Bunny felt in his pocket, fiddling for loose change.

9.

O'Hara's landlady called up the stairs that he was wanted on the telephone. 'Long distance,' she said.

When he heard Potter's voice he was taken aback. 'How are you?' he asked, and was annoyed with himself for sounding so effusive.

'I must apologise for disturbing you at such a late hour,' Potter said. There was that familiar intake of breath as he drew on a cigarette. 'Rose felt we couldn't leave it until the morning. Reynalde gave me your number.'

He explained, briefly, the difficulties they were in. 'I don't expect you'll want to come up here... even if you're available.'

O'Hara reminded him that Jung had considered Liverpool the centre of the Universe.

'How interesting,' said Potter. 'I take it he didn't live here. It'll be a six-week run, two matinees a week, from Tuesday.'

'I presume I'll be doubling up on both parts,' O'Hara said.

'But of course. It's traditional.'

'Not invariably,' said O'Hara. 'Laughton only played Hook.'

Afterwards he telephoned Lizzie to ask what she thought.

'Christmas in the provinces,' she said. 'It's not everybody's cup of tea, is it? Still, you've always wanted to go back, and I dare say you can demand the earth in salary.'

'But think about it... Potter of all people.'

'I am thinking,' she said. 'It was donkey's years ago.'

'We can never measure the effect we have on other people,' he said, although he, more than most, had a fair idea. 'Time has nothing to do with it.'

'Who else will be up there,' she enquired, 'besides Mary Deare?'

'Dotty probably. I didn't ask.'

'And when are you off?'

'As soon as I've packed. I shall ride up on the Norton,' he told her, and there was a difficult pause in which she waited for him to suggest she should come up to Liverpool in the New Year.

'Well then,' she said, at last. 'Don't forget to send a postcard.'

Frowning, he rang Mona Gage and hung up when her husband answered.

Rose booked O'Hara into the Adelphi Hotel at the theatre's expense. It was an empty gesture she knew he wouldn't stay there. He had always, even as a young man, hankered for the past.

After only one night he went out and rented his old room in the front bas.e.m.e.nt of a house in Percy Street. He sought, self-consciously, now that he once again walked those familiar streets, to catch up with that other, vanished self who, at this distance, seemed more real than the person he had become.

The room hadn't changed. The fire still smoked, the damp still grew vegetable growths the colour of peaches on the wall between the grimy windows. Even the table that Keeley, the painter, had used as a palette was in its place beneath the sink. He didn't dare inspect the mattress in case that too was the same.

When he dragged out the table and the lamplight spilled onto the splodges of cadmium yellow and scarlet lake, he thought of the girl who had shown him to his dressing-room on the morning of his arrival. She was dressed as a munitions worker, and when he switched on the light her hair had blazed under the dim bulb. 'I know this is your old dressing-room,' she said. 'George told me.'

'Ah, George,' he repeated. 'Salt of the earth.'

'You still have to kick the pipes before the water comes out of the tap,' she said.

Outside, the gate had gone from the bas.e.m.e.nt steps, and the slanting roof of the coal hole had fallen in, but when he looked he could see the chafed paint, those marks on the rusted railings, where once he had padlocked his motorcycle.

Keeley, of course, had long since departed. A biology student with a stutter now occupied the back room. He was lonely and broke and had already barged in for the loan of a cupful of Quaker oats.

Those first evenings O'Hara avoided going to the Oyster Bar. Grace Bird, whom he had worked with before and of whom he was fond, spent most nights up at the hospital knitting in the waiting-room while Dotty ministered to poor old d.i.c.kie St Ives, and although he respected Mary Deare as a performer she was possibly the best Peter since Nina Boucicault she had never been a chum. He rather took to Bunny, but it was obvious the stage-manager was a crony of Potter's and it was advisable, this early on, to leave well alone. To be fair, Potter was behaving better than would have been expected cold yet civil.

It was no hardship isolating himself. He had no wish for company nor wanted to be anywhere else than in that room with the paint-flecked table. He lay on the narrow bed and waited for the bas.e.m.e.nt gate to bang in the windswept night, until he remembered it was no longer there.

Dotty had once gone out with a piece of string to stop its clanging. Dotty had pinned a photograph of Charles Laughton, torn from a movie magazine, on the wall above the fireplace. If he got up and peered closely enough he would still see the p.r.i.c.k of that vanished drawing-pin in the plaster.

The girl behind the beauty-counter at Lewis's had scrawled her name in pencil on the window frame. Then you won't forget me, she had said. But he had, long before the condensation, dribbling, like Dotty's tears, had smeared the name away.

Dotty had cried a lot. He had only to go for a spin with Freddie Reynalde or spend half an hour too long in the pub for her shoulders to slump and her eyes to fill. Once, she'd taken a hammer to the headlamp of his motorcycle. She'd done it because she cared. It was no good repressing her feelings. It struck him as convenient the way women placed such reliance on their emotions.

She'd offered to lend him the money to have the bike fixed, and when he accepted she said, 'I've broken something precious, haven't I?' and knelt in the street among the bits of gla.s.s, looking up at him as if she understood it was more than a lamp she had smashed.

He forgave her, and then a week later he and Keeley came home from the Beaux Arts Club to find her sitting on the bas.e.m.e.nt steps, smiling nice as pie. Fooled, he let her in, and she ran straight to his jazz records and whipping off her court shoe brought the heel down on his favourite Blossom Dearie.

This time it was because her feelings told her he didn't love her. She dragged up that other business he'd been foolish enough to confide in her, that lost girl with the golden voice. No wonder she she'd disappeared into the wide blue yonder. He was a monster. Why, in all the time she'd known him he had never said the words words.

'What words?' he asked, and she said, 'Exactly. You don't begin to know what I mean.' And then Keeley had nudged him and he'd found the words she wanted, and still it wasn't enough she called him a liar and wept even louder.

He'd thought he did love her, until she went on worrying at it, thrashing it to and fro, churning up feelings like a dog digging up a bone. By the time she was through he didn't know what he felt.

He'd had no such doubts when embracing that model Keeley had brought home from the Art School. She had tufts of hair in her armpits like clumps of gra.s.s. A man couldn't slide into the abyss when she was around.

He'd told Dotty she wouldn't always feel so unhappy, that one day she'd look at him and his face would seem quite ordinary, and she'd flown at him, pummelling his chest with her fists, sobbing that the day would never come.

They were both young, of course, and neither of them knew what they were talking about. Keeley said girls were unreasonable because they weren't any good at sport they hadn't learnt any rules.

At his first rehearsal of Peter Pan Peter Pan, almost before Bunny had finished introducing him to the rest of the cast, Dotty had taken him proprietorially by the arm and strolled him into the wings. There was no need for her to be present. She was playing Mrs Darling and she and Hook were never on stage together.

He thought, how changed she is, how nearly old she has become. She wore a smart blue costume with a tiny hat tilted over one eye. She whispered, 'How strange it is, you and I here together... after all these years.' Then he thought, how little she has altered. She chided him for not responding to her Christmas cards. 'One every year,' she cried reproachfully. 'Without fail. But then, you were never one to dwell on the past, were you?'

In spite of this, she never lost an opportunity to jog his memory, mostly during the coffee breaks when Desmond Fairchild and the girl with red hair were within earshot.

'Remember that time we went dancing at the Rialto ballroom,' she would say. 'After the second night of Richard II Richard II... when that fight broke out? There were bottles of stout flying like skittles.' Or, 'Wasn't it a scream that afternoon we went to the matinee at the Court and you got a fit of the hiccoughs.' And Mou-Mou!... How fond he had been of darling Mou-Mou... it broke Mummy's heart to have her put down, but it was the kindest thing to do... 'You must have got my letter,' she said. 'It was some years back.'

'No,' he said. 'I'm afraid I didn't. It must have been after I moved.'

'But, of course,' she said. 'Otherwise you would have replied.'

He didn't mind. There was nothing so cosily malicious, once it was mutually accepted, as dead love, and besides it was plain Dotty had a thing going with Fairchild. The man had a faint discoloration under one eye he couldn't help speculating whether Dotty hadn't been giving him a hard time.

He discovered the girl's name was Stella and tried to engage her in gossip. She eyed him shrewdly and said Mr Fairchild was very nice, very nice indeed, and so was Miss Blundell. Miss Blundell had been particularly nice to her. 'It's nice when people are nice, isn't it?' he said, and she snapped back, 'I do know other words, but usually n.o.body likes the sound of them.' She reminded him of someone, or rather he felt he had met her before.

'It's hardly likely,' Freddie Reynalde pointed out. 'You haven't been in this neck of the woods for years, and I doubt if in all her life she's been further than Blackpool.'

The first dress-rehearsal lasted the whole of Sat.u.r.day. Bunny had taken the precaution of holding separate flying- and lighting-rehearsals on the Friday, with the result that the delays were structural rather than technical the deck of the Jolly Roger Jolly Roger swayed alarmingly during the fight between the pirates and the Lost Boys, and the ticking of the crocodile was found to be inaudible beyond the first three rows of the stalls. When Hook, communing with his ego, murmured, ' swayed alarmingly during the fight between the pirates and the Lost Boys, and the ticking of the crocodile was found to be inaudible beyond the first three rows of the stalls. When Hook, communing with his ego, murmured, 'How still the night is; nothing sounds alive... split my infinitives, but 'tis my hour of triumph', the mast creaked ominously and all but fell against the backcloth.

In spite of this, those actors who stole into the auditorium between entrances returned full of enthusiasm. John Harbour p.r.o.nounced the production nothing short of magical. The missed cues, the botching of business, the somewhat lumpy prancings of the Tiger Lily troupe counted for nothing beside the chilling authority of Hook and the strutting Peter, unearthly yet real of Mary Deare. O'Hara, he said, was the terrifying shadow on the wall which every child saw through half-closed lids once the nursery door had shut. Not many of those present had first-hand knowledge of such rarified accommodation, but they took his meaning.

In Act Five, Father Dooley, who had been sipping Irish whisky from a camouflaged army-issue water-bottle, responded dramatically to the exchange between Hook and Wendy.

(Wendy is brought up from the hold and sees at a glance that the deck hasn't been scrubbed for years.)

Hook: So my beauty, you are to see your children walk the plank So my beauty, you are to see your children walk the plank.

Wendy: (with n.o.ble calmness): Are they to die? (with n.o.ble calmness): Are they to die?

Hook: They are. Silence all, for a mother's last words to her children They are. Silence all, for a mother's last words to her children.

Wendy: These are my last words. Dear boys, I feel that I have a message for you from your real mothers, and it is this: we hope our sons will die like Englishmen These are my last words. Dear boys, I feel that I have a message for you from your real mothers, and it is this: we hope our sons will die like Englishmen.

At which Father Dooley rose unsteadily in his seat and denounced the philosophy behind the words. n.o.body on stage heard him. Grace, who was purling in the front circle, gathered he was drawing their attention to the war and the number of dead and maimed. Meredith endeavoured to explain that the play had been written long before the carnage of the First World War, let alone the Second. Besides in 1915 Mr Barrie had written to George, his adopted son and one of the original Lost Boys, that he no longer thought of war as glorious. It is just unspeakably monstrous to me now It is just unspeakably monstrous to me now. To clinch matters, a few days later George was killed, shot through the head as his battalion advanced on St Eloi.

Father Dooley refused to see the connection and continued to protest. Dr Parvin took him home. Meredith, who had served in nothing more b.l.o.o.d.y than the Catering Corps, called a break and clambered into the orchestra pit to mangle Bach on the piano.

After the national anthem, and before the curtain went up, Rose made a speech expressing her mixed emotions at the unfortunate accident which had befallen Richard St Ives. Mixed, she said, because it had given the theatre the opportunity to invite P.L. O'Hara to step into the breach. She drew the audience's attention to the injured leading man, who, leg propped on a cushioned trestle arrangement protruding into the centre aisle, sat under a red blanket in the third row of the stalls. He was given an ovation, and Rushworth's grand-daughter, a stout girl with ringlets, ran forward and, leaning heavily against his broken leg, presented him with a bouquet. It was this same child who later screamed piercingly when Hook made his first entrance, clawing the misty air above the frozen river.

After the final curtain-call Bunny came into the prop-room and invited Stella to a little party at the Commercial Hotel. The play had overrun the licensing hours and the Oyster Bar was already closed. 'It might amuse you,' he said, and added gallantly, 'You aquitted yourself excellently with the torch.'

'Thank you very much,' she said. She longed to go, and yet she couldn't bear the idea.

'You too, George,' said Bunny.

George wriggled out of it. His missus would go on a vinegar trip if he was late home again.

Stella ran upstairs and combed her hair in the extras' dressing-room. She thought of taking off her overall she was wearing one of Lily's blouses underneath only when it was unb.u.t.toned and she looked in the mirror her chest poked out in a most peculiar way. She imagined it might settle down if she removed her bra.s.siere, but what if Dotty noticed and made some personal remark about her growth?

She couldn't think how she was going to enter the Commercial Hotel, not unless accompanied or pushed. No doubt Babs and Grace would travel up the hill by taxi. Trouble was, if she appeared downstairs too soon it would look as if she was cadging a lift, and if she arrived too late they would have gone without her and then how would she summon up the courage to go at all?

She went to find Geoffrey. The stage doorkeeper said he had already left. At last, emerging into the street, she found herself a hundred yards behind John Harbour and Meredith. Squatting, she pretended to tie a non-existent shoe-lace and waited until the two men had crossed Clayton Square and turned the corner in the direction of Bold Street.

I can't go, she thought. Who needs parties? And she began to walk home the long way round so as not to b.u.mp into anybody. She felt annoyed with herself, made miserable with so little cause. If she had been the offspring of drunken parents in Scotland Road, or born with a hair-lip like Ma Tang's daughter, there might be some excuse for feeling as she did. Why couldn't she slide out of herself and be someone else, if only for the ten seconds it would take to push open the door of the hotel and step across the threshold?

She was making for the telephone box outside the Broken Dolls Hospital when she heard the puttering of a motorcycle engine as it reduced speed in the gutter behind her. Turning, she recognised O'Hara. He wore the flying helmet he had affected on the morning of his arrival and those goggles which, when removed, had left him looking like a barn owl, white-ringed eyes blinking in a s.m.u.t-flecked face.

'Hop on,' he said, patting the pillion.

She clung to the waist of his crackling leather overcoat as they thundered up the hill and roared along Hope Street, past the Mission Hall and the Inst.i.tute and the ruined silhouette of the Methodist church. The headlamp picked out a cat streaking towards a wall, and a child without shoes between the shafts of a wooden cart, straining to pull it into an alleyway, and both images were gone in an instant, drowned in darkness as the bike sped past, the road a triangle of bright water as they rode the glittering breakers of the tramlines and swerved to the kerb of the Commercial Hotel.

Meredith's landlord had put the back parlour at their disposal. There was a fire in the hearth and sandwiches on the sideboard. One of the pirates gave Stella a gla.s.s half-full of gin. She swallowed it in one gulp and started to cough.

Toasts were drunk to Mary Deare and O'Hara. It had been a wonderful night, absolutely marvellous. It couldn't have gone better. Seven curtain calls, and they would have taken more if Rose, concerned at the overtime the stagehands were in danger of earning, hadn't signalled Freddie Reynalde to play the audience out.

What about that child who had screamed in Act Two, and the hissing that had followed... and the outbreak of sobbing when Tinkerbell drank the poison and Peter announced she was dying... and the sigh that had rippled... yes, rippled through the theatre when Peter, alone on the rock in the lagoon, heard the mermaid's melancholy cry as the moon began to rise over Never-Never Land.

O'Hara, on behalf of the company, spoke a few words in appreciation of Meredith. He said he'd done a wonderful job in very difficult circ.u.mstances. The lighting had been quite brilliant.

Meredith, wearing his duffle-coat and sitting cross-legged on the floor, raised his gla.s.s in response. 'How very kind,' he murmured. 'Such praise, coming from you.'

Stella asked John Harbour if he had seen Geoffrey.

'He's off sulking most likely,' said Harbour, and started to tell her his reasons for believing O'Hara's performance that evening had been the equal of any of the great Shakespearian roles as portrayed by the likes of Ralphie or Larry. 'He had the audience in the palm of his hand,' he cried. 'How they hated him. Those flourishes, those poses, that diabolical smile... the appalling courtesy of his gestures...' He broke off in mid-sentence, as if suddenly realising who he was talking to, and abruptly left her for Mary Deare. Sitting at her feet he gazed up into her withered child's face and began again. 'You had the audience in the palm of your hand. How they loved you.'

O'Hara had been b.u.t.tonholed by Babs...o...b..rne. She was reading him parts of a letter from some fellow with a foreign name. 'Listen to this bit,' she urged, '"I do not wish to treat you like a good-time girl. Were my feelings not so strong I could not bring myself to say goodbye." You can tell the torment he's in, can't you? It's obvious isn't it, that he still loves me?'

'Yes,' said O'Hara. 'It couldn't be more obvious.' He was watching Stella who stood at the fireplace, leaning against the armchair in which Potter now sat holding court. She had black eyebrows despite the colour of her hair, and a little Roman nose.

'Why can't he treat me like a good-time girl,' wailed Babs. 'It's better than nothing, isn't it?'

Stella was feeling decidedly confident. I've cut the ropes that bind me to the sh.o.r.e, she thought, and sinking down onto the arm of Meredith's chair she listened, smiling, to one of the pirates confiding that when he was in town he consulted the same dentist as dear Johnny. He'd once had a drink with him in the Shaftesbury Johnny, not the dentist and really, he'd couldn't have been sweeter. There was no side to him, absolutely none. Of course, there had been lots of other people present. He couldn't pretend there'd been just the two of them.'

'Quite,' said Meredith, and yawned.

Someone put a dance record on the gramophone and presently Desmond Fairchild and Dotty swayed together in a corner of the room. She had bought him a new trilby with the tiniest of blue feathers tucked into the band at the crown. He was clinging to her as though she was his mother, his head resting sleepily on her shoulder, buckling the brim of his hat. Often she glanced across the room to where O'Hara stood with his arm about Babs...o...b..rne.

Bunny brought Meredith a plate of sandwiches; he waved them aside. Stella said she wasn't hungry either. 'I can't eat when I'm with you,' she told Meredith. 'I'd be sick. It's a compliment really.'

'I've known better ones,' he said. He seemed amused.

'I don't want anything to get in the way. Not sausage rolls or cheesy buiscuits or anything. I want to listen.'

'I'm not sure I've got anything to say,' he said, and closed his eyes, his foot jogging up and down in time to the beat of the dance band on the gramophone. She studied the reflections on the wall as the lights of the Golden Dragon flashed blue and pink across the street.

'I knew it would be like this,' she said. 'I just knew.' She wasn't really talking to him; she thought he had dozed off.

He said, 'This isn't my room. I live at the back, overlooking the side of the church.'

'My grandfather played the organ there,' she told him. 'When Clara b.u.t.t gave song recitals.' She looked up and saw O'Hara staring at her over Babs...o...b..rne's heaving shoulders. 'Miss...o...b..rne is crying again,' she said, and asked, aggrieved, 'Why did you stop talking to me? Why didn't you want me to take notes anymore?'