through her, and swept away her short-lived dream of stepping on to the stage in Raina’s opening-scene nightgown and fur wraps.
She slipped back to the cubby-hole and clattered noisily with the kettle and cups. When the tea was ready she laid a tray and carried it back to the office. Sheila was nodding bravely, with her hands folded between John’s.
Mattie knelt beside her and poured her a cup of tea. When Sheila took the cup Mattie put her arm around her shoulder and gave her a hug of sisterly solidarity.
‘Oh, Mattie,’ Sheila broke out again. ‘It takes a terrible shock like this to make one realise how valuable friends are.’
‘I know, I know,’ Mattie saw warmly. ‘The door was open, and I couldn’t help hearing a little. Just remember that we all love you, and admire you.’ Not wanting to risk overdoing it, she tiptoed away again.
Ten minutes later, her face set in lines of sorrowful courage, Sheila was on her way to her dressing room.
Mattie went back for the tray. John was sprawled in his chair with his hands over his face, but he looked up when he heard her come in, and smiled at her.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
It was so rare for him to praise, and it was such an odd, conspiratorial moment, that Mattie didn’t know what to say.
‘I need a drink,’ John grumbled. He poured whisky into two glasses and handed one to Mattie. ‘Will you join me? To celebrate our success in going forward into another evening of theatrical mediocrity?’
They raised their glasses and drank.
With the spirits burning the back of her throat, Mattie blurted out, ‘What are you doing here?’
He turned his molten glare on her. His eyes were the colour of syrup, and because of their surprising glow they were the only part of him that looked healthy. His skin was grey, and the front of his ash-coloured hair was yellow with nicotine. Mattie noticed that his hands on the arms of his chair were knotty with pain. She might have felt sorry for him, if she hadn’t felt more afraid.
‘Doing?’ He laughed throatily and she relaxed a little. ‘Isn’t that obvious? Earning a few quid. A very few, I should say, thanks to your friend Francis. One has to live, and I do have a wife to support.’
‘You’re married?’
The laugh again. ‘Of course I’m married. I’m fifty-four years old, and one would have to be very clever, or very determined to escape the net, to survive as a bachelor for this long.’
Mattie thought back over the grinding weeks that had just passed. Her own time was fully occupied, but John Douglas was hardly less busy. How did he fit in a wife, unless he glimpsed her on Sundays when he drove off in his Standard Vanguard?
‘Where does she live?’
‘You’re an inquisitive little girl, aren’t you? Helen lives in our house, an attractive if chilly Cotswold stone edifice outside Burford, in Oxfordshire. To forestall your next question, she loathes and despises everything to do with the theatre, and prefers to live her own life while I pursue my spectacular career. It is a perfectly agreeable and amicable arrangement, and I return to Burford and to my wife whenever I can.’
If Mattie had had time to analyse it, she would have realised that the vaguely unhappy feeling that took hold of her now was disappointment. But John turned sharply to her.
‘And what are you doing here?’
‘I want to be an actress.’
She said it automatically, and she regretted it at once. His shout of laughter was hurtful, but it made her angry too. John Douglas saw both reactions.
‘Of course you do. Of course you do. Do you have any experience?’
‘Only amateur. But I’m good.’ She was stiff and red-faced now, like an offended child.
He nodded. ‘Tell me, did you think your big chance was coming tonight? With Sheila’s broken heart and whats-her-name’s laryngitis? I bet you know all the lines.’
Mattie shrugged. She felt too angry to give him the satisfaction of an answer. He waited for a moment, and then he drawled, ‘Well, then. Thank you.’
Both whisky glasses were empty. John glanced at the half-bottle on the table, and then snapped at her, ‘Haven’t you got work to do?’
Mattie swung round to the door, but he called after her. ‘Mattie?’
It was the first time she could remember that he had called her anything except You.
‘Yes?’
‘You’re not quite the worst stage manager I’ve ever had.’
She had to content herself with that.
The company moved on again. Two weeks before the Christmas of 1955 they were in Great Yarmouth. There was a sudden spell of clear, mild weather and through the usual smells of chips and sweaty costumes and smoke, Mattie caught the fresh salt tang of the sea. Early one morning she went for a walk along the beach. The world was an empty expanse of grey water and grey, glittering pebbles and sand. There wasn’t a sound except the sucking water, and the shingle crunching under her unsuitable shoes. The air tore at Mattie’s lungs.
She remembered that day, afterwards, and the scrubbed grey light of winter seascapes always brought the after-memories flooding back.
It was an ordinary evening, to begin with. It was a Shaw night, and Mattie noticed that John Douglas was hovering in the wings, watching the performance more closely than he usually did. Sheila was suffering an emotional relapse, and at the end of the first act she rushed offstage and flung herself against John.
‘I can’t,’ she whispered, loudly enough for everyone backstage to hear her. ‘I can’t do it. Why is it so hard? What have I done to be made to suffer like this?’
It was obvious to everyone except Sheila that the manager was only just keeping his temper. The edges of his nostrils went white with the effort.
‘You can’t? But your performance is only a little bit worse than fucking well usual.’
Sheila’s head tilted sideways, and her eyelashes made a dark crescent on her Leichner-pink skin. John looked down at her, and hoisted himself with the support of his stick. He took a deep breath that clearly hurt, and tried again.
‘My darling. Do it for me, if you can’t do it for yourself. It’s important for me, tonight.’
‘Is it?’ she breathed. ‘If it’s for you, John. I need to know that.’ She went on again for the second act, but watching her from the wings Mattie thought that the performance could hardly have been any more terrible without her. Sheila fluffed almost every line, and Lenny struggled to help her from the box. Hugh’s Bluntschli turned sulky and then perfunctory, while Fergus and Alan as Petkoff and Saranoff battled on with weary determination.
The final curtain came as a release for everyone. The applause was no more than a dry patter, extinguished by the banging of seats. John Douglas limped away without saying a word, and Sheila fled
