Poppy (14 page)

But she was feminine enough not to want to appear like a crow forever, and so one hazy, golden June morning, Rose ran to fetch her a cab to take her to Harridges, that famous emporium of ladies’ fashion in Regent Street.

Poppy’s bank account was in a small local branch of Lloyds, and she had quickly become used to writing and cashing checks. Mrs. Abberley had hinted that clothes made by a dressmaker would be more befitting her position, but the sun sparkled through the leaves of the old apple tree, and Poppy wanted them
immediately
.

She settled back in the cab and threw back her heavy black veil with an impatient hand. It was early enough in the morning for the suburban streets to be quiet. Sunlight flashed down through the trees, onto the moving carriage, and the horse’s lazy clop-clop sounded on the cobbled roads.

Poppy thought vaguely of her plans to return to the theater, and smiled at her folly. What was a little silly humiliation compared to this new and beautiful security for herself and Emily and Josie? Then she wondered if Annabelle were married, and if she would ever come to call on such an unfashionable branch of the Plummett family.

At last the cab deposited her before the stately pillars of Harridges, and Poppy walked from the burning pavement into the cool depths of the shop, and into the arms of a sea of flattering deference from the staff. It was then that she realized for the first time that she was, in fact, the Honorable Penelope Plummett, and had mysteriously made the transition from cockney showgirl to lady. In pleased wonder she listened to her own faultless voice as she told the head saleswoman exactly what she wanted.

With meticulous care she tried on blouses and skirts in lovely mauves and lilacs, reluctantly asking that they be threaded with black-silk ribbon to comply with the social rules of half-mourning.

She then bought several charming hats, and moving from the millinery department to the young ladies’ department, bought two beautiful white lace dresses for Josie and Emily.

She found she had a little money left, since she had set herself a strict budget, so she bought a bottle of lavender water for Miss Villiers and some artificial flowers and ribbons for Mrs. Abberley and the two housemaids.

There was still a little left over. She had asked for her purchases to be delivered so she did not have to worry about carrying packages. She was about to leave the store when her eye was caught by a display of toys. Oh, the luxury of being able to buy her little sisters something so splendid as a brand-new toy each! After much debate with herself, she chose a fuzzy teddy bear for Emily and a handsome doll with flaxen hair and blue glass eyes for Josie. These, she said, she would carry with her.

When she emerged from the store the heat struck down, but the heatwave had not been of long enough duration to make the air tired and stale. It still felt exhilarating. A light breeze moved the colored awnings and fluttered the parasols of the ladies.

Poppy decided to walk down to St. James’s Park before returning home. She was pleased by her decision when she at last walked along by the lake under the shade of trees, listening to the band playing selections from
The Gondoliers
. A detachment of Life Guards clattered down the Mall, on horseback, their helmets and breastplates glittering in the sun. The Royal Standard flew proudly above Buckingham Palace, to let his subjects know that King Edward was at home.

Poppy lazily strolled along, her veil thrown back, enjoying the feel of the light breeze on her face. Ducks bobbed after bread in the water, the fountains played, the band played on, and Poppy was content.

Then for some reason a shadow seemed to be edging into a corner of her mind, and she was overcome by a strange unease. Without knowing why, she turned and looked behind her.

Coming along the walk was the Duke of Guildham, with Freda on his arm. The duke was carrying his tall silk hat in his hand, and the breeze ruffled his thick white hair, which he wore—unfashionably—free of grease. Freda looked very beautiful in a white organza dress, which clung to her magnificent figure. A saucy little parasol was held at quite the right angle, and she flirted with her large eyes under its shade.

Poppy raised her hands to lower her veil, but he saw her, and so she stayed like that beside the water, her arms raised, a black silhouette against the sunny day.

He looked at her, his face a well-bred blank. Freda did not see her. They passed by as if she did not exist.

The duke had simply decided not to recognize her because he was with Freda, because he felt he had behaved badly to her at Everton, because—Oh, he did not know why.

At last he could bear it no longer and stopped and turned around while Freda stared wonderingly up at his set face. There was nothing but the water, the sunshine, the band, and the ducks. Of Poppy there was no sign. She had simply disappeared. He must have imagined he saw her, he thought, and wondered at the nagging pain in his heart.

Poppy had moved very quickly across the grass into the black shade of a stand of trees, the black of her clothes merging with the shadow. She stood there for a long time, the box with the toys dangling from her wrist, her bosom rising and falling.

And then she moved, oh, so carefully, taking little steps across the grass in the direction of the Mall. After all, a sudden movement, and she might shatter into pieces as her golden world had just shattered.

With a quick jerky movement she flagged down a passing four-wheeler.

“Lewis’s,” she said in a voice which did not sound at all like her own. “Lewis’s Theater in the Strand.”

The interview with Mr. Lewis and Mr. Pettifor was not exactly easy.

“I don’t know why you want to come back,” said Mr. Benjamin Lewis, examining his cuff links. “You’ve gone and turned into a lady, and although we like to pretend to the contrary, we don’t have ladies in the Lewis girls.”

Made courageous by despair, Poppy faced up to him. “I didn’t want to come back as a Lewis girl,” she said.

“Then what?” asked Mr. Pettifor. The theater was dark and quiet. Poppy had caught both men just at the end of rehearsals, and they were standing on the darkened stage, which was lit only by a shaft of dusty sunlight that had filtered somehow through the filthy glass dome on the roof.

“The lead,” said Poppy quietly, “and the money that goes with it.”

“See here,” cried Mr. Pettifor, very much the outraged dormouse. “You ain’t got the training. You got to work your way up. You got—”

Mr. Lewis silenced him with a wave of his hand, his eyes still fixed curiously on Poppy. “Run round to the King’s Arms, Mr. Pettifor,” he said, “and fetch that pianist, Alfred Jones.”

Mr. Pettifor opened his mouth, thought the better of it, and scuttled off into the blackness of the wings.

“There’s a new musical comedy, written by a young Australian fellow called Cyril Mundy. It’s the same mixture as before, some damned mittel-European country that no one’s ever heard of, and some prince masquerading as a student. So the story line’s nothing.” He leaned forward. “But the lyrics are good, and the music’s funny. Sort of haunts you once you’ve heard it. I’m worried about putting it on, ’cause it’s not quite in our usual line, and you have to hear the tunes more than once for them to catch on. That’s risky for us.

“Now, when that there Alfred gets back, I want you to sing one of the numbers for me, Poppy. It’s one about the girl feeling she’s been abandoned by her sweetheart. If you can make me cry, I’ll hire you.”

He walked over to the piano, which had been left in a corner of the stage after rehearsals, and picked up a pile of music and came back with it, kneeling in the center of the stage in the dusty sunlight and flicking through it until he found the right sheet, which he handed mutely to Poppy.

Poppy emptied her mind of every thought and every hurt feeling, and concentrated solely on the music, and all at once she knew she could do it. She was being asked to sing about lost love and rejection, and who better than Poppy to do that?

“All right,” said Benjamin Lewis when Mr. Pettifor arrived back with the pianist. “Mr. Pettifor and I are going to sit right at the back of the pit, and we want to hear every word, and we want to feel our hearts break. I can’t be bothered fiddling around with the lights, so you’ll need to use that bit o’ sunlight. It’s center anyway.”

Poppy had fortunately been taught to read music at her school, and so she knew exactly how the tune should go before Alfred struck the openings bars.

She carefully took out from the back of her mind the colored picture of Freda and the duke, and all its attendant humiliations and rejections, and put it in the front of her mind and sang to it.

She sang with such pathos and intensity and hurt and longing that little Mr. Pettifor gulped, and Mr. Lewis felt the hairs rising on the back of his neck.

She had taken off her hat, and her golden hair shone in the dusty sunlight, and her black widow’s weeds cast her face into pale relief against the dusty, greasepaint-smelling shadows behind.

There was a long silence when she had finished. She stood alone, trembling and feeling sick, as if she had taken off her clothes in public.

“Christ!” muttered the pianist, staring at the keys.

Mr. Lewis walked down the aisle and stood below the stage, looking up at her.

“I don’t know what’s been happening to you, Poppy,” he said. “But the part’s all yours. I’ll give you the address of my diggings. Come around there tomorrow and meet this chap, Mundy, who wrote the stuff. Alfred, you be there as well. We’ll put it on in the autumn. Well, Miss Duveen, I think you’re going to be rich.”

“Plummett,” corrected Poppy quietly. “The Honorable Poppy Plummett. That’s how I want to be billed.”

“Suit yourself,” he shrugged. “Give us a bit of class. Only hope the Duke of Guildham and that lot don’t try to stop their family name appearing on the playbills. The duke’s got a lot of power, Poppy. He could make things rough for you.”

“Make them rough for me,” echoed Poppy with a bitter little laugh. “He already has. There’s nothing more that lot can do to me.”

“Well, whatever it was they did,” said Mr. Lewis heartlessly, “it’s improved your singing no end. You were always a good singer, Poppy. Now you’re an actress.”

“See you tomorrow,” said Poppy, accepting the card handed up to her.

“I don’t know what Elaine Pym is going to say about this,” wailed Mr. Pettifor.

“Who’s she?” demanded Poppy.

“Our current leading lady,” replied Mr. Lewis. “Well, she can play second.”

“Oh, Gawd!” exclaimed Mr. Pettifor, wringing his hands. “She
will
screech so.”

“Come and have a pint of wet,” said Mr. Lewis comfortingly. “She always did screech, you know.”

Poppy walked out of the stage door and into the heat of the day. She realized she was very hungry indeed, but did not know where ladies ate when they were unescorted. She hailed a cab and gave the man directions to St. John’s Wood, her mind a blank as the cab lurched and swayed out to North London.

As the cab turned into the street where she lived, a tall man was standing at the corner, his back to her, his hat in his hand. His hair shone white in the sunlight. Poppy felt her knees begin to shake.

Then he turned around, revealing a mild, pleasant face like that of an elderly sheep.

But the shock of thinking it might be the duke had unfrozen Poppy’s mind, and she fairly scrambled from the cab, leaving the garden gate swinging on its hinges, running up the mossy path, bolting into the house, and slamming the door behind her.

Sanctuary!

At least
, she thought cynically,
the house is in my name. They can’t take it away from me
.

Her throat felt dry and sore with hurt, but she would not cry. She walked out to the garden and sat quietly on the swing, watching Josie and Emily open their presents, nursing her hurt, fanning her anger, longing for the sun to set so she could escape the cruel world and climb into bed and pull the covers right over her head.

The next day the sun had turned brassy as Poppy once again left St. John’s Wood to reach Mr. Lewis’s home in Chelsea.

As the cab weaved its way through the press of traffic on the King’s Road, Poppy reflected wryly that there was some comfort to the feminine heart in being able to put on new, fresh clothes.

She was wearing a lilac lace blouse, the bertha threaded with a single black silk ribbon. The neckline consisted of a soft rolled collar instead of the usual boned one, and her black linen skirt felt cool and neat, worn over two lilac taffeta petticoats, which rustled enticingly every time she moved. Her hat was a saucy, shady thing of biscuit-colored straw, with a whole garden of violets on its small crown.

The cab turned off the King’s Road and made its way along a shady street, stopping at last at Number Fifteen, which was Mr. Lewis’s diggings. Mr. Lewis, in fact, did not “dig” with anyone, but owned the whole house, a trim little Georgian gem with light, airy rooms and a patch of sunny garden at the back.

Mr. Lewis answered the door himself. He was in his shirt-sleeves and braces, and looked plumper than usual, and Poppy realized that he probably wore corsets when he was at the theater, for his waist had sprung out into one of interesting embonpoint.

He complimented her on her appearance and explained that they were all out in the garden.

The company consisted of Mr. Pettifor, Alfred Jones, a youthful-looking man called Gerald Devere, who was actually forty but had been playing young men for so long that his face had become frozen in a sort of rigid, youthful grin, and Cyril Mundy. And it was Cyril Mundy who made Poppy stand and stare.

He was the most beautiful young man she had ever seen. He glowed with youth and vitality, from his thick head of glossy black curls to his tanned face, white teeth, and slim, muscular body, in striped blazer and white flannels.

She found him immensely attractive, and it was like a balm to her soul. Somewhere at the back of her mind she must have wondered whether she would again find any man attractive at all.