Stella went into her dressing room, sat down in front of her looking glass where she stared at her reflection. She was still a beauty, would be till she died; she had grown into beauty, a rare benefaction of nature but one given to her.
Her make-up needed touching up, and mechanically she redid her lips and puffed on some powder. Her mind was not on it, but her hand was so used to the job that it smoothed her eyebrows and checked the line of her lips with its usual skill.
She was not on for some time in the next act so she could sit back, breathe deeply and give herself good advice. Such as:
Stop going into a panic.
Pretend it’s all a joke.
Tell your husband.
Oh, no, not John, not yet.
Her call came, the first call, to remind her she should soon be in the wings awaiting her cue. Stella remembered the days when a boy came round to bang on your door with the news: you’re on, Miss Pinero. Now, the word came over the intercom.
She moved towards the wings, not waiting to be prompted.
She could hear the dialogue. Here was Lady Chiltern (acted by Jane Gillam, a beautiful girl, very nearly straight out of RADA where she had won an important prize). Lady Chiltern was a difficult part because she was so humourless and stupid, but Jane was doing what she could with it.
‘Mrs Cheveley! Coming to see me? Impossible!’
And here was Fanny Burt as Mabel Chiltern – she had better lines and even a few jokes, but Wilde reserved the best dialogue for the men: ‘She is coming up the stairs, as large as life and not nearly so natural.’
Not brilliant dialogue, Stella thought as she moved forward, but it got you on stage.
Here she went: ‘Isn’t that Miss Chiltern? I should so much like to know her.’
Stella stayed alert through the rest of the play. She had come to a decision. Speed seemed necessary, so she was off the stage as soon as the applause finished – to her pleasure there was a good show of enthusiasm – and slipped away to her dressing room without a word to the rest of the performers.
There were thirteen members of the cast; in the original production there had been fifteen, but money was easier then, and Stella had been obliged to cut out the two footmen. Of the remainder, ten were what she thought of as her ‘repertory company’ inasmuch as they performed for her whenever she produced a play herself and did not buy one in. Most of these actors were young, and local, from the drama department in one of the nearby universities. Stella had early realized the importance of cultivating your neighbourhood to win affection and bring in the audiences. She had a lot of support always from the friends and families of her young performers.
But you also needed an outsider to provide some extra excitement and here Jane Gillam, a star in the making, and Fanny Burt came in. The two men, Michael Guardian and Tom Jenks were attractive performers. Stella Pinero herself provided glitter.
In her dressing room, Stella let her dresser remove her hat and garments as Mrs Cheveley. She did not appear in the last act, but had duly turned up for the last curtain. ‘You pop off, Maisie,’ she said to her elderly dresser. ‘I know you want to get home. I will finish myself off.’
‘I’ll be dressing Miss Bow next week?’
‘That’s right.’ Stella was creaming her face, removing the last of her make-up – she never used much, the days of heavy slap were over.
Stella had introduced a fortnightly change of programme to entertain her limited audience in the Second City, which made a frequent change of programme an economic necessity.
‘A bit of an unknown quantity,’ said Maisie, hanging up a green silk mantle. As an old hand, she was allowed a certain freedom of speech. ‘But she’s done well; starring roles straight from college.’
‘Yes.’
Irene Bow was a graduate of the University drama department; she had been lucky with parts and had performed well in the Theatre Workshop production of Barefoot in the Park, and her crisp, rapid style of delivery would go down well in Michael Frayn’s Noises Off. Stella now had two weeks to herself.
‘You have a nice rest then, Miss Pinero,’ said Maisie. ‘You’ve earned it.’
If only, thought Stella.
Maisie turned round at the door. ‘Are you all right, Miss Pinero?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You look a bit white.’
‘Don’t you worry, Maisie.’ Stella was rapidly doing her face, repairing what ravages she could and concealing any paleness with a thin foundation cream from Guerlain. ‘You get off.’ What she meant in her silent heart was: Please go away and leave me to think.
Stella went to a locked drawer on the make-up table and withdrew a thickish envelope. She looked at it for a moment before opening it.
Three old letters, two very recent ones, and a photograph. How wrong she had been to let that photograph be taken.
Not drunk, not mad, just silly, she told herself. I cannot even claim that I was so young, she added. He was, I wasn’t. Stupid, I was, carried away by emotion. Even now, when she knew what he was, what he had become, she remembered his physical beauty.
She looked away from the letters, and inside herself let the dialogue go on: I did not know then that I would meet John Coffin again, that I would marry him and become the wife of a top policeman. When I married John, I tried to tell him of a few past affairs, but he laughed and said he did not want a General Confession, and he had not been without lovers himself.
It was, she admitted to herself, one of her treasured moments, because it showed what a nice man John Coffin was, with a knack for good behaviour. He was also tough-minded, resolute and quick-tempered. Oh dear, she could hardly bear to think of all that being turned against her.
He was fair, she told herself, very fair.
For some reason, she found this no comfort as she stared at her face in the looking glass, for fairness could be a very sharp weapon. She touched her cheek with a careful finger. ‘I must look after my skin, stress is bad for it. Maisie was right, I am a wreck.’
She leaned, resting her chin on her right hand, and, ever the actress, mimed tragic despair.
Possibly not a wreck, she allowed herself, withdrawing her hand, she had been a beauty and still was. Like many actresses she could make herself beautiful. She turned away from the looking glass to get dressed.
Her hasty movement knocked the letters and the photograph to the ground. Three old letters from her, and two new ones from him. Unwelcome, unwanted letters, threatening letters, demanding letters.
Pip Eton, student, actor, stared up at her from the photograph on the floor. How he had changed from what he had once been, to a treacherous beast. Once her lover, now … What could she call him but a blackmailer, a criminal, a traitor?
No, be fair, she told herself bitterly, it is you, Stella Pinero, whom he invites to be the traitor. And to betray whom? Your own husband, not sexually as a lover, but professionally as a policeman.
A reviewer had once called Stella the ‘modern comic muse’. Stella had valued that comment, she knew that she was a very good, possibly great comic actress, but now she felt a sting. Life had offered her a comedy, she reflected bitterly, and now she was being asked to play it as tragedy.
She put the letters and the photograph into her big black crocodile handbag which she had bought when she had won the Golden Apple Award on Broadway, and forced herself to calm down.
She could always kill someone. Preferably, Pip; if not, then very likely herself.
Her