Lying Together (10 page)

Wayne and I agree that Nigel is best left with me. Wayne says I'm a marvel with babies, and he can see Nigel's looking better already. He says Geraldine has no patience. Motherhood, I tell him, is a job for the experts.

THE GINGER ROGERS OF BATH AND WELLS

S
he's Licensed for Music and Dancing. It's written above the fanlight of her five-storey Regency house. But Lydia Pendleton's dancing days are done. In fact, her moving days are pretty much done as well. When the weather is warm, she has a little freedom in her hips and knee-joints, but her feet, once so nimble and dainty, are swollen and near useless. She can manage to hobble from her bed-settee to her easy chair, but has to rely on the kindness of others for almost everything else. Her old friend Matty comes every morning and spends a brisk hour setting Lydia's room (the first floor front) to rights, plumping up cushions and pillows, running a vacuum cleaner between the pieces of heavy furniture and flicking a duster at the few uncluttered surfaces. But she's a poor conversationalist and is always off on the dot of eleven o'clock. The rest of the day Lydia has to herself. She might read the local paper, or thumb through some old programmes, or watch a small portable TV with the sound down. Or she might just stare at the sky. But her ears are always pricked for any footfall on the landing outside. Lydia has nine tenants, all theatricals, inhabiting assorted accommodation over five floors, and although they sleep on late in the mornings and come back late at night, she usually manages to waylay one or two. She leaves her door ajar specially, and can hear the lightest of steps. She hears one now.

‘Is that you, Miss Henshaw, dear?'

Vicki Henshaw hears the old lady's feeble query, and stops. Damn, she thinks. Caught again. She inclines her head around the massive mahogany door. She is wearing a chic beret and a shiny black mackintosh. ‘Did you want something, Mrs Pendleton? I'm just going up to the theatre.' She knows better than to enquire after Lydia's health; it is an inexhaustible subject. She pulls on her gloves with a briskness she hopes will deter Lydia from asking more questions. Her feet are still outside the door.

‘Would you do me a favour, Miss Henshaw, dear?'

‘It'll have to be quick, I'm afraid. I'm due in rehearsal at three.' The words are firm, but Vicki senses she has lost the advantage. Invalid ladies are difficult to refuse.

‘Just bring that little table over here, would you?' Lydia indicates an octagonal carved object, vaguely Indian in style. ‘I meant to ask Matty, but she's so impatient. She's always off home before I've finished with her.'

Vicki is wholly in the room now. She is tall, with long legs and long hair. She puts down her shoulder bag and attempts to move the heavy table, rucking up the Kashmiri rug and banging her thin knees against the ornate carving. Lydia squeals out for her to stop: ‘Ooh, careful, dear! I daren't injure Mr Rolfe's leading lady!'

‘Oh, I'm not his “leading lady”!' Vicki straightens up, smiling. ‘We're an ensemble group.'

‘
Ensemble
?' Mrs Pendleton frowns. ‘You mean like a chorus?'

‘Well, not exactly. It just means we do all the parts, big and small. One minute I'm the waitress with two lines, the next I'm the woman who's going to kill herself in a big scene. It's not like it used to be – one big Star and a lot of also-rans. It gives everyone a chance to shine.' She makes a move to the door. ‘Anyway I –'

‘Perhaps you wouldn't think that way if you
had
been the Star,' Lydia reflects, not altogether unkindly, as she glances with delicate reference to the framed black-and-white photographs massed in ranks on the flock wallpaper. ‘Of course, I wouldn't go so far as to say I was a
big
star, but I was pretty well known in the West Country during the War. “The Ginger Rogers of Bath and Wells” they called me. That was an exaggeration of course; I was never as pretty as Ginger.' She cranes round. ‘That's me in
Hit the Deck
. One of my best photos, although it makes my hair look on the dark side. Mind you, I never had a leading man anything like Fred Astaire. Wartime, you see, Miss Henshaw. I had to make do with poor old Laurie Burnett.' Lydia sighs, leaning back in the deep easy chair. ‘I don't expect a young thing like you remembers Laurie – but he was quite a name in his day – the thirties, I mean. Star billing, always his own dressing room. But you can see how he was in 1943.' She reaches back perilously and unhooks the photo from the wall. ‘I mean, how could anyone take him for the Romantic Lead with his hair dyed so black it looked like a wig, and that terrible spluttering when he got out of breath? Quite frankly, Miss Henshaw, he was a shocker. I used to long for a younger partner, someone with a bit of zip.' She sighs, then chuckles a little. ‘You know, some nights I'd try and speed things up – ever so slightly, just to get a bit of pace in the big numbers – but all he'd do was start to wheeze.' She shakes her head. ‘And now, look at me – I'm even worse than he was. Heart trouble's a terrible thing.' She lies back as if exhausted by the power of reminiscence. But she is not done. ‘What I would find useful,' she says pathetically, ‘is somewhere to put a tray.' She gestures vaguely in the vicinity of her armchair, as if hoping for a space to materialize.

‘A tray?' Vicki thinks that if she does this one simple thing, she can leave Mrs Pendleton with a clear conscience. She is already in danger of missing the bus up the hill, but she feels sorry for the old woman. She glances round for a tray, but there is no sign of one. The room is grand and high-ceilinged, with three full-length sash windows, but it is dark red, ill-lit, and chock-full of elaborate furniture. Every horizontal surface is loaded: records in old green paper sleeves, theatre programmes in top-heavy piles, copies of
Spotlight
and
The Stage
. And newspapers, millions of newspapers. It looks as though every
Avon Gazette
ever printed has found its resting place on Lydia's red and blue Axminster carpet.

‘If you could just move these, dear' – Lydia indicates the pile near her left elbow – ‘then I could make room for my biscuits and my Thermos.'

Vicki fears this business with the tray will go on for a long time. She glances at her watch, and lets Lydia see her do so. The old lady remonstrates. ‘Oh, I'm making you late. Selfish me. I must let you go.'

But her dismissal is faint; and Vicki hears herself offering to clear a space after all. She says brightly, ‘It won't take long.' She thinks less brightly of the walk up the hill to the Arts Centre, of the way Justin Rolfe hates people to be late, of the sarcasm that will result. She begins to move the mound of papers. ‘Where shall I put them? On the floor?' She stacks them against an ebony étagère where the dust-furred remains of half a dozen bouquets are displayed in their faded red ribbons. A dark oak tea-trolley is gradually revealed at Lydia's elbow. Under direction, Vicki finds the flask of tea and the packet of ginger nuts and settles them cosily on a tray beside the transistor radio and the big old-fashioned black telephone with its twisted purplish cord.

Lydia opens the ginger nuts. ‘Have one, dear.'

Vicki, in reflex, accepts. It cleaves hot and dry to the roof of her mouth. She says thickly, ‘I really
have
to go now.'

Lydia waves a valedictory ginger nut at her. ‘Give my love to Mr Rolfe, won't you? Ask him when he's coming to see me again. He used to call me the best landlady in the western hemisphere. Mind you, he said a lot of silly things. He was a terrible flirt. I used to say, “No woman's safe from you, Mr Rolfe.” That made him laugh.'

Vicki sucks her cheeks. ‘I bet it did.'

‘Now don't forget to tell him. Say “The Ginger Rogers of Bath and Wells requests his company.” No excuses – or I might remember he still owes me a month's rent. Now off you go, Miss Henshaw, dear.'

‘Yes, I really must.' She glances more explicitly at her watch. There is no chance she will catch that bus, now.

‘You think I'm an old nuisance, I know.'

The remark catches Vicki as she rounds the door's edge. She looks back hastily. ‘Oh, no, I love your old photos – and your stories. I could stay here all day, honestly. It's just that they'll have started working things out without me. We're improvising, you know.'

‘Improvising? Well, I
don't
know about that really, dear.' Lydia's remark lassoes Vicki back into the room. ‘I'm glad to say there was none of that sort of thing in my day. Someone else wrote the words; we just said them. I must say, it was a lot fairer. Everybody knew where they were. Just like a family.'

‘Really? I thought these old musical comedy troupes were full of jealousy and drama … or is that just Hollywood myth?' Vicki wonders why she cannot put an end to this conversation.

‘I expect it was, dear. Though there was one occasion … Plymouth, I think it must have been, because there were so many Navy boys. We were doing Ivor Novello and I'd had this meat pie …'

It is dark when Lydia wakes up. Only the horizontal red bar of the electric fire lights the area around her. She reaches over the back of her chair and her plump hand feels for the trailing cord with its egg-shaped switch. She turns on the standard lamp: more reddish light. Brighter this time, but still heavily obscured by the fringed red shade. Lydia likes red: it is both cosy and theatrical. It reminds her of the Gaiety Theatre in King Street where she'd danced as a child. That was shut, now – turned into a Cash ‘n' Carry – and they'd opened the new Arts Centre instead, up near the University. She'd been there a few times. Mr Rolfe had given her complimentaries, and she and Matty had put on their best clothes and taken a taxi up the hill. But the place hadn't felt right. Not like a theatre at all: just rough brick and black paint, with plastic seats – and no curtain. No scenery to speak of either; you had no idea where you were supposed to be. As for costumes, she'd said to Matty that it looked as though they'd been out to Oxfam and picked the cheapest cast-offs they could get. ‘There was no glamour,' she'd complained. ‘No glamour at all.'

Glamour had always been Lydia's watchword. She believed anything in life could be improved by a touch of it, and the meanest of lives could be enhanced by an hour or two in the presence of beautiful clothes, lyrical music and elegant dancing. She loved Hollywood films, of course, with Fred and Ginger twirling impeccably round the floor doing steps few could emulate. But for a real heartbeat thrill there was nothing like tripping the light fantastic yourself. There was nothing like standing in front of an audience and hearing the swell of applause. Lydia had never wanted to give up that feeling.

However, after the war, she had found herself less in demand as a leading lady. And then, imperceptibly, less in demand for any kind of part. She'd still dressed like a diva, but she spent more time ‘resting' than she ever had. With each day that passed, she found it harder to keep the notion of glamour alive in her heart. Gradually it occurred to her that a new strategy was needed, one where she was in control, where she did not have to wait to be summoned at the whim of others. The choice was obvious for a person of her talents: she would run a dancing school. And not just any dancing school. It would be a lavish enterprise with a proper ballroom. There would be formal dances, as in a country house. As the Principal, she would be the hostess, the central figure gliding across the boards, drawing all eyes.

But first, she needed a suitable property. And that was where Arthur Pendleton had come in. He'd been one of her more elderly admirers; someone whom, in earlier days, she'd tended to disregard at the stage door in favour of younger men. But he was, she learned from Matty, the possessor of a large Regency house, and a private income sufficient for her plans. So she turned the full blaze of her charm upon him, and within six weeks she was stepping over the threshold as his bride. She entered her new domain with relish, and began to convert the elegant but dowdy house into a palace of dreams. Up went mirrors and chandeliers. On went rose-coloured paint. Red velvet curtains were swagged across every alcove with tasselled ropes. Red carpet adorned every staircase. Potted palms filled the entrance hall. And in the basement Lydia created a ballroom with a ceiling of stars, phalanxes of gilt chairs around the edge, and a smoothly sprung floor in the middle. ‘I shall hold classes in the daytime, and formal dances at night,' Lydia exulted. ‘I shall be Licensed for Music and Dancing.'

Mr Pendleton had watched with rising agitation as his once tasteful home took on the aspect of a Grand Hotel. He'd wanted his glamorous wife to be happy; to be given the environment she so clearly loved. And he'd wanted to be part of it. But he was an old dog and he couldn't bring himself to learn new tricks. Once the dance lessons started, he found there was too much bustle and noise and music and clattering of feet. And the hallway was always filled with coats and umbrellas and boots and dancing shoes. It was all very well to have that kind of hectic excitement once a week at the theatre; it was another matter to have it every day in his own home. Gradually he retired to the upper reaches, where the music was only faint and the sound of voices didn't penetrate, and took to spending his days on a battered sofa with a glass of brandy and a detective novel. Within six months of the wedding he had quietly passed away. Lydia followed his coffin in the smartest of black dresses and the most elegant of widow's hats. But, as all good troupers do, she pinned orchids onto her bodice that very night, and soldiered on.

For a long time after that, she queened it in the ballroom, partnering the very choicest of her pupils to the strains of the Dorchester Trio. Her silver shoes twinkled; her supple arms embraced disinterestedly the worsted suiting of each ardent young man (any suggestion of more intimate contact was met with a closed-up smile that gave nothing away). If bouquets arrived with declarations, she put the flowers in water and the notes, unread, in the fire. And stepped forth once more under the rotating mirrored globe that sent measles of tinted light over her smooth face and bare shoulders. Head extended, arms poised, she whirled and pranced, dreaming she was Ginger gliding over acres of glassy Hollywood floors, with suitors falling literally at her feet.