Miranda Emmerson - Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars

‘No. More general.’ Lanny waved her hands in the air. ‘You know, the whole making a better life thing.’

‘And have you ever been back to Ireland. I mean: have you visited?’

‘No. I have never had that pleasure or that privilege.’

‘Do you know where in Cork they were from?’

Lanny’s voice rose a little. ‘Anna. Anna! I’m so sorry, James. There’s something nagging at the back of my mind. Do I have someone in tonight?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Anna stood. ‘Do you want me to double-check who’s got the house seats?’

Lanny waved her hand frantically. ‘No. No. No. It doesn’t matter. I’m being silly. Sit down. Pre-show nerves.’ She directed this last remark to Wingate whose eyes were rather wide.

He waited a moment and then began again. ‘I only wondered. Partly, I suppose, because Green is not a typically Irish name. I wondered if it had been changed along the way?’

‘Green? No. I think if I’d chosen a stage name I’d have gone for something a bit wilder.’

‘I wondered if it had been anglicised. If you were once all O’Gradys or MacGoverns.’

‘Well … that’s very interesting. You see, my daddy was Green, but I didn’t know my grandaddy at all because he died so young. And, well now, I assume that we were all Greens – not my mother’s family of course, they were Callaghans – but I never really asked. I mean, it’s not something that you think of, is it? “Daddy, is that definitely your name?”’ Lanny laughed, showing Wingate all of her teeth.

‘Are you tempted now to go digging around and find out?’ Wingate asked her.

‘You’ve got me interested, James, you really have.’

‘Might you make a pilgrimage?’

‘To Ireland? Perhaps. If time allows and they want me back.’ Iolanthe laughed and Wingate joined in with her. He tasted his coffee, made a face of disgust and deposited it at his feet. Lanny’s eyes wrinkled into a smile. She held his gaze for a moment.

***

After the show that evening, Anna stood by Lanny’s side as she always did and watched her clean off all the muck. The dark black liner, the red lips and the mascara made her glamorous and sultry, but she was far more lovely underneath it all. Her eyes were round and deepest brown, her eyebrows thin and delicate. Her nose was too broad for her face and underneath all the panstick it was covered in light brown freckles, which always made Anna think of her as a little girl from a storybook. Lanny’s lips were a soft, deep rose and her teeth snaggly, the inheritance of a childhood without money.

Lanny pawed at a mole on her cheek, which sprouted a single hair. ‘I look so old these days.’

Anna smiled at her in the mirror. ‘I think you look lovely. Like a woman from a Rossetti or a Waterhouse.’

‘I don’t know what those are.’

‘Rossetti? He was one of the Pre-Raphaelites. Waterhouse as well. They were painters in Victorian times who painted these big romantic pictures of women from literature. All flowing locks and big, bold eyes and lips.’

‘It sounds pornographic.’

‘Well, it is, in a way. It’s very sexual. But I wanted so much to look like those women when I was younger. My father had a book with plates in it. I wanted to be the Lady of Shalott or Pandora or a mermaid. But you really do … Without make-up …’ Anna shook her head. ‘You look more real somehow.’

‘Well, I am more real.’

‘I suppose.’

Lanny’s hand sneaked across the dressing table and picked up the mascara. ‘A little something, just for going home,’ she said.

‘What’s it like, living at The Savoy?’

Lanny met Anna’s eyes in the glass and her own eyes wrinkled into a smile. ‘It’s exactly what you’d think, child. Everything is very shiny, the breakfast is excellent and everyone looks terribly, terribly bored.’

Anna laughed and helped Iolanthe into her dress and coat. A little pile of post lay unopened on the dressing table. Lanny pushed the envelopes into her bulging handbag and then paused in the act of picking up yesterday’s Standard . She glanced down at the headline.

SNOW ON MOORS HAMPERS SEARCH

Brady and Hindley remanded

They’d hardly been off the front pages this past month. First the boy’s body, then the girl’s, now a second boy had been found.

Anna watched Lanny’s train of thought. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘I’ve been having nightmares.’

‘About the kids?’

‘After they found the girl. Under the earth. Who’d leave a child like that?’

Lanny’s face creased a little in pain. ‘I don’t want to think about it.’

‘Sorry,’ said Anna. ‘Let’s not.’

They walked in silence down the many flights of stairs. Outside the theatre Lanny belted her coat against the cold and drew on gloves. Anna paused at the corner and watched her walk away. Lanny looked over her shoulder just once and waved a hand.

‘See you Monday,’ she called.

‘See you Monday,’ Anna called back.

And then she was gone.

Monday, 1 November

At half past five Anna was ready for Lanny’s arrival. A cup of lemon tea sat on the table waiting. Lanny’s clothes were ironed and hung ready for her in neat rows. The play began at seven and the cast were expected to be in place at the very latest by the half-hour call, which came at six twenty-five. Lanny normally liked to arrive early. She had make-up and hair to do. She wanted to drink her tea and go to the toilet. She wanted time so if anything went wrong with her costume it could be fixed.

Any moment now Lanny would come running in, throw down the newspaper, empty her pockets of sweets, peel herself out of her dress.

‘Fucking cold!’ she’d cry. ‘And the cabs! No one knows how to drive in this country!’

‘Did you look the wrong way again?’ Anna would ask.

‘I looked the right way. But all the assholes just kept driving in the wrong direction!’

Or perhaps tonight she’d be contemplative, slip into the dressing room without a word. If she was in a quiet mood Anna had learned to come and go without a sound. Fetching and carrying everything that might be needed as Lanny stripped herself. Sometimes Anna would find her standing naked before the mirror, touching her hand to her breasts or her belly or her thighs, lost in thought. Anna would look, too hard to be a human and not look, but then she would look away. She tried to imagine her way into the body of Iolanthe. The mind, she corrected herself. Iolanthe resided in her mind.

Half past five became six. Anna went downstairs to see Dick but Lanny hadn’t signed in yet. Leonard popped his head in to ask if she thought Lanny had been getting sick.

‘I don’t think so,’ Anna told him. ‘She just seemed her normal self.’

Anna waited. Lanny’s tea grew cold. At six twenty-five exactly the call came on the backstage tannoy:

‘ Field of Stars company. This is your half-hour call. Thirty minutes, please.’

Leonard burst in again. ‘We can’t raise her at The Savoy. She isn’t there. Agatha is dressing to cover Lanny. Minnie is dressing to cover Agatha. Can you go and cast an eye over what she’s doing?’

Anna helped the young understudy to get into her clothes. Minnie was talking all the time. Running the lines at high speed over and over again. Anna gave her a hug.

‘It isn’t Shakespeare,’ she told her. ‘No one knows the words. You can say anything at all and they’ll still think it’s part of the play. Walk on, walk off and try to look like you know what you’re doing. Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. I’ll see you later for the quick change.’

She walked back to Lanny’s dressing room. The cup of tea sat on the table untouched. Was Iolanthe ill?