Angel Cake (30 page)

And she did. Although as she stood between the two of them at the altar, all light and lovely in her white, the wedding had been nearly ruined by a vision; she was marrying both of them. Harry’s warm arm, his strong, faintly garlicky smell, even on a day like this when they were all spruced up to the nines, the way those tight, coarse little coils of hair curled on his neck; she couldn’t shut him out
of her responses. And when Harry’s arm gave way to Leonard’s firm one and Leonard’s scented smells of talcum powder and coal-tar soap and lavender, she was positively relieved. Marriage would put a stop to this foolishness. Back down the aisle they went, she and Leonard, and the organ played a march of triumph. In the nick of time, she had made it, she was safe aboard. Harry looked after her, left behind on the barren shore, while she and Leonard sailed away into the sunset, in a rosy glow of wedded bliss and confetti, champagne glasses and happy-ever-after. Let Harry look his fill, she was Leonard’s now for ever more. Except, as it happened, things had not turned out that way at all.

Their wedding night – but that was the deepest hidden layer, that she really couldn’t. There were some things in life that should never see the light of day. You owed it to yourself to keep them hidden. They might chafe and fret you, work their way out sideways in dreams and nightmares, but of your own free will you should never let them out of the bag. Leonard had cut a fine figure in his knife-blade creased trousers and tails and his grey silk wedding hat.

Their wedding night had been a sham. Alicia, an utter virgin, had only the vaguest idea of what ought to have happened. But she knew that what had occurred between them was not nearly enough. It hadn’t hurt her, and she knew from secret female conversations that there ought to have been writhing and tearing, a painful savage ripping and blood. Leonard undressed with his back to her, took her gingerly in his arms and gave her a quick dry kiss. Then he lay back, crooked his hands under his head, smiled at her once shyly and fell fast asleep. Alicia lay awake, wondering. In the end she decided he was being considerate; it had been a long and draining day and they were both of them worn out. Leonard must have restrained himself, decided to spare her that ordeal today on top of everything. She congratulated herself happily on what a considerate husband she had found for herself. Except that nothing happened the following night either, or the one after that. She still enjoyed the honeymoon. She had never stayed anywhere as smart as the Queen’s Hotel. Leonard had arranged for cut flowers in the room and they had whatever took their fancy for dinner. From the
outside, everything was excellent and it was lovely being ‘Mrs’. She thought that maybe Leonard was waiting until they were more used to each other. Perhaps she should indicate to him that she felt ready? But he failed to see her signal, even though she considered it plain enough. That was when she first began to have her little needling worry that maybe all was well, not quite right with Leonard. She did her best to squash it. Whyever worry about the night-time when the daytime was so beautiful? They went on their walks and outings, strolled arm-in-arm along the sea-front. Alicia told herself that it would surely all come right in time. And in the meantime, frankly, was she really all that bothered? Wasn’t it rather nice to have the paper satisfaction and the trimmings of marriage and be spared the savagery and the pain?

When they returned from their honeymoon, of course Harry was still there. What really upset Alicia, what made her recognize that her marriage was not the watertight vessel in which she would be safe from Harry’s molestation for ever more, was that Harry’s behaviour had not changed. She had imagined marriage would clang down between them like an iron grille, but Harry didn’t give a fig for that. He went on ogling her and brushing up against her in the dark of the wings just as before. At first, she was indignant. Then she grew scared.

The months went by and Leonard’s nightly performances didn’t alter. At last, summoning all her courage, she put it to him: wasn’t something missing?

She was introduced to his temper, his terrible razor-sharp raging furies which swept down on you out of a clear blue sky and rampaged murderously about your ears. What, if you please, was she driving at? What exactly was she trying to suggest? Was she after high jinks, some sordid fun and games, was that it? Was that her idea of the purpose of the sacred institution of marriage?

But a few weeks afterwards, he brought himself to do it, reluctantly, against himself; such a brief, brusque performance that Alicia got so little pleasure from it, she was in no hurry to persuade him to repeat it. For many months, she endured her disappointment unquestioningly. Well, it wasn’t what it was cracked up to be, that was all. It wouldn’t be
the first thing she had come across which failed to live up to expectations. She could get along without it. She had the four walls of marriage; was what was supposed to happen within them really that important? It was not until they had been married for nearly a year that a treacherous thought occurred to her; was it the act itself which had failed to live up to expectations, or was it Leonard? Would it be as sore and unexciting with someone else?

That first year set the pattern for their marriage; long weeks of silent nights with every once in a while, maybe when Leonard’s conscience pricked him, one of those brief grudging performances. She couldn’t say though, even with hindsight, when she had become unhappy. Happy, unhappy; once you had been an actress for long enough, it was frequently hard to tell which was which. You dressed one up as the other so much of the time; on stage all rouged and bouncing, when secretly your heart might be breaking, or weeping make-belief tears for the footlights when all the while you had a mad wish to giggle. She had so much to be happy about at the start of the marriage: the compliments, the flowers and the presents, the elevated status of being Mrs Leonard Queripel. During the day, she simply put the night out of her mind.

In time, she began to worry about the consequences, or rather the lack of them. She and Leonard had never talked about having children – he was hardly the fatherly sort, she now saw – but she had somehow assumed that in marriage they came without saying. She now realized that, at the rate she and Leonard were going, unless she said something they probably never would. Not that she was mad keen to start a family. She wasn’t at all sure about losing her looks and her figure. But a little girl would be sweet, a pretty little blonde girl she could hold by the hand and dress up in frilly dresses. Sometimes, idly, in the bath, she would make up names for her: Cicely or Polly or Belinda. She came to the conclusion that she wouldn’t mind about losing her figure at all.

She steeled herself to broach the subject to Leonard. She was prepared for fireworks but they were not forthcoming.
Leonard simply shook his head, once, but with a dreadful stony certainty, and answered, ‘No, not for us, my dear.’

‘What?’ Alicia blurted out. ‘
Never?
’

Leonard clasped his hands in that maddeningly reasonable way he had and told her, ‘You know you married the theatre when you married me.’

‘Yes,’ said Alicia, ‘but,’ and then she had stopped, stopped dead and said nothing more on the subject until 1939. Because she had suddenly realized why it was she needed a baby so desperately urgently, and it was not something she could possibly admit to Leonard, not in a million years. She needed a baby precisely so as to get herself out of the theatre. She needed a baby to get herself away from the clutches of Harry Levy.

As wedded bliss with Leonard took on more and more of a tarnish, so Harry Levy shone the brighter. He was a big star by then; he had his name in lights. One day not far off he would leave the company for greater things, everyone knew that; it was only a question of when. There were days, when Leonard had been especially beastly to her, when the prospect of Harry’s departure made him almost irresistible. 
Almost
, for she never forgot she was a married woman. Once or twice, it was true, she only remembered in an abstract sort of way, with a tiny cobwebby corner of her mind. But she had never – and half a century later she didn’t know any more if it was a cause for pride or an eternal regret – she had never forgotten entirely.

Harry never took the least bit of notice of it. He said he had seen through her and Leonard right away. He’d never understand why she married him. The first time he said as much, Alicia had been outraged. Leonard was away on company business for a day or two and she and Harry were having tea together in the Queen’s Hotel. There was dance music playing, Johnny Icebreaker’s Teatime Trio, and Harry’s foot was nudging her brazenly under the table, urging her to get up and dance with him. Well, nudges and winks and brushes in the wings were one thing; frank remarks were quite another.

Alicia bridled with indignation. ‘How dare you?’ she hissed.

Harry laughed. ‘Oh, spare me the melodrama, please,’ he smiled. ‘You know you agree with me.’

She hated him then and yet she went on putting up with him, Lord knows why, when a word to Leonard could have had him out on his ear. But a word to Leonard might have meant answering the question, ‘How long has this been going on for?’ and the answer would have undoubtedly threatened her precious sacred marriage. The answer was: ‘Since I first set eyes on him.’

Courting was not the word for what Harry had done all those years ago; he had besieged her. It was a campaign, like in a war, and she was not in the least surprised when the real war came that Harry turned out to be such a hero; she had known all along from the way he did battle for her that he had it in him.

Every time Leonard was called away on company business, Harry rolled up at the door of their lodgings like a bad penny. He took her to sit in the front, most expensive row of deck-chairs to listen to the afternoon concerts of the band. They went to Pevensey Bay and he pranced on the beach in the sunshine, a dark sun-tanned figure who flung himself headlong into the waves. She, as ill luck would have it, had her monthlies and had to sit watching him from the stony shore. He took her to tea at the Lilac Tea Rooms and, in public, in the middle of the Tea Rooms, he reached across with his cake fork and speared a piece of gateau off her plate. ‘Did you know,’ he teased her, sucking the rosette, letting it dissolve sweetly on his tongue, ‘that sugar flower is the very same colour as your eyes?’

Even when Leonard was there, he hadn’t been much inhibited; he still held her far too long and close in his arms on stage, he still breathed his warm garlicky breath on her neck in the dark of the wings. And she, like an idiot, she let him.

The rumpus was long overdue. Everyone, not only Leonard, was worried about their takings. But it was foolish of her to have spoken up for Harry. It was hardly surprising Leonard had flown off the handle. Had he known, she wondered ever after? Till his dying day, she had naturally never dared ask him. And when his dying day came, she had
missed her moment. Was that what had made his temper that day particularly biting? Certainly, he spoke less and less well of Harry as Harry’s star ascended, but she had always assumed that was professional jealousy, and nothing to do with her. Why would Leonard be jealous over her when he seemed to want so little to possess her? But, from that day on, he ran Harry down remorselessly; he repeated scornfully that Harry had the common touch, he said that of course he wasn’t truly English, he didn’t have an Englishman’s honour. She was always shamefully glad when Leonard said that; it reminded her of why, whatever ridiculous notions she might now and again give in to, she could never really run away with Harry Levy.

Then Harry went away to fight the real war and she never saw him again. He left her gladly, with heroism in his heart and his head held high. On his handsome face there was the serene conviction that he was right; he had offered her her chance, but she had declined to take it. He left her life just as he had entered it, strutting out stage left with his black hair tossing. And she –

They gave him a sumptuous farewell send-off. She wore the blue-and-white polka-dot which Harry liked best and she cheered with the throng, all rouged and smiling, even though deep down she thought her heart was breaking. She raised her glass and drank to his future, his future without her, and she wondered how she would ever conceal her grief if he were to be killed. All through the war, she followed Harry’s fortunes. She paid far more attention to those far-flung places than to the war in Europe. She devoured the news about North Africa and she was miserably jealous when in the last stages of the war he was sent to Italy, because of the ravishing Italian women. He wasn’t killed and, after the war, he went to America. He made his name in the movies and she was left with just his image on the silver screen, an image in which he was no longer Jewish but frequently Italian or Mexican or Greek.

She was left bricked up with Leonard, or that was what it felt like, bricked up within the four stout marital walls of which she had been so proud. How had she stuck it out for, was it really thirty-three years more? She knew how she had
done it; she had made up a story. She had made up a story in which Leonard Queripel was the most splendid husband and the very best of men. He was always fine and upstanding, always true. He was her leading man and she followed him gladly all the days of her life. She told this story to herself so well and so often that she had ended up nearly believing it. Once Leonard was dead, it had of course been a great deal easier.

In the winter of 1939, she had steeled herself to speak to him once more about children. Time wasn’t standing still; she was pushing thirty. But Leonard said it would be madness to think of bringing children into such a topsy-turvy world. The times they lived in were not times in which any reasonable person would dream of starting a family.

Right after VE Day, she asked him once again. She was getting panicky then, for time was running out. There was no chance of getting her way by catching Leonard unawares; for years, on the rare occasions when he consented to perform his conjugal duty, he had used sturdy fail-safe precautions. But she got nowhere, as she had always known she would. Leonard was adamant. Plus he stopped gracing her with his rare favours for good and all.