By
Kathy Sharp
a glass of porter
She
didn’t often go to bed at night any more. People died in bed, did they not? It
felt safer to sit up in the armchair, her walking stick beside her, ready for
whatever might happen next. Less of a deathbed and more of a waiting room.
Besides, she didn’t need to sleep very much these days. A little doze here and
there between the arrivals of the trains. Miss Finlayson liked the trains. They
were a regular and timely reminder of life going on in the outside world. Miss
Finlayson was sometimes unsure whether her own life was still going on or not.
But the sound of a train door slamming indicated that people were travelling
about, had things to do. It was comforting, especially in the
dark.
She
had moved to this flat near the station when she retired, acquired a little dog
for company and decorated her walls with dozens of framed photographs. She
wasn’t sure how many there were – all the actors she had worked with in a long
theatrical career. Household names, every one of them. Or they had been. They
were still household names to Dorothy Finlayson – how could they not be? Her
flat was full of them. She had known these people so well. You do get to know
them, as a dresser. They confide all sorts of things that she’d never repeat.
She was not the sort of person to betray confidences in a theatrical memoir,
though it had been suggested she do so. The very idea!
Many
of them were far from the confident, glamorous people they appeared to be, set
forever on her wall in urbane and lovely poses. Not real, of course. That one
had terrible skin. Another chain-smoked himself to death from nerves. And not
just tobacco, either. Dorothy knew it all. But that was the theatre, wasn’t it –
that colourful, exaggerated, pretend world that she had so loved being a part
of.
She
had spent her working life helping others to conceal their identities, to create
new identities for themselves. Actors! What stories she could tell, if there
were anyone at all to listen. The framed photographs stared down at her, day
after day, with knowing looks. We know the price of a life lived
pretending to be someone else. Had she, Miss Finlayson, ever really been that
able, competent person she half remembered? Her memories were confused, these
days, and she wondered if some of them were actually the storylines of plays she
had worked on. Work. It had been wonderful to be working, always working, being
an integral part of the theatrical world. Actors come and go, but you, Dorothy,
go on forever! Dear Larry – he could always be trusted to say just the right
thing. Or had it been dear John? Or was it a line from a
play?
There
he was on the wall, dear Larry, in glamorous black and white. Under the glass
was the spot where his hand had touched the photo as he signed it for her. They
used to squabble, you know, the actors, fight to get their pictures on Dorothy’s
wall. You were a proper star of stage and screen when your framed image was good
enough for Dorothy. And not before. In the early days she carried them with her
as she moved from lodging to lodging, and then little flat to little flat. In
the end, there were so many that she could no longer manage them all, and the
majority were put into storage. She hadn’t realised quite how many there were
until her retirement when she had seen them all together at last. The sitting
room had been the perfect setting for them. It stood in a sort of turret on the
end of the building, and a nearly-circular wall. Very theatrical. Even so, there
was scarcely enough room to display the whole collection, as she liked to think
of it.
She
heard another train rattle into the station, and stand still with an electrical
hum. A pause. A door was slammed shut, and the train slithered off into the
night again. People don’t travel so much by train these days, Dorothy thought.
It was a comfort to have practical, conversational thoughts like that. The sort
of thing you might remark to a friend. Or a colleague. Sometimes she said it
aloud to the signed photographs. It was a long time since she had sustained a
conversation.
One
winter, oh, quite a few years ago now, you know, it had snowed and the pavements
were frozen. Treacherous underfoot. Miss Finlayson had stood at the street door,
fearful of the consequences of a fall, with the dog on a long lead. Three little
girls had passed by. They stopped to fuss over the dog and asked if she would
like them to take him for a walk. It was something of a chancy thing to do, but
they were very polite and Miss Finlayson had entrusted Jamie to their care. Half
an hour later, to her relief, they returned, the dog happy and exercised. She
invited them in for tea and gave them cherry cake and a thorough introduction to
the actors in the framed photographs. The girls were goggle-eyed. Said, yes,
they had heard of some of these people, heard their parents speak of
them.
The
three little girls came back every day until the weather improved and she could
exercise Jamie for herself, and thereafter every year whenever it was icy
underfoot. Miss Finlayson had seen them grow into teenagers. But then… the
little dog had died and the girls did not come back, and after that Miss
Finlayson didn’t get out much at all.
But
no matter, there was plenty to think about. All that great stretch of days and
nights of her theatrical career. All strung out across the past, with
artfully-lit pockets of memory to switch on and off at will. Lighting was so
important, wasn’t it? Poor lighting could ruin a perfectly good production.
Dorothy sat all night with the lights out these days, as often as not. There was
nothing she needed to look at, really, and all her things were so shabby now;
everything that mattered was in her head.
She
remembered the war, oh dear me, yes. Such a time. They had needed to be extra
inventive with costumes – you couldn’t get hold of the materials, could you? And
the theatre was so important for keeping up people’s morale, don’t you
know. Conversational thoughts, again, and very pleasant. She remembered the near
miss. The bomb had shaken the theatre, and Miss Finlayson with it, to the
foundations. She remembered the way everyone had rallied round to help.
Wonderful wartime spirit. She chose to forget that her near miss had been
someone else’s direct hit. She chose to forget the dust, the screaming, the
smell. Her memories did not smell of death and destruction. They smelt of
lavender, the lavender they hung among the costumes to keep away the moth. The
show must go on. Of course it must.
Sometimes
she mused on what it might have been like to have a husband and family, but not
often.
‘You
are a plain girl, Dorothy,’ her mother had said firmly, ‘and you should equip
yourself with a means of earning a living. It’s unlikely anyone will want to
marry you.’
A
devastating thing to say to a young girl, you might think, but Dorothy accepted
it without fuss and set about finding a place in a dressmaker’s, and that was
where she learned her trade. And then the circus came to town – or rather a
theatrical troupe – and when they left, Dorothy went with them. From this lowly
beginning she worked her way up to the theatres of the West End. It had been a
wonderful life and not at all lonely. Miss Finlayson, dresser to the stars. Our
dear Dorothy.
But
who was Dorothy? Someone she used to know. Someone bright and quick and ready
with a smart reply. Someone intelligent and apt and capable. Someone dedicated
to her work. An interesting person with many friends and a colourful history.
Yes, she thought, I used to know her rather well.
It
had been a long time between trains. The depths of the night; the time when
memories clustered together in little bunches and wafted away in ones and twos.
When this time was over and the early train came through, then she would know
she had survived another night. Little edges of dawn catching the photograph
frames, drawing streaks of dust and light on the glass. And, at last, dear
Larry’s smiling, flawless face, composed and knowing, elegant to the nth degree,
would look down on her again.
About the author
Kathy's Whales
and Strange Stars is set in the marshlands of
18th century Kent.
