You must forgive me, but I have fallen hopelessly in love with you and I’m afraid I must tell you that you are now inextricably linked to my survival in this dreadful war.
‘One minute to curtain. One minute to curtain.’
The cry of the stagehand cuts through my thoughts. I check myself again in the mirror, touch up my rouge, and apply more kohl to my eyes. The mask of theatre. Who cares that my head is pounding and my bones ache dreadfully. The show must go interminably on.
I open the dressing room door and call out into the dimly lit corridor: ‘Does anyone have an aspirin?’ but my words evaporate in a cloud of powder and perfume and glitter as the chorus girls scurry past, their heels clicking and clacking along the floor as last-minute adjustments are made to zips and straps, buckles and laces.
Only Hettie hears me. ‘Should I go and find one?’
‘One what?’
‘An aspirin.’
‘Yes. Please.’ I wave her away with a distracted hand. I have no idea why the poor thing puts up with me. I treat her dreadfully at times. I don’t mean to. I just don’t seem to know how to treat her any differently.
I listen at the door until I’m certain the last of the girls have gone. Only then do I reach beneath the dressing table and open the bag I keep hidden there. I pull out the bottle of gin. A quick slug. Purely medicinal. What I wouldn’t give for a shot of sweet morphine, to slip into that delightful abyss of nothingness where nobody can hurt me and nothing dreadful has ever happened and Roger is coming home and I am perfectly well. There was a time when I took morphine for fun, to numb the emotional pain of war. Now the doctors tell me I must take it for the physical pain that will eventually bring about my demise. I take two long gulps of gin, coughing as the liquid burns the back of my throat, before returning the bottle to the bag and rushing from the dressing room, the sharp tang of liquor flooding through me, suppressing my pain and my fear and my doubts.
‘Miss May! Your aspirin!’
I ignore Hettie and carry on along the passageway, climbing the steps into the wings. I hear the chatter and rustle of the audience as they settle back into their seats. As the houselights go down I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and allow everything to dissolve into a muzzy warmth as I step onto the stage.
The curtain goes up. The spotlight illuminates me. There is an audible gasp from the ladies in the stalls as they admire the beauty of my red velvet cape. I know the reporters for The Lady and The Sketch and the other society pages will be scribbling down every detail. The gallery girls burst into rapturous applause, screaming my name and standing on their chairs. ‘Miss May! Miss May! You’re marvellous!’ I open my eyes, the audience a blur of black against the dazzle of the footlights. My leading man, Jack Buchanan, gives me the cue.
I step forward and deliver the line. ‘Honestly, darling, must we invite the Huxleys for dinner. I think I would rather curl up in a ball and die.’
The audience roar with laughter, unaware of the cruel truth contained in my words.
‘It isn’t my place to tell you when you’re dreadful, especially not on opening night.’
A heavy fog smothers London by the time the show is over. Outside the door to Murray’s, the soot-tainted air catches in my chest, making me cough. It is sharp and painful. Far worse than anything I have experienced before.
Perry looks worried. ‘You really should go to the doctor about that cough, Etta. It’s definitely getting worse.’
When I’ve recovered and caught my breath I take a long drag of my cigarette and tell him to stop fussing. ‘Was I all right tonight, darling? Really?’
He shivers, pulls his scarf around his neck, and claps his hands together for warmth. ‘You were fabulous, sister dear. Everybody said you were splendid.’
I wrap my arms across my chest and sink the fingertips of my gloves into the deep pile of my squirrel-fur coat. ‘Of course they did. They always do. Anyway, you wouldn’t tell me even if I was beastly. Would you?’
He says nothing. I pinch his arm.
‘Ow! That hurt.’
‘Good.’
‘Etta, I’m your favourite brother, and one of only a handful of people you deem worthy of calling your friend. It isn’t my place to tell you when you’re dreadful, especially not on opening night. There are plenty of people being paid perfectly good money to do that.’
I pinch him again. ‘You’re a dreadful tease, Peregrine Clements. First-night notices are ghastly things. I’m nervous. What if the critics hate it? I really can’t bear to think about it.’
He crushes his cigarette beneath his shoe. ‘Come on. Let’s get disgracefully drunk. By the time the notices are in, you’ll be too blotto to care.’
But despite the cold and the lure of champagne cocktails, I’m reluctant to go inside. ‘Walk with me around the square?’
‘What? It’s freezing. You need a gin fizz, dear girl, not an evening constitutional.’
‘Please, Perry. Just once around. It was so dreadfully stuffy in the theatre tonight, and the club can be so suffocating at times.’
He sighs and offers his arm. ‘Very well. I’ve lost most of the sensation in one leg. I might as well have a matching pair.’
Looping my arm through his, I rest my head wearily on his shoulder as we stroll. I enjoy the sensation of his cashmere scarf against my cheek; the sensation of someone beside me. For a woman constantly surrounded by people, I so often feel desperately alone.
We walk in comfortable silence. For a few rare moments we are nothing more remarkable than a brother and sister enjoying an evening stroll. Much as he frustrates me, I love Perry dearly, although I can never bring myself to tell him so. Even when he came back from the front I couldn’t say what I’d planned, couldn’t say the words I’d rehearsed in my head and written in dozens of unsent letters. Old habits die hard. Our privileged upbringing might have left us with proper manners and a love of Shakespeare, but it also left the scars of unspoken fondnesses and absent affection. We are as crippled by our emotions as Perry is by the shrapnel wound to his knee.
‘How did the meeting go with Charlot today? Did he like your piece?’ I hardly dare ask. Perry’s meetings with theatrical producers have been less than successful recently.
He yawns. A habit of his when he isn’t telling the truth. ‘Not bad. He didn’t hate it. Didn’t love it either.’
I stop walking. ‘You didn’t go, did you?’
‘Damn it, Etta. Are you having me trailed? How do you know everything about me?’
‘Because you are about as cryptic as a brick, darling. Anyway, it doesn’t matter how I know. But I would
