Seven Dials Read online

  ‘Well, introduce me, Brin, do.’ The voice sounded pert now and not at all breathless and Charlie turned unwillingly to look at its source. A girl with round blue eyes and a pink and white face surmounted by a froth of yellow curls stood there with her head on one side and her pink button of a mouth half open, staring back at her, and Charlie was suddenly very aware of her own dark thinness compared with this obvious prettiness and felt old and dull and dowdy. Even in her uniform the girl looked delectable, her waist small and tightly defined inside a wide black belt over which her bust pouted lavishly, and her slender legs clad in black silk. Clearly she had plenty of contacts to get her good stockings, Charlie thought absurdly, and then, as Brin said cheerfully, ‘Oh, this is Nurse Macmillan, Charlie, a very naughty little handmaiden of Aesculapius who’s doing her bit to improve my state of mind here. This is my doctor, Miss Lucas, little Mack, and we have to talk. So go and take yourself back to old Mr Pillbrow and see if you can revive the poor old devil in time for his lunch. If you see the battleaxe tell her I’m out here yearning for a sight of her - that’ll keep her happy -’ And he slapped the girl on her neat bottom and she giggled again and went obediently, looking back over her shoulder at him as she did so.

  ‘Well,’ Charlie said after a moment. ‘I was worried that you might be miserable here! I took rather a dislike to the place when I got here and was feeling guilty for having sent you. Clearly I needn’t have worried.’

  ‘Oh, Charlie, it’s dreadful!’ he said cheerfully. ‘A positive hive of gentility. Matron works so hard at being a grand lady that she convinces me she started life as a counter hand in Wool worth’s. And the patients - they’re really at the bottom of the world, believe me. Fussing all day about who’s pinched their sugar ration and why isn’t there any jam for tea, and who did what to who with which - ghastly.’

  ‘You don’t seem to be too unhappy, though,’ Charlie said, hating herself for the waspish note in her voice as the girl disappeared into the house with a last wave at Brin. ‘As far as I could see you were managing to console yourself pretty well.’

  ‘Chap’s got to do something to amuse himself,’ Brin said and tucked one hand into her elbow. ‘Come on. We’ll walk round this benighted patch of unlovesome garden and you shall tell me all the news. How is it with McIndoe?’

  But she couldn’t leave it alone. She should have been as he was, insouciant and unconcerned, but that just wasn’t possible. ‘Is she someone special, that girl?’

  ‘Mack? Ye gods, of course not! She’s just number seven.’ He chuckled and hugged her arm closer to his. ‘I thought when I first saw that matron, I’ve got to do something about her, so pompous - it’s unbelievable! So I set out to flirt with her, quite outrageous I was, but it worked! Eats out of my hand now, and then I thought - well, if I can captivate that old bag, even with a face like mine, let’s see what I can do to other women here. And I’ve been flirting with ‘em one after another. Promised myself I’d get every girl on the staff well and truly kissed before I left - and finish with the old bat herself -’

  ‘Oh! Then it doesn’t matter after all, your scar? You’ve proved to yourself that you can be as attractive with it as you were without it?’

  ‘Oh no.’ Suddenly he was serious again. ‘It’s one thing to flirt with silly nurses who’ve nothing better to look at than a scarred chap, because all the other men in this place are older than God and about as attractive, but it’s quite another to deal with a career as an actor with this sort of handicap. I still want to know when McIndoe can put it right for me. You’ve fixed it, haven’t you? That’s why you’re here? To tell me it’s all arranged?’ And he looked down at her eagerly, his eyes alight with excitement.

  She looked back at him, trying to sort out her feelings and knowing she was a fool. From the moment this man had become her patient she’d been fascinated by him, and for the past few months positively obsessed. She who had always been too busy with her work, with her studying and her patients and her career to be bothered with men, to have been bowled over so very thoroughly - it was shaming, and her face reddened now as she looked at this man who had been occupying her thoughts for most of the time for so long and realized that as far as he was concerned she was his doctor, his ally, perhaps his friend - but no more than that. He did not see her in at all the way he saw girls with round baby-blue eyes and silly pouting mouths and fluffy yellow curls. They were for holding and kissing and for letting his hands explore as she had seen him in that summer-house exploring -

  With an almost physical effort she pulled her thoughts back to the moment and to his question. If that was all she was to him, his doctor and his ally, then that was what she would have to be. To attempt to be otherwise was to be stupid in the extreme and that she must never be - or at least not so that it could be noticed by others. Bad enough that she knew herself to have been stupid. No need to display it -

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not quite - I -’

  ‘Not quite -’ Brin’s face flattened, every trace of the pleasure that had been there vanishing, and he stared at her with his mouth half open. ‘No quite?’ he said again. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I went to East Grinstead and saw the sort of work he does,’ she said. ‘Appalling injuries. A great deal worse than yours. I can see why he says he has no room for you in his ward. So would you if you could see what sort of people -’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about other people!’ Brin burst out. ‘Why the hell should I? Why does everyone try to make me feel guilty because I want to be well? Haven’t I as much right as anyone else to be cared for? Are doctors now measuring the sort of treatment they give according to some sort of worthiness table? Are you going to start refusing to help people with - with cancer on the grounds that their cancer is only a little one and that other people have much worse ones? Doesn’t it matter that both lots’ll die if they’re not treated? Doesn’t it matter that I’m as unhappy and as disabled by my injury as a man with a much bigger one? What do I have to do to get across to you doctors that I’m miserable like this? That life isn’t worth living? That I’ve got to be helped? Ye gods -’

  ‘I know, Brin,’ she said, and she spoke loudly, to over - whelm the almost shrill pitch of his voice. ‘I know - I’m not trying to award scores for misery. I’m just trying to explain to you why McIndoe won’t take you at present. But I’ve got a plan. I’m going to try to work there with him -’

  ‘You’re leaving Nellie’s?’ His voice sharpened.

  ‘Yes. I applied for a job at East Grinstead as a houseman - it’s a step down as I’m a registrar at Nellie’s, but it’s worth it - and I’ll train as a plastic surgeon myself. If he can’t take you after I’ve done my stint there, then damn it, I’ll operate myself. I’ll have all the skills you need by then and -’

  ‘Is that the best you can offer, you and your bloody McIndoe?’ Brin roared and now his face was mottled with colour and the blood vessels in his neck stood out. ‘All I need is a couple of weeks, surely - a simple operation and then -’

  ‘Brin, it isn’t as simple as you think. Your scar isn’t as bad as many I’ve seen, but it is involved with several very delicate facial muscles. To operate on it successfully will take a lot of skill. I’m prepared to work at getting that skill for you. I can’t do more. If you can’t accept that, then -’

  She stopped and turned away from him, and began to walk back towards the house. ‘Then there’s nothing more I can do for you. I’m sorry, but there it is. Either you wait till I can learn enough to be the surgeon you want, or you find yourself another practitioner to take care of you. I’ve gone as far as I can - I’m sorry, Brin, but that’s the best I can do. It’s up to you, now.’

  11

  The big room was dusty and cold and the peeling old green paint and the skylights, still crisscrossed with wartime sticky tape, admitted as little light as possible, yet for all that the place was crackling with excitement and Katy took a deep breath of the chill musty air and felt better than she
had for a long time.

  This was what she had missed, she now realized; the reality of work. It was all very well to be a film star and have all the fuss that was made of you going on, but filming wasn’t real work, what with all the long boring waiting between shots and the fussing about camera angles and lights and microphones. Real acting started in places like this, rehearsal rooms where a show was put together, painful step by painful step, over long hours of concentrated effort which finally erupted into the high excitement of a long night’s sustained performance.

  And she looked round contentedly as all the frustration and loneliness of the last few weeks, ever since The Lady Leapt High had been released to such horrid notices, seemed to melt away and smoothed her already perfectly fitting slacks over her hips and pushed up the sleeves of her big baggy sweater - very American that, and she could feel the envious eyes of the other women on her and loved it - and settled down to enjoy her morning.

  Across the room Letty was sitting with one buttock perched on the rough deal table that had been set up with a few battered bentwood chairs to accompany it, her head down over a sheaf of papers with smoke rising round it in a lazy tendril from the cigarette she had clamped between her lips. Her eyes were squinted against the smoke, and her hair looked ruffled and messy and her clothes - trousers and an old shirt - were far from exciting, though clearly well cut and expensive, yet for all that she looked good, and Katy grimaced a little at the sight of her. If I can look as interesting as that at her age, I won’t complain, she thought. It’s as though she’s a spring, all coiled up and only just held in place, waiting for the least touch to explode into vigorous action.

  Not like the man on the far side of the table, sitting quietly in his chair, and also watching Letty from deep-set shadowed eyes. Katy couldn’t remember when she had last seen a man so thin; his features were so sharp they could have been carved out with a razor that very morning, and his head looked more like a skull with dead skin stretched, only just, to cover it than like part of a living man. His wrists, emerging from the big shaggy coat he was wearing, were as fragile as a bird’s and his hands looked like great claws from this distance, fleshless and less than human. Yet for all his oddness, there was a familiarity about him.

  Katy stared and frowned, trying to think who it was he looked like, and then as he turned his head to reply to something Letty said to him, recognition hit her like a shock wave. It couldn’t be Peter, could it? She’d heard he’d come back to England after doing heaven knows what in the War, and wasn’t too well, but she’d had no idea he was as changed as this, and she sat and stared at him, more subdued than she would have thought it possible for her to be.

  To see Peter looking as sick as that made the War suddenly seem to have been important. Sitting in California all through the six years of fighting, working in films, going to parties, swimming and picnicking and being photographed wherever she went and whatever she did, the War had seemed to her to be little more than stints at the Stage Door Canteen and Bond Drives and public appearances at aeroplane factories; but looking at Peter now in a cold rehearsal room in Earlham Street in London’s Seven Dials a full year or more after the War was over, the death and the horror of it became real to Katy for the first time, and she shrank back in her seat, and stopped feeling quite as good as she had. It was as though she were a child again, and a rather stupid one at that, who had suddenly learned to understand what being a grown up was all about. And didn’t like it.

  ‘All right, everyone, let’s settle down, shall we? Settle down -’ Letty called and the little knot of dancers who had been giggling together in a corner in the time-honoured way of dancers straightened up and pulled up their thick hand-knitted socks and came padding over to the middle of the room to collapse into elegant heaps at Letty’s feet. The singers, who had been sitting by the old upright piano picking out notes and loudly complaining about its dreadful pitch, closed the instrument’s lid and came across also to sit primly on the chairs provided and the rest of them, actors and speciality acts and musicians, arranged themselves behind them so that everyone was paying attention to Letty, who sat there calmly waiting for silence. And eventually got it.

  ‘Right,’ she said and took her cigarette from her lips and ground it out on the cocoa-tin lid beside her on the table. ‘This is the first call for Rising High, the working title for a Benefit I’ve been asked to set up for Nellie’s - Queen Eleanor’s Hospital down the road. For your information, they badly need money for rebuilding a lump of the hospital that was bombed to a rubble and to reopen some wards they’ve had to close. They need at least ten thousand quid out of this effort which, even allowing for using the Stoll Theatre which has a capacity of two thousand two hundred and fifty seats and if filled to the roof at top prices can bring in a good deal, takes a lot of earning. There’s a committee of ladies from the hospital’ - and she nodded at someone who was sitting at the far end of the room, in a shadowy corner - ‘who will be organizing a brochure in which they’ll sell advertising space at no doubt vastly inflated prices’ - there was a little titter at that - ‘and they have other schemes for mulcting the audience of their cash. It’s a good cause and they’ll be working as hard as any of you. Right now, I want to thank all of you who are working for nothing. Your reward will be taking part in the best damned show I can devise for you, and the best quality audience you’re likely to get this side of Paradise. I’ll also make sure you get the highest level direction and music and all the rest of it. I’m producing and some of you will, I hope, remember the superb work of my old friend and colleague who also happens to be my cousin, Peter Lackland. He’s working on this show too. Altogether, you’ll be in good company. We’ve got David Crankshaw from the Opera House among our singers, James Fennel from the Guildhall School of Music to direct the orchestra, Irina Capelova from the Diaghilev company - and no need to be fearful of language problems. She started life in Stepney as plain Irene Caplan, hey Irina? - and Katy Lackland, from the film side. Plenty of stars to share the limelight with you, you see, so I hope you’ll enjoy yourselves.

  ‘Now, I’ve set plenty of rehearsal time to accommodate those of you who are lucky enough to be in paying work, and we’ll fit in as best we can with all of you. This first call is just to let us all meet each other and to give you an idea of the shape of what we’re doing and to thank you all for your efforts.

  ‘Right. The show, as I say, is called at present Rising High. Can’t think of a better title, so there you are. It gets across the idea of a new hospital building going up, I hope. We want to do it as a revue knitted together with a story line - a bit different, you’ll agree. And Peter’s suggested we use the thread of the hospital’s history. It was founded back in 1811, so there’s plenty of history to use. He’ll be researching it for us, putting a script of sorts together, with the help of Daniel Burke - you’ll all remember the great hit he had with his play Deborah in ’39 - and Irina who will choreograph dances to tell some parts of the history, and there’ll be sketches and tableaux and songs; we’re hoping to get some specially written music from James and altogether we should be on to a lovely original presentation. Any questions?’

  ‘Yes - what time’s tea?’ someone called from the huddle of dancers and Letty grinned and turned her head to look into the shadows on the far side of the room and bawled, ‘Mrs Alf! Naafi!’ And there was an answering shout and then a clatter as a trolley was pushed out with a large and steaming tea urn on it as well as a number of thick white cups and plates of heavy sticky buns.

  ‘I should have known not to keep you waiting for that,’ Letty said and then, as they began to move with alacrity towards the trolley, raised her voice. ‘As soon as you’ve got your tea, come and check with me how you’re needed. Peter and I have our work sheets here and you’ll be given your numbers and your calls. Tell us any problems you have with the rehearsal schedules as soon as you possibly can - all right, all of you -’

  They scattered and there was a happy babble over
which the constantly scolding voice of Mrs Alf, busily wielding tea urn and milk jug, could be heard, and Katy got to her feet and moved lazily and with apparent unconcern, yet for all that very directly, towards Peter who still sat at the table looking down at the papers that Letty was now showing him.

  ‘I’m not sure the original idea I had for her will work,’ Letty was saying as she came up to them. ‘I can’t see how that’ll fit into the theme. But I dare say I’ll find something out of Shakespeare we can use -’

  ‘I think we could still use the wooing scene, you know,’ Peter said. ‘It’s about one person getting his or her own way over another - the whole play is, isn’t it? Well, as I recall the history of Nellie’s - and I’ve heard only odd bits here and there - the old man who started it all was a bit of a battler. With the right piece of linking script we could make it stand up. And she’d do the scene well. Given the right Petruchio -’

  ‘Hello, Peter,’ Katy said, deliberately making her voice throaty, and he looked up at her and the shock came new again. At this close range his eyes were quite dead, and the translucent frailty of him even more apparent.

  ‘Katy,’ he said after a moment. ‘How are you? We were talking about you.’

  ‘Saying good things, I know. You were always generous to a fault. Remember? That incredible universities tour before the War?’

  ‘I remember,’ he said, after another perceptible pause.

  ‘We had a marvellous time. All those divine students, and the fuss about which plays they’d let us do, those ghastly Nazis - we had no idea why then, did we? And then we found out.’

  ‘Yes,’ Peter said woodenly, after the expected pause. ‘Yes. Now we’ve found out.’

  He seemed to be shrinking away from her, though in fact he hadn’t moved, but Letty moved a little closer to him in an oddly protective fashion and said rather loudly, ‘The wooing scene in the Shrew, Katy. We’d like you to look at it, work it up. I’ll find you an attractive man to play opposite - could be good.’