Their Finest Hour and a Half (28 page)

‘Christ!' said Ambrose, out loud, and the maid who was clearing the last of the breakfast dishes gave a little jump.

He skimmed the rest of the article –
thrilled
,
fun
,
fun
,
fun
,
terrific
,
fun
,
Angela
,
fun
,
director
,
fun
,
Hadley
,
fun
, no mention of his own name,
super
,
goofing about
,
fun
– and then he closed the newspaper, and stretched back on the hard dining-room chair and clasped his hands behind his head.

Doris was a ninny, the possessor of saucer eyes and a pretty, dimpled face that reflected every passing emotion, like that of a toddler. Watching her interpret a scene was akin to viewing a speeded-up film of the sky – the clouds flicking across the sun, a brief rain-shower, a ruffle of wind, the sun bursting out again – all in the course of a single listening shot. It was artlessness taken to exhausting lengths. Her ‘twin' Angela – and they were a fair match facially, aided by congruous hair-styles and a clever identical beauty spot added by the make-up chap to each rosy left cheek – was a cipher by comparison, though she made up for any sphinx-like qualities of appearance by an absolutely uncensored approach to conversation. Her life was laid bare at every opportunity and to anyone within earshot – romance, arguments, reconciliations, bust-ups – all shared in such minute and relentless detail that the items became indistinguishable, a single linkless sausage, devoid of mustard or spice. And then there was Hadley Best, poor sap, using the word ‘stickler' in every other sentence, as if military accuracy would in some way compensate for the fact that he was consistently out-acted by Chick's dog. ‘Of course, I'm off to the navy myself,' he kept saying. ‘Yo ho heave ho.' And behind the hard-tack-and-hornpipe jocularity, and the renditions of ‘Blow the Man Down' one could almost smell the black waters of the Atlantic, the death-run that was swallowing ships whole.

They were all so
blank
, these youngsters, so pristine, so lacking in footnotes and bookmarks, their pages uncut, their margins unsullied; even Arthur Frith, peering out at the world like a tortoise newly emerged from the shell, seemed to have acquired no history over the course of his thirty-odd years.

‘Mr Hilliard . . .' Ambrose turned to see the landlady of the Crown and Anchor, her hand slightly raised as if volunteering in class. ‘I wonder, Mr Hilliard, if you'd be kind enough to vacate the dining-room so that the girl can tidy around. There's a very nice fire lit in the snug . . .'

He nodded, affably enough, and took his paper into the bar-room. It was a bleak morning, rain sliding down the windows and a stiffish breeze rattling the trees on the green. The big reveal sequence had been scheduled for today – Uncle Frank climbing on deck, German aircraft overhead, crowds of extras in the water, explosions – but this ridiculous business with the extras' costumes had shoved the whole thing back a week, and, instead, the crew was out shooting a scene involving Hadley, the dog and a crowd of Norfolk villagers masquerading as Belgian refugees. Doris and Angela, their own scenes postponed, had gone to Norwich for the day to look at the shops, the writer Buckley was observing his usual practice of sleeping until noon, and Ambrose himself was at a loose end until the following morning. He lit a cigarette and turned to the back page of the
Eastern Daily Press
. It was hard to believe that so little happened in East Anglia that they could devote one whole page out of a total of four to small ads and notices. Or perhaps not, he thought, as a gust of wind tumbled a rook past the window. He began to work his way through the columns –
For Sale
, a tandem in Downham Market, four white leghorns (good layers) in Holt;
Help Needed
, maid wanted, maid wanted, housekeeper wanted and good luck to them with that particular search;
Entertainments
, Hoxne Amateur Dramatic Society tackling
King Lear
, God help the audience, Norwich Players with
Rookery Nook
, Ipswich Grand presents
The Ghost Train
by Arnold Ridley, Prince of Wales Theatre Cromer would like to announce the extension of their record-breaking run of
The Student Prince
.

He folded the newspaper. The fire seemed to be producing smoke rather than heat, and the only other occupant of the snug was a trembling ancient, currently asleep. Ambrose crushed his stub into the ashtray, looked out of the window at the sodden village green, and then checked his wrist-watch. Nine thirty; three hours until luncheon. He lit another cigarette and picked up the newspaper again. There was something tugging at his memory, something he'd seen on the back page . . .

*

Edith had never thought of herself as a passionate woman, but she was passionate now, so much so that she kept jamming the Singer by dint of over-vigorous treadling, and had several times caught herself muttering out loud, like a mad old woman, because it wasn't fair, it simply
wasn't fair
that it was Verna who had been seconded by the film people when she herself was almost certainly the only person in Badgeham, and very probably the only person in the whole of Norfolk, who already knew the meaning of the phrase ‘breaking down' within the context of costume authenticity and had, in fact, been responsible for actually re-inventing the previous, rather primitive, Tussaud's method of fabric-ageing (a butter-churn filled with stones) when required to re-clothe Livingstone and Stanley for the 1937 Four Corners of the Empire exhibit, during the course of which she had even researched the colour of the mud in the Tanganyika Delta. She was the closest thing to an expert that anyone could possibly stumble across, and yet, when the woman from the wardrobe department had unexpectedly called at the shop and begged for assistance, had Verna said, ‘Why, that's just the job for my cousin Edith, who at this very second happens to be out of the room?' No, she had instantly volunteered for the task herself, and when Edith had arrived back from the WC three minutes later it was to find a fait accompli, and a pile of women's overalls in saxe-blue cotton drill, pinned but not yet stitched, that she was now required to complete all on her own – presumably by skipping meals and working straight through the night – because Verna was
needed
.

‘Though to be honest, it's not an exciting job,' her cousin had said, on the first evening. ‘I've been given a nail-file and I'm roughening all the buttons so they don't look so shiny on camera,' but her voice, as she said it, was full of kindly condescension, and for a moment Edith had experienced the urge to pick up a fork and stick it in the back of Verna's hand, for it was not the
interest
of the work that had drawn her, it was the perfection of the coincidence, the sense that something fresh and unexpected and utterly Edith-shaped had appeared on the road ahead. ‘It' had arrived, at long last, ‘it' had smiled, ‘it' had beckoned, and ‘it' had been lassooed, hobbled and dragged away by Verna.

‘And I have to say that I'm very impressed by the whole tone of the proceedings,' added Verna, in that breathy, busy little voice, ‘because obviously, I was anxious that the arrival of so many newcomers from . . .' she glanced at Myrtle, who was concentrating on her sponge pudding, and then mouthed the word ‘London' at Edith, ‘might have a lowering effect on the village, on the local girls and so forth – you know what I mean Edith, don't you? And I felt that it was important, as a chapel-goer, to keep an eye on what was happening, that's of course why I volunteered to help, but I've been assured that the story of the film is entirely clean in every respect, and the people I've met so far have been very nice, with very nice manners. Married, most of them.' Was there a slight edge of disappointment in her voice? ‘Because all the younger ones have been called up, of course.'

Had she been hoping to widen her gossip pool, to hear a few more sets of fumbled buttons on Mudd Street? Edith slapped down the thought, shocked by her own spite and prurience; still, it was infuriating to hear Verna dispensing new-found expertise over the supper table (‘. . . and then there's a standby wardrobe assistant who checks the costume every time there's a take, and, of course, by the word “take” I mean . . .' ), and a relief when Myrtle finished her pudding and cut straight to the heart of the subject.

‘But have you met any film-stars?'

‘I saw a gentleman who apparently used to be a film-star, and also a very polite and nice young lady actress called Miss Doris Cleavely who came in for a costume fitting. I don't suppose that
she
ever puts her elbows on the dining-room table . . .'

Since then, Edith's outrage had continued to smoulder. ‘It's really very fortunate that you're here,' Verna had said only this morning, vigorously fanning the embers. ‘Otherwise I might have had to cancel that last order of overalls.'

In the little lean-to at the back of the shop, deafened and blinkered by the ugly rattle of her own thoughts, and the drumming of the rain on the glass roof, and the chatter of the needle, and the endless line of stitching that chased across the stiff blue material, one colour scarcely darker than the other so that she needed to peer closely in the low afternoon light to check the straightness of the seam, Edith's world seemed to contract, its walls to thicken. She didn't notice the resumption of gunnery practice, nor – some time later – the tinkle of the shop bell.

*

It was only after he had knocked at the stage door and was waiting for a reply that it occurred to Ambrose that he ought to have brought something – a token – flowers, perhaps. He turned to look along the street in the faint hope of seeing a nosegay-seller emerge from the gloaming, but there was no one in view but a distant cyclist, pedalling grimly through the puddles. The rain fell in the same constant, dispiriting fashion that it had pursued all day. It had turned the landscape between Badgeham and Ipswich into a dismal blur, and leaked through the seams of his shoes as he'd walked from the station to the theatre. There was no sign of it stopping; another couple of weeks of this and the German navy would be able to float straight to London via Cambridge.

He lifted his hand to knock again, but before he could do so, the door sprang open to reveal a pretty little thing in a pixie hood, and a weak-looking chap holding an umbrella.

‘Sorry,' said the girl, ducking past Ambrose; he'd seen her on the stage just ten minutes before and she was still in full make-up, her lips startlingly vivid. ‘Ooh, I could murder some cheese on toast . . .' he heard her say to her companion, as they hurried away. Ambrose entered the corridor and let the door swing shut behind him.

It was a touch unfortunate that a combination of a delayed connection at Norwich, and the understandable assumption on his part that the matinee would begin, as matinees had always begun, at three o'clock, had meant that he'd missed the entire opening act of
The Ghost Train
. In fact, as the crone in the box-office had explained to him at unnecessary length (and with the inevitable use of the catch-all phrase ‘owing to the international situation'), the evening performance these days began at six and the earlier performance at two. As a result, by the time he'd settled into his seat in the stalls, Cecy's character – a comic spinster, Miss Bourne – had already accidentally imbibed a flask of whisky and was lying in an inebriated sleep on the table in the station waiting-room, and he'd had to sit through another hour and a quarter of stilted nonsense before she'd awoken on cue and uttered the penultimate line of the entire play. It was lucky that he'd seen the whole thing performed once before, years ago, and could dimly remember a spot of comedy business with Miss Bourne's parrot in the opening scene; it was always best to compliment a specific moment when going round.

Dressing-room Number 5 was at the top of three steep flights of stairs, and Ambrose paused outside the door to recover his breath. ‘Mrs Clyde-Cameron, Miss Robertson, Tommy', it said, rather puzzlingly, on the strip of pasteboard below the number. From inside the room came the tinkle of spoon on glass. He knocked.

‘Come in, darling.'

A great belch of warm air engulfed him as he opened the door. Cecy was sitting in front of a two-bar electric fire, a black cat on her lap, a small tumbler in her hand. Her expression, as she looked at him, was one of pantomimic amazement.

‘
Ambrose!
'

And although her amazement quickly gave way to what should have been a gratifying degree of delight, Ambrose felt a converse drooping of his own spirits, because ever since he'd read the notice in the newspaper this morning, and had made the connection between the repertory theatre at Ipswich and the possibility of having a conversation with someone who hadn't actually been wearing school uniform in the twenties, it seemed that he'd been carrying an image of Cecy in his head that was (as it now transpired) altogether softer, more shapely, and less toothy than the original, and the shock of seeing her in the flesh – in the too, too solid flesh – had made him suddenly start to think about what a bloody long way it would be back to Badgeham this evening.