“I’m afraid the standards in the metropolis are very different from those in the provinces,” Miss Sherbourne told Freda. “You might be the star of your local provincial school, but here you’re just another girl, I’m afraid. I’m sure I’ll find you something eventually, though. And if the worst comes to the very worst,” she added rather darkly, “then the nightclubs always need girls who can dance.” The Nellie Cokers of this world were ravenous for them, she said.
Although Freda didn’t like to admit it, Florence had changed since they arrived in London. Of course, she had lost interest in the stage almost immediately, but that was no great surprise. Instead she had wanted to go to cafés and cinemas and mooch around the West End department stores. She wanted to “see the sights” and bought an expensive pack of tear-off postcards that was indeed called “The Sights of London.” The pack folded out like a concertina to show photographs of Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, the Tower of London and so on, and after each sight had been ticked off, Florence sent a postcard to her parents on which she wrote the same message every time. Dear Mummy and Daddy, I’m having a lovely time in London. Miss you!—a sentiment somewhat undercut by the carelessly cheerful exclamation mark and the absence of a return address. The Ingrams had a telephone in their house, but Florence made no attempt to contact them. Freda supposed she had never had freedom before. Freda, who had had nothing but freedom, considered it to be an overrated concept.
As week followed week, Freda had continued the arduous grind around the open auditions in theatres and left Florence to her Sights. Perhaps that was a mistake, because the once reliably sunny nature had often become eclipsed recently by a new querulousness. If Florence wasn’t out visiting the Sights (surely she had seen them all several times by now), she was often to be found lounging around with uncharacteristic petulance on their uncomfortable horsehair mattress, picking at a bag of sweets while reading lurid, dust-jacketed thrillers that she bought from a stall in Berwick Street market.
She was seized too, of course, by the idea of Tutankhamun and his curse.
Freda hadn’t heard of Tutankhamun—she had never read a newspaper in her life, they were good for stringing up in the outside privy or for wrapping fish and chips, but that was their limit as far as she was concerned. She didn’t understand why a big modern city like London—surely the most important city in the whole world—should be convulsed by the idea of someone who died in Egypt thousands of years ago.
“He’s haunting the streets, looking for victims,” Florence said, “because we dug him up and disturbed his eternal rest.”
“No we about it,” Freda said crossly. “I didn’t dig him up. I don’t even know where Egypt is.”
In York, you couldn’t lay a gas pipe or a new drain without digging up a Roman skeleton. If they didn’t like their “eternal rest” being disturbed, then surely the streets of the girls’ home town would be full of legions of the dead roaming about. (“They are,” Florence said.) Freda’s next-door neighbour in the Groves had a Roman skeleton in his coal cellar, people paid tuppence to come and gawp at it. Freda would rather spend the money on a bag of pear drops.
And visions! The day before they left for London, they had climbed the spiral staircase that led to the roof of the Minster. Freda wanted to say goodbye to York, she intended never to return. Florence huffed and puffed and claimed dizziness at every turn, while Freda—an adept at the pirouette, lest we forget—skipped up the helical steps full of encouragement for her friend. It was a clear day and when they reached the top they could see the Vale of York laid out before them. “It’s like looking at the whole world,” Florence said.
“Well, not quite the whole world,” Freda said. “Just a tiny bit of it, really.”
“Do you think,” Florence said, “that if we jumped, we would fly?”
“No,” Freda said. What a clot Florence could be sometimes! “We wouldn’t fly,” she said sternly. “We would fall.”
“I think the angels would catch us. I think I can see them waiting,” Florence said, pointing vaguely in the direction of the hills in the distance. (Sometimes, Freda really worried for Florence.) “Harrogate’s over there,” she said with confidence. Apparently, at Florence’s school they spent a great deal of time in Geography class drawing and colouring in maps of Yorkshire. Florence and her mother often went to Harrogate on the train, Mrs. Ingram preferred the shops there, she said. Harrogate was “full of angels,” according to Florence. What a booby. Freda had accompanied them once and despite afternoon tea in Bettys the interminable round of shops had bored her silly, angels or not.
Once, they had accompanied Mrs. Ingram into Hannon’s the fruiterers in Stonegate—Mrs. Ingram had heard that they had “wet walnuts” and was eager to surprise Mr. Ingram with them. Freda couldn’t imagine why you would want to eat a walnut, wet or otherwise. They tasted bitter and stuck in your teeth. The only nuts that Freda liked were the sugared almonds from Terry’s, pretty in their pastel colours, that Mrs. Ingram kept in a silver dish on the sideboard. “Filigree,” Mrs. Ingram said mysteriously when Freda admired the scrolling cut-out pattern that bordered the little dish. To Freda’s ears it sounded like something to do with horses, or perhaps a pretty name for a girl.
In Hannon’s, Florence had suddenly grown excited, claiming that she could see the face of the Virgin Mary on a large melon. “A honeydew,” the brown-coated assistant said, as if that might explain the apparition. Freda had never seen a melon before, with or without the Mother of God embossed on its froggy yellow surface. Now, of course, thanks to living so close to Covent Garden market, she considered herself quite the expert on the world’s fruits and vegetables.
* * *
—
Freda had grown increasingly remorseful about the anxiety she was causing the Ingrams and yet Florence herself seemed unusually immune to guilt. Dearest Ruthie, you have put up with so much. Mrs. Ingram was putting up with a lot more now, Freda thought.
Florence did, however, attend Mass regularly in Corpus Christi, the Catholic church on Maiden Lane, and Freda wondered if she professed her contrition and was absolved (Florence had taught her the word). How handy it must be to have one’s slate wiped clean on a regular basis.
Corpus Christi meant “the body of Christ,” Florence explained when a mystified Freda asked. There was a large crucifix hanging above the altar of the church. It was an execution really, wasn’t it? It may as well have been a man hanging from a gibbet, in Freda’s opinion. Gruesome. Still, the Corpus Christi church was a splendid affair, like a particularly glamorous theatre. Freda had peeked inside, rather cautiously, in case she suddenly succumbed to conversion and found herself wishing that she had a god, any god, if it would entitle her to this magnificence. When younger, Freda had occasionally attended Sunday School—two words that should not belong in the same sentence, in her opinion—but it had disappointed with its lack of decoration.
When she was still quite small, Freda had played the lame boy who was left behind by the Pied Piper in a Settlement Players’ production of The Pied Piper of Hamelin. It was a non-speaking role, so as well as lame she was also directed to be deaf and dumb. She played for, and received, much sympathy from the audience, indeed she had her own little ovation at the curtain call. Instead of changing the role to that of a girl, they asked her if she would cut her hair. Freda had lovely long plaits at the time, but of course she chopped them off. She would have done anything for a part. And now, she realized, it was she who was the Pied Piper, enticing Florence away and leading her who knew where.
Freda’s heart was heavy. It would never have crossed her friend’s mind to run away from home without Freda suggesting it. Freda had a feeling it was going to end badly. One way or another.
Bartholomew