, but the whole idea of
being in love with someone quite so decrepit is ridiculous. I have awful lines like ‘my hero!’ in it, and I wear evening dress nearly all the time – pale blue chiffon –
and there are no funny lines at all – I mean, on purpose. It is funny by
mistake
all the time. Anyway, they are quite kind to me except that some of the men upstage me rather a
lot. My digs are on the edge of the town kept by an old retired stage hand and his daughter, Doll. He gets awfully drunk on Friday nights and swears in Shakespeare: he actually called me a
cream-faced loon last week and turned me out of the house. But Doll said to wait in the street for a bit and she’d let me in again. I have ‘dinner’ – lunch – with
them. Nearly always stuffed sheep’s heart and greens and potatoes and thick brown gravy, but it’s the only proper meal and I eat it all. Otherwise there is a very genteel tea room
where doughnuts cost fourpence each
and
they are tiny (though delicious). But I get paid two pounds ten on a rehearsal week, and five pounds when we are playing and my digs cost thirty
shillings so I have to be careful. There are hotels, of course, but they have only got five-shilling meals which are out of the question. [She was so hungry nearly all the time, that it was
difficult not to write about food.] Occasionally, Bay takes me home to his flat where his wife, who doesn’t act any more, gives us a wonderful high tea with meat paste sandwiches and rock
cakes and once a boiled egg.
Here she paused. It did not seem a good idea to tell him about the difficulties of getting home at night after the performance when she had to choose between being followed by a pair of Czech
officers – there were a lot of them billeted near Stratford and they were working in pairs reputed to rape girls – or being pawed by one of the elderly actors who offered to walk her
home.
My room at the digs is quite small, dominated by a large, creaky double bed with a very thin mattress and one of those eiderdowns that slip off the bed all night. When I get
back I sit in it wearing a lot of clothes because there isn’t any heating and write my play or learn lines. The river is nice, with swans on it, and sometimes we rehearse in the bar,
which has a terrace looking out on it.
She read the letter so far.
Upstaging [she then wrote] is when the person you’re talking to moves further and further upstage (away from the audience) so that you either have to move up too, or
speak all your lines with your back to the audience. The old actors do it all the time – to make people notice them, I suppose. One of them used to do a lot of music hall, so when he
rehearses he doesn’t say his lines properly at all, simply gabbles them in a monotonous undertone. He is rather a fat man, and when he isn’t on, he keeps going to sleep on three
chairs.
I wonder when you will get some leave, and whether I shall see you? I am only here for three plays. They
might
keep me on, but I don’t think so. So I shall just have to go
home [she nearly put, ‘and be made to do some boring job for the war’ but she wasn’t quite sure how much he was on her side about that so she ended] and learn to do something
useful.
Have you read any Ibsen? [she went on] I have been reading
Rosmersholm
and
The Doll’s House
. He really did understand what a rotten time women used to have –
not allowed professions or careers. His language is so
modern
that I didn’t realise what a long time ago he wrote – well,
fairly
long. What made me think of it was
that his plays, which caused a scandal when they were first performed in this country, by the way, don’t seem to have made much difference to people like my aunts and mother. I actually
met
the old man who first staged him – and Shaw. He lives with a fierce housekeeper in a rather nice broken-down house. He is called Alfred Waring, but he was too deaf and shaky
to have a long conversation with, and I could see the housekeeper didn’t like me being there so I only stayed half an hour. I told you because that’s how I know about people
objecting to Ibsen. Quite different from Shaw. I should think he
wanted
people to object to him.
Well [she was suddenly terribly sleepy] – I think I’d better stop now as this is far too long. And rather dull, I’m afraid. Much love, Louise.
At the bottom of the page, she added:
If you
do
get leave in the near future, you
could
come and stay in an hotel here. I could easily book you a room.
Then she wished she hadn’t put that because if he was going to see her act in a real theatre, she wanted it to be a better part than rotten old Ethyl.
The letters she wrote to Stella were quite different. In them she discussed in some detail the relative merits of being pawed by awful leathery old men with bad breath or systematically raped on
the towpath by young Czechs, not, presumably, understanding a word they said. She did this because the whole thing frightened her rather – after all, it was six nights a week and even with
the Double Summer Time being kept on in winter, it was dark by five, after which the streets in Stratford became extremely, and disquietingly, quiet.
You’re frightened [Stella wrote back] and I don’t blame you. The trouble is that you must keep the doors open with the old lechers, because one evening, you
might really need one of them. I should learn a few blistering things to say in Czech, just to be on the safe side – if there is one! Oh, poor Louise! It’s this disreputable
profession you’ve chosen. Actresses used to be fair game for everyone, and as a lot of Europe is behind us in social mores, I expect the Czechs still think they are. Shall I come and see
you? Could I share your large, creaky bed, as I’m very short of cash? My father equates lack of money with strength of character – in other people, of course.
And before Louise could even write back saying how lovely, do come, she arrived, without warning, at the stage door after an evening show.
‘I haf komm to take you to ze river path to do unspeakable things,’ she said.
‘Oh, Stella! Oh, how gorgeous! Oh, you are marvellous to come! Come down to my dressing room while I change.’
‘Don’t you die of cold in your deb’s chiffon?’
‘I do rather, but I’m getting used to it. It’s quite warm on the stage because of the lights. It’s waiting to go on that’s so ghastly.’
‘I saw the play. You were quite right. It is
awful
, isn’t it? Poor you.’
‘I did my best.’ She felt faintly, and perversely nettled that Stella hadn’t added, ‘But you were good.’
‘You want me to say you were good. Well, you weren’t bad, and I don’t think you could be more than that. Do you have this room to yourself?’
‘I do for this play. But in the next one, one of them is playing the lead, and I’m just crowd, so I’ll certainly be sharing.’
‘In love with anyone?’
‘Nope. Are you?’
Stella shook her head. ‘I think I’m the kind of person who not many people would go for and then one day just one person will, and I shall be completely bowled over from lack of
practice. Unlike you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, my darling, that
you
are the kind of person who millions of people will go for.’ She leaned back in the basket chair and crossed her ankles; her thick grey
stockings in no way spoiled their elegance.
‘I’ve brought us a picnic,’ she said. ‘Can we eat it here?’
‘No. They’ll turn us out any minute. The doorkeeper wants to lock up and go home.’
‘At your digs, then?’
‘Well, it depends on whether Fred is drunk and up, or out or in bed. And I’ll have to talk to Doll – ask her if you can stay and so on. It’ll be all right, unless Fred is
drunk and up.’
‘In which case?’
‘We’ll be up and out.’
‘Well, is there anywhere else we could go?’
‘Not really. The towpath by the river, but apart from anything else, it’ll be freezing cold. We might just have to eat the picnic very quietly. I must say it’s heroic of you to
bring it.’
‘We may turn out to be heroic to eat it.’
‘You ladies finished in here?’
‘Coming, Jack.’ She spread a face towel over her makeup, picked up her bag, wound her muffler round her neck, and they went back up the concrete stairs and through the swing doors
into the pitch dark street.
‘Take my arm,’ Louise said. ‘I have got a torch, but I know the way.’
‘He’s not back from the pub,’ Doll said when she let them in. ‘
I
don’t mind,’ she added, when Louise had explained about Stella. ‘Why
don’t you sit in the kitchen and have it, then?’ she said when Louise explained that her friend hadn’t eaten and had brought a picnic. ‘I’ll make you a pot of tea.
After all, it’s not the same as if you were a gentleman,’ she said.
‘Which of us would have to be that for it not to be the same?’ Stella muttered as they took off their outdoor things in Louise’s room.
‘You, I think. But she’s nice, isn’t she?’
‘Very nice,’ Stella answered affectionately. ‘Bit frightened of her dad, though.’
When they came down, Doll had laid the table with two cups and saucers, a sugar bowl and a jug of milk. ‘The pot’s warming,’ she said. ‘I’ll shut the door and
happen he won’t notice.’
She untied her faded flowered overall and hung it on the back of the door. ‘I should just lay off talking when you hear him come in. It is Friday, you see.’
She had a tired, kind face that was full of lack of expectation.
When they were alone, Stella said, ‘Are Fridays especially bad?’
‘He gets drunk on them. He doesn’t on the other nights.’
She made the tea, and they sat, rather subdued, eating cheese rolls and apples, and some pieces of chocolate.
‘I very nearly wish he
would
come, just to see what it would be like,’ Stella remarked, as Louise rinsed out their cups.
‘I don’t. I vote we go up
now
and get safely tucked up.’
‘Is there an indoor lavatory?’
‘Yes. It’s sort of built onto the back, half-way up the stairs.’
He came back while Stella was in the lavatory, and Louise hoped that she’d have the sense to stay there while Doll helped him up the stairs to bed. But Stella, of course,
did
have
the sense. They undressed quickly – Stella had bedsocks: ’My feet are always freezing; they’d be a real hazard for anyone to encounter in the night’ – and lay
whispering, about nothing very much.