The Warning Bell Read online

  ‘My God,’ said Maggie quietly. She had a sudden feeling almost of desperation, part rage and part helplessness. Her hands made a convulsive move, as if to crush the letter, but Mrs Dalzell hastily snatched it back.

  ‘Here, give it to me! It’s an unspeakable insult, to be sure, but it’s a whole lot better than nothing.’ She put it away again, and touched Maggie’s shoulder. ‘Oh come along now, my dear, cheer up! Things aren’t so bad. I’ve a wee pension, after all, and I have not even started to look for a job yet. Speaking of jobs, do I detect signs that you have another one?’ She indicated the half-packed trunk, rising like a table-top mountain from a surf of clothes, wigs, shoes and tissue paper.

  ‘Yes,’ said Maggie dully. ‘A season in north Devon.’

  ‘At this time of year? Heaven help you.’ She got up and peered into the depths of the trunk. And suddenly she began to laugh. ‘Good gracious, what on earth is this extraordinary device?’ She dived her arm in and lifted a padded garment fashioned of pyjama flannel, shaped like an open-ended barrel with long tapes like braces looped to it.

  ‘That? It’s my middle-aged spread,’ said Maggie. ‘For when I play large character ladies.’

  Mrs Dalzell was briskly shedding her coat, which she had retained against the chill. Now she hung the flannel barrel on herself with the tapes over her shoulders. Next, she dived again into the trunk, emerging with one of Tanya’s bequest dresses, which she slipped over her enlarged form. Maggie watched her in astonishment over the back of the sofa, and found she couldn’t even raise a smile at the abruptly comfortable, matronly figure.

  ‘Did you make this yourself?’ asked Mrs Dalzell, parading in front of the long mirror. ‘Well done! I’m delighted you’re not too vain to spoil your looks in the interests of realism.’

  ‘I love playing character. Give me a good landlady with curlers, a big bust, carpet slippers and falling-down lisle stockings —’

  Suddenly Mrs Dalzell interrupted. ‘Do you know what? I think we should celebrate your new job. Something modest but fun. A meal out! What do you say?’

  ‘I’d love to! But —’

  ‘It’s settled, then. I’m staying at my cousins’, of course, so you can phone me there. I shall be out job-hunting during the day but home most evenings. Make it soon. I must go.’

  At the door she turned and gave Maggie’s shoulders a little shake, as if to shake away the sad thoughts she had visited on her. She smiled into her eyes as if nothing on earth were amiss.

  ‘Dress up nicely,’ she said. ‘Remember! An actress is never off duty.’

  But when it came to it, Maggie discovered that she did not want to be alone with Mrs Dalzell for this essentially private celebration. It was not that she feared Mrs D would bring up the matter of her victimisation at the stealthy and vengeful hands of Mr Robertson, or do anything else to remind Maggie of the deplorable straits into which her life had fallen on Maggie’s account. It was simply that the proximity of her old teacher made her deeply unhappy and uncomfortable, just when she wanted to be otherwise. So, without consulting Mrs D, she invited Tanya to go with them.

  The venue was Lyons’ Corner House in Coventry Street, where the three of them had some very thin steak and very thin chips washed down with a glass of red wine (also on the thin side) for five shillings a head including a roll and butter.

  The two girls talked without cease, and often simultaneously. Mrs Dalzell did not appear to mind. She was not depressingly silent; her eyes moved interestedly from one eager young face to the other, and she ate with a good appetite.

  Afterwards they all strolled along to Leicester Square, still talking shop. They stopped outside the lighted window of Frizell’s Theatrical Chemist and yearned over the displays of greasepaint like children outside a toy-shop.

  ‘I wonder which numbers one’d use for a ghost,’ mused Maggie.

  ‘Probably not sticks at all,’ said Tanya. ‘You’ll have to do your hands and arms, and part of your chest if you wear a low dress. They could probably make up a special wet-white.’

  ‘What about your hair?’ asked Mrs Dalzell.

  ‘Well, I won’t be given a wig; our company is too hard up even to hire a moustache.’

  ‘You might make one yourself from cotton wool,’ Mrs Dalzell suggested.

  Maggie and Tanya shrieked.

  ‘Cotton wool! It’s not the black-and-white minstrels!’

  ‘Or amateur night on the pier — not quite!’

  Mrs Dalzell looked abashed. Maggie had never seen her look abashed before. The expression sat strangely on her face, which had always radiated an undefeatable confidence. In fact, in the lunar glow of the neon, she seemed altogether to have shrunk in some odd way. Maggie, who had been too full of herself all evening to pay Mrs Dalzell much attention, suddenly felt a belated pang of something more than sympathy — a sort of protectiveness.

  ‘Of course, I haven’t forgotten the marvellous effect you got with cotton wool wigs in your production of The Relapse at school —’ she began. But Tanya, owing nothing to Mrs Dalzell, was not listening.

  ‘The best thing would probably be to set your own hair smoothly and then smear Meltonian White shoe-cleaner all over it.’

  ‘Shoe-white on my hair! It might make it all fall out —’

  ‘You would do your bow at the end, and — plonk into the floats —’

  The two girls laughed hilariously, and Mrs Dalzell joined in. Then they bought ice-cream in the Square and strolled around ‘theatre mile’, licking their cones and looking longingly at front-of-house displays. Maggie had an urge to put her arm through Mrs Dalzell’s, but she felt embarrassed about what might seem an unwarranted familiarity, so she put it through Tanya’s instead.

  They parted, two and one, at Leicester Square tube.

  Afterwards, Maggie tried obsessively to remember exactly how they had said goodbye, but she couldn’t. Something quite commonplace about how much fun it had been (had Mrs Dalzell said that, or was it herself or Tanya?) and that they must keep in touch. One thing Maggie was absolutely sure of later was that during the whole course of the evening she had not once asked Mrs Dalzell anything about her own quest for a job, nor made any real effort to draw her into the conversation. And at the end, they parted on a high, shrieky, theatrical note — a superficial, silly note, a note of self-absorbed and impervious youngness.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Maggie set off for Devon shortly afterwards. She had meant to phone Mrs Dalzell before she left, to say goodbye, but she kept getting side-tracked. She did fully intend to write to her and sent off, quite soon after her arrival, a postcard showing Ilfracombe beach on the sort of sun-soaked day that evidently does come once a year, even to that storm-ridden coast, for the special benefit of postcard photographers — the scene certainly bore little resemblance to the rain- and wind-swept vista that met Maggie’s eyes every morning when she donned pac-a-mac and gum-boots to trudge from her digs to the little seaside theatre.

  Precious few were making that pilgrimage, aside from the actors; in fact, the inhabitants of the town appeared to have gone to ground for the winter, except for a few hardy shopkeepers and fishermen. Most of the rest were over seventy anyway, to judge by the audiences. On week-nights, these consisted of a handful of faithful old ladies, several in wheelchairs; they sat under their rugs, often clutching hot-water bottles, with their felt hats jammed well down over their neat white perms. Their enthusiastic hand-claps as the curtain fell could be individually distinguished. At weekends, the numbers were marginally more encouraging. One Saturday in early November, when the company was playing a new play called The Young in Heart — which had a strong sentimental appeal — one of the young managers rushed round the dressing-rooms with the incredible news that there were forty-five people out front, four of them clearly under thirty.

  Added to the small houses and the dismal weather were their confined and introverted ‘private’ lives in a small, cramped lodging house. This was being kept open specially f
or them by a landlady more accustomed to summer visitors, who behaved as if the actors had to be beadily watched for outbreaks of depravity. All this told sorely on their nerves. Quarrels and bitching became endemic; but it was not till December, when Dudley, one of the managers, imported his girlfriend to play leads, that the real trouble started.

  Until then, the good parts had been shared round, as at Tenby. (Ah! Lovely sunny theatre-minded tourist-filled Tenby, just across the whitecapped grey estuary! Maggie thought back to it as to paradise lost.) But now the other three women in the company were relegated to secondary roles, and lost no time in making clear their resentment. Maggie was that bit more vociferous on the subject than others, earning herself an unenviable appointment as spokesman. This was to prove her undoing.

  Knock, knock on the door of the small room backstage used by the two managers as an office-cum-dressing room. Scuffle. Thump.

  ‘Come in? Oh. Hello, Maggie, it’s you.’

  ‘Sorry if I interrupted anything.’

  ‘No, no. Just hearing Avril her lines, wasn’t I, love?’

  Avril was sprawled in unblushing disarray on what the disgruntled ladies of the company had taken to calling the already-cast-couch, though it was actually an antediluvian ottoman with its padding hanging out. Avril had quite a bit hanging out too.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ asked Dudley.

  ‘May I talk to you alone?’

  ‘No secrets from Avril, have I, love?’

  ‘No,’ said Avril firmly.

  ‘Well!’ began Maggie, unconsciously adopting Mrs Dalzell’s opener and tone. ‘I was invited to join this company on the basis of fair shares for all. Now Avril’s getting all the plums. And the rest of us are fed up.’

  The young man’s face, alight a moment before with vacuous postcoital benignity, froze into fixed lines of dismay. Avril sat up, put her feet on the floor and drew her dressing-gown around her as if preparing to ward off a physical attack.

  ‘Who’s fed up?’

  ‘All of us. The whole company’s upset about it. Even the men don’t like seeing one person playing leads week after week whether she’s suitable for the parts or not.’

  Avril rose slowly and menacingly and fixed her eyes on her champion, whose jaw had just dropped.

  After one or two audible swallows he said, ‘Who says she’s not suitable? Do you imagine you could have played her part this week better than she does?’

  ‘Oh no. She’s type-cast in bitchy roles,’ said Maggie, finding she got a delightful frisson from Avril’s gasp of fury. ‘But,’ she went on, in top gear now, ‘she made a dog’s dinner of “Marion” the week before. She’s hopeless at older women. You only gave it to her because it’s the best part in the play. She wouldn’t even grey up for it, for fear someone might think she’s really forty.’

  Avril closed in and grasped her lover’s shoulder in a convulsion of rage. This seemed to impart some gumption, because he sprang belatedly to his feet.

  ‘How dare you talk about her like that!’

  ‘How dare you let your sex-life mess up the company!’

  Flummoxed, Dudley glanced for inspiration at Avril, who jerked her head sharply at the door.

  ‘Er — yes. You’d better go,’ he said rather unconvincingly.

  ‘Go? What’s that supposed to mean?’ asked Maggie.

  Avril smiled her pussy-cat smile at Maggie and purred, ‘It means, permanently.’

  There was a stunned silence. Maggie hadn’t bargained for that. Neither, probably, had Dudley, who looked aghast.

  ‘Are you firing me?’ she asked finally.

  Avril nodded pleasantly. ‘From Saturday. We’ll pay your fare back to London, won’t we, love? Oh,’ she added as Maggie stood motionless, ‘and thank you for your criticism about greying up. It may interest you to know that I’ve run out of silver dust. Besides, lots of women of forty aren’t grey at all.’

  Maggie, feeling the numbness of shock already wearing off, turned at bay. ‘She’d murdered her husband with a panga knife and been ten years in a Malayan prison,’ she snarled. ‘If you don’t think she’d be grey after that, you’re stupid as well as vain. And who needs silver dust? I use talc!’

  And she made a splendid exit. But all the bravado collapsed two minutes later. Going on that night to an audience of eleven and chirruping through her part, which was a foil to Avril’s, took all the professionalism she had so far managed to acquire. The support of the rest of the company, though needless to say it didn’t run to mass walk-outs or anything of that sort, did something to help her through the rest of the week. But there was nothing and nobody to help her pack her things and get on the train on Sunday morning, and she cried a good part of the way back to London.

  Who could she turn to, when she got there, to support her through her first professional crisis? Not her mother, unexpectedly supportive though she had been about her career. Not Stip. Tanya was in rep in Sheffield — a real rep, Maggie reflected bitterly, not just a doomed winter migration without roots or traditions or funding or audiences. She herself should have done as Tanya had: wait, instead of grabbing the first thing that offered, for something sound, something that could further her career. The more she thought about what she was leaving, the more appalled she felt at its seediness, its lack of any real professional foundation. She was ashamed, now, of having been part of it, but that didn’t make her less ashamed of having been summarily kicked out of it.

  There was only one person she could think of who might be able to comfort her — only one person, as her train drew into Paddington, whom she wanted to see.

  There was no reply from the familiar number in Bloomsbury. After a short debate with herself, she bought a Mars bar — the most filling thing on earth for the money — and then took a bus. The sound of the phone ringing and ringing had made her feel even more desolate. She would go round there. She had nowhere else to go, anyway — the doss-house in Goldhawk Road had been sublet for the winter and she had to have a room. She even, as the bus swished through the slushy remains of a hail-storm, began to feel quite nostalgic about her dim little room at the M’Crimmonds’ with its metered gas-fire to which she had returned night after night from RADA.

  As she walked round Russell Square, feeling the cold cutting into her bones, Mrs Dalzell’s cheerful, dynamic image marched beside her along the icy street. Maggie’s chagrined spirits lifted. It wouldn’t be bad, staying in that house if Mrs Dalzell was there. They could eat together and have lots of good talks. Maggie would unload her tale of injustice bravely opposed. Reviewing for the twentieth time her scene with Avril, Maggie began to relish in anticipation the prospect of re-enacting it; Mrs D was always a perfect audience for a good meaty anecdote.

  Maggie mounted the steps and rang the bell. It echoed through the house. For a few moments, it seemed there was no one at home. But the M’Crimmonds on their rare excursions were always back in time for tea, and soon she heard steps. The door opened, and there was Miss Brenda, the smaller and frailer of the twins.

  ‘Hallo, Miss Brenda! It’s me, Margaret.’ (She had weak sight, Maggie recalled.)

  The pinched face broke into a wan smile. ‘Och, hallo, dear! Fancy seeing you. Come along in, you look half frozen.’

  Maggie stepped into the gloomy hall. Nothing had changed. Even the Jack Russell, which for three years to her certain knowledge had been on the verge of a natural demise, was waddling down the dark corridor to greet her, snuffling asthmatically and giving off his smell of bad teeth. Maggie bent to give his rough side a pat, surprised to find she was glad to see him, glad of the feeling of continuity. She would have been glad to see a decaying stuffed pike if it had looked pleased to see her.

  ‘And how have you been?’ Miss Brenda was asking. ‘You’ll take tea with us? Sister’s just brewing.’

  ‘Thank you, but what I really came for was to see your cousin. Is she in?’

  Miss Brenda peered short-sightedly at her. ‘Cousin? You don’t mean Fiona? Surely y
ou’ve heard —!’

  Crouched beside the dog, Maggie’s hand paused on his side. She looked up as one might at a Damoclean sword.

  ‘She’s passed over this two months or more.’

  Maggie stood up slowly. The sword was on its way down.

  ‘It happened at the beginning of November. We’re only just getting over it. Why, look at you! You’d better come through and sit a wee, you look very pealy-wally!’

  Pealy-wally indeed. And more so when she heard what had happened. Mrs Dalzell, it seemed, had spent September and October trying to get work. She had written many letters and gone to a number of interviews in and out of London, but none of them came to anything. And she became, in Miss Brenda’s words, ‘very quiet — very put-down.’ And then one day she didn’t come home, and that night a policeman came to the door and told the sisters that their cousin had been run over and had died on the way to hospital.

  Maggie had had quite enough by then and would have been glad to be spared further details, but by this time Miss Roberta, the more voluble sister, had brought tea in, and took up the tale.

  ‘At the inquest, the driver of the lorry said she was standing at the curb, looking straight at him, so he never thought to slow down. And just as he reached her, she stepped out in front of him… Sister and I understood then that she’d done it deliberately, though the coroner passed it off as accidental death. We were very, very distressed, as you may imagine. Ending her life in that way — it was not like her, not like her at all, not as we used to know her when we were girls. She was never one to give in, was she, Brenda? But we all have our moments of weakness, the strongest of us perhaps more than the rest, for those are the ones not used to defeat, who may not know how to manage it.’

  Maggie turned her face into the worn plush wing of the chair and wept bitter tears. They were not only for Mrs Dalzell and her lonely, forlorn and desperately courageous end, but for herself. For if Fiona Dalzell, who stole library books and defied governors and risked perdition to set Maggie’s life on its course, could throw herself under a lorry’s wheels after a mere two months out of work, then who was safe from the ultimate exigencies of despair?