The Family Arsenal Page 13

  – Did you call me, love?

  – No, I said ‘knickers’. I’ve burned the scones. They looked like pieces of coal.

  – Save them. Might come in handy this winter when the miners are on strike and the Arabs are squeezing our liquid assets.

  There were bawls of appreciation, and even scattered clapping, for this.

  ‘Right,’ said Hood. ‘I’ve seen enough. I’m leaving.’ He hitched forward and started to rise.

  But Mr Gawber was asleep. He slept upright, facing the stage, holding the pound of chocolates on his lap, like a train passenger in a tunnel. His posture was attentive; only his eyes, tightly shut, indicated his slumber.

  – Speaking of Arabs. Hear about the one that was trying to get back? Goes into an airline booking office and hands over a hundred quid for his ticket. Feller at the desk says ‘You’re ten p. short.’ So this Arab walks outside and stops a City gent. ‘May I have ten p. sir? I want to go back to Arabia.’ ‘Here’s a pound,’ says the gent, ‘take nine more of the buggers with you.’

  Hood folded his arms angrily.

  There was some business with the electric blender. The woman left the top off and switching it on sent the mixture flying in blobs that plastered the kitchen and shot into their faces. The jokes were about food – the shortage of sugar, the cost of flour, the hoarding of butter; and the audience reacted as if their own grievances were being accurately represented.

  – Three weeks on the Costa Packet. Isn’t it smashing to be back? Imagine, a cup of tea without grease in it!

  – And no enterovioform for dessert anymore.

  – Blimey, they even put garlic in the cornflakes.

  – Wasn’t it shocking? Why did we do it?

  – Perversion, that’s Europe. But I’ve been looking forward to this. High tea. Good English food after all that Spanish muck.

  Mr Gawber swayed in sleep. Hood was restive; the stupid happy faces of the audience, the idiocy on-stage, the gaping at food, the ineffectual humour put him in the mood of the sharpest rage. He could destroy them for this fooling. They were acting out their strength, celebrating their petty hatred. But the worst of this malice was the acceptance of things as they are, the assumption of oily foreigners, the assumption of greed, the assumption of funny little England. That and the moronic display of food stacked, burned, thrown about – which titillated the audience like naked flesh. Hood saw it as the coarsest pornography – hunger’s greedy ridicule.

  He wanted to wake up Mr Gawber and tell him he was going; he could wait in the lobby until it was all over. And he had half-risen to leave when a boy made his appearance on stage – a handsome boy in an old army shirt and woollen cap and boots.

  – You mean, while we were in Majorca you were sleeping in the garage?

  – Yeah. I’m a squatter.

  – Spanish style? Well, there’s a time and place for that.

  – He means he’s moved in.

  – He can bloody well move out. He’ll rust me mower.

  – You can’t throw me out like that. Anyway, maybe I can help.

  Hood sat down. The boy, unseen by the man, winked at the woman, who was obviously attracted to him. The man gave in and allowed the boy to help with the dishes. This was the beginning of a prolonged and punning flirtation, with winks for emphasis, that lasted throughout the first act. The audience screamed at the farce the woman made of the cooking and barked at the sexual innuendo. But Hood was looking closely at the boy, studying the face, the ears, the set of the mouth.

  The woman tossed a bowl into the sink, splashing and soaking the boy’s shirt.

  – Oh, I’m terribly sorry. You’re drenched.

  – That’s okay. It’ll dry.

  – Here, take that off. Can’t have you catching cold.

  – I’ll get you one of my shirts. Won’t be any worse than the one you’re wearing.

  The man plucked at the boy’s shirt, but the boy objected and covered himself. The man snatched and with fumbling fingers worked at the buttons. He opened the wet shirt and shook loose two well-developed breasts, nodding softly in the man’s astonished face.

  That was the end of the first act.

  Mr Gawber woke and smiled, ‘Disappointing.’

  ‘Who did you say the girl was?’

  ‘Araba Nightwing. Client of mine. Awfully nice girl. She’s going to play Peter Pan in the Christmas pantomime.’

  ‘I’d like to meet her.’

  ‘Would you?’ Mr Gawber seemed surprised. ‘I can arrange that. It’s the least I can do after putting you through this. We’ll go backstage afterwards. But I think it’s only fair to say that her company can be rather, um, frenzied. How about a tub of ice-cream?’

  He hailed a woman passing with a tray and bought two ice-creams. He gave one to Hood and said, ‘Or more than frenzied, if there’s a word for it. It’s the profession, you know. All that publicity. Money, then unemployment. It does things to them. They never stop acting – it’s very trying. They cry and it’s not sad. They laugh and you wonder why. I’d applaud if only they’d stop, but they take it as encouragement. Norah loves them, poor old thing. I always think they could have puppets instead of actors. Big puppets, of course.’

  ‘The Japanese have them,’ said Hood, digging at the ice-cream.

  ‘You don’t say,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘I thought it was my own invention. Big puppets, absolutely life-like. I’d feel better about it. It wouldn’t be so embarrassing somehow.’

  ‘It’s a good idea.’

  There was a thump behind the curtains. Mr Gawber laughed. ‘Oh, I say!’

  Hood said, ‘I hate this play.’

  ‘Then we shall go,’ said Mr Gawber, crushing his empty ice-cream tub and shifting in his seat.

  ‘No,’ said Hood, ‘I want to meet that actress.’

  ‘She’s got quite a reputation.’

  The warning bells rang at intervals of a minute and then the lights dimmed, the chatter ceased, and the curtain rose. Mr Gawber went to sleep at once. The second act was a reversal of the first: now the boy was exposed as a girl in a tight-fitting dress. The woman was angry. The man flirted. There were whispers.

  – She’ll have to go.

  – But you wanted her to stay!

  – That was when she was a boy.

  – But you’ve got to admit she knows how to cook.

  The cooking, the preparations for tea, had gone on. The woman made mistakes; it was the girl who made the cakes, the scones, the kippers and poached eggs. This amazed and delighted the audience: cakes baked before their eyes, an egg poached on stage, the scones brought steaming from the oven. The food was theatre. A little cheer went up each time a new item appeared and was set out on the table. And it was the cooking that won the woman over. At the end of the play they sat around the table, the woman champing on a cake, the man leering, the girl looking at once seductive and demure.

  – We dreamed about this in Spain.

  – A real English tea!

  – Kippers, cakes and scones.

  – Toast.

  – No garlic.

  – And a bit of crumpet.

  ‘Awfully disappointing,’ said Mr Gawber, blinking as the curtain came down.

  There were five curtain calls, and then the audience was depleted, but smiling in the glare of lights. They filed out with mincing stateliness, as they had entered. Hood noticed how fat and satisfied they looked, repeating the lines of the play with sleek self-assurance, laughing through down-turned mouths in hearty contempt.

  At the stage door Mr Gawber said, ‘I feel such an ass doing this.’

  Hood said, ‘I’ll ask for her.”

  A porter in a peaked cap said, ‘Help you?’

  ‘We’re looking for Miss Nightwing.’

  ‘Come in. I think she’s still inside,’ said the porter. He spoke to another man. ‘Has she turned in her key?’

  The other man, at the window of a booth just inside the door, glanced up at a board on which were a numb
er of keys with tags. He said, ‘It’s not here. She must be changing.’

  An old man walked towards them, carrying a leather satchel. He moved slightly stooped and his head shook. He wore a thin brown overcoat and a small trilby hat. His face was deeply wrinkled and pale and he looked very tired as he passed and handed a key to the man in the narrow booth. ‘Night, George.’

  ‘Night, Mister Penrose. Mind how you go.’

  Mr Gawber whispered, ‘Dick Penrose.’ He saw the old actor struggle with the door and pull his satchel through, and he thought: Poor old fellow, he must be seventy. He felt a tug of pity seeing the actor alone, so exhausted, stepping into a damp wind gusting from Drury Lane. He had never seen an actor after a performance, and he could not separate the two men in his mind. He watched the battered door, sorrowing for the man, then turned to face Araba Nightwing, who tripped into him and burst into tears.

  ‘Mister Gawber!’ she held him tightly and sobbed.

  ‘This is my friend. Mister Hood, I’d like you to meet Miss Nightwing.’

  Araba’s crying ceased. She smiled at Hood. Suddenly she said, ‘Your wife – what’s happened to her!’

  ‘Under the weather, I’m afraid. A bout of flu. Nothing serious.’

  ‘I was going to suggest a drink,’ said Hood.

  ‘God, I need one,’ said Araba. She wiped at her tears and wiped away that mood. She gave her key to the man in the booth and they started through the door. There was a shout from the hallway.

  ‘Has my old man ditched me again?’ The speaker was a short fat woman with a face the colour of plaster. The voice was Blanche Very’s and she was still shouting as the stage door banged shut.

  They went up Catherine Street to the Opera Tavern, Araba wrapped in a black cape, speaking slowly in her deep attractive voice, repeating how kind it was for Mr Gawber to have come to the play. She did not speak to Hood directly, and it was not until they were in the pub and seated under the old theatre posters and signed photographs that he was able to get a good look at her face. The shine, the pinkness she’d had in the play, was gone – that mask was off – but there remained traces of the make-up flecking her long cheeks. She was tall, with large perfect features forming true angles and sloping planes which, because they fit so exactly, did not give the impression of largeness. She had the sort of beauty that is at once familiar and strange, a remembered face, full of clues. Her lips were full and she spoke emphatically without noticeable effort, but with an anger she hadn’t used in the play. The scarf she’d wrapped tightly on her head in imitation of the great Twenties’ actress she was often compared to, hid her hair, and tailing to drape her shoulder gave her the look of a desert princess. But it was her eyes that struck Hood – they were green, and she seemed to be able to intensify their light to give a point to her words. She still spoke to Mr Gawber – he was jammed against the wall – but she watched Hood with those green eyes, studying him closely, almost suspiciously.

  ‘Sometimes I don’t think I can bear it a minute more. It’s such a fag, and there’s a matinée on Wednesdays. I don’t know how I do it – I have to suck sweets to keep awake. It’s dreadful.’

  ‘You seemed to be enjoying yourself,’ said Hood.

  ‘I am an actress,’ said Araba.

  ‘Yes, the play was very interesting,’ said Mr Gawber.

  ‘Interesting?’ she said, using her voice to doubt it. ‘No one’s ever said it was that.’ She addressed Hood. ‘What did you think of it?’

  ‘I’m not a very good judge of plays,’ said Hood. ‘The audience seemed to like it, though.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about them,’ said Araba.

  ‘We’ve heard your good news,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘About Peter Pan.’

  ‘It was the boy-girl part in this thing that did it. It’s just a gimmick. Peter Pan is a big play – I wonder if you know how big? I hate some of the audiences, so many queers think of it as their own vehicle. I’m only doing it for the kids. They understand it – they go out hating their parents. That’s how it should be. God, I love acting for kids! They really appreciate what you do for them. They don’t have any hang-ups. They’re terrible critics – if they think it’s a lot of old rope they say so; if they feel like screaming, they scream. I love that.’

  They were seated near the door, drinking half pints of beer, and from time to time young men with blow-waves and backcombed hair, and girls peeking from beneath wide-brimmed hats, had called out ‘Araba’ and ‘Darling’. Araba had smiled and gone on talking about acting for children (‘There’s no ego-trip involved – they’re not interested in stars and personalities’). Now they were approached by a short woman pushing through the crowd, holding a small dog Hood had first taken for a handbag – it was square and still, with tight curls. The woman had freckles on her thin face and chewed an empty cigarette holder. Under this veil of freckles the woman – who was no larger than a child – had the sly mocking face of an old elf. But there was about her size and the way she was dressed a neatness that was sharp and unconcealing: the small body showed through the green coat as the slyness had through the freckles. She said in a high voice, ‘Poldy wants to say hello.’ She spoke to the dog: ‘Say hello to Araba, my dear. Get on with it – don’t just sit there.’

  ‘McGravy, I’d like you to meet one of my dearest friends, Ralph Gawber.’

  Mr Gawber said, ‘Very pleased to meet you. This is Mister Hood.’

  ‘Mister Hood is not a very good judge of plays,’ said Araba.

  McGravy said, ‘Send him to Tea for Three.’

  ‘I just saw it,’ said Hood.

  ‘What’s the verdict?’ said McGravy.

  Hood considered for a moment, then said, ‘It’s got a lot of food in it, hasn’t it?’

  ‘It’s all about food,’ said McGravy.

  ‘And that was one damned hungry audience. I could see them licking their chops.’

  ‘Everyone’s starving nowadays,’ said McGravy, looking uncertainly at Hood, who was smirking. ‘It’ll get worse.’

  ‘I sometimes think that,’ said Mr Gawber.

  ‘It’s the system,’ said Araba, and her eyes flashed. ‘All this deception. All these hangmen. And these leeches – bleeding people to death. It makes me want to throw up.’

  ‘Parasites,’ said McGravy, cuddling her dog until he growled his affection. ‘Well, they’ll get what they deserve.’

  ‘I think that needs saying,’ said Mr Gawber.

  ‘Bloodsuckers,’ said Araba. ‘It’s a Punch and Judy show, but it can’t go on like this.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree with you more,’ said Mr Gawber.

  ‘It really is rotten,’ said McGravy. ‘It’s like a boil that needs lancing – then it’ll all come gushing out, all the corruption and lies.’

  ‘I’m so glad you said that,’ said Mr Gawber. He leaned forward, encouraged. Two hours of sleep in the theatre had rested him. He said spiritedly, ‘No, the workers have had it all their own way since the War, but now they’re simply malingering, holding industry to ransom. A period of recession wouldn’t be a bad thing. A crash might even be better – a dose of salts. I agree unemployment’s a bitter pill, but the workers have to realize –’

  ‘Who’s talking about workers?’ said McGravy sharply in her high child’s voice.

  ‘Let him finish, sister.’

  ‘Whose side are you on?’ McGravy demanded.

  Mr Gawber said, ‘Aren’t you talking about workers?’

  ‘No,’ said Araba, patting Mr Gawber’s hand. ‘We’re talking about the power structure, my darling.’

  ‘But the unions,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘With all respect, there’s your power structure, surely?’

  ‘The union leaders are in league with the government,’ said McGravy. ‘It’s a plot –’

  ‘Dry up,’ said Hood.

  ‘I had no idea,’ said Mr Gawber.

  ‘Let’s talk about the play,’ said Hood.

  ‘I’d rather not,’ said Araba.

/>   ‘Wait, Araba. Perhaps he has some insight he wants to share with us.’

  ‘My insight,’ said Hood, ‘is I think it’s the biggest waste of time since parchesi.’ He smiled. ‘A load of crap.’

  ‘Come now,’ said Mr Gawber. He thought it tactless of Hood to say it, but all the same agreed and felt a greater fondness for him.

  ‘It made him mad,’ said Araba.

  ‘It’s supposed to make him mad,’ said McGravy.

  ‘But it is a wank,’ said Araba.

  ‘If only it was,’ said Hood. ‘I was sitting there and saying to myself, “What’s the point?” ’

  ‘If only he knew,’ said McGravy, grinning at Araba.

  ‘What don’t I know?’

  ‘Several things,’ said Araba. ‘But the first one is that McGravy wrote it.’

  ‘Oh, my,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘You have put your foot in it.’

  McGravy stroked her dog and let him nuzzle her. She turned to Hood. ‘You were saying?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Hood.

  ‘Go on, I’m rather enjoying your embarrassment.’

  ‘It’s not embarrassment, sister, and if you think I’m worried about hurting your feelings, forget it. If you wrote that play you must be so insensitive you’re bulletproof.’

  ‘I wish I were,’ said Araba.

  ‘Who are you anyway?’ said McGravy.

  ‘Just part of the audience,’ said Hood.

  ‘Drink up, please,’ said a man in a splashed smock, collecting empty glasses from the table.

  ‘I have a train to catch,’ said Mr Gawber.

  ‘Let’s get a coffee at Covent Garden,’ said Araba to Mr Gawber. ‘Then we’ll let you go home.’

  They trooped up to Covent Garden, turning left at the top of Catherine Street, where long-bodied trucks were trying to back into fruit-stalls at the market. There were men signalling directions with gloved hands, and behind them stacks of crates and displays of vegetables. In spite of the trucks it had for Hood the air of a bazaar – the dark shine of the cobblestones, the littered gutters and piles of decaying fruit; the men jogging with boxes on their heads and others bent almost double under the weight of sacks. Mr Gawber thought he saw the two men with the laden prams he’d seen earlier that day in the stairwell below Waterloo Bridge; he remembered the warning, ARSENAL RULE, and then actually saw it, splashed on the arches of Covent Garden Market. Over by the tea stall gaunt men stood inhaling the steam from cups of tea.