Curtain Call Read online

  ‘Why, the murder of course. He’s killed another one.’

  ‘Ah – that.’

  Nina gave a little splutter. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Are you bored with it already?’

  He winced; the corrective was deserved. He only stood on the brink of disgrace. He hadn’t been beaten and strangled to death in an alleyway. ‘No. I’m sorry, darling, I had other – I’ve just been reading about it. Ghastly.’

  ‘I know – and I can’t help feeling responsible. For not giving them an accurate description of him –’

  ‘You mustn’t think that. You tried. We tried. Others might not have bothered at all . . . My God! I wish I’d never set foot in that hotel.’

  This was said with too much feeling for Nina to let it pass. Stephen was not one to give vent to distress. ‘Darling, what’s the matter?’

  He told her, and Nina listened with incredulous outrage. As he related the story even he found his own part in it somewhat unbelievable.

  ‘You’re not to blame,’ she said with firmness. ‘You’ve been duped by a – by a scoundrel.’

  ‘– who has a cheque with my signature on it. It’s his word against mine as to what it was for.’ He paused. ‘And meanwhile my reputation – what’s left of it – gets worked over in the papers.’

  Nina had never heard him sound so low. I must be a friend to him, she thought. ‘Look, how about I come over and take you to lunch?’

  ‘I’d be very dull company –’

  ‘Which is why I must cheer you up! No, don’t argue. I’ll just change and be with you in an hour.’

  Nina was at the theatre door and heading off to Stephen’s studio when Dolly came hurrying after her.

  ‘Oi. It’s milady on the phone.’

  ‘God! What does she want?’

  Dolly pulled a face meant to suggest the eternal and inscrutable demands of womankind. With an irritated toss of her head Nina retraced her steps back down to the telephone. She picked up the receiver with a long-suffering air.

  ‘Mother.’ At the end of the line she heard a stifled sob. ‘Mum? What’s the matter?’

  ‘I am – I am –’ she stuttered, sniffling, ‘I am the unhappiest woman alive.’

  I very much doubt that, thought Nina, who nevertheless softened her voice. ‘Oh dear. Is this about Mr Dorsch?’

  Now there came a long whimper of pity, or self-pity, which in Mrs Land’s case amounted to the same thing. Whatever it was she had intended to say was choked off by an attack of sobbing that no consoling words of Nina’s could staunch.

  ‘Is Felicity with you? Or Bee?’

  The gluey voice at the other end indicated that neither of her other daughters had been located. Nina, helpless, offered to come over to the house, and on hearing no objection from the distraught caller she realised, with a prickle of annoyance, that she would have to go. Damn. Stephen would wonder where she’d got to. What a morning for revelations, though!

  She took a cab to King’s Cross, then got the Tube to Westbourne Park. It was the first time she had visited the family home since her mother had announced it as the exclusive inheritance of her younger sister. By the time she arrived Felicity was there, with a face like the chief mourner, and Nina felt the shine had been rather taken off her mission of mercy. Her mother was propped on the sofa, dabbing her eyes; emanating a strong aura of misery, she had at least calmed down since the phone call. Felicity hovered in the background, and gave Nina a warning look with her eyes as she approached their stricken parent.

  ‘Hullo, Mum,’ she said, settling on a gentle note of sympathy. This was a time for kid gloves. ‘Just tell us what happened.’

  Mrs Land closed her eyes with a look of martyred anguish. In broken sentences the story came out. Mr Dorsch – ‘Eric’ – had taken her out to dinner, just the two of them, by which point she had become convinced he was about to propose. He did indeed have a proposal for her – ‘Annabel’ – something he had been pondering ‘for a while’, he explained. Their long friendship, of more than twenty years’ standing, had been one of the most important in his life. And it had become doubly so after his dear wife Monica had departed this earth. The challenges of living alone had been mollified by Annabel’s companionship; moreover, he had realised in the years since his bereavement that she was blessed not only with a tender nature (Nina heard this without a change of expression) but a capable and forthright one. Such a talent for succour could not be ignored. Which was why he hoped she would accept an offer he believed would bring out the very best in her: the post of chief administrator to his Spanish orphans’ charity.

  Nina glanced up at Felicity, wondering if she might discern on her face the tiniest twitch of amusement at this unforeseen climax. But whatever her sister felt was unreadable beneath her mask of concern.

  ‘I just don’t understand it,’ whimpered Mrs Land, tears still glistening in her eyes. ‘How . . . could he?’

  ‘Oh, Mum, there,’ said Felicity. ‘I’m sure Mr Dorsch didn’t mean to mislead you. He’s too kind-hearted for that. He just wants to do right by the orphans –’

  ‘Damn and blast those orphans!’ cried her mother, a snarl in her voice. ‘What about doing right by me? Has he not heard of charity beginning at home?’

  The sisters were too startled by the vehemence of this to know how to respond. After a pause Nina said, ‘I’ll go and make us all a cup of tea,’ indicating that Felicity should accompany her. Once they were in the kitchen together they gave one another a ‘you first’ look, and Nina obliged.

  ‘Goodness. I wasn’t expecting that,’ she said, dropping her voice low.

  ‘Well, nor was Mum, evidently,’ replied Felicity, matching her volume.

  ‘No, I mean that little outburst just then. Orphans! How very thoughtless of them to lose their parents and upset her marriage plans.’

  Felicity pursed her lips, demurring. ‘She’s lonely, Nina. I know she can be rather selfish, but perhaps she didn’t entirely imagine Mr Dorsch’s interest in her.’

  ‘Didn’t she? All I saw at that dinner was him behaving with perfect good manners towards an old friend. If she thought it was anything more then –’ Nina decided to bite back her sarcasm.

  ‘We see what we want to see,’ conceded her sister leniently. ‘What she needs now is our love and support.’

  Nina stared at her. ‘I’m sorry? What do we owe her of love and support after the way she’s behaved to us? I think it’s pretty bloody amazing we’re still on speaking terms.’

  Felicity busied herself with the tea things, which allowed her time to consider a reply. When it came her tone was more critical. ‘You sound awfully bitter, you know.’

  Nina choked out a disbelieving gasp. ‘Bitter? Let me remind you, it was entirely based on her deluded expectation of a proposal that she willed this house to Bee and cut us off. So yes, I am bitter, if you must know.’

  ‘Shh, lower your voice. I wonder whether you’d feel so aggrieved about this if there was someone in your life. I think you blame Mum for what happened with Pa, and you’re upset that any man should show an interest in her.’

  Nina was for a moment too stunned to speak. It was not merely the accusatory thrust of the words that pierced her, but that it had come from Felicity, whose tolerant good nature had always helped keep the peace. She stared more closely at her, hoping to see a softening in her gaze, but there was none.

  She tried to hold her voice steady. ‘I knew this would happen. I knew the minute Mum told us about the will it would cause an argument, sooner or later. Only I thought it would be with Bee, not with you. Fliss, please, don’t be angry. I thought you were on my side.’

  Felicity clicked her tongue in irritation. ‘I’m not on anyone’s “side”. I’d just like this family to get along with one other. You think Mum fooled herself and has now got her comeuppance – well, maybe she has. But instead of gloating you should feel sorry for her.’

  The teacups and spoons rattled on the tray as Felicity picked it up, their brittl
e chimes underscoring her disapproval. Nina, stung by this exchange, had one last stab at defending herself. ‘By the way, you may find it hard to believe, but I do have someone in my life.’

  Felicity stopped, glanced at her. ‘I see. Will we be invited to meet him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Nina, hesitating. ‘There are – difficulties.’

  Felicity’s expression had turned thoughtful, and Nina knew her to be astute enough to guess what they were. But she only gave a little nod, and said, ‘Well, the path of true love, and so on. I hope it’ll make you happy. Happier than . . .’ A meaning look accompanied this uncompleted phrase. Happier than their mother? Or happier than the usual run of Nina’s affairs? She would have liked her to continue, but Felicity was already on her way out of the kitchen, armed with the tray. Some moments later she heard her voice in the next room, solicitous again, calming their mother.

  Nina remained standing where she was, her thoughts in a stir of remorse and resentment. On the one hand, she now felt shamed by that secret bat-squeak of amusement on hearing her mother’s tale of dashed hopes. On the other, she sensed in her blood the slow-acting poison of genetic inheritance. She had dreaded becoming like her mother, and had striven, perhaps at a cost, to ensure she did not. She would not throw in her lot with a feckless man, would not shackle herself to domestic drudgery, would not sacrifice a career to her children and then resent them for stifling her. At the age of thirty-two, with a job, a little money and no dependants, it seemed she had succeeded. It had not mattered to her before that her most serious liaison had lasted ten months. Now she wondered if her flightiness was actually a deep-rooted fear of committing herself to a man.

  Something else was bothering her. Why had she felt it necessary to tell Felicity there was ‘someone’ in her life? Her hackles had been up, true, but she had no need to score a point in argument, or to eke a little mystery out of the unidentified suitor. The subject of her romantic life rarely came up between them. This time it was different. She had wanted to tell her about Stephen, wanted to say how mad she was about him, and so what if he was unavailable? He loved her, Nina, enough to admit his mistake – that he should never have got married, they were too young, and if he could turn back the clock . . . No, she mustn’t torment herself with that. She would not whine or wheedle; she would simply be what she had always been to him – adorable.

  When she returned to the living room she found the emotional temperature had cooled down. Felicity had poured them some tea, and her mother’s trembling lip had returned to the stiffness of old. The mood had taken a philosophical turn, and the character of Mr Dorsch, so recently a fiend in human form, was now adjudged to be merely a pitiable wretch. Nina, in a sudden uprush of generous feeling, took her mother’s hand and gave it a kiss.

  Mrs Land acknowledged it in a queenly lift of her head, then said, with deliberation, ‘Of course, I realise the mistake I made. I should not have allowed myself to keep on giving. It made him think I didn’t need anything.’

  Nina absorbed the remark in silence, and calculated the moment it would be permissible to make her excuses and withdraw.

  Madeleine had spent the afternoon at a picture house on the Charing Cross Road. The second feature, a sliver of romantic foolery whose title she had already forgotten, had nevertheless performed a vital service. It had banished her low spirits. She knew nothing like the pictures for taking her out of herself. The tatty circumstances of the place – the stale smoke, the threadbare velvet seating, the motes of dust teeming down the projector’s wand of light – these seemed to enhance the truant nature of film-going. What was it called? It didn’t matter; gaze uptilted, she was entranced by the silvered aquarium of light containing the two lovebirds, the marvellous clothes and the silly friends, the swooning music, the muddling of motives that threatens the couple’s happiness, the interlude of repining, and the reconciliation clinched with a kiss. A fantasy, of course, though she wondered all the same if there might be people out there who did inhabit such a bubble of charm, with their gay parties and jaunts – people whose principal concern was how they should enjoy their life, rather than (more common, alas) how they should keep body and soul together.

  She emerged into the roaring dark of London traffic, but her mood had been lifted by the film. She thought she might have a drink before clocking on, and started on a diagonal course through Soho. Roddy had been offish with her since the night of their dinner, informing her of this or that punter with a side-of-the-mouth brusqueness. There were no more offers of a lift. She didn’t care, so long as he didn’t put her through all that business again. In spite of the job, and a natural tendency to depreciate herself, Madeleine could not help being aware that to some men she was a romantic object, as opposed to a merely physical one. Roddy was the last she would have suspected of going spoony on her – the last, and the least welcome. But recently it seemed she had detected a certain softness in Tom’s eye. It was at that lunch, when Jimmy had been descanting on the attractiveness of her ‘phizog’, as he called it, and Tom had echoed his praise in a rather sincere way. It was confusing, their admiration, since they were both queer – only, now she thought about it, might Tom be one of those who also fancied women, like Oscar Wilde?

  It had just gone five thirty when she arrived at the Blue Posts, its doors thrown back to admit the first customers of the evening. She sat at the bar and ordered a gin and pep. She was still working on her thoughts about Tom, and whether he had any inkling about what she did. He had seen her that one time at the Elysian, and had probably assumed she was some sort of showgirl or waitress. She had encouraged this assumption by declining any opportunity for discussing it. But what would happen if – well, if he actually fell for her? How long would it be before she was obliged to tell him? A common bond united them: they were both in their way outcasts, hiding in plain sight. In the eyes of the law they were criminals. Perhaps Tom, long used to concealing his sexual proclivities, would look on her as a kindred spirit, but she was not inclined to believe it. There were few men who would regard a woman of the streets in a spirit of equality, and fewer still who would choose to befriend her.

  At the other end of the counter there had been a good deal of head-shaking and frowning among the habitués. The barman finally dragged himself away and brought her drink. He knew Madeleine by sight, and plied her with some inconsequential chat about the cold weather. She could sense, almost from the way he was drying a glass, that he was still preoccupied with the conversation he had recently abandoned, and to which he was keen to return. Or was he in fact trying to refresh that conversation’s novelty by including her, a newcomer? Either way, he seemed to have something on his mind of greater moment than the weather.

  ‘S’pose you’ve ’eard the latest?’ he said, lifting his gaze from the pint glass he had been wiping.

  Madeleine, pausing over the gin and pep, shook her head.

  ‘Vicious,’ he muttered, with a grimace that could hardly conceal his eagerness to continue. ‘That feller, the one who strangled them women – he’s done another one in.’

  Numbed with shock she half listened as he elaborated on the story. The killer had gone quiet in the last few weeks, prompting speculation from some that the police, always ‘questioning’ suspects, had finally got their man. Others, like the barman, called it wishful thinking. Now there was no room for doubt – the Tiepin Killer was still at large.

  ‘S’like the Ripper all over again, I’m tellin’ you,’ said the barman.

  She looked narrowly at him, wondering how he could remember that far back, and said, mechanically, ‘Where did they find her?’

  He gestured with a vague tilt of his head. ‘Strand. Always ’ereabouts, see.’

  ‘But the Ripper – weren’t his all in the East End?’

  The man stopped cleaning his glass for a moment, and considered. ‘Right enough. Mebbe that’s why he leaves a tiepin on ’em. Bit of West End flash, hur hur.’

  Without thinking Madeleine fin
ished her gin in one go. Feeling slightly dizzy as she stood, she put on her hat and headed for the door. More customers were coming in; she was preparing to brush past them when of a sudden her name sounded. She jumped, looking about her in alarm. It was Rita, her face drawn and strangely older. They sidled over to an unoccupied corner of the bar.

  ‘You’ve heard,’ was all that Rita said.

  Madeleine nodded. ‘The barman just told me.’

  For some moments they gazed at one another, as if forlorn expressions might unlock some meaning from this new calamity. Then Rita shook her head.

  ‘That poor kid.’

  ‘What have they said about it?’

  ‘Only that’ – she put a hand to her mouth, and dropped her voice – ‘they say he knocked her about before he . . .’ The sentence trailed off into the unspeakable. ‘To think we was just sittin’ here, the three of us.’

  Madeleine was so sick and distracted with apprehension that it took her a moment to digest these last words. ‘What do you mean – the three of us?’

  Rita stared at her, appalled. ‘Oh God, you mean you don’t know?’ Madeleine’s uncomprehending look was enough to confirm it. ‘Maddy, the girl he – it was Alice.’

  Nina had managed to get away from her mother’s at last. She had caught a bus to the King’s Road and was hurrying down Tite Street. Having told Stephen she would be there within the hour she was now so late that he had probably given up on her and gone out. But at the door she was answered by his housekeeper and directed up the stairs. Stephen presented himself at her knock, and the first syllable of her endearment (‘Dar –’) was out of her mouth when she spotted over his shoulder that he already had company. The look of apology on his face warned her. On entering the large light-flooded studio she thought it was one of his fawn-like models curled up there on an armchair in front of the fire. But that wasn’t the case.

  She heard a strained note in his introduction. ‘This is Freya, my daughter. Freya, meet my friend Nina.’