“No reason, really. Just that Jane’s doing up a flat for her. At first it was going to be a pretty modest affair, but as soon as she got this part, she reckoned she’d moved in with the big-time spenders; you know, mirror bathrooms and white mink bedcovers.”
“Very nice,” said Helen. She tossed the paper back into his lap but he was too hot and lazy to catch it, so it slipped from his knee and fell to the ground. After a little, Helen began, in a desultory fashion, to gather the tea things together. She picked up the tray and started indoors.
“How about dinner?” she asked. “You going to Jane’s or are you staying here?”
“I’m going to Jane’s.”
“That’s fine. I’ll eat a piece of cheese. It’s too hot to cook, anyway.”
When she had gone, he lit a cigarette and sat, listening to the pigeons, and watching the shadows lengthen over the grass. The cool and the quiet were like a benediction. The cigarette finished, he got up and went back into the house, and upstairs to his own flat, where he showered and shaved, and changed into jeans and a cool shirt. As he was pouring the first drink of the evening, the telephone rang. He filled the tumbler halfway up with soda, and went to his desk to answer it. It was Jane.
“Robert?”
“Yes.”
“Darling, it’s me. Look, I just wanted to warn you, don’t get here till about eight…”
“Why, are you entertaining a lover?”
“Wish I were. No, it’s Dinah Burnett, she’s had a new idea for her bathroom, God rot her soul, and she wants to come along after rehearsals and talk about it.”
“For a girl who is so proud about being in the blasted play, her mind does harp on material things, doesn’t it?”
“So you’ve been reading the evening paper. That blurb makes me ill.”
“I can’t think why she didn’t bother to mention that she was doing up a flat, and had chosen well-known interior decorator, twenty-seven-year-old Jane Marshall, 34, 26, 36, to help her. Were you expecting to be taken out for dinner, because I’m not dressed according.”
“Of course not, it’s much too hot. I’ve got some cold chicken; I thought I’d make a salad.”
“And I shall subscribe a frosty bottle of wine.”
“Delicious.”
“Till eight, then.”
“Yes, eight.” He was on the point of putting down the receiver when she said again, “Don’t come before,” and than rang off. Mildly puzzled, he put down the receiver and then decided that he must have imagined a certain urgency in her voice. He went to find ice for his drink.
Deliberately, he was a little late, but even so, when he drew up outside Jane’s house, there was a small blue Fiat still parked by her door. He gave his double toot on the horn and got out of the car, carrying the bottle of wine, and almost at once the front door opened and Jane stood there, in a faded pair of pink cotton trousers and a sleeveless top. Her hair fell across her cheek and she looked, for Jane, mildly distraught, making flapping gestures with her hand, and pointing upstairs.
He was amused. He came to kiss her. “What is it?”
She took the bottle of wine from him. “She’s still here. She won’t go. She won’t stop talking. And now you’ve come, nothing’s going to shift her.”
“We’ll say we’re going out, and that we’re late already.”
“I suppose it’s worth a try.” They had been talking in whispers. Now she said in clear and social tones, “I wasn’t sure if it was you or not. Come along up.”
He followed her up the narrow, steep stair. “Dinah, this is Robert Morrow…” Casually she introduced them, before going into the kitchen with the wine. He heard the big fridge door open and shut as she put it away.
Dinah Burnett sat on Jane’s big sofa by the open window, with her legs curled up beneath her, looking as though she was expecting a photographer, or an interviewer, or a prospective lover. She was a beautiful girl, ripe and colourful, and it occurred to Robert that no photograph could do her full justice. She had auburn hair and pale green eyes, and skin like an apricot, and was built on proportions that are normally described as “lavish.” She wore a short shift dress in a green to match her eyes, and it might have been designed to display as much as possible of her smooth, well-rounded arms and endless legs. Her feet were thrust into wooden sandals, her wrists jangled with gold bracelets and in her ears, gleaming through the profusion of hair, were enormous gold hoop earrings. Her teeth were white and even, and her black lashes long and black as soot, and it was hard to believe that she had started life in Barnsley.
“How do you do,” said Robert. They shook hands. “I’ve just been reading all about you in the evening paper.”
“Wasn’t it a dreadful photograph?” She still had an endearing trace of a Yorkshire accent. “I look like a broken-down barmaid. But still, I suppose it’s better than nothing.”
She smiled at him, all her feminine charm rising to the bait of a new and attractive man, and Robert flattered and warmed by her friendliness, settled himself at the other end of the sofa. She went on, “I shouldn’t really be here at all, but Jane’s doing up this new flat for me, and to-day I found this American magazine with a fabulous bathroom and I just had to bring it along, after rehearsals, and show it to her.”
“How’s the play going?”
“Oh, it’s most exciting.”
“What’s it about?”
“Well, it’s…”
At this juncture Jane re-appeared from the kitchen and briskly interrupted. “How about a drink? Dinah, Robert and I are actually going out, but there’s just time for a drink before you go.”
“Oh, that’s sweet of you. If you’re sure. I’d love a glass of beer.”
“How about you, Robert?”
“Sounds very nice, let me get it…”
“No, that’s all right. I’m up.” She snapped the top off a beer bottle, and poured a glass expertly, with no head to it. “Dinah, Robert’s an art dealer, he works in Bernstein’s in Kent Street.”
“Oh, are you really?” said Miss Burnett, looking wide-eyed and interested, but not very much wiser. “Do you sell pictures and stuff.…?”
“Well, yes…”
Jane brought Dinah’s beer across, pulled up a small table and set the glass down.
“Robert is a very high-powered man,” she said. “He’s always dashing off to Paris or Rome, to pull off enormous deals, aren’t you, Robert?” She went back to her drink tray. “Dinah, you should get him to look out for a picture for the new flat. You need something modern over that fireplace and you never know, it might be an investment. Something to sell when they run out of good parts for you.”
“Don’t talk about running out. I’ve only just started. Besides, wouldn’t it be very expensive?”
“Not as expensive as that American bathroom.”
Dinah smiled engagingly. “But, I always feel a bathroom’s terribly important.”
Jane had poured two more drinks, now she brought them over, and handed one to Robert. Then settled herself in the chair opposite the sofa, and faced them both across the low table.
“Well, it’s your flat, ducky,” she said.
Her voice was a little acid. Robert said quickly, “You still haven’t told me about the new play … The Glass Door. When are you opening?”
“Wednesday. This Wednesday as ever is. At the Regent Theatre.”
“We must try and get seats, Jane.”
“Yes, of course,” said Jane.
“The thought of a first night makes me sick with nerves. You see, it’s my first shot at the living theatre, as it were, and if it wasn’t for Mayo being such a fabulous producer I’d have dropped out weeks ago.…”
“You still haven’t told us what it’s about.”
“Well, it’s … oh, I don’t know. It’s about this young man, from an ordinary, working-class family. And he writes a book and it’s a best seller, and he becomes a sort of celebrity—you know, on television and such. And then
he gets mixed up with the film people, and all the time, he’s getting richer, and nastier, and he’s drinking and having affairs, and generally living it up. And then, of course, in the end, the whole racket falls round his ears like a pack of cards and he finishes up, right where he started, in his mother’s house, in the kitchen, with his old typewriter and a blank sheet of paper. It sounds corny, I know, but it’s moving and real and the dialogue is out of this world.”
“Do you think it’s going to go?”
“I don’t see how it can fail. But then I’m prejudiced.”
“What part do you play?”
“Oh, I’m just one of the many girls. But I’m different, because I get pregnant.”
“Charming,” murmured Jane.
“But it isn’t sordid, not a bit,” Dinah assured her. “When I first read the script I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Real life, I suppose.”
“Yes.” Jane finished her drink, and put down the empty glass and looked at her watch. She said, pointedly, “Robert, I’m going up to change. We mustn’t be late. We’ll keep everybody waiting.” She stood up. “You’ll excuse me, Dinah, won’t you?”
“Of course I will, and thank you for being so sweet about the bathroom. I’ll ring you up and let you know what I’ve decided.”
“Yes, you do that.”
When she had gone upstairs, Dinah smiled once more, confidingly, at Robert. “I hope I’m not keeping you. I will go when I’ve finished my drink, but I live in such a dump just now, it’s depressing. And it’s so hot, isn’t it? I wish it would thunder. It would be so much cooler if only it would thunder.”
“It will this evening, I’m sure. Tell me, how did you get this part?”
“Well, Amos Monihan, you know, he wrote the play—he’d seen me on TV in Detective, and he rang Mayo Thomas and said he thought I’d be right for the part. So I had an audition. That’s all really.”
“And who plays the lead? The young man. The writer?”
“This is the gamble. The backers wanted a big name, somebody famous. But Mayo had found this new boy—he’d seen him in some provincial rep, and somehow, he convinced the man with the money to give him a try.”
“So you have an unknown in the lead?”
“That’s about it,” said Dinah. “But, believe me, he’s good.”
She finished her drink. Upstairs Jane was moving about in her bedroom, going to and fro, opening and shutting drawers. Robert got up to retrieve the empty glass. “Would you like the other half?”
“No, really, I won’t. I mustn’t keep you any longer…” She stood up, pulling down her dress, and tossing her long hair away from her neck. She called up the stair. “I’m off. Goodbye, Jane!”
“Oh, good-bye.” Jane sounded more friendly now that her visitor was actually on her way out.
Dinah started downstairs, and Robert followed her, intending to politely see her off the premises. Over her bright head, he leaned forward to unsnib the latch of Jane’s front door. Outside, the mews slumbered in the hot airless evening.
He said, “I’ll keep my fingers crossed for Wednesday.”
“Bless you.”
They went out into the street. He opened the door of the Fiat for her. He said, “What’s he called, this young actor?”
Dinah slid into the driving-seat, revealing more leg than was good for anybody’s blood pressure.
She said, “Christopher Ferris.”
He thought, So that’s why Jane didn’t want me to meet you.
* * *
“Christopher Ferris? I know him.”
“Do you? How funny.”
“At least … I knew his sister.”
“I don’t know anything about his family.”
“He’s never mentioned her? Emma?”
“Never a word. But then, chaps don’t usually talk about their sisters, do they?”
She laughed, and slammed the car door shut, but the window was down, and Robert leaned his elbow on it, like a salesman with a foot in the door.
He said, “I’d like to wish him luck.”
“I’ll give him a message for you to-morrow.”
“Could I ring him up?”
“Well, I suppose you could, but calls aren’t exactly welcome when we’re working.” And then she had a bright idea. “Tell you what, I’ve got his home number somewhere. I had to ring up for Mayo, once, and leave a message.”
She picked her bag off the other seat, and started to delve. She brought out a script, a purse, a scarf, a bottle of sun oil, a diary. She leafed through the diary. “Here it is, Flaxman 8881. Do you want me to write it down for you?”
“No. I’ll remember.”
“He might be there now … I don’t know what he does in his spare time.” She smiled again. “Fancy you knowing him. It’s a small world, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It’s a small world.”
She started up her engine. “Well, it’s been fun meeting you. Cheerio.”
He stood back. “Goodbye.”
The little car roared away down the mews, and he watched it go. At the junction at the end of the narrow street it paused for a moment, then shot away, turned left and was gone, the sound of its engine swallowed into the anonymous grumble that was London traffic.
* * *
He went back into the house, closed the door, went upstairs. There was no sound from the bedroom.
“Jane.”
She began immediately to move about, as though occupied.
“Jane.”
“What is it?”
“Come here.”
“But I’m not…”
“Come down here.”
After a moment, she appeared at the head of the stairs, wrapped in a thin dressing-gown. “What is it?”
“It’s Christopher Ferris,” said Robert.
She stared down at him, her expression closed and suddenly implacable.
“What about him?”
“You knew he was in this play. That he’s been in London all this time.”
She came down the stairs toward him. When her face was on a level with his, she said coolly, “Yes, I knew.”
“But you never told me. Why not?”
“Perhaps because I don’t believe in stirring up muddy ponds. Besides, you promised. No more Littons.”
“This has nothing to do with that promise.”
“Then what are you getting so hot and bothered about? Look, Robert, I think I feel about this business much the same way as your sister Helen. Bernstein’s act, in a professional capacity, for Ben Litton, and after that, their commitments to the family should end. I know about Emma and the sort of life she’s led and I’m sorry for her. I went to Brookford with you, and I saw that creepy little theatre and that dreadful flat. But she is adult, and, as you said yourself, highly intelligent … What if Christopher is in London? That doesn’t mean Emma has been abandoned. It’s all part of his job, and she’ll accept it as such, I’m sure.”
“That still doesn’t explain why you never told me.”
“Perhaps because I knew all along that you’d start running round in circles like a demented sheepdog. Imagining the worst, nagged by responsibility, simply because the wretched girl is Ben Litton’s daughter. Robert, you saw her. She doesn’t want to be helped. And if you try, you’ll just be interfering…”
He said slowly, “I don’t know if you’re trying to convince me, or yourself.”
“You fool, I’m trying to make you see the truth.”
“The truth is that, as far as we know, Emma Litton is alone, living in a damp basement with a paralytic drunk.”
“Isn’t that what she chose to do?”
She flung the question at him, and then, before he could reply, pushed past him and went to the trolley and began fiddling about with empty glasses and beer-bottle tops in a feeble pretence at tidying up. He watched, with a great sadness, her back view, the smooth bell of hair, the tiny waist, the small, capable hands. She was unrelenting.
He sai
d gently, “Dinah Burnett gave me Christopher’s number. Perhaps it would be better if I rang him from here.”
“Do whatever you like.” She carried the glasses through to the kitchen. Robert picked up her phone and dialled the remembered number. Jane came back to collect up the empty bottles.
“Hello.” It was Christopher.
“Christopher, this is Robert Morrow speaking. You remember, I came down to Brookford…”
“To see Emma. Yes, of course. How splendid! How did you know where to find me?”
“Dinah Burnett gave me your number. She also told me about The Glass Door. Congratulations.”
“You can save them till we see what the critics have to say.”
“Still, it’s a great effort. Look, I was wondering about Emma.”
Christopher’s voice turned cautious. “Yes?”
Jane had come back from the kitchen and now stood by the window, her arms folded, looking down into the street.
“Where is she?”
“In Brookford.”
“In the flat. With your friend?”
“My friend? Oh, Johnny Rigger? No, he left. He came to rehearsals drunk one morning and the producer slung him out. Emma’s on her own.”
Carefully controlling his temper, Robert said, “You never thought of ringing up Marcus Bernstein or myself and telling us this?”
“Well, I would have, but before I left Brookford, Emma made me promise not to. So, you see, I couldn’t.” While Robert, in seething silence, tried to accept this excuse, Christopher went on, sounding suddenly much younger and not so sure of himself. “I tell you what I did do, though. I felt a bit of a heel leaving her like that … so I wrote to Ben.”
“You wrote to who?”
“Her father.”
“But what the hell could he do? He’s in America … he’s in Mexico…”
“I didn’t know he was in Mexico, but I wrote to him care of Bernstein’s, and put please forward on the envelope. You see, I felt someone should know what had happened.”
“And Emma? Is she still working in the theatre?”
“She was when I left. You see, there was really no point her coming up to London with me. I rehearse dawn to dusk as it is, and we’d never have seen each other. Besides, if The Glass Door folds up after a week, then I’ll need my old Brookford job back again. Tommy Childers is very kindly keeping it open for me. So we decided it would be better if Emma stayed down there.”