She still had hold of his face. He could see lipstick on her teeth. ‘Oh, she can’t complain too much,’ he said. ‘It’s not as though I’m juggling fish in an East End music hall. “O O O, I’m Shakespehearian, darling. So elegant, so intelligent.”’ He placed his hands over her hands, closing his eyes like a petted cat. He so wanted to tell her everything. His heart was smashed to pieces.
She left and he poured himself another glass. Her scent stayed in the room, a lovely jasmine fragrance that he knew she sprayed liberally on her cleavage.
Another knock at the door.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s me.’ Keith.
Bart opened the door, drink in hand.
Keith smiled nervously. ‘Can I come in?’
‘No. Go home to your fiancée if you want your dick sucked.’ And he slammed the door shut.
The next night, he knew something was wrong as soon as he entered the darkened auditorium. Actors and actresses were milling about half dressed in front of the stage when normally they’d be in their dressing rooms by now, putting on make-up, whining about the director, or – as in the case of old Spencer Hughes, who played the friar – shovelling stimulants up their noses. Tybalt was smoking a cigarette, his codpiece hanging half fastened and the buttons of his blouse undone. Agatha Chalmers, who played Lady Capulet, was sitting on the edge of the stage with her legs dangling childishly and her head jerking around like that of a nervous ostrich. She was dressed in a velvet cobalt-blue dress, the corset loose, and had a dowdy grey winter coat draped over her shoulders. Bart tapped her on the ankle to get her attention. ‘What’s going on, love?’
She leaned down in a conspiratorial manner, her eyes darting left and right, and said, ‘Keith’s been arrested.’
‘Arrested? What in the world for?’
‘You’ll never guess,’ she said, eyes boggling out of her head.
From this angle he could see up her nose – two red caves. ‘I have no intention of guessing. Spit it out, will you.’
She pulled a haughty, offended look. ‘I see, the good sir does not appreciate a build-up. Well, fair enough. Only, I am an actress with a flair for dramatic tension.’
You bloody well are not, you silly asinine whore, he thought. ‘Agatha. Please.’
‘As you like it. He was arrested last night for – actually, I can’t remember the precise terminology for the offence, but it was the same thing that did for Oscar Wilde.’
Bart felt the skin on his face tightening. ‘Gross indecency.’
‘That’s the one,’ she said, nodding with prim lips. She leaned closer and cupped a hand to the side of her mouth. ‘Sodomy,’ she whispered. ‘Up the bum and all that.’ He could see flecks of green caught in her big yellow mule teeth. ‘He was caught in the bushes of Hyde Park. Only two days till his wedding day, too. I just can’t imagine what that poor girl is going through, though let’s be honest – anyone can see the man’s not a regular sort, so perhaps she should take better care choosing husbands in the future.’ Agatha leaned back, satisfied with herself, took a tin of humbugs out of her coat pocket and popped one into her mouth. ‘An hour till curtains and we’ve got Romeo and Juliet without a Romeo and the understudy is throwing up his lunch in the men’s lav. So it’s safe to say we’re buggered.’ A pause. ‘Though not as much as Keith, I dare say.’ And she cackled – you could never call it a laugh, it was certainly a cackle – her caruncled old turkey throat shivering and her mouth flung open with the humbug perched moistly on her tongue.
‘Bloody choke,’ he whispered, walking away.
Chapter 9
September 1924, London
She’d been staying with her cousin Petunia almost two months now in a huge Georgian house near Twickenham which overlooked the Thames. Petunia as a child had been an absolute brat – an under-table pincher, a petty blackmailer, a pot-stirrer, always ready to run to the parents with a twisted version of facts which placed her as the victim. She was thick-waisted and over freckled with thick, springy red hair that drew (unflattering) comparisons to Queen Elizabeth.
As an adult she was much changed. She now possessed the most full, sensual, plum-skinned mouth which served as her centrepiece and encouraged one to forgive any other imperfections – her freckles hadn’t gone anywhere and her hair was the same frizzy mess, impervious to even the most brutal of treatments and therefore hidden always under a silk scarf or a cloche hat. She had enormous breasts, one noticeably far bigger than the other, a pot belly and shapely legs. Her eyes were a lovely green, her voice husky; she sounded like a fifty-year-old woman who’d chain-smoked since adolescence. She made everyone call her Tuna, as she was, in her own words, ‘more fish than flower’. She didn’t seem to mind how long Bettina stayed for, enjoying a busy house and putting on lavish meals almost every night for artists, intellectuals and other such ‘free-thinkers’. Her husband Max was abroad most of the time and she was, by her own admission, terrified of being alone.
Jonathan came to visit on some weekends, staying in the guest room two doors down from Bettina. Her brother liked to go to museums and cricket matches but disliked clubs and pubs, and in the evening stayed in playing cards or snooker with whichever of Tuna’s guests horrified him least. Only one night had Bettina succeeded in dragging him out to a club, and he’d refused to dance with her, predictably, remaining seated at a table and watching the band with a look on his face as if he were on the verge of throwing up. She called him a bore and danced with various men, drinking cocktails between songs, and it wasn’t until she was properly drunk that she was jolted by an epiphany: Jonathan didn’t like loud noises in confined spaces because Jonathan had fought in the trenches. How ridiculously obvious! What a thoughtless, self-involved boob she was – really, what a child. ‘Let’s go,’ she said to him, taking his hand (clammy, of course) and leading him out of the club. They went home, raided Tuna’s larder and stayed up till five in the morning, playing tiddlywinks and eating French cheese.
It wasn’t as if she could ask Bart to go dancing either, because Bart was being a perfect misery lately, often choosing to stay in and drink by himself. Ever since that actor friend of his got busted for that grubby business in the park. Which was interesting – tick-tock went her thoughts, tick-tock, tick-tock, what’s up, Mr Dawes? And she remembered something her father had once said – back when Bart was nearing adolescence, this was. Venetia and Monty had been arguing about whether to let Bart and Bettina go on an Easter egg hunt alone together – there’d been a big hoo-ha about it, with Monty being dead against it, Venetia trying to change his mind and Lucille oblivious to the fact that a battle was even taking place. Bettina had listened to the argument through their bedroom door (as she often did) and heard her father say, ‘Mind you, I’ll admit this much: there’s as much chance of that boy taking a fancy to Betsy as there is of me mounting a house cat, mark my words.’ Tick-tock, tick-tock.
The pale mauve moon was just visible from a slit in the carriage curtains and a hanging lantern slowly swayed, its orb of light swelling and shrinking, swelling and shrinking, and the darkness surrounding it like a gently squeezing hand. And then there was the lovely clip-clop of the horses. Bettina felt serene and snug, the alcohol a light heat in her belly and veins – this one had broken the one-drink rule, topping her up after every mouthful practically. And this one was gorgeous.