Riley, page 10
‘Sort of. It’s like indigestion. Too much drink. Does drink give you indigestion?’
‘Oh, drink can give you all kinds of symptoms.’ Now her hand was across the table and holding his, and she was saying, in the voice that was not Miss Mason’s, ‘Will you miss me, Riley?’
He couldn’t bear it. He gripped her hand with both of his so tightly that she winced, and he said, ‘Oh my dear, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ and he found his throat to be so dry he couldn’t go on further; and when his head drooped, she said, ‘Now, Riley, I know you feel indebted to me but there’s no need. You have so much talent it was bound to come out sooner or later; you would have discovered it yourself without anyone’s help.’
‘You…you don’t know how I feel. I—’ He was shaking his head slowly from side to side now and his eyes were looking into hers when she replied, ‘I do, Riley, I do. But you are so young. You know that? You are still so young.’
‘I am not young.’ His voice was deep as any man’s now, and he went on, ‘I have never felt young in the brain department; I just put it to the wrong use, as Mr Beardsley…Fred has pointed out so often; and since I’ve been at the Palace I’ve felt I’m a man. And I know this much: only a man could have played the part in The Golden Mind, and only a man could have followed where you led. I know I have a lot to learn, and I keep learning it; but I am learning it as a man, not as a boy or a callow youth.’ He stood up now, because the pain had turned into anger, and he almost barked at her, ‘I won’t let anyone treat me as a boy or a youth in future. I’m telling you.’ And with this, he stalked out of the kitchen, leaving her gazing towards the door, her clenched fists pressed tightly against her lips as she groaned inwardly: ‘Oh my darling. My darling.’
Not until she heard his footsteps coming down the stairs did she enter the hall, to see him dressed for outdoors; and she hurried towards him, saying appealingly, ‘Oh, Riley! Please don’t go like this.’
‘It’s all right. It’s all right. I’ll look in before Tuesday. I’ll walk round to Fred’s now.’
She had him by the shoulders and was staring into his eyes, her voice held a soft, agonised appeal as she said, ‘Please…please! I beg of you, don’t leave me like this. This is the last time I will have you. Just stay until Fred comes for you. Please! Do this for me. Let us sit down together quietly and talk. Please, Riley! Please.’
His whole body seemed to be bent in two. He allowed her to take off his coat and scarf; he threw his hat onto the chair; then together they made their way into the sitting room.
The log fire was already lit. There was the couch they had sat on last night; and now they sat on it again, and she took his hand and pleaded, ‘Leave me a memory to fall back on, please. Please, Riley!’ She had his hand on her lap, and when he let out a long deep sigh she remained silent for almost a minute. Then she said, ‘You must keep in touch. When you’re on the road, as you will be, there won’t be much time for writing. But wherever you are, just send me a card; then I’ll know you haven’t forgotten me.’
When she felt his whole body shudder and move as if away from her, she said, ‘You won’t have any idea of how long the tour will be or where you are going, but do let me know. You will, won’t you?’
He slowly nodded his head just as a child might and, as she went on talking, he listened to her much as he might have done to his mother if she hadn’t been such a narrow-minded woman; the man in him slipped away again and he was the boy he had denied, the boy whose one desire at this moment was to put his arms about this woman and to bury himself in her.
Six
His first week in Manchester was spent in rehearsal for the pantomime. When it finished, three weeks later, rehearsals for the tour began and continued until the end of February. The rehearsal for the pantomime and the show itself he enjoyed to the full, which enabled him to stifle the pain of Nyrene, but the play itself he found less engrossing. He read it twice, and went over his part dozens of times. There was no Miss Mason to guide him this time. His part wasn’t very large but it was important. For half of it he played a drunk; for the other half he was the youngest son of a notable family who was being kept at home to check his philandering. He was a cadger, and the fact that he needed money was the crux of the play. It dealt with family intrigue, divorce and a death to be investigated; it had some good fights, and one of the highlights was an Irish Ceilidh held, when the family were away, by the servants and himself as the youngest son. This was where he had to let himself go in song and dance.
He knew he was capable of playing all these parts, but there was one snag, which was why he had had to read the script over and over again. It was his voice and his northern accent. He did not speak as a Geordie might, but nevertheless he used the idiom, and the inflection at times was strong; and so for a full fortnight he had spent two hours a day with a voice trainer, and afterwards reading his parts in a highfalutin twang, as he put it. The only time he would be able to let himself go would be in the Ceilidh, when he would imitate the antics and twangs of the staff and the household. He had soon discovered the cast were very different from those at the Palace. There wasn’t as yet that co-operation and warmth between them, although no doubt being on the road would bring that.
He had three days before setting out on the enterprise that would surely reveal to him what real touring was about, and he phoned Fred to ask if he could go through for a couple of nights, and Fred had bawled back, using no polite language, ‘What are you talking about? You went off with the key of the door, didn’t you?’ …
Riley arrived at three o’clock in the afternoon during a heavy snowstorm. Because of the weather, the school had been closed so Fred was at home. He greeted Riley with open arms. As he helped him off with the heavy grey sheepskin-lined coat he said, ‘My! My! Things are looking up already.’
‘Second-hand. They know all the tricks in Manchester. Four pounds complete with lining.’
‘Never!’
‘Oh yes. Likely it was pinched; but what matter.’
‘Hello, my dear.’ Louise came from the sitting room, her arms held out towards him, and after kissing her on both cheeks he said, ‘French fashion: it’s the in thing.’
‘Go on with you. It’s been the in thing in France since the first Napoleon was a lad.’
‘What weather! It isn’t snowing in Manchester or anywhere else.’
‘Well, if it isn’t, then the radio weather report is lying. But come on into the kitchen and have a cup of tea first. Are you hungry? I have a meat pudding on…a pot pie, as you call it.’
‘Good. I love pot pies, with plenty of gravy.’
‘Sit yourself down.’ Fred went to push him into a chair, but then stopped him from sitting by grabbing his shoulder and, holding him at arm’s length and looking him up and down, he exclaimed, ‘You wearing high heels or artificial soles?’
‘Not when I left this morning, no.’
‘Well, you seem to have put on inches since we last saw you.’
‘It’s my manly bearing, and haven’t you noticed my upper-clarss accent? I’ve had to learn how to…articulate correctly since I left you lot. I told the language lady that my awful way of speaking was due to my teacher; he was so broad.’
‘How dare you! I have never spoken broad in my natural northern life.’
‘Stop it, you two! Anyway, you stop it,’ and Louise pushed at her husband, then turned back to Riley and said, ‘Come on, give us your news.’
So he told them about the pantomime, the cast and the big names that appeared in it, then added, ‘It strikes me as most odd, you know, that these top stars—after they’ve made it—want to play in pantomimes. They practically fight for the parts. Lord! If I was where some of them are they could keep their pantomimes.’
‘Well, wait till that time and see how you feel then. Go on, what about this play? Do you think it’s any good?’
‘Oh yes, it’s good; but it isn’t The Golden Mind. In a way, you know, I’m sorry I ever did that; I find myself now looking for faults and picking out niggly things in other people’s work.’
‘Well, that’s all right, only keep it to yourself.’
All the time he had been talking he had been wanting to ask one question, and now he could resist no longer: ‘How is Nyrene?’ he asked, and his tone was even.
‘Oh! Our Nyrene is in fine form, never better, but, mind, for a couple of days after you left we didn’t know whether she had locked herself in or left the house. The Palace of course, as you know, was closed for a week, but she wasn’t to be found. I had a suspicion then that she had gone on the bottle again, but later we found out we were wrong.’ He glanced at Louise now, and it was she who, nodding at Riley, said in an exaggerated whisper, ‘She has a boyfriend. She told me yesterday. As you know, she has a married cousin in Scotland and although they come down at times, I’ve never met them, though Fred has.’
Fred nodded now, saying, ‘Yes, and they’re a nice couple, very nice. Well, apparently the boyfriend is a friend of theirs. He’s a traveller in plastics. The two days I thought she was on the binge she must have spent with him. Aha! Aha!’ and he nodded at Riley, a broad grin on his face; but then, the grin disappearing, he said quite seriously, ‘I’m glad for her. She’s been on her own all these years. I don’t know how she’s put up with it at times, because she’s an attractive woman. Likely she’s still harping after that rotter.’
He felt sick to the pit of his stomach. He was experiencing a feeling something similar to that he had had when he woke up that morning and found that she had changed from a wonderful loving woman back into Miss Mason.
During these past weeks he had tried in every way to get her out of his mind. The days had been bearable because there was so much to do, so much to think about, so much to learn, and with so many people milling around, but from the moment he dropped into bed in Mrs Wear’s boarding house and longing for sleep the torment would begin again.
It had happened.
It couldn’t have, judging by her expression as she stood there handing him a cup of tea.
But it had, it had.
Well, if it had, it had happened with a drunken woman who had forgotten all about it, a thought which made him even more sick and brought the picture of her down to a level against which he would physically screw up his eyes; and now here they were saying she had a boyfriend.
‘What’s the matter?’ Fred was looking at him intently, and he answered, ‘The matter? Nothing. Nothing.’
‘You’re shocked at the idea she should have a boyfriend.’
‘Shocked!’ The reply came out on a yell. ‘These days? Where do you think I’ve been for the past weeks. Shocked, man? You know nothing about it.’
Louise put in quickly, ‘What are the girls like in the cast?’ To which he answered, ‘Two of them are very pretty and fetching, another is old in the tooth behind her make-up, and one of them is married to the leading man.’
‘Well, if there’re two pretty ones still at large—’
‘Oh, they’re not at large, Fred—’ He always had difficulty in calling this man by his Christian name, having been so used to Mr Beardsley or sir, but he went on, ‘They’ve got sleeping partners in the cast. Perhaps I should be more modern and say boyfriends. But it’s funny about lasses nowadays, they all veer towards much older men. Not understandable, is it?’
‘Well, it isn’t, looking at him,’ Louise said, slapping her husband gently about the ears. ‘But he’s canny,’ she said lovingly.
‘I still maintain, though, you must have been hard up at the time to take him.’ She joined in his laughter when she said, ‘I was; I was very hard up; but he was the best that was on offer, and so I jumped.’
When Louise’s fingers went through Fred’s hair he looked at Riley and said, ‘A fella’s got to wait until a certain age before he really becomes attractive and knows what it’s all about.’
‘Oh my. Oh my,’ Riley sighed, and Louise came back with, ‘Don’t worry, Riley, the only thing they’re sure about, men of this type’—she again patted her husband’s head—‘is that age gallops on them around now. Anyway, we’re going to dinner at Nyrene’s tonight to meet the gentleman in question, that is if he manages to get here from France in this dreadful weather. I’ll phone Nyrene and tell her you’re here. I’m sure she’d love to see you again.’
He rose from the table abruptly now, saying, ‘I could do with a bath, Louise. Then I’ll look in on the nipper. Is he up in the nursery?’
‘Yes, but pay your visit first to the nursery. His lordship is at the painting stage, so look out for your suit. I would take off your jacket.’
Fred and Louise looked at each other and Fred said, ‘Well, what do you think?’ to which she answered, ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know, except that he’s changed.’
‘I’ll say he has. I could still see the lad in him when he left but it’s there no more.’
‘Do you think he’s worrying about his mother and being here instead of at home and what she’ll be thinking?’
‘I wouldn’t know, dear, I just wouldn’t know; it could be, but I noticed a change in his expression when the boyfriend was mentioned.’
‘Well, in a way I can understand his reaction because, you know, she’s made a lot of him over these past two years. He might have been her son, although she’s never acted like a mother towards him, more like a—’ They looked at each other for the explanation, and when it wasn’t forthcoming, Fred said, ‘Yes, more like a what? She was his mother in the play all right, but off it, no. In spite of her drinking she never looked her age; and these last few days…well, I saw her twice last week and she was beaming.’
‘Well, all I can say, dear,’ said Louise on a laugh, ‘is if this man can make her beam, long may he shine on her.’
‘Oh, that’s a stinker of a pun.’
‘Yes, I know it is; but anyway, we’ll see what he’s like tonight and we’ll take particular note of our friend’s reaction’—she looked upwards—‘that might give us a clue.’
‘I hope it doesn’t give you the clue that you’ve got in your mind.’
‘Why not? Why not?’
‘Don’t be silly. The age difference between people of thirty and fifty doesn’t matter so much, but he’s nineteen, and Nyrene must be nearly forty, if she’s a day.’
‘Well he’s an old nineteen. He was an old sixteen when I first met him. Stranger things have happened.’
‘Well, all I can say at the moment,’ said Fred, ‘is that I hope such a strange thing hasn’t happened to them.’
They were in the sitting room. The artificial log fire was burning brightly. The chandelier wasn’t lit, but the light from two gold-shaded standard lamps and six wall lights merged the colours of the carpet, the drapes, and the loose covers on the chesterfield suite into a harmonious whole.
Louise and Fred were seated one at each end of the couch; Riley was sitting in an armchair at the other side of the fireplace.
The room looked different from how he remembered it. In fact, the whole house looked different. But at that time his main view had been through a white light of love, created by a wine haze.
The far door opened and he watched her enter the room, and coming in, pulling off a white apron to reveal the complete blue woollen dress. Again she was wearing the red suede belt at her waist. Her hair wasn’t in its usual bun at the nape of her neck, but was loose and tied with a blue ribbon, making her look like a teenager from behind. However, from the front she certainly didn’t have the appearance of a teenager; she looked a woman, a very, very beautiful woman. Her skin was clear, her eyes were bright. He hadn’t before noticed that they were grey. Previously, he had thought they were green. But no, they were definitely grey. And her mouth was wide and laughing. Had that mouth ever kissed him, not only kissed his lips but kissed him all over? Oh, for God’s sake, man!
‘I don’t think one can get any further down the culinary scale than to ask friends to dinner and offer them a meat pudding,’ Nyrene was saying.
‘Don’t you believe it.’ Fred nodded from his corner of the couch. ‘If I’m to believe what I read the other day the self-appointed moguls are sick of chicken, game and turkey and are actually asking for steak and kidney pud…as grandma made it,’ he laughed. ‘But it isn’t everybody that can make a proper meat pudding. I love what I call the jelly part, where the steam has softened the crust.’
‘Well, I’ll give you a good helping of the jelly part, Fred. What part do you like, Riley?’ She was standing by the side of his chair looking down at him.
‘Oh.’ He looked up at her without smiling as he said, ‘Any part that fills me up.’
‘Well, I can promise to fill you up, because I’ve made two man-sized ones.’
‘Come and sit down, dear.’ Louise patted the cushion to her side. ‘You’ve been buzzing about like a bee. It isn’t seven yet’—she pointed to the clock—‘and you said he’d arrive about seven.’
‘When did he say that?’ Fred asked, and Nyrene answered, ‘Yesterday morning.’
‘Yesterday morning?’ he repeated. ‘Well, look what the weather’s done since yesterday morning; it’s gone barmy, and it will be a wonder if his plane will have been able to take off, let alone land on time.’
It was at this point that the bell rang. Nyrene had been about to sit down, but now she straightened up quickly and looked from one to the other in surprise, and then she muttered as she hurried to the door, ‘He…he could have got in.’
Fred and Louise were facing directly towards the door but Riley was only half-turned towards it, and although he told himself not to do so he looked directly at her when she returned carrying an enormous bouquet of flowers.
‘His flowers have come,’ she said, ‘even if he hasn’t. I’ve only just got rid of the last lot.’ There was a shy note in her voice now. ‘Excuse me for a minute; I’ll go and put them in water until the morning.’
