Their Finest Hour and a Half (29 page)

‘So what are you
doing
here?' asked Cecy, after he'd kissed her cheek, its surface as powdery and cushioned as the top of a Victoria sponge. ‘And Ambrose, please don't tell me that you saw the matinee.'

‘I did.'

‘Oh
Lord
above, today of all days. Then you can't have missed the dry?'

‘I thought you covered superbly,' he said, covering superbly.

‘Really?'

‘Oh yes.'

‘It was the upstage turn that foxed me.'

‘It would have foxed anyone.'

‘He's
so
inconsistent, the boy playing Teddie – they're simply not trained, these days. And what about that fearful muck-up with the window?'

‘Unnoticeable to anyone outside the profession,' said Ambrose, smoothly, ‘and the parrot routine was beautifully handled. Laugh after laugh.'

‘
Bless
you. So . . .' She lifted her glass, ‘. . . little hot toddy for you? Not the real thing, of course, just honey and hot water and the teeniest dribble of Amontillado. And while I concoct it you can sit on Jillie's chair – that's the girl playing Peggy Murdock, she's awfully good, I think, and the lisp is actually quite charming although I suspect it might cause a problem or two if she ever gets a film, those microphones are so
unforgiving
– you can sit down and tell me absolutely everything. Take Tommy, will you?'

She lifted the cat from her lap, and it dangled bonelessly, like a stole, its back claws flexing for purchase as she lowered it towards Ambrose's groin.

‘He's a grumpy old thing but he generally likes men,' said Cecy, ‘though perhaps you shouldn't make any sudden movements. And you couldn't just ease the lid off this for me?' she added, passing Ambrose a jar of honey. ‘Marvellous,
so
strong. Now do tell all.'

She set about making the toddy, bending over the kettle so that most of his words were addressed to her generous rump, but she was a good audience (he had to concede), exclaiming at all the right places, and offering comments about the film that were both pertinent and surprisingly intelligent – ‘It sounds to me, Ambrose, as if your character's a sight more complex than the others' – and the toddy, when it came, was very pleasant, and the cat sat inertly on his lap, and didn't smell, nor seem to have any fleas.

‘So who's playing the American journalist?' asked Cecy, picking up a piece of knitting.

‘Good question. Apparently the character was a last-minute addition to the script and they're still casting.'

‘No location scenes with him, then?'

‘Back of his head in a couple of set-ups. One of the ADs has been standing in.'

‘Did you know that they're shooting
The Ghost Train
at Gainsborough?'

‘Really?' He made a quick mental inventory of the characters he'd just seen on stage: the gun-running Bolshevik masquerading as a doctor might be a nice, meaty role. ‘When are they casting?'

‘Already done, darling, they've almost wrapped. The story's been changed so that it's all about fifth-columnists now, and Arthur Askey's playing the lead and Kathleen Harrison's Miss Bourne.'

‘Oh.' Damn Sammy. Or Sophie, rather. Though it was possible that the doctor had been written out, the whole concept of gun-running to Russia being somewhat dated these days, and . . . it occurred to him that Cecy had stopped talking and was concentrating, in a rather obvious way, upon her knitting; he had, he realized, missed his cue. ‘I always find Kathleen Harrison's comic delivery rather broad,' said Ambrose. ‘I'm surprised they didn't approach you about the part.'

‘Ah well . . .' Cecy smiled and shrugged, but she gave him a sharp look from under her heavily darkened eyebrows. Her needles clicked industriously, producing something pendulous and khaki. Comforts for soldiers in general, or for a soldier in particular? Ambrose dredged his memory – hadn't Sammy mentioned that she'd had twins, although surely her offspring couldn't yet be of an age for military service? And of course she'd been married to that sad old soak George Garamonde, now long since propping up the bar in the eternal lock-in.

‘Tommy likes you,' said Cecy, nodding at the passive black bundle on his lap. Ambrose raised a hand to pat it, and then thought better of the gesture.

‘He travels with you, does he?' he asked.

‘Oh yes, I pop him into his little basket and off we go together, and he's the most wonderful gauge of character. I'm always suspicious of people who don't respond to animals – I think there must be a tiny little core of ice at the centre of their soul. Don't you?'

‘Mmm,' said Ambrose, non-committally. ‘And how are your – er – twins?'

‘Oh gosh . . .' She didn't speak for a while, and when she did her voice was quite light. ‘Such a long, long time ago. No twinnies, I'm afraid, they were born much too early,' and Ambrose wanted to pull his tongue out by the roots.

‘Another toddy?' she asked.

He managed, somehow, to nod.

‘And then you must tell me all about what's been happening to poor dear old London Town. I've felt quite the deserter, skulking in the provinces. Is it true about the Café de Paris?'

He found his voice again and led Cecy through the boarded windows and sandbagged foyers of the West End, and he had just moved on to a subject very close and very dear to his heart – viz., the nightmarish difficulty of trying to find a domestic plumber – when there was a knock at the door.

‘Oh – now that's sure to be Gus,' said Cecy. ‘Do come in!' and a bearded man entered the room, caught sight of Ambrose and leapt back in mock-surprise.

‘Egad, milady Cecilia, thou hast a visitor!'

‘This is Ambrose Hilliard, Gus.'

‘Nay, thou needst not vouchsafe his name, for well I knowst that visage – hath I not seen it oft a-flicker in the darkness, stretched full twenty feet from ear to ear? Greetings sirrah!' He swept a bow, and Ambrose nodded, coldly; a wag, forsooth. The fellow had played the station-master, but was not quite as old as he had appeared on stage. The paunch had been fake, the thinning hair and beard whitened with chalk.

‘Do you know,' said Cecy, ‘I first met Gus in 1916. I was ASM at Hampstead and he was juve lead, isn't that right, Gus?'

‘And she don't look a day older, do she, what, I say?' said Gus, adjusting an invisible quizzing-glass, having leapt inexplicably from Shakespeare to Sheridan.

‘And then I walked into the rehearsal room in Ipswich and there he was. He's been the life and soul, really he has.'

‘And this fair lady hath been the queen of all our hearts.' Gus knelt and took her hand and laid it against his chest.

‘And now you're being most awfully silly,' said Cecy, looking nonetheless rather pleased. It was a second or two before she detached her hand and resumed knitting. ‘Ambrose is on location with Baker's Productions.'

‘Oh really?' Instead of standing up, Gus sank back on his haunches and lolled against the leg of Cecy's chair, his posture self-consciously bohemian, though he lacked the boneless ease of youth. ‘Is it a comedy?'

‘Drama.'

‘Oh, I thought Baker's was all slapstick and pies, and fat boys climbing ladders.'

‘Not any more,' said Ambrose, lips barely moving.

‘No offence, old man,' said Gus. ‘Now before I forget, Cecy dearest, I just came in to ask if you had any spirit gum.'

‘Right out, I'm afraid.'

‘Oh
bother
.'

‘Is it for the wig?' asked Ambrose. ‘I noticed during the matinee that it needed patching – just at the back,' he added, helpfully. ‘There's a bald area, small but obvious.'

There was a pause. Gus reddened slightly and Ambrose felt a nice jolt of satisfaction.

‘I'm sure that Jillie must have some,' said Cecy, suddenly full of bustle. ‘Yes, look, just here, she uses it for her kiss curl, I'm sure she won't mind if you borrow a dab. It's for the braid on your shoulder, isn't it, Gus? Keeps happening, doesn't it? I could sew it on for you if you'd prefer.'

Gus, clambering awkwardly to his feet, ignored her and fixed Ambrose with a dyspeptic eye. ‘So sirrah,' he said, back at the Globe again, ‘thou wast in the audience this post-noon?'

‘Yes,' said Ambrose, shortly.

‘And yet thou wast not – ah, conundrum!' He posed with a finger under his chin, his expression arch.

‘Whatever do you mean?' asked Cecy.

‘I meanst that in the blackout twixt the first and second scenes in Act Two, I hath espied a most egregious late-comer, a fellow in hat and coat a-creeping into the stalls like the veriest mousie!' Gus essayed a rodent scamper and then paused to look at Ambrose again. ‘'Twere not so, sirrah?' he enquired, pointedly.

Silence seemed the only option. Gus paused hopefully for a moment longer, then waved the tube of gum at Cecy, and said, ‘Do thank Jillie for the kind loan,' and left the room.

After a long moment, Cecy picked up her knitting again. ‘Well really,' she said, tightly, ‘what a pair of silly boys.'

Ambrose found that he could not meet her eye. He looked, instead, at the orange glow of the electric fire.

‘So you missed my scenes,' said Cecy.

‘I'd thought that the matinee began at three.'

‘I see.' She came to the end of a row, and shook out the length of khaki before counting the stitches in an emphatic whisper.

‘Muffler?' asked Ambrose, when she'd finished.

‘Ear-warmers.' She folded the knitting on to her lap. ‘You know, when I first met Gus, all those years ago, he could barely speak when he wasn't on stage. He'd been invalided back from France and he couldn't keep his voice on the level, you see, it kept wavering, and as time went on he started assuming different accents and characters, I think as a way of concealing his difficulty. It seems to have stuck with him, doesn't it?'

Ambrose nodded, uncomfortably.

‘No one ever mentioned anything to him, of course,' said Cecy. ‘One never did, did one? All those fellows coming back with twitches and stutters and nightmares – we all thought it was kinder to pretend that we hadn't noticed. I don't think anyone guessed that with some people the effects might go on and on and on . . .' She gave a brisk sigh. ‘Still, one can't blame the war for absolutely everything, can one? Sometimes bad behaviour has an excuse, and sometimes it's simply bad behaviour, and I must say I'm awfully tired of all that sort of thing. Kindness and friendship are what I value these days. Kindness and
friendship
,' she repeated, firmly, ‘and nothing more. Now . . .' she nodded towards the kettle. ‘Another drink?'

‘No. Thank you. I really ought to be heading back.' He shifted slightly and the cat opened an eye.

‘Are you sure?' asked Cecy.

‘Really. The trains . . .'

‘Well, it was very kind of you to come all this way. It
was
, actually,' she added, a fraction more warmly, ‘and it was very kind of you to compliment my performance, even if you didn't see it. Us thespians, we're awfully good at pretending, aren't we?'

A response was clearly called for, but Ambrose could produce nothing but a vague nod. Over the last hour and a quarter he had chalked up pleasure, depression, mortification, fury, triumph, guilt, remorse, and even – could it be true? could this really have happened? – a bizarre spurt of near-jealousy. He had nothing left in stock. He lifted the cat from his lap, and it bit him, savagely. Pain, ah yes, he hadn't yet experienced pain.

‘Oh
Tommy
,' shrieked Cecy. Ambrose clutched the fleshy web between thumb and forefinger and watched the blood drip on to his trousers. Yes, pain.

*

It was past midnight and Arthur was still awake. He had always found the business of getting to sleep rather tricky, a skill unmastered, but in the army he had temporarily discovered the knack and had fallen nightly into unconsciousness like an anchor dropped into water – no dreams, nothing but a blink of darkness before the morning, and this despite the cement mattress, the barnyard smells, the snores like the grinding of machinery. Here in Badgeham, on a feather bed with no noise but the distant sea, he lay with his eyes open and stared at the pale square of the whitewashed ceiling.

It had rained all day. The crew had worn waterproofs and the camera had been protected by a huge umbrella, and for the first hour or two all had been efficiency and vigour and then, as the damp had begun to creep into both canvas and bones, the pace had slowed. People had stopped cracking jokes, and every scene had been halted before its completion, the photographer objecting to drips from the edge of the umbrella, the fellow with the microphone complaining about splashing footsteps, the actors slipping in the mud. Lunch had been taken early, in the hope of the weather easing, and in the barn in which cast and crew sheltered, the director formed a worried huddle with the other important types while the actors commandeered the hay-loft and sat with their legs dangling over the edge, their feet swinging in a free and easy manner. All around the barn little groups formed. Arthur sat on a bale of straw and ate a Bovril sandwich and listened to the hum of conversation.

‘Everything ship-shape, Arthur?' called Hadley Best from the hay-loft. By way of reply – his mouth being full – Arthur gave a thumbs-up, and noticed that there was a streak of Bovril on the back of his cuff; that was the problem with sleeves that came down to one's knuckles. Of course, he was beginning to understand that no one in the picture business (apart from the actors) cared two hoots about smartness – it was, apparently, quite the normal thing for a crew to sport frayed collars, flapping ties, filthy turn-ups, patched elbows, long hair and black nails, it was part of being ‘behind camera', it was almost a uniform – but at least the crew's clothes
fitted
them.