The Walworth Beauty Page 14

  Toby puts his mouth to Madeleine’s ear. Oh, handsome! She murmurs back: he’s gorgeous. He’s like a sculpture. A god!

  An eighteenth-century version. One of those elegant stone figures decorating the balustrade of an Italian villa’s terrace, posed lolling and amused. He needs a lyre, though, not a brolly. Anthony’s gaze sweeps across Madeleine, halts for a moment at Toby, stops at Francine. He leaps up the couple of wooden steps onto the verandah, casts his dripping umbrella to the floor.

  He grimaces. There’s been a bit of a disaster. In fact, several.

  Deep, warm voice. Madeleine wills him to speak more. Vowels that roll over you like honey. Is this how Beatrice feels, listening to Benedick? No wonder she’s so rude to him: she needs to provoke him, needle him, make his words flow back at her, pour over her again and again.

  Francine stretches out a hand, looks tender. She commands: explain!

  He keeps his tone playful. He’s obviously upset, and at the same time he’s mocking himself for making a fuss.

  He raises a finger. Firstly, he explains, three large lorries have just arrived and parked down in the courtyard. Apparently there’s going to be some filming going on tonight in the house. No one has told Anthony anything about that.

  Francine says: oh, I’m so sorry. The problem is, the owners are finishing up a film, and the schedule won’t let them wait a single day. It won’t affect us, I promise you.

  Secondly, the young woman playing Hero has collapsed, weeping, with violent toothache. Thirdly, the cast don’t have understudies. What’s a man to do?

  Francine pushes Anthony into a canvas chair, picks up the umbrella and closes it, leans it against the wall. Water trickles along the oiled teak floor. Let’s get you a cup of tea. Madeleine, would you put the kettle on? Quick as you can, please.

  Madeleine brings in the tray. Black pottery teapot with big gold spots, matching cups. She pours tea, serves Anthony.

  His gaze settles on Toby. He narrows his brown eyes. I say, would you mind standing back a little?

  Madeleine watches Toby decide to play. Pause. Music. Enter Toby. He glances at Anthony from under his eyelashes, turns away, glances back. Their gazes intertwine. Yes, exactly like Claudio catching sight of Hero for the first time. And she of him. Split second of wonder. Captured. Enchanted. Toby looks down modestly. Applause, Toby.

  Toby poses like another graceful statue on a balustrade, a young shepherd, or a faun, Bacchus himself perhaps, holding not a wine-pitcher but a milk jug. His look unblinking. Anthony stares back at him. She wants to laugh, but can’t. Something this intense and solemn hushes her. The air seems to turn solid. Everything goes very still, all movement, every breath. The two faces. Nobody speaks. Crashing in the undergrowth. The god approaches. Beware. Oh, beware.

  Francine’s eyes follow the direction of Anthony’s. She hesitates, seems to sink. She is obviously scrabbling for the correct gesture, the relevant speech. She clasps her hands: Toby knows the play, he was saying so earlier.

  Anthony sits back, frowns, becomes again the capable director alert to new talent. He says to Toby: it’s a tiny part. You could learn it in five minutes. Hero scarcely speaks at all. And she’s always accompanied by her ladies, so they’d be able to move you about. Really all you’ll have to do is get up a few lines, smile and look pretty.

  A veil, please, in that case, says Toby: I insist on a veil.

  Francine’s lips part. Flash of little white teeth. She straightens her black tunic. Her fingers grip its edges. Well, thank goodness we’ve got that sorted out! Let’s get on, shall we? Lots still to do.

  She gathers the mugs back onto the tray, vanishes with it into the kitchen. Clatter of china. The rush of tap water. The chug-chug of a dishwasher.

  Anthony will now show Toby down to the garden-stage, block out his moves, lend him a copy of the play, procure him a private place where he can rehearse his lines undisturbed. We’ll fix you up with a costume later, with Francine’s help. There’s a blonde wig somewhere. And we’ll find you a pair of shoes.

  With a flourish and a flurry it’s all over. Anthony tucks his arm into Toby’s, whirls him off down the hillside.

  Francine returns, unrolling her black sleeves. Madeleine, you’ve time for another break. Nothing more we can do up here for the moment. I need to go and check on what’s happening with the marquee. I’ll see you later.

  Fine, says Madeleine.

  No worries, says Francine.

  Exit Francine, humming, under her purple brolly. Off she hurries, drops down the steep path, not seeming to care whether she skids or trips.

  Madeleine plumps up the cushions on the canvas chair. Perhaps she should make herself a fresh pot of tea. No. An urge for a drink. To hell with it. Too late to sack her for pilfering. She can give Francine the money later on. She unscrews the cap on a bottle of Chilean red, pours herself a large glassful. Nelly pipes up behind her shoulder: oh, you sad creature. Madeleine turns: and who was it who drank bottles of stout every day in pregnancy on doctor’s orders? Nelly scolds. Get on with you. Pinching drink. Oh, you tinker.

  Now Madeleine wants her book. She’ll curl up, read, drink wine. Where’s her bag? Of course: she’s left it in the potting shed. A handy place for reading on this rainy afternoon: dry, peaceful, and, as prospective green room, pleasantly imbued with theatre magic. Down she goes, bottle tucked under her arm, full glass in her hand, rain falling into the wine, puckering its surface.

  Rain-percussion; gentle drumming on her shoulders. Fudge of sand and grit squidges under her feet. She enters the pergola, stops, with her free hand brushes water from her hair. The gesture recalls Toby’s earlier, smoothing a fringe of raindrops from his eyelashes. Speaking of Sid. Trying not to weep. Now he’s got Anthony’s arm round his shoulders, Anthony’s gaze searching his own, Anthony’s voice murmuring to him. Toby will learn his part in a twinkling, he’ll be a great success, at the cast party on stage after the show he’ll flirt with everyone but especially with Anthony and then they’ll vanish together into the wings for as long as they choose and Madeleine will envy them, yes, she will, and toss back another glass of wine.

  She stoops under the lintel of the potting shed, half-closes the door behind her, so that light can reach into the blue shadows, just enough to read by. That earth smell again. It rises up and surrounds her, wraps her in a shawl of humus.

  There’s her bag, hung over the back of the obelisk near the workbench. She pushes aside the stack of seed-trays, sets down her bottle and glass.

  Something white flickers in the shadows opposite. Flutter of a white hand.

  Her insides burp and curdle. A ghost escaped from the cemetery. No. I don’t believe in ghosts, remember? Not the cartoon sort, anyway, the ones draped in white sheets moaning whoo-hoo. Other sorts then? Perhaps. Yes. As of this morning I do.

  A whimper stabs up. Somebody there, over by the wall opposite. A human shape huddles on the ground beneath the costume rack, next to the little pile of Dogberry props. A pale scarf wound around her head, the lower part of her face. One hand clasps it in place, the other holds her knees as she rocks to and fro, giving out little bleats of pain.

  Madeleine says: oh, you made me jump!

  The young woman’s wrapped in some sort of dark cloak. One slender foot thrust out. No shoes.

  Madeleine says: you must be Hero. I mean, the one with the toothache. Oh, I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do for you?

  The girl dips her head, shakes it. She lowers her scarf a fraction, and croaks. It just hurts so much.

  Coloured shapes glimmer. The sheet on the clothes rack has been half torn back, trails along the ground, revealing a press of fancy garments: a flounced green crinolined dress, crimson bodices and jackets, pink petticoats, dark overcoats, tweed trousers. Feathered bonnets bulk out, a lace collar, a couple of gilded masks. Fur-cuffed black ankle boots lie on their sides.

  Madeleine says: Francine. Oh, Francine.

  Pink face blotched with patches of white,
dark red lipstick smeared along her cheeks, mascara leaking black runnels. Francine weeps afresh.

  Madeleine hovers over her, squats down. Francine stares at her from bloodshot eyes, puts out a hand to push her away. She gives another snivelling sob, blots her face on a tissue pulled from her sleeve. Cadences of woe: I could have played Hero. I thought. I thought we. That he.

  She averts her face, folds herself over her lap. Her sodden tissue, a pulp of blotted black mascara, bulges from her fingers. Madeleine fiddles a handkerchief from her pocket, hands it over. Francine blows her nose, wipes her eyes.

  Words blurt forth mixed with tears. I started helping with DramSoc. We’d go for coffee. Go to the pub. He said what a good listener I was. Hadn’t known him before. He told me he was bisexual. I said no worries. He said I was his right hand.

  Francine gasps, snorts, clutches her balled handkerchief. She wipes her eyes again. With her heavy white makeup gone, she looks very young.

  Madeleine says: oh, I am so sorry.

  Francine glares at her. Don’t patronise me! You don’t know what it’s like. You can’t understand.

  One classic remedy available. Madeleine gets up. Come on, let’s have a drink. A glass of wine will do you good.

  She pushes the clothes rack to one side, kicks away the piled props, fetches the bottle from the potting table. She sits down on the ground, next to Francine, their backs against the wall. She tops up the glass. Here. Think of it as medicine.

  Lengths of silk and velvet swing near her face, brush her cheeks. She reaches up a hand, hauls the sheet completely off the costume rail and wraps it around their legs, covering their feet. If your feet stay warm, the rest of you does. Francine rubs the back of her hand across her mouth and nose, drinks some wine. It works like medicine, yes, because she stops crying, and also it works on the roughed-up psyche like oil. Words can flow out smoothly from the hurt throat.

  Toby’s not even good-looking. And giving himself such airs. Why does Anthony like him so much? All he’s done since he got here is criticise. And now they’ve gone off together! Easy to see where they’ll end up. You can’t fool me.

  Toby and Anthony behaved freely: immediate recognition of desire, willingness to act on it. Madeleine behaved like them when she was young, didn’t she? She still would, given half a chance, wouldn’t she? Oh sweet Francine.

  Madeleine says: I suppose Toby’s honest. At least he says what he thinks.

  Francine takes a swig of wine. She says: when I’m at work here I can’t say what I think. I’m paid to keep my trap shut.

  Francine yawns. She sits up, takes another glug of wine. She shudders, coughs. Madeleine says: easy! She pats Francine’s back. You drink even faster than I do. Let’s make it last.

  The shed feels warm now. In the shade of the costume rack, they loll shoulder to shoulder, passing the glass back and forth between them, sipping. The wine tastes of cherries spiced with cinnamon. Drinking wine, as opposed to stout, in the afternoon, she wants to explain to Nelly: well, it’s like being a student again, lying on the grass by the river, picnicking with friends. Read poetry and plays to each other, talk and daydream. Nelly taps her novel borrowed from the mobile library. Just as long as you don’t bring trouble home.

  Madeleine tilts the last red drops into the shared glass. Their breath smells of ripe fruit. Their breaths mingle, just as Toby and Anthony’s glances mingled earlier. She slumps further down, her edges softening, melting. Warm inside, the warm-earth air of the potting shed, the wine tastes earthy, red earth, she’s a fat grape ready to pop, scatter her little black pellets wherever they want to fall.

  Francine combs her hair with her fingers. She says: Toby doesn’t know how the owners of this house make so much money. His precious Anthony doesn’t know either.

  She leans to one side, picks up the handcuffs. Aluminium, leather-edged, on a chain of wide links. She reaches for the truncheon. From further behind her, she draws out a small whip. She puts them in her lap, along with the handcuffs, as though she’s tidying up a child’s toys. She says: they make porn films. That’s what this place is for. It’s where they shoot the films. They started off with bodice-ripper type ones inside the house. Gonzo porn. Whatever. Then Lady Chatterley-type stuff in the potager and in here. Now they make porn for women.

  Scripted by women? Madeleine asks.

  She reaches out, strokes the fur edging a velvet robe. Her fingers enter its silkiness.

  She says: I like reading novels with sex in, when it’s well done. But I don’t know much about visual porn. I’m a porn-film virgin!

  Francine folds her arms. She says: what you need to understand is, all young men use porn. And now young women do too. Francine’s voice has taken on the pleasure of telling an older woman things she doesn’t know. That’s why they’ve let Anthony put on his stupid Much Ado. They’re going to film it so they can intercut tiny bits of the footage with their own stuff. They didn’t tell him in advance in case he kicked up a fuss. And the special patrons: they’re all the marketing people. Stupid Anthony hasn’t even guessed.

  Francine gleams, brittle and shiny as a shell, one of those fluted cockle cases covering the wall of the grotto in the garden below. Pleated, like a half-open fan, sharp-edged, cemented to the wall, part of an ancient design. Once, as a child, she wriggled in her bed, in sunlight, rolled naked in grass, she nuzzled and bit her mother and sucked her and licked her, she wanted to stroke and be stroked, her father tossed her up teased her tickled her and she screamed with delight, she ran down the hill in the darkness, she swam in the buffeting rough sea, she fought with her best friend twisting over and over on the kitchen floor, she smelled her mother’s skin the enticing sweet-fish scent underneath her skirts. Whose memories are those, Madeleine’s or Francine’s?

  Francine stills her face. The moment stretches around them, flimsy, taut, like a silken tent keeping the rain off. Keeping too much feeling out.

  Madeleine gazes at the empty glass. She says: my generation of women believed in free love. The Pill freed us! But we believed in passion, too. And I still do. So there, Francine!

  Francine says: that sod Anthony. Kept going on about how much he liked women, how much they liked him. What does he know about women? Fucking nothing!

  She digs for her phone, takes it out, checks her messages, while Madeleine waits. Francine snaps her phone shut, catches Madeleine’s glance. She says: times have changed. Nowadays, with phones, everybody who wants to can shoot their own porn, shoot themselves having sex, post it on the internet.

  She pockets her phone. The owners here are afraid of going bust. They’re cutting down on staff. I’m out of a job as of Monday. So what the fuck does any of it matter?

  She grimaces. She gathers herself, puts her hand on Madeleine’s shoulder, levers herself up, unwinding the cotton sheet from around her legs, beating it aside. Madeleine stays sitting on the ground. Francine stoops, steps into her fur-cuffed boots. She stands up straight. The brisk housekeeper once more. Cold and strong as Mrs Danvers in Rebecca, efficiently torturing the new bride.

  She says: come back up in good time, won’t you? There’ll be all kinds of last-minute things to see to.

  At the door of the shed Francine pauses, turns: thanks for the wine. Let’s go halves on it.

  Madeleine keeps silent. Silvery-grey wood walls make a box holding the scent of dust. They look at one another. Air between them, separating them. Memory of their bodies close, shoulders touching, the smell of makeup, everything loose and runny, tears, sweat, wine, words.

  Francine hurries out, through the screen of rain. Tap tap tap of her feet across the tiled floor of the pergola.

  Madeleine gets up. She punches a top hat, a red silk waistcoat. She smothers the costume rack with the sheet, smoothing it well down over the robes, the crinolines and overcoats. The stage manager making the curtain descend, sweeping the actors from view.

  There’s time for a walk, surely. If only she had an umbrella. She could go to the cemetery.
Re-visit those Victorian graves. See if a ghost turns up.

  Who or what is a ghost? One answer, given in a book read long ago: middle-aged women lacking a sex life believed in the paranormal as consolation. Ghosts wanted them even if men didn’t.

  Definitions seal things off. Like the lids of tombs. Then in the middle of the night the lid creaks, lifts itself up, and flocks of new meanings flurry out. Uncontrollable. Poets are grave-robbers, making dead words live.

  She jolts across the path. I must be drunk. I don’t care. She swerves along in the rain, which trembles onto her feet.

  Perhaps ghosts represent the possibility of stories. Something unfinished, that needs recounting. In the cemetery the ghosts run back and forth, holding out their arms and weeping, wanting to meet someone who won’t be frightened but who’ll listen. I’ll go and sit with some ghosts. Tune in to their stories. Ask them to tune into mine.

  Her phone warbles. Toby, sounding exuberant. Where are you? Get your ass up here! We’ve got work to do.

  SEVEN

  Joseph

  The house reeked of kippers. Cara always cooked fish on Friday mornings; a nod to her Catholic upbringing. Why could she not remember that he hated kippers and always had?

  The lodging-houses of the poor stank of fried fish. He didn’t want the poor following him home. Kippers à la Cara were grilled, not fried, he reminded himself. No good. Halibut poached in milk he could just about stomach for breakfast, but not these creatures flat as boot-soles, flopping yellow-brown and greasy on a purple-flowered plate, their black eyes glistening in wrinkled sockets. He stared back at them. Mere relics of fish; wizened and mummified; like those relics of saints Nathalie had told him were kept in Catholic churches.

  Cara, wrapped in her grey cotton dressing-gown, a white cap tied on over her curl-papers, turned in the dining-room doorway. Eat up while they’re still hot, dearest.

  Children wailed two floors above. A door slammed. Joseph said: won’t you sit down and have breakfast with me, my love?

  Cara flung up her hands. Impossible. I must go up and give Milly a hand. She can’t manage on her own.