The Town in Bloom (15 page)

It was an extensive garden, at the side and the back of the vicarage, running down to a little stream where a wooden bridge led across to the park around Mr Crossway’s house. Chairs for the audience were already set out on the lawn. Brice pointed out the quite high mound, topped by a cedar, where Adrian Crossway would stand to bless everyone; and then the local stage manager and his assistant came out of the vicarage. Except that one was middle-aged and one young and both were pleasant and efficient, I can’t remember a thing about them, not even their names.

The entertainment was to take place on the wide terrace at the back of the vicarage, onto which a central door and four tall windows opened. The players – I gathered there were many – dressed in the vicarage bedrooms and had to get downstairs at the right moment to make their entrances. The method of achieving this was explained to me and then the four of us rehearsed it. Brice, in a kind of
prompt corner hidden from the audience by a piece of scenery, held up cards with large black numbers on them. I, at an upper window where I could see him, called the number on the card to the local assistant stage manager stationed on a landing. He then warned the players needed for the next episode. When Brice turned the card over, so that the number was in red, I called ‘Ready, One!’ (or whatever the number was) and then the players concerned marched downstairs to the vicarage drawing-room, where the local stage manager waited in readiness to get them out on the terrace at the right moment. I was told again and again that it was absolutely simple.

At the end of the rehearsal somebody mentioned that there were many other players concealed in the yew walk – knights on hobby horses, folk singers, half a dozen monks – who would come on between some episodes (without any help from me, thank God). So many villagers seemed to be
in
the entertainment that I couldn’t imagine how there could be anyone left to look at it.

Brice and I were coming out of the vicarage to get an early lunch at the inn when Mr Crossway and Adrian Crossway came through the lych gate of the churchyard and crossed the road to talk to us. Adrian Crossway was wearing a long and most becoming clerical garment, and I saw in a flash that his looks were all I had expected my dear’s to be, that day at the audition – and which they had so depressed me by not being. Adrian’s hair was thicker and fairer, his eyes larger and bluer, his nose straighter, his mouth more classical in outline. Also he was slimmer than Mr Crossway. I took pleasure in seeing them side by side and thinking that Adrian’s good looks meant nothing to
me – except that I rather resented them. And Brice’s description had made him sound dislikeable. But I must say he couldn’t have been nicer.

He apologised because the church service had
prevented
his being at the vicarage to meet us, regretted he couldn’t give us lunch there as his housekeeper was busy with preparations for the garden party, and said he would look forward to meeting me during the afternoon. He even walked all the way to the inn with us, after Mr Crossway had gone to lay out his clothes in his dressing-room – which, he mildly complained, was the house maid’s pantry. One difference between them was that, unless Adrian was actually smiling, he looked extremely serious; whereas my dear Mr C. usually looked as if just about to see a joke. Anyway, he looked like that when he was with me.

After Brice and I were on our own at lunch he said, ‘I can’t decide if you’ve made a hit with Adrian or if he simply turned on his charm-the-woman manner. Tom would have only got the curtest “good morning”.’

I had really quite liked Adrian, so I said, ‘You’re prejudiced, just because he’s a Crossway.’ But Brice wouldn’t admit that. He said he found Adrian dislikeable in his own right.

After a scrappy meal we went back to the vicarage and did some more rehearsing with the black and red number cards. I had begun to fear I might wreck the show.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Brice. ‘When there’s any hold-up I cue in the hobby horses from the yew walk and they prance round until I yell for them to go off.’

I felt I might be less confused if I knew what the
entertainment
was about; but Brice said that, after stage
managing it for five years, he still hadn’t any clear idea. He vaguely thought it dealt with the history of the village, with Boadicea and Queen Elizabeth thrown in for good measure.

By now the bedrooms were full of people dressing up. I had nothing to do until the show started so I stood on the front steps of the vicarage and watched the audience arrive. There were a good many cars parked along the village street and a steady stream of people paying their money at the door in the garden wall. Adrian Crossway stood there greeting people and escorting the local gentry to good seats. I hoped to see some pretty dresses but most of the gentry wore drab-looking silk, and the villagers wore drab cotton. Not one dress, in my view, qualified as a real garden-party dress. I remembered that Molly, Lilian and Zelle had worried about what they should wear; and I thought that, even if they wore their simplest summer dresses, they would look better than most of the audience.

I had been too busy all morning to think of the girls. Now I was on the look-out for them. I had begun to fear they would be late when a large, chauffeur-driven car pulled up at the garden gate and out got three absolute visions in fluttering printed chiffon. Molly’s was mainly pale green, Lilian’s was pink and mauve, and Zelle’s was beige and white. All their dresses – and their hats – were the apotheosis of garden-party clothes. (I later learned that Zelle had bought them all, for the occasion.)

I reached the girls just as Adrian Crossway was introducing himself. He had been nice to me, but to them he was almost reverently admiring; they might have been
three goddesses, As he took them into the garden I heard him say they were too late for front seats but he would find them a very special place.

When I got back to the vicarage, the local stage manager wanted to give me some last-minute instructions, so I only got to my open upper window as Adrian Crossway, tall and straight under the cedar tree on the mound, was about to address the audience. I then saw the ‘very special place’ he had found for the girls: they were at his feet, sitting on white skin rugs. On the lower slopes of the mound were the privileged village tots but they didn’t have any rugs.

The minute Adrian said: ‘Good people! My friends, one and all!’ the audience stood and turned to the mound, as people in the chancel of a church turn to the east for the Creed. It would have been more impressive than it was if so many chairs had not been knocked over, but Adrian gave people time to pick them up. He then spoke well and I quite liked what he said about entertainments, as well as church services, having the right to be blessed.

After that, the audience turned towards the vicarage again, knocked over and picked up more chairs, finally got themselves settled; and the show began.

First, Mr Crossway spoke the prologue. Being above him, I could see little more than the top of his head. Anyway, I could neither look nor listen as Brice was already showing a number card. My job had started.

For nearly two hours I repeatedly dashed from my window-seat and up a flight of stairs, shouting my ‘warnings’ and ‘readys’, with no respite except during an interlude of folk song, during which I got the opportunity
to have a good look at the mound. The girls were now not merely sitting; they were reclining, very gracefully, on the rugs. Reclining with them was Adrian Crossway and a large red-haired man rather like Henry VIII but better looking, and broad rather than fat. I was just wishing he would stand up so that I could see if he was tall enough for Molly when, up from the back of the mound, came Mr Crossway. I thought it unprofessional of him to mingle with the audience when he was still dressed as an eighteenth-century squire, but no doubt it would have been dull spending the afternoon in the housemaid’s pantry. I saw him being introduced to the girls and then he, too, settled on the skin rugs. The whole group looked most picturesque and I watched it with interest until the folk songs stopped and my job started again.

When the entertainment mercifully ended I barely waited for Mr Crossway to finish the epilogue before I grabbed the chance to get into the bathroom to tidy up. I found I looked pretty awful. My hot face was shining and I seemed to have lost my powder compact. My grey linen dress with its spotless white collar (‘like’ a Puritan Maid, according to Aunt Marion) was creased and the collar no longer spotless. I felt in no mood to mingle with the girls in their chiffon glory. Anyway, I decided I must report to Brice. But when I got to the terrace he wasn’t there; and as I happened to see the girls going into one of the marquees I hurried into the other and had two cups of tea. Then I felt better and went out to the lawn.

Already chairs were being stacked and people who were not at tea were wandering around. Almost at once I saw
Mr Crossway coming towards me, still in his
eighteenth-century
clothes; many of the performers were still in their costumes. He said he had been looking for me.

‘Any special reason?’ I asked hopefully.

‘In a way. Come and stroll with me. I’ve been talking to your very decorative little friends. Tell me about the dark one. Can she act?’

‘Lilian? She’s only been in musical comedies.’

‘But she tells me she’s played parts. I was wondering—Oh, dear, I’m afraid this may hurt your feelings.’

I found he was considering Lilian for the part I had played, that memorable evening. The girl who had been taken ill was not returning and he had never thought the understudy good enough. I felt a pang, but as there was no hope of getting the part myself I was all for Lilian having it. I suggested he should hear her read.

‘That’s what I thought. Is she teachable?’

‘I’d say that’s just what she is – very quick to pick up ideas. She’ll be thrilled that you like her.’

‘I don’t know that I
like
her – except for the part; she seems a trine hard. The baby-faced giantess is a darling. She’s made something of a hit with Hal Hammond, as you can see.’

Molly and the large red-haired man were strolling across the terrace and he was being most attentive.

I said, ‘How suitable that his name’s Hal when he’s so like Bluff King Hal – though his eyes aren’t so piggy.’

‘And he hasn’t acquired any wives yet,’ said Mr Crossway. ‘I must say they make a striking pair.’

‘It’s so splendid that he’s tall enough for Molly.’

‘He also has other advantages – including a good deal of
money. He’s a local landowner. If he’s seriously attracted, your big little friend could do well for herself.’

‘What do you think of Zelle?’

He said he’d hardly spoken to her. ‘She was sitting next to my brother, who has persuaded them to stay for the evening service. Are you going back with them, or with Brice?’

‘I suppose I couldn’t drive back with you?’

‘No, indeed. And I’m not going till tomorrow. I dislike driving at night. I shall sleep in my workroom.’

I asked when he was going to show me the workroom and he said he ought not to have put that idea into my head. ‘When my wife’s down and the house is open, people often wander over from here and I could have shown you round without its being conspicuous. But now it’s out of the question. We can’t walk across there all on our own.’

We had come as far as the bridge over the stream. I made sure there was no one within earshot and then said: ‘But later – tonight – couldn’t I visit you?’

‘In your long black cloak, I suppose?’

‘Well, I do have it with me.’

He chuckled. ‘And after our interlude at Hampstead I take it that your intentions are entirely dishonourable. No, of course you can’t visit me, tonight or any other night. This is a blood-curdling conversation to be having at a vicarage fete.’

‘No one can hear.’

‘I realise that now – but by tomorrow I shall fear some old lady may have had a powerful hearing-aid trained on us. Oh, you’re a mad, bad girl and I’m so fond of you.’

‘Even when I’m looking my worst, as I am now?’

He regarded me critically. ‘Well, your nose is a bit glossy but what’s a glossy nose between friends?’

‘That’s how I felt about you, that night when your face was covered in grease. Except that I felt more than friendly.’

‘Well, so do I. But you really must get it into your darling head that I never seduce respectable young women, even when they don’t want to stay respectable; and if any dowager has heard that through her
hearing-aid
I trust she’ll set it to my credit. Now, as they say, we must mingle – with the others, I hasten to add.’

‘Can I ask you one thing first?’

‘You undoubtedly will if you want to.’

‘I just want to know, if you didn’t think it wrong, would you … well, like me to visit you in your workroom?’

‘Of course.’ He said it very seriously and very kindly; then his tone became amused again. ‘We’d better try to look less sultry as we rejoin the mob.’

‘Are we looking sultry?’

‘Well, you are. And I rather feared I might be, judging by the effect you have on me, you shameless girl. That’s
absolutely
all for today. Let’s find your friend Lilian and I’ll ask her to come and read to me – tomorrow afternoon if she’s free.’

We found both Lilian and Zelle strolling with Adrian Crossway. It turned out that he had asked all the girls to supper at the vicarage after the evening service, and he at once included me in the invitation, which I thought very kind of him.

‘Do stay,’ said Zelle. ‘Then you can drive back with us.’

I said I must ask Brice if he wanted me to return with
him. Adrian Crossway said I need not bother to let him know about supper. If I didn’t turn up, he’d know I’d gone back to London.

I found Brice upstairs in the vicarage, checking and packing costumes which had been sent from London. He said of course I could stay and, though he would miss me on the return journey, I deserved some fun after my hard work. I helped him until all the clothes were packed except those that were still on people’s backs; the local stage management would have to cope with them. Then Brice went to ask the housekeeper for a sandwich as he saw no chance of getting a meal for hours. I, too, had a sandwich because, if a plan I was already working on came to anything, I was going to be short of food before the evening was over.