As Hannah, Mrs Morton’s maid of all work and general dogsbody, moved from bedroom to bedroom lighting meagre fires and taking away chamberpots because the elderly ladies of the house couldn’t be expected to use the privy in the middle of the night, she must have informed the residents of 17 Willoughby Square, Hampstead, that Libby was heading into town.
It could be the only reason why, as Libby was taking out the pin curls she’d slept in and surveying the sparse contents of her wardrobe, there were constant taps on the door and plaintive entreaties to be allowed in.
The ancient aunts, Alice and Sophie, wanted a quarter of humbugs, a jar of potted meat, two balls of black wool and if Libby happened to be passing a bakery late in the afternoon, a bag of stale buns. Mrs Carmichael also wanted wool, a pair of size nine needles, a packet of digestive biscuits and a bottle of Milk of Magnesia. Little Miss Bettany sent a note asking for denture cream and a small jar of Bovril, and Potts, though he was perfectly able to toddle to the shops under his own steam, demanded a bottle of gin. Even Hannah, after sneaking the kettle up the stairs so Libby could wash in lukewarm water, presented Libby with a sad collection of farthings and ha’pennies and a request to ‘pop into Woolies and get me a half pound bag of weigh-out sweets, Miss Libby, but no Brazil nuts or toffees, please. They play havoc with my back teeth.’
It was quite clear that the old and infirm residents of the house were hungry and cold. Mrs Millicent Morton, landlady and Libby’s mother-in-law (though the older woman believed that no woman could ever be good enough for her precious Freddy), ran a tight ship.
Libby had had nowhere else to go. She’d given up her digs in town before she’d got married and when she’d come back from Paris, broke and broken, Millicent had grudgingly offered her lodgings, which Libby had grudgingly accepted. Beggars couldn’t be choosers but that didn’t mean Libby liked her living arrangements, or Millicent, who ran a teetotal house and refused to even countenance the idea that her darling son had done a runner.
It was little wonder that relations between the two women were strained, not that they’d been particularly chummy before.
It was also hard to feel warmly towards a woman so mean-spirited and penny-pinching that she’d halved the week’s coal delivery and had recently decided that the entire household should embrace vegetarianism. ‘Meat is so hard to digest,’ she’d explained when Libby had defended her right to the occasional rasher of bacon. ‘It lies rotting in one’s gut and excites passions. I can’t have that. This is a respectable house.’
Not that there was anyone in the house who had any passions worth exciting. They were all too cold and miserable to give in to their baser lusts. Libby shivered on the threadbare rug in her bedroom. It had been Freddy’s old room, his model aeroplanes still suspended from the ceiling, the bookshelves crammed with tales of derring-do. She tugged on her best dress over her goose-pimpled flesh. The dark green frock she’d been married in. It had been snug then, she’d been four months along at that point though no one was meant to know – she’d couldn’t even eat the smoked salmon sandwiches Freddy’s editor at the Daily Herald had provided for the wedding breakfast for fear she’d rip the seams. Now it hung off her, but Libby added a belt and by the time she’d carefully combed out her hair and applied a little make-up, some rouge, mascara, lipstick, she was quite pleased with the end result. She was still a little faded at the edges, but she looked much better than she had. Felt better too.
Thankfully she’d stopped bleeding, that terrible pain in her side had quietened down – some days it disappeared entirely – and though she’d had to spend a week in bed after she’d returned from Brighton, now Libby fairly skipped down the stairs to the dining room.
It was hard to skip or make any sudden movements when every surface was littered with what Millicent called her ‘objets d’art’. Ugly figurines, old-fashioned frames containing old-fashioned photographs of stiff people in old-fashioned clothes, decorative plates on stands. It was all so Victorian; the house dark and dreary, every window hung with heavy drapes, so it was difficult to see where one was going in the gloom of a February day. At least in the morning room the fire was lit and Hannah was just bringing through the teapot and toastrack as Millicent sat at the head of the table, a peevish look on her sallow face, her tone querulous.
‘I’m convinced that people have been helping themselves to coal,’ she announced, and the little old ladies – the two aunts, Mrs Carmichael, and Miss Bettany (who hadn’t uttered one word the whole time that Libby had been in residence) – quivered where they sat. ‘I’m sure that your rooms are quite warm enough without having to take extra so others must go without.’
‘Goodness, Millicent, please tell me that you haven’t been counting how many pieces of coal there are in the bucket,’ Libby said as she took her seat on Millicent’s right.
Mrs Morton shot Libby a look of quiet, seething fury as she did every time Libby called her by her Christian name. ‘Of course I don’t,’ she said with wounded dignity. Libby calmly took a piece of toast and waited and she hadn’t even counted to ten in her head before one of Millicent’s bony hands pressed against her black bombazine bosom. ‘Must you always be so strident, Elizabeth? Especially when my heart has been palpitating wildly. I barely slept last night and when I did I had such strange, unsettling dreams about my poor late Arthur, then I lay there fretting about poor Freddy. Of what might have happened to him. Something terrible somewhere foreign and how would I ever know? I suppose you haven’t heard from him?’
Libby continued to calmly spread butter on her toast, thickly enough that Millicent gave an unhappy whimper at her profligacy. ‘No, I haven’t,’ she said. ‘He could by dead in a ditch on the road to Seville for all I know.’
She’d only said it to be spiteful because Millicent was so tiresome but the thought of Freddy dead, or even ill or injured, brought her no pleasure; the traces of her love for him still lingered. Millicent clutched her chest again and her sharp features softened as if she were about to dissolve into tears. ‘Dead,’ she echoed. ‘Dead on a dusty road where those heathens will step over him. Not even give him a Christian burial.’
The argument had gone on long enough. ‘I’m sure Freddy is alive and well,’ Libby said. ‘Probably halfway through writing his novel and he’s all but forgotten his own name.’ She paused to take a bite of toast. ‘Now, back to the coal. If any has gone missing, it’s sure to be one of the gentlemen. They come and go at such odd hours. Who can say what they get up to?’
There were three salesmen who rented rooms and disappeared for days on end as they plied their trade (one of them, a Mr North, had once cornered Libby on the stairs and asked if she’d be interested in doing some modelling for his camera club) then would return to change the tenor of the house with their heavy tread and the foul stench they left in the privy.
Peace was restored. Now Millicent and her geriatric paying guests could happily complain about the men and their inconsiderate behaviour. By the time Libby rose from the table, the ladies were preparing for a long morning spent in the drawing room, the only room where the fire was lit during the day, and were chattering about the new King. How handsome he was. ‘So nice to have a young man on the throne,’ Aunt Sophie said. ‘Though really he should be married by now. What good is a king without an heir?’
Libby was pleased to leave the stultifying atmosphere of the house, the smell of cabbage and camphor, to step out into the bracing February day and feel as if she could breathe again.
How she’d missed going into town! Sweeping up the steps at Leicester Square station as part of a busy bustle of people, then ducking through the familiar, narrow Soho streets. Libby had been in every pub, every club, hung around backstage at every theatre, knocked on the door of every casting agent’s office. Killed time with a pot of tea and a cake in every café and now, when she popped into Maison Bertaux, she was greeted like the long-lost friend that she was.
Libby took her cup of coffee (Millicent had banned coffee too; claimed that even one whiff of a tin of Camp sent her heart racing) to a corner table. There was just time to gulp it down then powder her nose, reapply her lipstick and set her hat at a more jaunty angle, which she matched with a jaunty wave as she left.
She didn’t feel jaunty but if she pretended hard enough, made her smile bright, her voice light, movements quick, then who was to know the difference? Maybe Millicent was right and it was the coffee that made her heart flutter as Libby crossed over Greek Street, slipped through another door and started the long climb up the stairs to the offices of Withers & Withers, Talent Agency.
She’d first climbed up these stairs sixteen years before as a gawky sixteen-year-old, all eyes, elbows and knees. Had goggled at the signed photographs of the stars of stage that lined the walls, all shot by Mr Anthony who had a studio on Bolsover Street and had used the same flattering, diffused light and artfully angled manner when Libby had had her pictures done too. Not that Libby’s pictures ever made it on to the wall.
They never would either, not when Deidre Withers glanced up from her cluttered desk and eyed Libby with weary disdain. ‘Look what the cat dragged in,’ she said, ramming a cigarette into a long ebony holder. ‘Married life obviously not agreeing with you then, dearie.’
‘And hello to you too, Deidre,’ Libby said as she removed a pile of scripts from the chair in front of the desk and sat down. If she waited for Deidre to invite her to sit, she’d have a long bloody wait.
It was impossible to say how old Deidre was. Libby would have sworn she hadn’t aged a day in the last sixteen years. Deidre could be forty, fifty, maybe even sixty, for she was tiny, slender and lithe, with close-cropped black hair. Libby had never seen her wear anything but black draped dresses, jet beads strung around her throat and wrists, her lips always painted a vivid blood red.
Libby had hoped that Ronald Withers would be in that morning. Then they’d sit next to each other on the little sofa on the other side of the room and Libby would explain matters, make her voice catch a little, dab at her eyes and let Ronald rest his hand on her knee. A gentle flirtation that neither of them meant because everyone knew Ronald’s taste ran to young guardsmen from the Hyde Park Barracks who’d treat him brutally, rough him up, all sorts.
But Ronald had always been kind to Libby. He’d signed her up the very day she’d first come to the offices. ‘I doubt you’ll ever set the world on fire with your talent, but you’re a pretty little thing,’ he’d said, after Libby had read one of Titania’s speeches from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. ‘I can always find work for a pretty young girl.’
Deidre (who’d waste no time in sliding her hand up one’s skirt, squeezing a thigh with cruel fingers, while she stared brazenly, daring her victim to protest) had been furious. ‘She has red hair,’ she’d announced flatly the first time Libby had met her. ‘Everyone knows red hair is unlucky.’
It had set the tone for their relationship, which had limped along feebly ever since. ‘Where’s that handsome husband of yours, then?’ Deidre asked, a malicious gleam in her dark eyes. ‘Word is that he left you before the ink was dry on the wedding certificate.’
‘He’s in Europe. Working,’ Libby said, which was true enough. If Freddy were back in London, she’d have heard something.
‘And the baby?’ Deidre raised her thinly plucked eyebrows as she regarded Libby who tried to affect an air of nonchalance and not grip the sides of the chair. There was always something reptilian and unsettling in the way Deidre narrowed her eyes, the tip of her tongue darting out to moisten her lips as she was doing now. ‘Everyone knew you were in the family way, dearie. You chased Freddy for years. Then all of a sudden he decides to do the decent thing and give you his name? Not unless you’d got caught.’
Libby couldn’t bear to meet Deidre’s obsidian gaze a moment longer. She rummaged in her bag for her cigarettes and matches and it wasn’t until she’d exhaled a thin plume of smoke that she could raise her head and say quite steadily, ‘I lost the baby. Freddy decided to stay on the Continent and I came back to England and now I’m living with his mother in Hampstead in her dark, cold house with a clutch of elderly spinsters, three boorish salesman and Potts. It’s so sad. It’s the saddest place on earth. I have to get out of there. I simply have to.’
She’d said far too much and Libby stiffened her spine, braced herself for Deidre to say something cutting and cruel, but it turned out her sympathy, the way she sighed and tilted her head, was far, far worse. ‘You need a job, then?’
‘Anything.’ Libby hadn’t planned to sound quite so desperate either but as usual all her plans amounted to precisely nothing.
‘Well, you’re far too old to play the ingénue or hoof it in a chorus line. As for the character parts, I don’t mean to be unkind, dearie, I really don’t, but there are heaps of other actresses with better notices and you are looking rather done in. Thin. It doesn’t suit you.’
Libby stifled a choked laugh. ‘You’ve always told me that I was too fleshy.’
‘You were, but now you’re quite haggard in the face. I couldn’t even find you a little modelling work at one of the fashion houses.’ Deidre sighed again as if her inability to find Libby any suitable jobs was paining her more than it was Libby. ‘I could see if anyone might need a secretary. Except… Do you type and take dictation? No, of course you don’t.’
The weight of it, the sheer despair of her situation, pressed against Libby’s chest. ‘Maybe some radio work?’ she suggested in a voice that quivered with the effort not to break down and sob.
‘I don’t think so,’ Deidre said vaguely as she rifled through a stack of papers on her desk, her bracelets jangling, red-tipped nails a blur. ‘You mentioned Hampstead? There was something that came in a couple of days ago. I wasn’t sure why it was sent to me, but perhaps it was kismet.’ She pulled out a piece of pale blue paper with the air of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. ‘Have you ever thought about teaching, dearie?’