Curtain Call Page 5

  ‘Erskine! How are you?’

  He turned to find a tall fellow with a florid face and an unnerving dark gaze fixed upon him. His projecting voice and wide-lapelled chalkstripe suit bespoke a boisterous confidence. Jimmy had absolutely no idea who he was. But he sensed he ought to know him, and muttered a hullo.

  ‘I was talking about you only the other day,’ the man continued, ‘with my old friend Stephen Wyley. I’m organising a dinner to raise funds for the Marquess – we hope to relaunch the place. Your presence would be a tremendous boon to us.’

  Dipping his hand into a breast pocket he took out a business card and handed it to Jimmy. It was embossed with the House of Commons portcullis, beneath which was printed: GERALD CARMODY, MP. So that’s who he was. Jimmy had no memory of meeting him before, though he knew his type: the varsity swagger, the entitlement, the bullying familiarity with men whose acquaintance he had never previously enjoyed.

  ‘You’re a friend of Stephen Wyley?’ said Jimmy, pouncing on the only bit of information that interested him. He owned one of his paintings, and nurtured a secret longing to have his portrait done by him.

  ‘Ye-e-ers, we were at Oxford together. He’s pledged his support. It should be a grand occasion – no trash!’

  Jimmy nodded approvingly. ‘Well, if it’s not a press night I’m sure I could see my way to attending. Call the Chronicle and ask for my secretary’s number – he looks after my diary.’

  ‘Splendid!’ boomed Carmody, his eyes glittering. He shot out a meaty hand, which Jimmy felt obliged to take. ‘Toodle-oo.’

  Jimmy had reached his seat when he noticed the man in the row behind glaring at him. What on earth was his gripe? His eyes slid along to the woman sitting next to him – and then he knew. It was the Brum matron he had recently put in her place. She looked merely embarrassed; he – the husband, presumably – looked furious, clearly having taken umbrage on his lady’s behalf. Oh dear, just his luck to be sitting in front of them . . . He drooped in his seat, feeling the man’s eyes burning into his neck. The lights went down, mercifully, and he was once more enfolded in the smothering competence of the painted people onstage.

  St Martin’s Lane was aswarm with the theatre crowds just emerging from their evening’s entertainment, the pavements thronged with men carrying the odour of sixpenny cigars and women wearing fake pearls and implausible hats. Brilliant traffic was bunching and growling, spurting and halting in broken processions, eager for a way out. Jimmy, despairing of a cab, hurried through Seven Dials and thence into Shaftesbury Avenue. While everyone else was heading for the late-night Tube and bus, his own evening was just beginning. He lived round the corner from the British Museum in Princess Louise Mansions, whose grimy terracotta facade belied the furnishings of his own bachelor rooms within. Extravagant in most things, where his flat was concerned he was positively Babylonian. A huge art deco mirror greeted his entrance into the hallway, where his shoes clacked pleasingly on the varnished parquet. Prints and paintings covered almost every inch of the living-room wall. On the chimney piece stood a marble bust of Irving next to a Lalique vase, the expense of which put him in a cold sweat even now. On top of the drinks cabinet a gramophone’s brass horn flared like a huge petalled flower. The cream-coloured carpets were lamb-soft, and the very devil to keep clean: Mrs Pargiter, his char, was often on her hands and knees scrubbing them. At his desk, where he now installed himself, certain literary treasures were laid out. An inkstand bought at an auction of Oscar Wilde’s personal effects; a blotter that had once belonged to Balzac; a fountain pen presented to him at an awards lunch by Kipling. He had attended Kipling’s funeral at the Abbey in January, and had surprised himself by weeping.

  From the kitchen he had brought a plate of cold partridge and half a bottle of sparkling hock, his fuel for the task. He had been rehearsing the second and third paragraphs of his review during the play’s interminable last act; another one would push it over halfway, then with any luck momentum would see him to the end. Sometimes he would spend an hour trying to get a sentence right; at others, he could cuff a paragraph into shape within ten minutes. He wrote as if he were composing music, testing each line over and over for harmony, phrasing, rhythm. His method entailed so much crossing out, with so many revisions and embellishments, that a page of his longhand prose would end nearly blackened. He would then make a fair copy of the text on his typewriter, and set to work on that, amending, tinkering, cutting. If his secretary was about he would give it him to read and make suggestions; he tended to curb Jimmy’s more baroque flights of fancy. Come to think of it, where was he tonight?

  The excitement of the evening ahead lent speed to his composition. By 11.15 p.m. he had it done, typed and ready to go. Eight hundred words in forty minutes: not bad. He telephoned for a taxi, and by quarter to midnight he was slouching in a chair by his editor’s desk at the Chronicle’s office. The latter was a cove named Gideon Lambert, who smoked Woodbines and seemed to take pleasure in never praising anything. Jimmy thought the man didn’t pay him quite the respect he was due, but he knew him to have influence ‘upstairs’ and so didn’t make a fuss.

  Having read through Jimmy’s copy in silence, Lambert looked up. ‘What’s this – “his steatopygous form” . . .?’

  ‘From the Greek,’ said Jimmy, ‘meaning excessive flesh on the buttocks.’

  ‘I don’t think our readers will know the word.’

  ‘Then they need only consult a dictionary.’

  Lambert was shaking his head. Jimmy sighed and said, ‘Would our readers prefer “fat-arsed”, d’you suppose?’

  For answer the editor scored a line through it. A short telephone call followed, consisting mostly of grunted hmms and yuhs. Lambert rang off and shot a look of amused resignation across the desk.

  ‘That was subs. They have to cut ten lines from it,’ he said, nodding at the review.

  ‘You’re joking.’ Lambert tweaked his mouth in a languid way that Jimmy found rather maddening. ‘Odd, isn’t it, how one’s deathless prose becomes in a subeditor’s hands so very mortal. Can you imagine a painter bringing in his canvas and the frame-maker telling him he must cut two inches off the foreground to make it fit?’

  Lambert spread his palms wide. ‘Either you can do it, or they will.’

  Jimmy clicked his tongue in annoyance. ‘Tell them to send up a proof.’

  While they waited Jimmy parked himself on the office’s horsehair couch and leafed through the paper’s late edition. His eye stopped at a headline on page three: SCOTLAND YARD RELEASE SKETCH OF TIEPIN KILLER. Alongside the story was a pencil portrait of a man’s face, apparently drawn by a member of the public who may have seen him at the hotel. Rather a professional job too, almost an artist’s impression. The identity of the second victim had been confirmed; she had just started working at the Imperial as a chambermaid.

  ‘My God, they’re not even tarts he’s murdering . . .’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Lambert, lighting another cigarette.

  ‘The girl who got strangled last week. Lived with her mother in Bayswater – perfectly respectable family.’

  Lambert didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘We thought he might be another Ripper. I think everyone here’s a bit disappointed.’

  ‘Charming,’ said Jimmy, quietly shocked.

  He was of an age to have lived through the Ripper murders. In the autumn of 1888 he was a schoolboy in Birmingham, though news of Whitechapel prostitutes being brutally slaughtered was not slow to catch on in the provinces. Jimmy had first read of them in his father’s Daily Telegraph, and could recall his fascinated revulsion on learning precisely what the word ‘disembowelled’ meant. Also the word ‘prostitute’, come to think of it.

  ‘Well, at least this sketch gives them something to go on,’ Lambert was saying as he studied the page. A short silence intervened, and Jimmy looked round to find Lambert staring at him through the smoke. ‘That’s an interesting pin you’re wearing, by the way . . .’

  Jimmy s
norted his amusement at the implication, fingering the gold pin that speared his tie. ‘I use it only for its designated purpose.’

  But Lambert was enjoying himself. ‘You even look rather like him,’ he mused, squinting between Jimmy and the sketch. ‘Can you account for your whereabouts on the evening in question?’

  ‘Are the subs going to be long? I have an appointment to keep.’

  ‘What, at this hour?’

  ‘The night is young.’ Jimmy shrugged, wary of his curiosity. Lambert was just the sort of tittle-tattler who could do him damage. Changing the subject, he fished out the business card lately entrusted to him and handed it across the desk.

  ‘Know anything of this fellow?’

  Lambert wrinkled his nose. ‘Gerald Carmody. Mm, used to knock around with the Blackshirts, before he fell out with Mosley. Met him a couple of times.’

  ‘He claimed acquaintance with me, but I didn’t know him from Adam.’

  ‘That wouldn’t stop Carmody. He puts himself about. I gather he’s running a theatre in Covent Garden – belonged to his wife’s family.’

  ‘Yes, the Marquess. He’s trying to raise funds – asked me along to a dinner in support. I suppose I ought to lend my name.’

  ‘But of course – a theatrical legend such as yourself . . .’ Jimmy thought he detected a note of sarcasm in his voice, but Lambert’s expression was impassive. ‘He’s not altogether trustworthy, of course,’ he continued, handing back the card to Jimmy. ‘He oughtn’t to be giving out these things for a start – he’s not an MP any more.’

  At that moment a copy boy poked his head round the door, waving a proof of Jimmy’s review. For the next twenty minutes Jimmy fiddled furiously, breaking up paragraphs and honing down sentences with the pained but beady eye of a master jeweller forced to cut a beautiful gem. Ten lines – lines he had lovingly composed – gone! Still, better he did the job than allow some sub to get his paws on it. When he had finished he placed it on the desk before Lambert, who was now slumped in his chair, blowing smoke rings at the ceiling.

  ‘I’m off. Are you going to have another look at it?’

  Lambert lifted his chin in vague acknowledgement. ‘I’m sure it’ll do.’

  Jimmy bristled. This was too much. ‘It will more than do,’ he said coldly. ‘Much as it might surprise you, my copy does not come by the yard, like cloth for curtains. Nor is it something to be topped and tailed like a French bean. It is a piece by James Erskine – therefore it will be the outstanding ornament of tomorrow’s newspaper.’

  He didn’t wait for Lambert’s response to this blast of magisterial hauteur, brushing past the copy boy who had been loitering at the door. He was halfway along the corridor when the response did come, belatedly: a rising three-note screech of hilarity, accompanied by another’s low appreciative snigger.

  Back in the cab, which he had kept waiting, Jimmy fumed uselessly over the scene he had just exited. He had forgotten how much he disliked Lambert. I’m sure it’ll do . . . Time was when he would have had him carpeted. The Erskine of old would not have suffered such impudence from a subordinate. That time was fading. Jimmy felt himself to be a person of diminishing consequence. It was partly to do with age. Young men like Lambert didn’t care tuppence that he was the great drama critic of his era; they just saw a fat old man in checks and a bowler who had to walk with a cane.

  It might have been different, had luck been on his side. Or should he say looks? In his early twenties he had strutted the stage himself, working in a repertory company whose productions had caught the eye of the local newspaper. His Laertes at that little theatre in Edgbaston was hailed as a triumph (he still had the cutting somewhere) and for a while he had even understudied the Prince. He possessed a melodic voice and a decent athletic figure, but as time went on he noticed that the roles being offered to him were getting smaller and, strangely, older. Instead of the dashing romantics he longed to play, directors were casting him as uncles, loyal advisers, second dukes. Three years after his ‘triumphant’ Laertes he auditioned for another Hamlet and was asked to read for – the gravedigger! Frustrated, he eventually took aside Mr Becker, the manager of the company, to ask why he was being overlooked for the major roles. Jimmy listened to him blather for a while before he pressed him to give an honest answer. Becker paused, embarrassed, and then he said quietly, ‘I’m sorry, James, but nobody will cast you for those parts. You simply don’t have the looks.’

  So there it was. He could have persevered in defiance of the man’s judgement, but in his heart he knew he had heard the truth, or something like it. He quit the company, without so much as a goodbye to anyone, and worked for a time in his father’s drapery business. It was a desolate period in his young life. For months he avoided the theatre altogether, sickened at the thought of his lost future. Then, during a week’s holiday in London, he went to see Henry Irving play Dubosc in The Lyons Mail, and was transfixed. On returning to his lodgings he wrote a review of the play, rhapsodising over three paragraphs on the actor’s ferocious gusto and individuality. He had written pieces for the school magazine, but nothing before had so fired his enthusiasm, or his pen. He sent it to the Post, with a covering letter, and the next day an editor wrote back. The paper couldn’t run his Irving review, but would he care to try out as their London theatre correspondent? Four weeks later, following a brief interview, the job was his. The performer in him had not been wholly thwarted; henceforth he would create his own sort of drama from the stalls, to be enjoyed in print the next day. It was revenge of a kind. But in thirty-eight years he had never forgotten the critical verdict Mr Becker had passed, regretfully, on his physical appeal.

  The cab had stopped on Charlotte Street, quiet at this hour, though he could see the lamps still agleam inside Bertorelli’s. He paid off the cabbie – quite a fare after all his waiting – and found the covered alley by the side of the pub. Newman Passage: don’t mind if I do, thought Jimmy. At the foot of the alley was a cobbled mews, where he counted off the numbers until he reached the door he’d been told about. A sullen-faced bantam who answered his knock gave him the once-over before stepping aside. The lounge he entered was long and dimly lit, like a Mayfair clubroom, and occupied by men in murmurous colloquy. Not knowing anyone, Jimmy was about to settle in a corner armchair when a strapping fellow with brilliantined hair and a neat moustache approached him.

  ‘Mr . . . Quex, is it?’

  ‘Call me Jimmy,’ he replied, accepting the man’s handshake.

  ‘Sergeant Teague, sir. What’ll you have to drink?’ Without waiting for an answer he called to another man lounging nearby. ‘Bottle of Black & White, if you will, Reg. Two glasses.’

  ‘And a tankard,’ added Jimmy. The man nodded and slunk off.

  Teague looked at him in a genial way, but said nothing, so Jimmy began the story of his evening, and made a little comic anecdote of his dropping off during the play. Teague only listened, though when the Scotch arrived at the table he poured them each a good three fingers and raised his glass. ‘Here’s how.’

  Jimmy drank and continued to talk of the London theatre and its audiences, cracking the odd joke, but Teague just sat there, nodding benignly. It seemed that whatever he said, and however amusingly he said it, he could not pierce the fellow’s carapace of polite indifference. Jimmy, used to entertaining company, decided on a different tack.

  ‘So, Sergeant,’ he began, looking about the room, ‘you’re all from the Albany Street barracks?’

  ‘Indeed we are, sir.’

  ‘I’ve done me bit for the King, too. Captain in the Army Service Corps, ’14–’18. Mostly in Le Havre and Boulogne, you know, looking after the horses. Much safer than the front, of course!’ Jimmy thought he should make this modest admission in case he came across as a shirker. Teague at last responded.

  ‘No shame in supplying a good service, sir.’

  Jimmy heard the ulterior meaning in his words. ‘Quite so,’ he said, taking out his wallet and laying two ten-shill
ing notes on the table. The sergeant winked, and calmly folded them into his pocket. Jimmy looked around at the other clientele, huddled in convivial clusters. He experienced a stab of panic. ‘These men are all . . . I can trust in their discretion?’

  ‘Absolutely, sir,’ said Teague, smiling. ‘Allow me to conduct you upstairs. I’ve a couple of friends I think you’d like to meet.’ He signalled to his man to carry up the Scotch and the tankard, and Jimmy followed after.

  At four o’clock the two guardsmen said their ‘g’nights’ and pushed off, each of them ten bob to the better. Jimmy, sprawled on a divan, hauled his trousers back on and went downstairs in search of Teague. He didn’t mind having to do all the talking – in truth he rather enjoyed it. But the sergeant had gone, so there was nothing else for it: home, James. Back on Charlotte Street the facades of cafes and shops gazed out, oddly hostile, the serried upper windows glimmering from the reflection of the street lamps. He headed for Bedford Square, his ears pricked for other footsteps, though there really was nobody about, not even an early milkman. His shadow seemed to gain on him as he walked, and he looked in fright over his shoulder to check he was not being followed. He hated having to walk home – he hated having to walk anywhere – and took to muttering some verses to keep himself company.

  We aren’t no thin red ’eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too.

  But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;

  And if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints,

  Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints.

  Indeed not!

  He had just reached the British Museum, nearly at his door, when he saw a lone, lean figure strolling in his direction. The helmet gave him away. He had heard stories of policemen disguised as trade, soliciting men like himself. One couldn’t be too careful. A discreet exchange of looks, a descent into the public lavatory – and the surprise snap of the handcuffs. Gotcha!

  ‘Good morning, Constable,’ chirped Jimmy, with an insouciance he didn’t feel.