Perfect Gallows (3 page)

“May is talking nonsense,” said Cousin Brown. “Of course I have my ideas about how I would play Hamlet, but who has not? I am aware that it would have been absurd for me to have attempted Helen of Troy, but, for instance, Juliet. There is nothing in the text to inform us that she is conventionally beautiful. All we know is that Romeo thinks she is, and that depends on the actors and the production.”

“Romeo was devastating,” said Cousin Blue. “Everyone knows that.”

“I see no reason,” said Cousin Brown. “I think one might stage it rather interestingly with a very ordinary couple. Let Mercutio be the glamorous one, and that other girl, with whom Romeo thinks he's in love …”

“Rosaline, but she doesn't come on,” said Andrew.

“She does not have a speaking part, but let her come on. Let her be as beautiful as Helen. But Romeo and Juliet are two quite ordinary children, caught up in their passion, while all their families can think of is their own pride and wealth. Romeo and Juliet are heirs.
That
is the point. Let it be not simply a play about doomed love, let it also be a play about money. Let that be what dooms …”

She was interrupted by a noise, an almost animal yelp, somewhere between a swear-word and a sneeze, from Uncle Vole. She turned to meet his glare, then rose, the darkie drawing her chair aside as she did so. Andrew had seen enough high-society films to guess what happened next. He helped Cousin Blue with her chair, then went and opened the door. He'd been expecting to follow the Cousins out, but as she passed him Cousin Brown whispered, “Father wishes to talk with you,” so he closed the door behind them and went back to the table.

The darkie was holding a chair for him just round the corner from Uncle Vole. He sat down, feeling on his right the soft warmth of the stove and on his left the chill of the air sucked in by its updraught. The old man gazed at him with gummy, red-rimmed eyes under scurfy brows. The lower part of the face was just like a rodent's, with no real chin, bluish lips under a ragged sandy moustache streaky with the black jam. The nose was small and sharp, the eyes surprisingly wide-set. Above them the forehead bulged like a mushroom, blotched grey and khaki and purple. Uncle Vole's body was shaken by a continual shudder which made the tassle of his smoking-cap dodder to and fro, but when he spoke the words came perfectly clearly, showing he simply hadn't bothered before.

“Port, Samuel.”

“Coming, Baas. 1927 Dow.”

The darkie moved away to the sideboard and returned. There was something about the silence of his footsteps that caused Andrew to glance down and see, instead of shiny black shoes below the pin-striped trousers, naked dark brown feet.

“I hate to see a nigger in shoes,” said Uncle Vole.

He stared at Andrew, challenging him to disagree, but also challenging him to meet the malice of his glare. Andrew did so, smiling. He had a trick for dealing with this sort of encounter. What you did was turn it into a scene from a play, with yourself as an actor and the other person—unwanted caller, schoolmaster, playground thug—also an actor playing his part. You could then perform, doing whatever was needed, while your true self stood off-stage, untouched. It helped to give the other people play-names—Cousin Blue, Uncle Vole. You had a secret name of your own, too. In some ways it was more like a spell than a trick. There really was something magical about the way it worked, how you could outface the schoolmaster, dominate the thug, smile at Uncle Vole …

The encounter lasted only a few seconds before Uncle Vole lost interest and turned to snatch at his glass. He sucked and sluiced the wine to and fro across his palate, then swallowed.

“Might just as well be sow's piss,” he said. “Can't taste, can't fuck, can't get warm. Never thought I'd have to face another winter in bloody England­. Drink up, boy. Let's see what you're made of Samuel, you clear out.”

“Going, Baas.”

Andrew sipped at his port. He hadn't enjoyed the wine much, but this was pretty good, not as sweet as he remembered Mum's, but with a rich strong juicy flavour. He sipped again.

“So you want to be an actor,” said Uncle Vole.

“That's right, sir.”

“You're a bugger, then.”

“No, sir.”

“Horse shit. All actors are buggers.”

“I prefer girls.”

“Had any?”

“Not yet.”

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen in March.”

“Drink up. Let's see what you can hold. What did they tell you about me? Black sheep of the family?”

In fact until Mum had suddenly decided that Andrew had better accept the out-of-the-blue invitation, Andrew had known practically nothing about the other branch of the family. Dad had never mentioned them. Mum, being Mum, couldn't resist hinting, but not in Dad's presence. Before sending Andrew off she'd tried to explain, in her rambling and excitable way, but he'd soon realized she didn't know much either, and was mostly guessing and hoping.

“You quarrelled with Great-grandfather Oswald, didn't you?” he said. “And then you went to South Africa and made some money in the diamond fields and came back and built this house.”

“Tell you what the row was about?”

“No. My mother says Great-grandfather was very strict, and so was Grandfather, so I suppose they didn't try to make it up.”

“Whey-faced, tight-fisted, canting, sermonizing, hypocritical, yellow­bellied, bootlicking, brass-arsed Judas. Your great-grandfather, my respected elder brother. Same goes for my dad. Drink up. Let's see the glass tilt. Six quid a bottle this, if you could buy it. Opened it for you.”

One day, Andrew thought, he would be able to buy wine at six pounds a bottle and drink as much as he felt like. Not yet. Deliberately he only half-filled his glass.

“Right up.”

“That's as much as I want, thank you.”

“Got you placed. Pansy little runt who can't hold his liquor.”

“No, sir. All you know about me is that you can't make me do what I don't want to.”

“Don't know what you're talking about.”

“You can't bully me and you can't buy me.”

(Mistake. He hadn't meant to say that. Good thing he'd stopped drinking.)

“Buy you?” drawled Uncle Vole. “I only buy the best available.”

“Perhaps I'm the best Wragge available.”

“Where's your father then?”

“In a Jap POW camp, but we haven't heard for more than a year.”

“Ain't he too old to fight?”

“He was mate of a merchant ship. They got caught in Singapore.”

“Gimme some more port.”

Adrian poured. That was the third glass, and there'd been at least three of wine with the meal. Of course the old man was used to it …

“Chapel?”

“Yes.”

“But you sneak out of it when you get the chance.”

“No. I don't mind it.”

(Watching the others—families, with their suppressed twitches of help and rejection; attempts to assume the spiritual look; the give-away tensions of necks.)

“Scared to tell them you ain't coming again?”

“No.”

“You're scared. You'd have said. You're not the Chapel sort, no more than I was, but I wasn't scared, though my dad leathered the hell out of me and my whey-faced brother held me down while he did it. You ain't got a brother, eh?”

“No, sir, and no sisters either. Dad's the same.”

The old man nodded, as though he already knew that. A shudder shook him. He twisted his chair round and shrugged it across the carpet till the cylinder of the stove rose almost between his knees. When Adrian passed him his glass he cradled it in shivering hands as he crouched into the rising warmth. The flame, shining through the pattern of holes in the stove-top, cast yellow oval blobs on to the mottled face.

“Done a job yet?”

“Only war-work in the hols. I got a scholarship to the grammar school and I'm staying on to take Higher Cert in the summer. Then I'll be due for call-up.”

“I left school when I was twelve. What's the good, once you've learnt to write a hand and add up? Time I was your age I was digging on the Vaal. Time I was twenty-one I had three hundred thousand pounds in the bank. You going to beat that, acting?”

“I might strike it lucky as you did.”

“Horse shit. What I struck was fellows less sharp than I was. I learnt my lesson on the Vaal, up to my waist in water, rocking a cradle six hours a day, nothing to show for it beyond a pile of gravel. When I trekked out to the dry diggings I promised myself that then on I'd see to it that some other bugger did that sort of work for me. Heard of Cecil Rhodes?”

“Yes, of course.”

“He was a gent. Liked to make a show of it. Read the books and you'll find not more than a couple of lines about Arnold Wragge, the writer-johnny wondering how a gent like Rhodes could have given the time of day to a bounder like Wragge. They wrap it up, of course, or I'd screw them for libel, but it's there, and it's true. I tell you, Rhodes would never have got started without me. He wanted to keep his hands clean, so he'd got to have a partner didn't mind paddling in the shit. I didn't, and I don't. Gimme some more port.”

He drank without bothering to sluice the wine round for the taste. The glass was empty in three gulps. He held it out again.

“I built this house by paddling in the shit. What makes you think I intend to leave one brick of it to a pansy little actor?”

“I don't.”

“Don't what?”

“I don't expect you to leave me anything, sir.”

“Horse shit. The moment I whistled, there you were on the doorstep.”

It wasn't true, but it must have looked that way. In fact Andrew had fought against coming, because Cyril had half-promised him a job helping with the panto. It was only going to be a semi-professional production, two weeks' run in St Michael's Hall, because all three theatres had been bombed flat in the blitz, but it was what Andrew wanted. Then the letter had come with the last Christmas cards, and Mum had said better go. Now that that poor young man had gone and got himself killed in Italy, Andrew was the last of the line. Stupid to pass up a chance like that. And so on. She had got really worked up about it. He'd even thought of pretending to set off and sneaking back to take the job at St Michael's, and sleeping rough somewhere, but of course the Wragges would have started asking where'd he got to. In the end he'd given in, but there was no need to tell Uncle Vole any of that.

“I don't want you to leave me anything,” he said. “I'm going to make my own way.”

“Horse shit again. You live in Fawley Street. I remember Fawley Street.”

“It's been bombed since then, but not our end.”

“Shut up. I tell you I know Fawley Street. One cut above a slum. Front parlour, snug, back kitchen. Two rooms up, neither big enough to swing a cat. Outside shit-house. Right?”

“We're on main drains. Dad put the plumbing in when I was born.”

“You'd give your right arm to be shut of it.”

“I will do that myself.”

“Acting? I know actors. I knew 'em at the Lanyon in Kimberley. If the diggers didn't like the play they'd flip gravel on the stage and watch the actors crawl about picking it up, case it might be diamonds. Actresses, now. They could get diamonds. But not like that.”

“I think that's what you're trying with me.”

“Don't know what you're talking about.”

“Flipping gravel on to the stage to see if I'll crawl. Well, I won't. I'm going to make my own way, by acting. To the top. I've got it in me.”

“How d'yer know, when you've done nothing more than put on a long skirt and simper. Oh, la, Sir Jasper. How d'yer know you're not a bugger when you've never had a woman?”

“I do know. To me, it's obvious. I'm the only person who can know. In both cases.”

“Cocky little bugger. All the answers.”

“I expect they said the same about you, sir.”

“Horse shit. They could've carved six of you out of me.”

“I think I've got about an inch to grow. I'll be five-foot-four then.”

His height used to bother Andrew. Until he was twelve or so he'd invented exercises, such as hanging from the kitchen door lintel with his toes hooked into the handles of two of Mum's flat irons, to stretch his joints. Then he'd noticed how boys a couple of years older suddenly shot up, and had waited for the magic moment. The moment had come with its odd magic, but not the extra inches. He still did exercises, teaching his body to be fit for the most exhausting roles, but nowadays told himself that his shortness didn't matter. Part of his power would lie in making the audience not see it. The line of his heroes ran from Garrick to Olivier. Six-foot players had to be hams.

Uncle Vole sneered. He had an A-one sneer, worth copying.

“Know what the gents called me at the diggings? ‘Wragges-to-riches'. Meant it as an insult, but when I had this place built I half thought of having it carved on my gateposts. I built this house and no man else, and I did it spite of all the nobs and Holy Joes and snivelling politicians in the world. But you, Mr Andrew Wragge, you'll never carve that anywhere. You'll be Wragges-and-Tatters, more like, poncing around in flea-pits till you drink yourself into a pauper's grave.”

“As a matter of fact my stage name is Adrian Waring.”

It was the first time he had ever told anyone the secret, since he had chosen the name three years ago, a sudden but fixed decision, made while Mum was out serving at the NAAFI and he was sitting at her dressing-table trying out mouths with the last of her pre-war lipstick. He was startled to hear his own lips speaking it aloud, and the effect on Uncle Vole was startling too. The old man poked his head forward like a darting terrier. A froth of spittle, purple with port, appeared at the corner of his mouth. He snarled. The sneer a moment ago had been calculated, intended to rile Andrew. The snarl was involuntary, real.