At Freddie’s. Simon Callow

quarter, and had turned it into a Shakespearean theatre for the people. Miss Baylis declared that she was not educated and not a lady, and did only what God told her to. Her staff were warned that they would have no home life of any kind. Her audiences, broken in to the hard seats, were entirely loyal. Her theatre was so uncomfortable and so deeply loved that it was believed that the British public would never allow it to close. She was the Lady of the Vic, almost the only person of whom Freddie spoke with respect.

      It was from Lilian Baylis that she had studied the craft of idealism, that is to say, how to defeat materialism by getting people to work for almost nothing. At the Vic, indeed, the lower-paid actresses often had to take men’s parts, and were told that it would be good for them to put on beards and speak such lovely lines. Freddie did not copy these methods, rather she invented her own variations. In one way, however, she surpassed the Lady, who told her staff: ‘Come to me in your joys and come to me in your sorrows, but not in between, because I’ve not time for chit-chat.’ Freddie, on the other hand, was always ready to talk, and, in those days, to listen. By the end of the war she had come to know and be known by pretty well everyone in the London theatre.

      In 1924 she left the Old Vic, not at all on bad terms with Miss Baylis, but with a recognition that the two of them, compressed under one roof, might provide the conditions for an explosion. With a small legacy – but who was it from? – she opened the Temple School.

      A certain amount of her life, then, was accounted for. But there were conflicting elements. Her assistant, Miss Hilary Blewett, had been favoured with darker glimpses, Freddie having told her more than once that she had known the very worst of poverty. That was either in Peterborough or St Petersburg, Miss Blewett hadn’t quite been able to make out which. The Bluebell was, by the way, quite capable of disbelief. Her devotion to Freddie, necessitating very long hours, was difficult to explain, even to herself. She was, perhaps, under some form of mild hypnosis.

      Freddie’s name was Wentworth, but she scarcely ever referred to her relations. There were no photographs of them. Her younger brother, however, who was a reputable solicitor on the south coast, had been known to call, though only once, at the Temple. Worried about his sister’s finances, or what he guessed of them (not having seen her for many years), he sent her a carefully composed letter. Freddie told him that she had been too busy to read more than the first sentence.

      ‘I imagine I am as busy as you, Frieda, and to considerably more profit.’

      He was sitting awkwardly in a small armchair, not at all right for a solicitor.

      ‘I have to conserve my energy, dear. I manage that by never doing anything that isn’t strictly necessary, and above all by never reading anything I don’t have to. I knew you’d tell me what was in your letter.’

      ‘Look, Frieda, I’ve been trying to think back to the time before this atmosphere of craze, I scarcely know what to call it, anyway this involvement with the theatre, began. Of course, I’m considerably younger than you are, I always have been. But I’d like to know how it was that you became so set on running this school, which I’m afraid is leaving you in a very discouraging financial position … I’m simply asking you to take stock of your position, Frieda.’

      ‘Well, it was good of you to come, James, and I’m interested you should have thought it worthwhile to do so. I think it will make you feel better. Why, this very evening, when you talk things over with your wife – what is her name, by the way?’

      ‘Cherry,’ the solicitor replied.

      ‘But that was your first wife’s name.’

      ‘I have only been married once, Frieda.’

      ‘When you tell her that this place appeared not to have been dusted for God knows how long, and that I couldn’t even find your letter, and what an old wreck I looked, and so forth, well then you’ll be able to tell each other at regular intervals how good it was of you to come.’

      ‘Cherry and I would like you to come and have dinner with us,’ he persisted.

      ‘You’d like to feel that I’ve had dinner with you, perhaps. But I’ve reached a point in my life where I never go out in the evenings. You’ve nothing to reproach yourself with on that score.’

      She remained calm, with an imposing appearance of sanity. But that wouldn’t do, all the common sense was on his side, as the frayed furniture bore witness. From notes which he had made he began to read an analysis – simply a rough guess, since she hadn’t seen fit to confide in him – of the school’s finances at the present time; he’d just asked around and had been told that there weren’t more than forty pupils, if that, and there was a dangerous dependence on Peter Pan and the Christmas shows for employment, with the odd musical and the few Shakespearean parts. No TV work, no film work, no modelling, the Temple didn’t countenance any of them. – A luminous smile passed over Freddie’s face, as though the depths stirred. – He persevered, asking how long it was since she had had the place surveyed or inspected in any way. Freddie replied that a Ministry of Education inspector was due in a few weeks’ time. When the solicitor brightened she added that she hoped the Ministry wouldn’t send anybody too heavy as she was doubtful about the sagging floor of the upstairs hall, and had given the children instructions never to walk straight across it, but to skirt round the edge of the boards. His sharp glance, rather like hers at that moment, told her that she was exaggerating. Probably she was trying to amuse him. As it happened, he was quite wrong. If his ears had been a little keener he could have heard the alternate shuffling and pattering above their heads. But he was a man who kept his eye on things, rather than listening to them. He said that he was obliged to be going, for, as a busy man, a necessary condition of his being anywhere was to be on the way somewhere else. He picked up his coat and brief-case, and then, although he knew that he had brought nothing else with him, looked round, as though he were not quite sure.

      ‘I don’t like to leave you like this, Frieda.’

      ‘You’ll find me looking exactly the same next time you come.’

      ‘That’s what I’m afraid of. I don’t find the idea at all reassuring.’ As he continued the moves of departure, Freddie, who had never stirred from her chair, pointed to a bureau which stood sideways on, struggling for position between two larger chests of drawers.

      ‘Help yourself out of the left hand small top drawer, James. That’s where I keep the complimentary tickets, I’ve forgotten what’s there.’

      ‘Well, if they’re going to waste … I’ve no objection to a good show … there’s a glass of milk here which seems to have been there for some time,’ he added as he opened the bureau. But he could not regain the upper hand.

      ‘You’ll find some passes for the Palladium, dear. Tell Cherry they’re good for any night.’

      He put them carefully away into a compartment of his notecase. As he got into his car he felt a sense of injustice at not being able to dislike his sister more, for surely she was not likeable. The smile she had given him at the last minute was probably responsible.

      This method of dealing with her relative, or relatives, left Freddie at liberty to elaborate the story of her life pretty much as she wanted. She was not likely to be challenged. To take one more example: could it be true that at one time she had been on the stage herself? When she rose from her chair her bulk was supported by the unmistakable, not very graceful, walk of a dancer, the upper part of the body quite still, the feet planted flat, like a sea creature on dry land. It was startling to see her glide forward like that. She enjoyed the surprise it caused.

2

      WHEN Mattie looked into the school on his way home from the Alexandra, Freddie was sitting with Miss Blewett and Unwin, the embittered accountant. Mattie poked his head round the office door, with all the bright airs of the indulged.

      ‘Go away, Mattie,’ said Freddie.

      Still in make-up, his skin like a kid glove, his eyes lined