Marking Time (19 page)

‘It’s only part of the point,’ Stella said, as they dabbed Arrid under their arms after their bath. ‘I mean, you can’t live constantly at a pitch of joy or misery.
The people you cite died anyway,’ she added, ‘and there’s surely not much point in loving somebody so much you have to die.’

‘That was just bad luck.’

‘Tragedy is never just bad luck. Tragedy is not taking everything into account, usually one’s own nature. I’m not going in for tragedy – not me.’

As usual she was silenced by Stella, who was, she felt, the most intelligent person she had ever met.

They all assembled in the drawing room for a glass of champagne and little pieces of salty fish on biscuits. Everybody looked extremely festive: Peter and Mr Rose in dinner jackets, Mrs Rose
statuesque and romantic in yards of pleated black chiffon, Stella wearing her wine red taffeta, square-necked, with tight sleeves to her elbow, and Louise (profoundly grateful to Stella for making
her bring an evening dress) in her old coral-pink satin that fitted like a glove to her hips and was drawn into a kind of bustle at the back.

‘What beautiful ladies I am taking tonight!’ exclaimed Mr Rose, with such enthusiasm that they all felt more beautiful. Peter was sent to fetch a cab, wraps and cloaks were put on,
and the women got into the lift with Mr Rose; Peter was told to walk down. ‘You smile,’ Stella’s father said in the lift to Louise. ‘Why?’

‘I’m so happy,’ she answered without thinking.

‘The best reason,’ he said. In some ways he must be a very good father, she thought.

In the cab, Peter teased them about how they would be bound to fall in love with Owen Nares, who was playing de Winter.

‘And why should we do that, pray?’ Stella inquired, bristling.

‘He’s a matinée idol. All girls fall in love with him. And old ladies, of course. The ones with tea trays on their knees.’

‘I shall have to be very careful then,’ his mother said, whereupon her husband seized her hand and said, ‘“To me, fair friend, you never can be
old—”’

‘“For as you were, when first your eye I ey’d – so seems your beauty still—”’ Louise continued.

‘Go on.’

Louise looked at him and began to blush: ‘“Three winters cold . . .” ’ She went steadily on to the end.

There was a short acknowledging silence, and then Mrs Rose put her fingers to her lips and laid them on Louise’s hand. Mr Rose said: ‘That is education. That is what I mean. Mark
that, Stella. You could not have finished that.’

And Stella said, ‘Of course not. Louise is wonderful. She practically knows him by heart.’

And Louise, slightly intoxicated by her success, said, ‘I don’t know anything else, much. Nothing like as much as Stella.’

But this only seemed to make the Roses approve of her more.

If anything was needed to fill her cup, it was discovery that they were in a box, something that had never happened to her before. Her family always chose the dress circle, although she had
always had the secret wish to be in the front row of the stalls. But a box! It combined luxury and romance; she felt important just
being
there. She was settled in front with Mrs Rose and
Stella and a programme was placed on the velvet shelf in front of her. Mrs Rose unbuttoned a small leather case to reveal a pretty pair of pink enamelled opera glasses which she offered as soon as
Louise exclaimed at its prettiness. ‘You can watch the people arrive. It is sometimes very amusing,’ she said. The glasses were extremely good: she could see the expressions on
people’s faces as they wandered in, looking for their seats, seeing friends, laughing and talking . . . It was her
father
! Her father? It
was
! He had just bought a
programme, had said something to the girl selling them, which made her smile, and then he had moved forward, put his arm round a lady who stood waiting for him. She wore a black dress, very bare
– Louise could see the cleft between her breasts, and then her father’s hand, which closed for a moment upon one of them. The lady said something, smiling, and he bent his head and
kissed her quickly on her cheek. Then they moved down the gangway of the dress circle and went to seats in the third row. Everything blurred and she looked quickly away. There was a cold feeling at
the back of her neck, and for a second she thought she was going to faint, but she must not. The desire to turn back and look again – it
couldn’t
be her father – collided
with a terror of his seeing
her
. It
was
him. She remembered her mother on the telephone: ’Daddy’s away, he
never
seems to get any leave . . .’ How could
she prevent him from seeing her? People always looked at the people in boxes. At least he hadn’t got opera glasses and he never used the ones you had to pay for because he said they were
useless. She moved her head slowly back to look at them. Stella had taken the glasses, but she could see their heads bent together over the programme. She put her hand half over her face and turned
towards the stage. In the interval she could say she wanted Peter to have a turn in front and she would be safe – or safer. But until then, she must just sit very still, with her hand over
the left side of her face, and behave as though nothing was happening. Because the other hazard, she realised, was not letting the Roses know that anything was wrong . . .

‘You’re shivering. Are you cold?’ Stella was asking.

‘A bit. Could I borrow a wrap?’

Peter handed her his mother’s shawl, which she pulled round her although she felt hot. ‘Actually, I’m just longing for the play to start,’ she said.

‘Your wish is granted,’ Mrs Rose murmured as the house lights began to dim.

The rest of the evening was like a frightful dream, only it seemed far longer than any dream. She tried, during the first act, to pay attention to the play, but the knowledge that he was in the
same theatre watching the same thing beside the unknown lady with whom, she felt, he
must
be in love (otherwise why would he lie to her mother about not getting leave?) was suddenly too
shocking to be put aside for anything else at all. In the first interval, it was proposed that they should stretch their legs, but realising that this might mean going to the dress circle bar,
where she knew that they might be, she refused, saying that she wanted to read her programme. They left her, and she sat miserably in the back of the box discarding wild notions of escape. She had
no money with her, so she could not leave a note and simply take a cab back to the Roses’ flat. Aunt Anna might not have any money to pay the cab; she might not even
be
there. She
could not
tell
them that she felt ill, as that would mean at least one of them taking her home, and she could not face spoiling the evening with a lie. She
could not
tell them
anything at all. Her head ached, and she wanted to go to the lavatory, but not knowing where it was and fear of encountering him on his way back from the bar made her stay where she was.

This was a mistake; throughout the second act, her need became so urgent that she could not think of anything else, but they had insisted on her remaining in the front of the box, and she was
afraid of the commotion she would cause by getting up and leaving which would entail Mr Rose and Peter getting up to move their chairs for her to open the door to the box. At the second interval,
she knew she had to risk it and Stella said she would come too. There was a queue for the ladies’.

‘A marvellous moment, when she comes down the stairs dressed in Rebecca’s dress,’ Stella was saying. ‘That wicked Mrs Danvers is jolly good too, don’t you think?
Louise? What’s up?’

‘Nothing. I just desperately need—’ She pointed at the lavatory door.

‘Oh. I say, would you mind, awfully, but my friend’s feeling ill. I think she’s going to be sick.’ The slightly resentful faces changed to a real fear, and Louise was
allowed the next lavatory that was free. She remained there for some time because, with the eventual relief, she started silently crying. She found her tiny, inadequate handkerchief and mopped up
the tears, and tried to blow her nose on some lavatory paper which was not of a kind to be much use for that.

When she came out, she found herself face to face with the unknown lady. For a fraction of a second they stared at one another: she had eyes the colour of blue hyacinths, and a small white lock
that sprang surprisingly from the dark ram’s horns into which her hair was fashionably set. Then the woman smiled – her lipstick was cyclamen on a long thin mouth – and pushed
gently past her into the lavatory. The woman could not have recognised her, surely, but Louise had felt a flicker of something – surprise? interest? – come and go in those amazing eyes.
Stella came out of the other lavatory, and Louise set about repairing her face.

‘Better?’

‘Much.’ She did not want to talk to Stella until they were outside. Now she was afraid of finding her father lurking somewhere in the passage. ‘You go first. I won’t be a
minute.’ And because the cloakroom was so full of more people queuing, Stella complied.

Louise came out and looked in both directions, but he did not seem to be there. Stella was waiting for her. ‘You were brilliant at getting me to the top of the queue,’ she said.

‘Wasn’t I? I was waiting for you to make sick noises to back me up, but you didn’t.’

This time she managed to insist on Peter having her seat in the front and Mrs Rose gave her an approving smile for her unselfishness, which it wasn’t at all, she thought miserably.

And then, at the end of the play, she became terrified of meeting them outside the theatre where everybody would be trying to get cabs. Luckily the blackout helped all that: it was almost
impossible to see anyone enough to identify them. But then she began to worry about the Savoy. Her father often went there after a theatre, she knew, because her mother enjoyed dancing. But she
found that she could not bear to think about her mother, being lied to, believing him – or perhaps she didn’t? Perhaps she knew and was unhappy, and that was what made her so difficult
to get on with? She could not deal with thinking about it in front of all these people.

By the time they got to their table at the Savoy, and she had looked round the very full room and decided that they were not there, she thought she would feel better. She must pull herself
together, put on a show of enjoying herself; anyone who knew about acting should know that that was possible. So she began chattering, and drank the glass of wine that was given her far too fast
without thinking, but then she found she really did not want to eat anything. She settled for some cold chicken, as being the easiest thing to eat, and was teased by them for such a dull English
choice. Once or twice during the evening she caught Mr Rose’s eye upon her, a shrewd, appraising look that seemed momentarily to nullify her appearance of enjoying herself, but she persisted:
if she smiled enough she could not be confronted. When she had left nearly all her chicken, she was offered an ice and managed to eat it. At last, the bill was paid, a taxi procured and they were
trundling back through the dark streets.

‘Thank you so much,’ she said. ‘I’ve had a wonderful time.’

‘No, no,’ Mr Rose answered, but whether he meant that she need not thank him, or that he knew it had not been wonderful, she did not know.

It wasn’t until they were going back to school on the train that Stella tackled her.

‘What’s
up
?’

‘Nothing’s up, Stella, honestly.’

‘Oh, well, if you’re just going to tell me lies, I’ll certainly shut up. And if you really don’t want to tell me, that’s all right too. I’ll mind, of course,
because I thought we told each other everything, but I would stop asking you. Well?’

‘Something is. I can’t tell you. I do partly want to,’ she added, ‘but it feels sort of disloyal.’

Stella was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘OK. If you’re sure there’s nothing I can do to help.’

‘There’s nothing anyone can do.’

‘My parents were awfully worried about you. They really liked you. You’re the first person I’ve brought home whom they’ve liked. Which is a good thing, otherwise
they’d make a frightful fuss about my coming to stay with you in the holidays. I so long to see your house in the country and that great family clan.’

‘How do you know your parents were worried about me?’

‘They said so, of course. Anyhow, it was obvious, wasn’t it? Even Peter knew
something
was wrong and he’s not known for his perspicacity.’

‘Oh.’ It was disheartening to think that her acting had been such a failure.

‘My mother just thought that you were taken ill, or getting the curse or something, but my father said nonsense – you had had some kind of shock.’ The grey-green eyes were
observing her intently.

Louise took refuge in anger. ‘I’ve
said
I don’t want to talk about it! Hell’s bells and buckets of blood!’

That evening, she asked permission to ring up her mother in London.

‘Darling! Are you all right? Is anything the matter?’

‘Nothing. I just wondered how your weekend with Grania had gone.’

‘It was rather awful, really. She didn’t want to leave Aunt Jessica who was absolutely exhausted. She’d taken to getting up in the middle of the night and waking Jessica for
breakfast. And then, when we finally got her packed and into the car, she thought she was going home. And at Tunbridge Wells she wouldn’t get out of the car for ages. I practically had to
trick
her – say we were just going to have tea with some people. So
leaving
her there was ghastly.’ Her voice tailed off, and Louise realised that she was trying not
to cry.

‘Oh, Mummy
darling
, how awful! I am so sorry.’

‘It is very sweet of you to ring. They say she’ll settle down – that people always do.’

‘And what about you?’

‘Oh, I’m all right. I came back and had a lovely extravagant bath – not one of the Duchy’s four-inch jobs – and now I’ve had an enormous gin and I’m
going to boil myself an egg. Did you have a nice weekend with your friend?’