Seven Dials Read online

  THE PERFORMERS

  1. GOWER STREET (1973)

  2. THE HAYMARKET (1974)

  3. PADDINGTON GREEN (1975)

  4. SOHO SQUARE (1976)

  5. BEDFORD ROW (1977)

  6. LONG ACRE (1978)

  7. CHARING CROSS (1979)

  8. THE STRAND (1980)

  9. CHELSEA REACH (1982)

  10. SHAFTESBURY AVENUE (1983)

  11. PICCADILLY (1985)

  12. SEVEN DIALS (1986)

  CLAIRE RAYNER

  SEVEN DIALS

  Book 12

  THE PERFORMERS

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-84982-067-7

  M P Publishing Limited

  12 Strathallan Crescent

  Douglas

  Isle of Man

  IM2 4NR

  United Kingdom

  Telephone: +44 (0)1624 618672

  email: [email protected]

  Copyright © 1986 Claire Rayner

  e-Published in 2010 by M P Publishing

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  For Esta Charkham,

  who is quite a Dame in her own right.

  With love.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The author is grateful for the assistance given with research by the Library of the Royal Society of Medicine, London; Macarthy’s Ltd, Surgical Instrument Manufacturers; the London Library; the London Museum; the Victoria and Albert Museum; Leichner Stage Make-up Ltd; Mr Joe Mitchenson, theatrical historian; Miss Geraldine Stephenson, choreographer and dance historian; Miss Rachael Low, film historian; the General Post Office Archives; the Public Records Office; the Archivist, British Rail; Mr Edmund Swinglehurst, archivist, Thomas Cook Ltd; the Curator, National Railway Museum, York; Historical Records Department, British Transport; Meteorological Records Office; Archives Department of The Times; Mr David Mancur, IPC Archives; Borough of Westminster Libraries; the Lodgekeeper, Albany, Piccadilly; the Archivist, Guildhall School of Music and Drama; the Imperial War Museum; and other sources too numerous to mention.

  THE LACKLANDS

  THE LUCASES

  1

  It really was remarkable how often it rained on the second Friday in the months of October, January, March and July, Billy Brocklesby thought. He peered out of the big double doors of the hospital into Endell Street at the chattering gutters and gleaming slate-grey pavements as people went splashing by with expressions of long-suffering martyrdom on their faces and shook his head disapprovingly at the dull sky. It really was too bad of the elements to show so little respect for that august body, the Board of Governors of Queen Eleanor’s Hospital. On the four days a year when they foregathered London should at least be dry, if not actually sunny, but there, what could you expect these days? Ever since the War had started everything had been out of kilter; before 1939, Billy Brocklesby told himself as he hooked back the great doors to show the world that Nellie’s was, as always, ready to do business with the halt, the sick and the maimed, before the War everything had been different. Plenty to eat and drink, sensible people running the country and sunshine every day. Now, in spite of the fact that peace had broken out over a year ago, you couldn’t get so much as a packet of fags to bless yourself with, let alone any decent scoff. And it always rained on the Guv’nors’ Day.

  ‘Bloody Government,’ he muttered under his breath as the first bewildered patient of the day came splashing into his newly washed front hall, dripping water all over the shining black and white terrazzo squares. ‘Bloody Government’ - and then, loudly, ‘Round the side, missus. First left and then left again for Outpatients - and mind where yer putting yer feet - just been washed, this place ’as, and got the Guv’nors comin’ any minute -’ And he sent her hurrying on her way, his brass buttons glittering imperiously as he ushered her out.

  There was no doubt that he looked the part of Nellie’s Head Porter most satisfactorily, in spite of the fact that he limped so badly and that his blue serge uniform was so thin and shiny, and his spirits lifted perceptibly, despite the rain, as the woman shot a scared glance over her shoulder at him and went scuttling away. That was better; a bit of respect, something else that was in short supply in this brave new peaceful world. They’d done more than throw out Churchill in last year’s disastrous election, Billy Brockesby was fond of saying to anyone who would listen to his dyed-in-the-wool conservative views. They’d thrown out decency and tradition and good old fashioned respect for your betters as well.

  There was another flurry at the door and he turned back from his little lodge, where he had been about to settle himself with the Daily Sketch and his first cup of tea of the day, his face scowling in readiness to send another venturesome patient round to the rear entrance where she belonged, but at the sight of the new arrival his expression at once became ingratiating in the extreme.

  ‘Morning, Dr Lackland, sir,’ he said, beaming widely. ‘Nasty morning, sir, very nasty – let me take your coat, sir, very wet it is – I’ll see to it that it’s dried nice and ready for you when the meeting’s over, sir – ’

  ‘I can manage, thank you, Brocklesby, I can manage perfectly well – ’ Max Lackland tried not to let his irascibility show in his voice, but he wasn’t too successful, and Brocklesby stepped back, his face blank now, and said woodenly, ‘Yes, sir, as you wish, sir’, and watched him go hurrying up the wide curved staircase, his damp coat tails flapping. Not the man he was at all, he thought, not the man he was by a long chalk, and getting nasty with it. You had to make allowances, of course you did, losing his wife like that and them as close as a pair of pigs in mud, but all the same, no call to go biting a man’s head off when all he wanted to do was be helpful, was there?

  No, Brocklesby told himself, no call at all, and went limping back to his lodge and his rapidly cooling tea. Dr High-and-Mighty Lackland wasn’t the only one to lose people to them bloody doodlebugs. Hadn’t his own old girl got hers two years ago this very month when three of the buggers had dropped down at Croydon? Not that she was all that much of a loss, to tell the truth, wicked tongue that she’d always had on her, but all the same, he’d lost her and had to look after himself these days, in consequence, and did he go around biting people’s heads off over it? He did not, he told himself righteously, as he folded the Daily Sketch into an even smaller wodge and peered at the results of last night’s dog races. He did not, bearing his losses with dignity, not like some he could mention; and still muttering under his breath he checked off the names of the winners – and he hadn’t napped a bleedin’ one of ’em – and sipped his tea noisily and tried not to care about Max Lackland’s bad temper.

  Max himself, standing in front of the window in the big Governors’ Room at the top of the stairs and staring sightlessly out at the rain, was thinking much the same about himself that Brocklesby was. There had been no need to be so unpleasant, damn it; the man had meant well and probably couldn’t help his oleaginous manner. They had been lucky to have had a Head Porter at all during the difficult war years when every able-bodied man there was had had better things to do than guard a hospital’s main entrance. To have found Brocklesby, with his left leg torn to tatters by World War One shrapnel, so making him useless for World War Two, had been Nellie’s good fortune and he, as a senior member of Nellie’s staff, should be able to tolerate the man’s less than pleasing personality better than he had this morning.

  But it had started off a bad day. He had woken to a sense of desolation that was even greater, it seemed, than it had been at the beginning of his private hell, dragging himself out of the rags of his sleep with a
conscious effort, trying not to remember that today was their wedding anniversary. But it had not been a memory he had been able to evade and he had stood there in his bathroom, the tears for Emilia coursing down his cheeks and the hard racking sobs tearing his chest as he contemplated, yet again, the agony of the long years that lay ahead without her. His life had been destroyed that afternoon in 1944 when a late V2 rocket, weaving its erratic way across the West End of London, had coughed and died just above the Regent Palace Hotel and the nearby shop where Emilia had been trying to buy a new shirt for him, and now he had to go on living that destroyed life, breathing, working, eating and sleeping while inside he was shrieking his pain and his loss, hour after impossible hour.

  And today was no better. It was still only nine o’clock; there was the rest of the day to get through somehow, another twelve hours to exist before he could again claim the temporary respite of sleep, which even though it brought such agonizing dreams, at least passed the time quickly.

  Behind him the door rattled and he turned away from the window, grateful for the interruption, and saw his father standing there leaning on his stick and staring at him from beneath eyebrows that seemed to go on getting more and more shaggy with every year that passed, as though they had a vigorous and personal life of their own and had chosen out of some quirk of ridiculous humour to grow on this wreck of an old face, as moss grows on old walls.

  ‘Well, m’boy?’ the old man said and set his head on one side as he stared at the hard-faced man with the thick grey hair who was standing there looking at him. ‘Well?’

  ‘Well enough,’ Max said, not ungently, and came over to lead him to the chair at the head of the table as Victor came in behind him.

  ‘That man down there don’t deserve to wear that uniform,’ he grunted, and came and slid a practised hand under old Sir Lewis’s other elbow so that both the younger men could lead the shaky old figure to his place. ‘If I’ve told him once I’ve told him a hundred times - it don’t do to sit there drinking tea for all and sundry to see you, not when you’re Head Porter! Got to have a bit of dignity.’

  The old man turned his head towards his son and gave him a sketch of a wink and Max, without thinking, smiled back, almost hearing his face creak at the rarity of the experience and felt, just for a moment, a lift of his spirits. In the old days, they had all laughed at dear old Victor, he and Emilia and Father, laughed at the constant rivalry that existed between him and the man who had taken over his job at Nellie’s when he had agreed to become old Sir Lewis’s housekeeper, nurse and general factotum after Lady Lackland had died back in ’41. To laugh now, without Emilia to share it, felt odd; wicked, almost. But that was a thought that had to be dismissed, and the psychiatrist part of his mind lectured the personal part of it, as it so often did these days. It was normal to feel guilt, but not necessary. It was not healthy to wallow in his loss, he must work at restructuring his life, make a new pattern for himself, make it possible to live without Emilia. Bereavement was a commonplace experience -

  ‘Big agenda today,’ Sir Lewis said, and waved away Victor’s fussing with the rug he was wrapping round his thin knees. ‘I just hope they don’t make too much of a meal of it. Women -’ And he sniffed noisily and rubbed at his nose with a flourish of a large white handkerchief. ‘You got any special business for us today?’

  ‘Nothing special,’ Max said and sat down beside him, opening his briefcase to spread his papers neatly in front of him. ‘I can’t stay longer than eleven anyway. I’ve got a Board at twelve - chap’s been refused his job back because he was diagnosed as an anxiety neurosis, and I’m not letting them get away with that. Anxiety neurosis - ’, and he half sniffed, half snorted. ‘Poor chap was trapped on Sword Beach with a broken leg on D-Day and once they got him out had a few bad dreams for a few weeks. Entitled to! Any sensible man would, but some half-wit of an army psychiatrist labels him as an anxiety neurosis. I ask you!’

  ‘What job are they trying to do him out of?’ The Old Man squinted up at him. ‘Does it matter what his war record was?’

  ‘You’ve got it in one. Librarian, for pity’s sake, librarian! A good peaceful life, ideal for a chap who’s had a bad war, and they’re trying to say he’s not fit. Bloody bureaucrats - ’

  ‘You might as well get used to ’em,’ Sir Lewis said. ‘The way they’re trying to run things now, we’re all going to have bureaucrats livin’ in our pockets. Nationalizing everything that isn’t bolted down, they are: Bank of England, coalmines, civil aeroplanes - bloody everything. Can’t stop ’em doing it to us as well, much longer -’

  ‘I don’t care what they do,’ Max said. ‘Nationalizing isn’t such a bad idea in itself. I quite approve of it. It’s time the people who make the money had a share of it, and as for the health service - well, you know my views. No, it’s the individuals who get up my nose. Jumped up little Hitlers, some of’em. And this Board is a whole bunch of little Hitlers and I’m not letting them refuse this chap his job back. So, I can’t stay after eleven. D’you mind?’

  Sir Lewis laughed, an agreeable cracked old sound that made Max’s lips quirk again. ‘Mind? Why should I? I’ve nothing else to do than sit here today, so I might as well do what has to be done and let you young ones go about your business. Of course I don’t – ah, here we are! The only reason I come here at all these days! Pretty ladies, pretty ladies! Hello, my dear! How are you? How’s that lucky husband of yours?’

  Lee Lackland, neat and charming in a green tailored suit and a frilled cream-coloured blouse that looked as though it had been made from a saved-up length of parachute silk smiled widely at him as she came in, and pulled off her froth of a hat, clearly a precious pre-1939 relic, as she came over to bend down and kiss his papery old cheek.

  ‘Very well, thank you,’ she said and smiled at him, and her face fell into soft and rather endearing lines. She had been a good-looking girl always, but now, as she moved into her middle forties, her looks seemed to be ripening and improving. Remembering how she had appeared on her wedding day, a dozen years ago, all snow and frost and floating gossamer hair, and seeing her now in the full glow of her maturity, Lewis approved. This was how a woman was supposed to look; so much more interesting than these worried bloodless girls one saw about these days. And he peered back down the long corridor of his memory to seek out his Miriam, seeing her as she had looked in the ‘nineties as a giddy girl, when he had first found her - or rather, she had found him – and how she had looked in those later years, with her rich creamy roundness and her soft-cheeked sweetness, and his old eyes filled with tears. Not that anyone paid any attention, for that often happened to the Old Man these days.

  ‘And the children?’ he said gruffly and at once Lee became animated.

  ‘Oh, splendid, really splendid! Michael is working so well at school – they say he has the makings of a really fine scientist, you know, and he says already he wants to be a surgeon like his Daddy, and the girls are so sweet! Sally can read really well now, and Stella is trying so hard to be as clever as she is, and pretends she can read too – it truly is so sweet to see them together, and of course the way Michael lords it over the girls when he’s home – it’s too funny, and – ’

  ‘Hello, Papa.’ Again the door swung and there was Lady Collingbourne, her head on one side in unconscious parody of her father’s most familiar posture and Sir Lewis peered across the room at her and greeted her with relief. Delightful though it was to talk to Lee, she did become rather boring on the subject of her children.

  ‘My dear Johanna!’ he said and held out both hands towards her. ‘Why didn’t you come to see me last night? I made sure you would.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Papa.’ She came and kissed his cheek and sat down beside him as Lee settled herself a couple of chairs farther along the huge round leather-covered table. ‘But Claudia wanted me to go with her to choose some clothes for her trousseau and to see what we could do to get some more clothing coupons for her wedding-dress and by the time we were f
inished I was beyond anything but a bath and an early night.’

  And she did indeed look tired, with violet-grey smudges under her eyes and her cheeks a rather sallow colour over the black dress and coat she was wearing. It had been four years now since Jonty had died at the battle of Tobruk, but still she wore mourning for him, seeming quite unable to bring herself to show any signs of recovering from her grief. Looking at his sister now, Max felt a sharp stab of anxiety. Was she at risk of sinking into chronic grief? Was this a family tendency that he would have to watch for in himself? And he stared at his sister and thought confusedly - are we a blighted family? First one of us killed in the Great War, and now two of us widowed in the Second and Peter so changed - a blighted family.

  And then he shook his head at himself, angry at such fanciful thinking. He was a sensible man, a psychiatrist, a man of science, not a mystic; he should be ashamed to think such stupid negative thoughts. Yet all the same, it did seem that they were uniquely cursed, in a sense, and he too looked back down the long pathways of his memories to their joyous childhood, he and Johanna and Peter and Timothy who had been so young, so very young, when the trenches of Flanders had claimed him - and again he shook his head and tried to concentrate on what was being said.

  Johanna was talking now about Jolly, having exhausted her discussion of her daughter’s coming wedding, and the Old Man was listening with every sign of interest; talk about children might become boring when they were other people’s children, but these were his own grandchildren and that was quite different. Always a family man, deeply absorbed in the care of his brood, Sir Lewis enjoyed nothing more than to hear of his young people’s doings, and Max looked at him and once again managed a smile. It was good to see the old man so animated and happy. He would have to find some news to give him of his own sons, David and Andrew. He’d enjoy that.