The Serpent's Sting (2 page)

It was suffocatingly hot, and the audience of howling children was viciously indifferent to the violence being done to my integrity as an artist by every ghastly syllable I was obliged to utter and by every mincing step I was obliged to take. As the foul smell of the ancient wig I was wearing wafted into my nostrils, I began to view the bombing of Darwin with something like nostalgia.

That first show is not among my proudest theatrical achievements. My dialogue was minimal, and consisted mainly of saying, ‘Oooooh.' I pulled faces and lifted my skirts to reveal the hairy legs beneath. Jim Stokes had been given, or he'd taken, all the best lines, such as they were, and Joycey Dovey had made only a desultory attempt to remove the vomit from my bodice. Under the circumstances, though, I thought I did all right. I don't believe the audience was even aware that one of the dames was seeing the show for the first time, just as they were.

In the mean, stale space of the dressing room afterwards, I sat beside Jim Stokes and glumly scraped the thick, white make-up from my face.

‘You're too small,' he said meanly. ‘It's not a fucking drawing-room comedy. It has to be big, big, big.'

As Stokes said this, he shed his voluminous costume and stood voluminously before me — pasty, flabby, and with an eruption of pustules scattered across his shoulders and mottled, glabrous chest. He was fifty years old, and I thought this might also be his avoirdupois weight. He'd taken a set against me because I hadn't fainted with envy when he'd told me that he'd played the Brighton Pier in England in 1934.

I watched Stokes in my mirror. When he'd wiped his face clear of the obliterating caricature of his ugly-sister mask, his porcine eyes and pitted jowls were revealed in all their grim, almost post-mortem dullness. He ran his pudgy fingers through his dry, grey curls, dislodging an avalanche of scaly dandruff. With his other hand he picked off the flaky skin from the corners of his nostrils, blithely unaware that an onlooker might find this disgusting.

‘You're only filling in, of course, so I suppose we must make do,' he said, as he wrestled with a stubborn flap of desiccated skin. The fact that I was ‘filling in' was the one thing that was making my circumstances tolerable.

After the first performance, I began to find my feet. The other cast members, whose names I was trying to remember, were generous to me, and one or two of them even praised my performance. No praise was forthcoming from Percy Wavel, and Jim Stokes didn't become any more accommodating. He accused me of trampling on his lines and mischievously putting him off by missing cues and wilfully ignoring his feeds. I forbore to point out that any flaws in the performance were the result of his inadequate stagecraft, not mine. I'd been told to follow his lead, but I'd abandoned this strategy when he revealed himself to be such a frightful old fraud. Following his lead on stage would take me nowhere.

By the third performance I was absolutely on top of the role, and my biggest challenge was preventing Jim Stokes from sabotaging me. Behind the camouflage that is the extravagance of pantomime, he tried to undermine me at every turn. With years of Shakespearian training behind me, I was more than equal to his assaults, and rose each afternoon magnificently above them. It was wearing and tedious, however, and my final performance loomed as a relief. Roger was recovering, and he was expected to return to his role after the fifth performance.

My final appearance went well, and even the minimally discerning audience of children gave me a round of applause that was more sustained than that which they gave Jim Stokes.

I might have put this brief flirtation with the grimmest of theatre's byways behind me, were it not for the fact that, unbeknown to me, my brother, my mother, her paramour, Peter Gilbert, and his two adult children from his first marriage had decided to catch the show, and worse, much worse, they'd decided to ‘come round' afterwards. The stage door wallah was supposed to keep people out, but an appeal to this decrepit creature's sentimental side, along with a one-pound note, ensured that not only were my visitors allowed in, but the delightful surprise in store for me wasn't ruined by their being announced.

Jim Stokes hadn't yet returned to the dressing room. It was his habit, often, to share a beer at the end of a performance in a remote corner of the wings with a young man for whom Jim Stokes in full drag fulfilled some bizarre, inexplicable yearning.

I'd shed the heavy, ponderous dress, and was enjoying the sudden weightlessness of being naked before pulling off the wig and removing the make-up. I'd reached up to lift the wig when the door opened and my five visitors leaked into the room. From the neck up, I was a pantomime dame; from the neck down, I most certainly was not. There were a few frozen seconds in which everyone dredged his or her memories for a rule of etiquette that might cover such a situation. The young woman, who I'd never met, but who I knew to be Peter Gilbert's daughter, stepped forward and introduced herself.

‘Cloris Gilbert. Will Power, I presume.' She put her hand out and, in an action that I hoped expressed an insouciance I wasn't feeling, I shook it.

‘I believe we'll soon be related by marriage,' she said, as if this somehow restored some balance into the wildly unbalanced situation in which we found ourselves. Over her shoulder I saw the look on the face of the young man who I assumed was her younger brother, John, and it came as close as I've ever seen to a cartoon sneer of unadulterated, unguarded contempt. Absurdly, I thought it might be the wig, and ripped it off, thereby providing him with the even more grotesque spectacle of being fully made-up, but wigless.

‘Darling,' Mother said, ‘perhaps a robe might be a good idea.'

I was in such a discombobulated state that it hadn't occurred to me to cover myself. I did so, but almost casually, as if I saw no need to be frantic about my nakedness.

‘You were marvellous, darling,' Mother said, and then typically spoiled it, rather, by adding, ‘and isn't it lovely that we came backstage, because I wasn't quite sure which one you were.'

Wrapping myself in a bathrobe only eased my discomfort minimally. Brian made no attempt to disguise his delight at finding me reduced to a pantomime dame.

‘You really should learn how to walk in heels,' he said. ‘I could've taught you, if you'd thought to ask.'

He could have taught me, it was true. Brian, who'd played the femme in the Concert Party shows, had become an accomplished wearer of female shoes.

Peter Gilbert made the formal introductions of his two children, even though Cloris had got there first, in her case. Cloris was, I recalled, twenty-eight, and John, twenty-six. Cloris must have resembled her late mother, and although she was no beauty, she had a striking face. It was strong, but not masculine. It was the face of a young Ethel Barrymore, perhaps. John Gilbert resembled his father very strongly. It pains me to say that he was a good-looking man, although his features were tensed into an unpleasant, continuous sneer. Despite his name, he looked nothing like John Gilbert, the actor. He hadn't been named after him, as his father had once been at pains to point out to me. If he resembled anyone, it was the tragic Wally Reid, although I couldn't imagine John Gilbert descending into morphine addiction, and dying in a padded cell, as Reid had done.

The gathering in the dressing room was blessedly brief. Its main purpose, apart from humiliating me, was to let me know that Mother had acquired a good piece of beef — she rarely had difficulty acquiring good meat, which, although it wasn't yet rationed, was nevertheless expensive and hard to come by. Mother had proved quite an adept at exploiting the local black market since the war began.

‘Black market is such an ugly, misleading term,' she used to say. ‘The home front is a theatre of war, too, and we all do what we can. If good meat is there, and I can get it, to do anything else would be irresponsible and wasteful. And would do nothing for morale, and morale wins wars.'

I was glad to accept this invitation to dinner. Although I lived in the same house as Mother, I'd made it my business to be unavailable for most evening meals. I didn't want to talk to Peter Gilbert, who seemed determined to ingratiate himself as my future stepfather — an absurd term, given my age, and his.

This dinner would be my first opportunity to properly assess the two people who would soon be my stepsiblings. I know it's completely illogical, but I didn't object to that term in relation to them. Mother's marriage to Peter Gilbert was scheduled for 15 January 1943, and although, as I think I've made clear, I couldn't see myself warming to Peter Gilbert, I have a sufficient reservoir of grace to sympathise unconditionally with his and Mother's profound grief following the death of their son, and my half-brother, Fulton. Despite such natural sympathy, it was unlikely that it would transmute into affection. With no expectation that I would develop finer feelings for Peter Gilbert, the probability that I would embrace his children was remote, particularly after our awkward and undignified initial meeting in the dressing room. I couldn't help but feel that I was at something of a disadvantage, having been seen naked by them and not having seen either of them naked in return.

Not long after my visitors had left, Jim Stokes returned. Given that this was the last time we would see each other, I was prepared to be generous. Jim Stokes was not. He sniffed at me and suggested that I might like to take acting lessons between now and my next engagement. This was rich, coming from him, who lumbered about the stage, bovine in both grace and wit.

‘You're very overweight,' I said. ‘I think you might be dead soon.'

With my make-up removed and back in mufti, I made my farewells to the mostly pleasant cast. They at least expressed some small regret at my departure. Percy Wavel wasn't on the premises, so I was unable to farewell him. He was probably drinking in a nearby hotel.

I emerged from the theatre into Bourke Street at 6.00 p.m. It was a bright, hot day, and the pavements were busy. I experienced a sudden surge of misanthropy — I am prone to this — and hated all the smiling faces for their complacent belief that they had something to smile about, and hated with equal vehemence the glum faces for their self-important certainty that their problems mattered.

It had been arranged that we would have drinks before dinner. Brian had managed to buy a bottle of single-malt whisky — a luxury now, and more than ever the preserve of the rich and unscrupulous. I presumed Brian had found the whisky through someone in Military Intelligence. How else could he have come by it? He didn't appear to be working. He claimed he was looking for work and that he had sufficient savings to see him through for a while. He denied, as he did every time I raised it, that Intelligence was his master. The denial was proof enough for me that he was lying. However he'd come by the whisky, we were to enjoy it before dinner. Initially I'd baulked at the idea, not wishing to engage in small talk with the Gilberts for a moment longer than was necessary. However, it occurred to me that a few whiskies would anaesthetise me against their company over dinner. I said I'd be home by 6.30.

The air was still, and I decided to walk home, as it would save me the cost and the discomfort of the tram ride. As I walked out of the city and up Lygon Street, I was filled with an extraordinary romantic yearning. I passed the cemetery, and was chillingly conscious of the secret it held. My role in the disposal of a corpse (had it really been only, what, twelve weeks ago?) was unlikely now ever to be discovered, but the guilt and the awareness of my foolishness would never leave me. I have no wish to go over this matter here. My memoir
A Thing of Blood
will answer all queries.

These uncomfortable feelings were soon supplanted by an awful ache that I recognised as the absence of a woman in my life. I'd been disappointed in the past, both distant and recent, and perhaps, too, I'd been a disappointment — although I acknowledge this more in the interest of balance than truth. One's own capacity to disappoint is never the equal of this capacity in others.

I enjoyed the vague melancholia of loneliness for a while, but suppressed it when I opened the gate to Mother's house in Garton Street. I entered, and heard chatter and laughter coming from the front room on the left. I couldn't face them without first taking a bath and washing the Tivoli off my skin.

I filled the bath with cold water, defying the current regulations as to depth. I sank into it and gasped. My body quickly adjusted, and I must have dozed off, because I was awakened by Brian splashing water in my face.

‘We're waiting for you, Will. Get a wriggle on.'

He was smiling his gentle whisky-smile, and generally exuding the air of a man for whom all was right with the world.

‘I don't have to like them,' I said.

‘That is a true statement. You don't have to like them, and as you don't actually like anyone, they might learn not to take it personally.'

‘You should have seen the way Peter Gilbert's son looked at me. Utter contempt and horror.'

‘He's not a theatre person, Will. He's never seen a naked man in a lady's wig before. I think he was just understandably appalled by you.'

‘Well, that's not going to make it comfortable to have chit-chat with him.'

‘They're actually quite all right. Both of them. They find the whole situation as strange and awkward as you do. They didn't know about Mother, or us, until relatively recently.'