Chapter Two
A few weeks later, in a muggy, distempered dressing room in the bowels of St Martin’s Lane, Anthony Wilde OBE let the door slam behind him. He advanced towards his companion with a smile on his face, deftly peeling off his thick, moss-like black beard as though it were a rubber mask, then threw it on the dressing-room table. ‘Now, my dear –’ he said, and, pulling her towards him, he kissed her neck. ‘Well, well.’
She dimpled. ‘Well, well,’ she whispered.
‘It’s jolly nice of you to pay me a visit,’ he said. ‘Can I get you anything to drink?’
‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘Where’s Nigel?’
‘I got rid of him for the night.’ Nigel was Tony’s loyal dresser of many years’ standing. ‘So we’re all alone.’ His hand slid up her firm leg. ‘Oh, I say – what have we here, darling?’
She gave a small, nervous giggle. ‘But you told me not to wear anything underneath,’ she said, whispering in his ear, pressing her young, firm body against his. ‘All evening, I’ve been waiting. It was quite hard, in the bit when I have to fall down dead – I was worried the skirt’d fly up and leave me showing my . . . um . . . to the whole audience.’
‘Naughty,’ he said, kissing her creamy neck, the tendrils of hair escaping from her cap. ‘Very naughty. You were wonderful tonight. I was watching. Finish, good lady, the bright day is done / And we are for the dark . . . just terrific.’ He unfastened her cotton bodice, deft, experienced fingers sliding the buttons out of the holes like pips from a juicy lemon. ‘Terrific.’
‘That was Iras. I’m Charmian,’ she said, slightly discouraged.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Tony, sharply. ‘I know that. But I love that line. Favourite bit in the play actually . . .’ Rosalie’s head snapped up as he teased her small, plump breasts out of their bodice.
‘Did you mean to ask Rosie in here instead?’ she said. ‘She gave me a funny look – I saw it. Well, I say. Anthony, did you?’
No, because I had her last week and she was rather a let-down. Nice girl but lank hair. Awfully moany, he wanted to say. Tony inhaled, telling himself to ignore the slight whiff of drains, and the sound of the Tube rumbling underneath their feet. Concentrate. Come on, old boy. Instead, he answered, ‘Course not, darling.’ He pulled her towards him so they were facing each other, and cupped her chin in both hands. ‘You, it’s you I wanted, you sweet, innocent angel. I’ve been watching you all night. I couldn’t wait to get you in here.’ He kissed her, gently. ‘To touch you –’ He ran his hand between her legs again, and she shivered in surprise, then blinked. ‘It was agony.’
‘Yes,’ she said, swaying slightly. ‘Oh – yes, Anthony.’ She ran her hands through his hair.
‘Ow,’ he said, sharply, gingerly touching his forehead. ‘Sorry. Don’t. Got a bit of a bump there.’
‘Oh!’ Her brown eyes were troubled, her adorable cherry-pink lips parted. ‘You poor thing. I see it, it’s a real lump. How did you get that?’
‘Oh, doesn’t matter,’ he said, hurriedly, then he smiled wolfishly at her. ‘I am dying, Egypt, dying. Now, where were we . . .?’
He supported her with one hand around the waist, and then, pushing her very gently backwards, walked her to the table that ran along one whole wall. He settled her on it, lifting up her serving maid’s skirts – the production was eccentric, with Cleopatra in full Ancient Egyptian regalia, her maidservants in Elizabethan costume, and the Romans wearing business suits to a man. Tony tugged off his jacket and tie, undoing his fly button with deft haste.
‘Oh, Anthony—’ she said again as he tugged her dress down over her shoulders, and he rather wished she wouldn’t.
‘Darling, I said, call me Tony.’
She stuck her chin out. ‘I couldn’t. That’s what she calls you. And Oliver.’
‘“She”?’
‘Helen.’
‘Oh, her.’ Tony dismissed his co-star with a murmur, and kissed her again.
She hung her arms around his neck and her hard little nipples scraped against his shirt as he struggled out of his trousers; he tried to keep calm; he felt woozy, high on the thrill of it: it was always like this for him. Beforehand, anyway.
‘Oh,’ she said, dismissively. ‘She’s so rude about you behind your back. In that American accent. I want something else to call you. My own special name.’
‘It’s what everyone calls me, my dear,’ he said, kissing her swiftly. She was a darling, really, but – he was meeting Simon and Guy later, and he didn’t have all evening . . .
She bared her little teeth at him, breasts pressed against him, nipped deliciously at his ear, and then she said softly, ‘Ant.’ She nipped at him again, and moved against him. ‘I’ll call you Ant, it’ll be our special name for you.’ She breathed in his ear. ‘Ant—’
‘No.’ Tony pulled away from her so roughly his fingers caught in her hair and she yelped. ‘Don’t – sorry. Don’t ever call me that.’
‘I’m – I’m sorry,’ she said, flushing red. ‘Tony – I didn’t mean to—’
‘It’s nothing. Just don’t. Sweetheart,’ he added, caressingly, and he carried on stroking her, with increased attention, almost too much. Now he just wanted to get inside her, for it to be done with. He eased his way in, feeling sick, his head throbbing more than ever.
She clutched him, pulling him closer to her, further into her. ‘Oh – oh, my God.’
Suddenly, unbidden, the image of Althea, lying sprawled on the bed, came into his head, and nausea rose sharply in his gullet. Her large creamy thighs, her auburn hair loose, covering her shoulders, the hooded eyes, her supreme indifference until the point of entry when she would become frenzied, ecstatic, possessed – her need for chocolate, or booze, or some sort of luxurious consumption afterwards . . . Jesus Christ, not now, not now . . .
The room she had made safe again . . . his sobs, the smell of a lit match in the dark . . . He touched his throbbing head. The scent of wild flowers outside, inside the gritty smell of oil lamps . . . a candlewick bedspread, bobbled and pink, that first time . . . tape criss-crossing the windows . . . sirens . . . Tony blinked, as he thrust harder inside Rosalie, and she gasped, and moaned loudly. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about the room, dammit. Why now, after all this time? Dammit . . . The bedspread . . .
He came inside her, crying out, slumping over Rosie – Rosalie? Rosalie. She cried out too, a little too loudly. In the silence afterwards, broken only by his heavy breaths and Rosalie’s small, panting gulps of air, he could hear tinkling laughter and conversation, coming from Helen’s dressing room. Damn her. Damn it all.
Tony sat scraping his make-up off with almost vicious haste, as the sound of his co-star’s honeyed tones drifted through the paper-thin dressing-room walls. The sultry summer heat seemed to be doing half the work for him, as the greasepaint had melted and slid off in parts: Tony peered anxiously into the mirror, to assure himself that the stuff hadn’t collected in his pores, and around his nose. It wasn’t vain, was it, to want to go out to dinner with a few friends and not be caked in stage make-up? Especially Simon, who loved to mock. One of Helen’s vacuous acolytes said something in a low voice and a silvery peal of laughter reached Tony again. He flinched, resisting the urge to bang on the wall and tell them all to shut the hell up.
He hated London in August. Why was he here, when he could be at the Bosky? Sweating away in this awful broken-down theatre on disgusting wages while Clive over at the National was absolutely packing them in with Othello? Because he wanted to do Antony, because it was working with Oliver Thorogood, the director of the moment, and Tony couldn’t possibly have turned him down. Because he was forty-two, and convinced his looks and virility and talent were going and Antony was the perfect role to prove to himself – his worst critic – that it was otherwise. Because he’d wanted to work with Helen O’Malley, damn it. What a fool he’d been.
He and Althea had one rule only – no jobs that interfered with August at the Bosky. That lead part in the Thames Television mini-series Althea had been offered last year – he’d been coldly angry with her for suggesting she even take it, even though it had been the first decent TV thing she’d had come in since the children. So she’d said no and taken that awful part as the simpering halfwit mother instead and hated it, and Tony knew she was better than that, knew probably more than she did how good she was . . . It terrified him, the idea she might be better than him.
And then in March came Thorogood with his offer of Antony and Cleopatra at the Albery, one of his favourite theatres – he was superstitious about everything but particularly theatres – and the chance to star alongside the one and only Helen O’Malley in her first appearance on a London stage and he’d said yes, and then had to explain to Althea. She’d been utterly furious. At the memory of the fight they’d had, Tony closed his eyes, briefly. He was still taken aback at some of the things she’d said. They’d rowed before – oh, they had – but this was another level, something quite different . . . Tony leaned forwards, resting his weary head in his hands.
It felt like months since she and the children had left for the seaside and he hated being alone in the Twickenham house. He was never on his own, couldn’t stand his own company. Aunt Dinah used to say he had to stand on his own two feet:
‘You’re all alone in the world apart from me, Ant dear. You have to learn how to jolly well get on with things if I’m not around. Life’s a gamble. You hold the dice.’
His great-aunt had played dice with a Foreign Office solicitor for a place on the last boat out of Basra when she had to come back for him. She’d won, and presumably the young man hoping to return to Aldershot was abandoned by the quayside for the duration of the war. It was in Dinah’s blood, gambling, and in his, too. Tony’s father, an actor like Tony, used to tell his son of the time she came to his first professional engagement, as Bluebeard, on the London stage – and, having forgotten her reticule (so she claimed), bet the lady at the Alhambra box office she could keep her eyes open without blinking for a minute. She won the bet and Tony remembered his father’s description of her, pushing past disgruntled theatregoers to the middle of the front row, sitting down and watching him with her eyes wide open, almost on stalks, as if she’d forgotten she was allowed to blink.
Tony blinked now himself, pushing the image of her away – more and more he found when he closed his eyes he saw Dinah, leaning over him . . .
Did you come back? Was it really you?
He touched the bump again, gingerly. Now the glow of sex was wearing off his head felt as though it were in a vice. The previous night, at home, he’d jumped at the sound of something – a mouse? Someone crying out in the park behind the house, or on the river? He’d slipped, and banged his head on the back of the door, knocking himself clean out. Been unconscious for God only knew how long, he wasn’t sure, and now he had a lump the size of a duck egg there and felt pretty strange.
As the laughter from the next room rose to a crescendo Tony looked at his watch. Time to get a move on, if he was to make dinner with Simon and Guy. He’d be all right after a stiff drink and a decent meal. On the way out, Tony paused; then, despite himself, he knocked on the neighbouring dressing room.
‘Night, Helen,’ he called, opening the door a fraction. ‘See you Tuesday.’
One of the acolytes lounging in a chair next to the door jumped up. ‘Good night, sir,’ he said eagerly.
Tony waved a gracious hand. ‘Tony, please.’ He nodded at Helen, who did not turn from the mirror. ‘I say, have a wonderful weekend, won’t you, darling.’
‘I will,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Tony.’
He stared at her coolly. She was taking off the heavy fake gold collar that he, onstage, had fastened around her neck earlier that evening. Her intoxicating scent, cloves and jasmine, reached his nostrils: early in the run he’d utterly believed she was Cleopatra, come to life. ‘Other women cloy the appetites they feed, but she makes hungry where most she satisfies.’
But she’d been so angered when he’d given her his usual little speech that she’d barely spoken to him since and the run had been somewhat strained. She knew about Rosie – Iras. She must soon work out about Rosalie . . . he thought of Rosalie again, her cheeks flushing as he touched her, her youth and beauty . . . the hopeful glance she’d given him as she’d left . . . if he’d been on better form it would have been a great fuck, really just what he needed. She’d definitely liked it. Hadn’t she? That was the rule, the rule that let him live with himself, ridiculous as it might seem, that they had to enjoy themselves, all of them. Helen didn’t seem to, any more . . . oh, what a mess it was.
It was the boy next to her who broke the silence.
‘Sunday and Monday off, eh? Positive holiday in the theatre, isn’t it? Why no show on Monday?’
‘There’s a charity revue, it was booked in long before the run was confirmed,’ said Tony. ‘So we have two nights without a performance, which is marvellous.’
‘In that case,’ said the younger man, ‘I say, Helen, would you like to catch a train up to Oxford tomorrow? Or Monday? I’ll take you punting.’
Briefly, Helen’s eyes met Tony’s. She gave a small, measured smile. ‘No thanks, honey. My plans are not yet confirmed, but I think I’m busy.’ She said softly, ‘Tony? How about you?’
Tony tried to ignore the rushing, reeling feeling that coursed through him. He clenched his fists, just once, and looked away, then heard himself say, ‘Actually, I’m driving to Dorset tonight.’
‘To your cute little place by the sea?’ she said, coolly. The vein on her forehead pulsed, just a little. ‘What fun.’
‘Yes,’ he said, warming to the idea. ‘Yes, I’m – I’m surprising the family.’
‘How wonderful.’ Her eyes met his and the look of disdain in them was so powerful he wondered why the others didn’t see it. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘We must let you go to them. It’s a long drive for you – ah, thank you, Rosie.’
Tony jumped, taking a sidestep, as Rosie appeared behind him and handed Helen some cosmetic product. ‘H-hello, Rosie darling,’ he said, as she brushed past him.
Rosie merely nodded, and Tony shrank against the wall to let her pass. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’ll be off then.’
One of Helen’s admirers nodded, but Helen ignored him. Alone in the dank corridor, Tony wiped his brow with something like relief and ran up the stairs. He waved to Cyril the doorman, who opened the stage door as he approached.
‘Anyone waiting?’ Tony said, warily.
‘There were a few. Couple of keen older ladies but I think they’ve all gone, Mr Wilde.’
‘I say, lucky me. Thanks, Cyril.’
‘Off somewhere nice for the break, sir?’ called Cyril, as Tony shook Cyril’s hand and climbed into the shiny red car parked on the narrow back street.
‘The seaside, Cyril. Off to surprise my darlings. Oh,’ he added carelessly, ‘could you telephone Sheekey’s? Explain I’ve had to dash off for the weekend and won’t be able to meet my companions for dinner. It’s – Guy de Quetteville, Simon Chalmers or Kenneth Strong. Can’t remember who made the booking. Do say how sorry I am. Domestic crisis or something. Tell them – ah, tell them my wife needs me.’ He smiled ruefully, climbing into the car. ‘The truth is, I damn well miss them so much I rather need to go down tonight while I can.’
‘Well, isn’t that nice to hear. I’ll just pop round there now, when you’ve gone, don’t you worry about a thing, Mr Wilde,’ said Cyril, approvingly. ‘Hold on a second, sir.’ He retreated into the stage-door office. ‘Hold on. Yes, I’ve got a message for you, come to mention it . . .’ He unfolded a grubby bit of paper; Tony stared at him in irritation. ‘Mr Chalmers had to cancel your dinner. He’s coming back from Dorset tonight and won’t be in London till later, he’s afraid, but he’s telephoned to say he had a lovely time with your missus and the children.’ He looked at Tony over the note. ‘Isn’t that nice, Mr Wilde, sir. Very like Mr Chalmers, to have his fun with one. A very amusing gentleman.’
Tony gritted his teeth. ‘Very amusing,’ he repeated, and then he looked down at his lap and smiled. Ridiculous situation. ‘Could you let Guy and Kenneth know? Make my apologies. I hope they understand. Thank you, Cyril.’
He waved at Cyril and, starting the engine, drove down St Martin’s Lane, the glinting light bulbs flashing around the different theatre signs on the road. A bulb on the Garrick burst suddenly with a splintering crack and people jumped out of the way, screams shattering the air. They were nervy – no bombings in London for a while but the IRA had targeted a bar in Belfast only two days ago. Four people killed. One was always rather on edge but what could you do? Square your shoulders and get on with it, like the war. What was the alternative?
That Sondheim musical was still packing them in at the Adelphi . . . Respectable couples, in heavy wool coats, hats jammed on heads, flocking towards the Tube station . . . Tony’s last dressing room had looked out on St Martin’s Court and he could always tell by the gait of each passerby who’d been at the theatre, escaping into another world, who’d had their ideas challenged, their heart broken, their ears filled with song and laughter . . . He loved the brightness of the West End, the lights that never went out above each theatre, their cramped seats, warren-like structures, where you buried yourself underground to emerge as Romeo, or Ivanov, or Willy Loman. He had played them all, more than once. He’d been Hamlet in space, and he’d done Pinero in Roman togas; he’d worn a doublet and hose literally thousands of times over the years, all the way back to his first performance, a humble production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, performed in a golden English vicarage garden as German planes studded the evening skies and death was always a possibility, just around the corner.
As he passed the Coliseum he remembered, in this nostalgic mood, the offices of his first theatrical agent a few doors along. Above a hairdresser’s; Renée Creations, that was it. Maurice Browne, camp and stern with a twist of pale purple hair which Tony had found odd at first and then come to secretly envy – the idea that you cared so little what others thought that you dyed your hair a delicate mauve . . .
After leaving Central he’d looked for an agent for weeks, tramping up and down St Martin’s Lane like hundreds of other young actors in the wreck of post-war London knocking on doors, begging for a chance, the one piece of luck. Maurice had taken him on that very day, had him in Hamlet in a month, the famous, groundbreaking production of Hamlet that would launch Tony straight into stardom. On the last night, they’d had to draft the police in to control the crowds who’d turned up to see the young star leave his dressing room for the final time.
He’d loved it, of course . . . Tony smiled reflectively, and slowed down to let a party of nuns cross the road. They smiled at him and he smiled charmingly back, his eyes drifting up to the windows of that first agent’s office again. It was part of his career, that meeting with Maurice – ’52? ’53? 1952, it had been. Which was how long ago now?
‘Jesus,’ said Tony under his breath. Twenty-three years ago. He’d been working for one whole young person’s life. (He wondered queasily how old Rosalie was.) ‘I’m past it,’ he said under his breath, and he was even more glad to be getting out of town.
The traffic was clear. The roof was down, the midsummer’s night breeze in his hair: slowly Tony began to feel calm again. He always did when he knew he was going back there.
He hoped Rosalie understood the rules. Too often they didn’t, and it became tricky. Like Helen. Or Jacqui, the cloakroom girl from White Elephant who’d written him all those letters. Or Bryan, the sweet boy he’d mentored for a while. Or . . . or any of them, any of the beautiful young things he needed who would appear at the stage door, or at the Garrick door or, for Christ’s sake, once at River Walk, tear-stained face, pale, tortured look in their eyes. ‘You promised me . . .’ ‘You said you’d telephone, Tony . . .’ ‘I love you. You can’t make me switch that off, you know.’ ‘Twelve weeks along, the doctor said.’
The girl who’d turned up at their house a few months ago – who was she? He screwed up his eyes, trying to recall, and swerved to avoid a black cab which blared its horn at him. Tabitha? Jemima? Something like that. The nanny of those kids who played with Cordelia and Benedick. Didn’t wash. Earthy smell, bushy hair everywhere, armpits, between the legs, proud of it too. He’d got that one wrong too, disastrously so. Sexual liberation didn’t seem to sit with the girls as well as with the boys, he found. He’d rushed happily towards the sixties thinking it meant that at last everyone would be as into it as he was and what a mistake: they still wanted the house and garden and the children, a promise, a ring . . . they wanted him for ever and he was Althea’s, for better for worse. Last time he’d seen her was outside the clinic on Devonshire Street first thing on a freezing May morning, putting the cash in her hand – Tabitha, yes, her name was Tabitha.
Somewhere past the New Forest Tony realised his head was worse than ever, banding his thoughts with pain. It was as though a crack was opening up in his brain and inside were constant thoughts of naked bodies, bent, twisted, glimpsed through silk or lace, mouths open, hair tumbling . . . thoughts crowded with the most arousing memories and the panic of knowing Simon had been down at the Bosky while he was up in London . . . she wouldn’t, would she? The crack was tiny, he could still just close it if he tried his hardest, but it was becoming harder and harder . . .
He drove on desperately, the moon lighting his way as the roads of Dorset grew narrower and greener, the empty lanes that in the daytime filled up with day-trippers and farm machinery. Only a few more miles, and then he was home, and he’d slip into bed beside his darling wife and the next morning the children would see him and scream with pleasure, and they’d go crabbing and he’d swim and build them sandcastles, and Althea would sit on the porch with her gin and tonic and put her book down to talk to him in the evening cool, the condensation of the sweating, plump glass running over her slim, creamy fingers, slender feet propped up on the porch balustrade, the sound of her carefree laughter, the look in her eyes that said, I know you, darling. You’re safe with me. For he was; he always felt with her that she was the only one who could save him when it all started up.
And then he saw Julia’s face, appearing in front of him as if it were yesterday. Come on, she was saying, tossing her hair, bottom lip caught in her white teeth, the deserted beaches, the lines of barricades set up against the imminent attack. Come over here, no one’s around. And her hands on him, and his own eager, searching hands reaching inside her dress . . . Sex, skin, the smell of summer nights and sweat and soap: Tony shook his head, jaw clenched, hands aching as he held on to the steering wheel like a drowning man to a lifebelt. No, no. No. Not her. Glancing at the sky, he grimaced and drove on. There were thin stripes of puffed cloud across the huge August moon, and the fields were silver with corn in the dark. All else was still. Hunched over the wheel, he sped towards the sea, as though something or someone were pursuing him. Home. He would be home soon.
He had not brought his keys, however, and so it was that when Tony drew up to the slumbering house he could not open the front door. He dared not wake Althea, much less the children, invoke her wrath and start this little surprise off on a bad footing. He pulled out a jumper from the boot of the car, shutting it as quietly as he could, then climbed into the back seat, put the jumper under his throbbing head, draped his tweed jacket over himself. His last sight was of the listing hollyhocks, bobbing black against the house in the light of the moon and, as relief washed over him, he fell unconscious and slept the sleep of the dead.