The innocent must not be made to suffer again.
He emptied the bottle and walked over to the bookcase, where a woman in a silver frame looked out at him from a backdrop of Bennett and Walpole. The picture had been taken forty years ago or more and, until death brought its miraculous peace, the face had aged in that time more starkly than he cared to admit, but this was how he always remembered her. ‘We’re nearly there,’ he said, raising his glass in acknowledgement of the silent pact that ran between them. ‘We’re nearly there.’
*
107
Hedley White stood across the road from the New Theatre in the rain, trying to understand how his world had fallen apart so quickly and knowing it was all his own fault. He had been there for an hour now, huddled against the iron gates that divided the courtyard of 66 St Martin’s Lane from the busy street beyond, and taking advantage of the shadows to watch the comings and goings opposite. Since mid-afternoon, people had been queuing along the draughty passage which ran down one side of the New but there had been no sign of impatience or bad humour, just excitement and the companionship that always characterises a crowd with a shared objective. The queue tailed back as far as he could see, following the passage round past stage door – where he had first set eyes on Elspeth – and on to Wyndham’s, eventually emerging into Charing Cross Road. All reservable seats were long gone, and had been since the play’s last few days had been announced, but hopefuls still turned out in force for the pit and gallery entrances and, even now, when the doors were thrown open and the lucky frontrunners admitted, there was no indication that the line was anything but infinite.
He had liked Elspeth from the moment he set eyes on her, standing patiently at the stage door with an older man whom he later learned was her uncle, waiting for Rafe Swinburne’s autograph.
With no thought in his mind other than to be helpful, and knowing that the actor would be occupied for some time with the blonde who had arrived halfway through the second act with a bottle of gin and some maraschino cherries, Hedley offered to take the programme backstage and get it signed for her. ‘Is she pretty?’
Swinburne had asked, after taking careful note of the name and covering his photograph with the usual flamboyant scrawl.
Blushing as he described her, Hedley laid himself open to some merciless teasing. ‘You have this one, then,’ Swinburne had said, casting a sly glance at the blonde. ‘As you can see, I’ve got my hands full tonight – but don’t let me down. Make sure she says yes.’ And much to Hedley’s astonishment, she had said yes. His tentative request that she might meet him for a cup of tea one day had been met with a smile of disarming pleasure and a blush that 108
matched his own. The last two months had been the happiest he had ever known.
And now he was paying for that happiness with a misery deeper than he could have thought possible. Just for a moment, he allowed himself the foolish luxury of playing out the evening as it should have been: their joyful first glimpse of each other and the endless conversation that always followed an absence; more talk inside the theatre – in all their meetings, he could not remember a single silence – where they would go first to the sweet kiosk so that Elspeth could choose a box of toffees to see them safely through the first half, and then to their seats. He would take her hand the moment the curtain went up and, from then on, would steal secret glances at her, smiling to himself as her lips silently formed the lines she knew by heart and watching as she leaned forward in her seat to anticipate scenes she particularly enjoyed. Then the walk, arm in arm, to the restaurant and dinner, before he saw her safely home. Unable to bear it any longer, Hedley brought the fantasy to an abrupt end and sank to the pavement in despair, bowed by a twin grief because he knew then, in his heart, that he would never want to set foot in a theatre again.
From where he crouched, scarcely noticing how cold and wet the iron railings felt against his back, he saw Lydia walking quickly down the passage towards stage door, arm in arm with the other lady and laughing as the two of them struggled with an umbrella that stubbornly refused to close. If she had been on her own, he might have approached her and asked for her help – she had been kind to him from the moment she found out that he shared her joy in music and old songs – but he was shy in front of her friend. In any case, a gentleman soon sacrificed his place in the queue to force the umbrella into submission and the moment was lost as they disappeared into the theatre. There was no safe haven for him there: Aubrey was furious with him and he, in turn, cursed the older man for his interference, without which Elspeth might still be alive and he would not be standing here with no idea what to do next. With all that the papers had implied, he knew the police would be looking for the dead girl’s boyfriend 109
and it would not take them long to find out who he was. They were probably at his digs now, waiting for him to come home, but he would not risk that, no matter how tempting it was to collect a change of clothes and the small amount of money that he had managed to save each week from his wages, carefully stored in a tin under the bed.
A coin fell to the ground in front of him. Instinctively, he picked it up and stood, ready to return it to its owner, to explain that he was not one of the beggars who lined the West End streets on a Saturday night and that the shilling should go to someone who really needed it. Instead, he just watched as the man disappeared into the crowd, suddenly aware that he faced a stark choice: he could give himself up and take what was coming to him, or he could run – and for that he needed money, not a conscience. As the dreaded ‘House Full’ sign was placed on the pavement outside, the queue began to disperse. Before he could change his mind, Hedley pulled his collar up and strode quickly across the road after a couple who were walking away in disappointment.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, touching the young man’s arm. ‘I was supposed to be going to the play tonight with my friend but she . . .
she can’t be here.’ From his coat, he took the tickets that Aubrey had given him, two front-row dress-circle seats, the most expensive that money could buy. ‘It’d be a shame to let these go to waste.
I’ll sell them to you if you like, just for the cost price.’
The boy looked at him in disbelief. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
Hedley nodded and took the money, embarrassed as the girl gave him a spontaneous hug. ‘We’ve just got engaged,’ she said, smiling in delight, ‘and we so wanted to celebrate at the theatre.
Everybody’s talking about it. You’ve no idea how much this means to us.’
The money weighed heavy in his pocket as Hedley turned away, knowing more certainly than the couple could have realised exactly just how much it meant.
For an actress in a hit West End play, Saturday was usually the most gratifying day of the week but, by five o’clock, Lydia 110
Beaumont had had enough. An unsettled air hung over the theatre as the tension which already existed among cast and crew was intensified by the shocking events of the day before; everyone seemed out of sorts because of it, herself and Marta included. As a rule, Lydia enjoyed the occasions when Lewis Fleming stood in for Terry because he brought a strained anger to the role of Richard, a rawness which gave her something different to respond to. This afternoon, however, she felt that both their performances had been distinctly below par and would not have blamed the audience for reflecting this at the end of the show. But
