Kitty Little (46 page)

Kitty gathered the cold hands between her own. She could feel them shaking. Very gently, she asked, ‘How do you know that he’ll ever leave her? Whatever it is that Archie feels for Charlotte, appears to be unbreakable. Whether he loves you or not, he is still completely besotted by her. Besides, it would demand action on his part to leave her, for him to make a decision, and you know how Archie prefers to avoid difficulties and anything the least bit unpleasant.’

‘But he loves
me
. He’s told me so over and over again.’

Kitty bit her lip in frustration. ‘Then why try to seduce
me
?’

‘You may have been mistaken.’

‘Esme, I wasn’t mistaken. Archie prefers his relationships to be purely physical because he isn’t capable of truly loving anyone. And what proof have you that he is saving this money? Have you seen the work that’s being done at Repstone, even before the Barn Theatre? Someone is funding Charlotte’s dreams for this new role of hers. Have you considered that it might well be partly you?’

‘That’s a despicable thing to say. Archie wouldn’t allow such a thing to happen. Besides, he has plenty of money.’

‘I’m beginning to wonder. He complains all the time about the likelihood of being bankrupt within the year. Look, you’ve been a fool. We both have. I believed in him just as much as you did. Once. But I was
wrong
! He’ll sleep with either one of us, and be unfaithful to all three, without a thought as to the effect this might have upon us. He’ll follow anyone who leads him down the path of dalliance. He hasn’t an ounce of true feeling and emotion in him. It’s all superficial gloss.’

Kitty stopped speaking because she could think of nothing more to say to prove her case.

Now the silence was so complete even the dust motes whirling in a streak of stray sunlight seemed like a noisy intrusion. Esme sat and wept silent, heartbreaking tears that seemed to be torn from the depths of her soul. Kitty put her arms about her friend and held her close for a long, long time, until they were all spent.

‘I thought he truly loved me.’

‘I know.’

Kitty made more tea and they drank it in silence.
 

‘I wish Mrs Pips was here,’ Esme said finally. ‘I didn’t realise how much I depended on her advice until after – after her death. It was all so sad, so cruel that the winding gear should break just when she was standing underneath it. I mean, we never had any trouble with it before, did we?’

Kitty was staring at Esme, a thoughtful frown puckering her brow. ‘A tragic coincidence, that’s for sure. Made me jittery about props and set ever since, I can tell you. Nor did we ever find out where she went just before she died.’

‘Charlotte was away too about that time, wasn’t she? And then when Mrs Pips came back, I suppose we were busy and forgot to ask, and then it was too late.’

Their gazes locked, as if with the same thought. Kitty said, ‘Did she never speak of her trip to you?’

‘Only to say that she’d felt a desperate need for a short holiday, and stayed at a charming inn called the King’s Head in a small village near Leeds.’

‘Leeds? Isn’t that where Charlotte goes to visit her mother?’

‘You mean the one who has never come to see her daughter perform in all that time…’ Esme stopped, focusing on the look of startled concern in Kitty’s eyes. ‘She may, of course, not be fit enough to travel. She does seem to fall ill a good deal.’

‘True, she may not. But Charlotte rarely speaks of her mother, except when she’s wanting to pay her a visit.’

‘Almost as if there wasn’t really a mother at all.’

‘Then who does she go to see?’

‘Are you suggesting that Mrs Pips could have followed Charlotte in order to find out?’

‘What happened to her things?’ Kitty asked.

Esme got up and drew from a cupboard a cardboard shoe box. ‘Everything’s here. Not that she had much. Rather sad really. A housekeeper all her life with very little in the way of family beyond her beloved Archie. There are lots of photos of him, as a boy of course, all stiffly posed in sailor suits. A purse with a few coins and a bus ticket in it, a few programmes of shows we did. And a diary, but I’ve already looked through that. Nothing of any note.’

They looked through everything again but Esme was right. There was nothing of any interest. Kitty opened the purse and examined the bus ticket. ‘This is to Leeds, and there’s a receipt for four night’s bed and breakfast at a village inn.’

Both now fell silent for neither dared voice the fear that perhaps dear Mrs Pips had indeed discovered the answer to where Charlotte went on her frequent trips away, one which Charlotte objected to her knowing and had therefore put end to the old housekeeper’s curiosity, for good.

Kitty stared again at the ticket in her hand. ‘We could always pay a visit to Leeds ourselves. We could just make time, if we hurried.’

Esme looked at her for one long stunned moment, then reached for her coat.

The Benefit proved to be an enormous success. The Barn Theatre was packed to the doors, standing room only. Each song and sketch met with a joyous response from the audience. They even took kindly to Charlotte’s extract from “She Stoops to Conquer” with its humorous tangle of mistaken identities, though not perhaps with quite the enthusiasm she had hoped for, nor the standing ovation she believed her performance deserved.

Kitty, dressed as a soldier, was now waiting in the wings for her own entrance. Mouth dry, nerves strung high, beads of sweat trickling between her breasts, this was the moment she loved and dreaded more than any other. The fear she felt in this instant was all consuming, so utterly numbing that she longed to turn and run; then the curtains parted, the music played and she was striding out on stage and the rush of pleasure she experienced as she started to sing, was utterly intoxicating. An addiction no less. The roar of greeting from the audience when they saw her, was almost overwhelming, drowning out even Kitty’s powerful voice for several seconds. Some actually stood up and called out her name, others whistled but these were soon hushed into silence by their comrades and a complete stillness fell upon the audience as she sang. She marched and sashayed, swung her stick, saluted and flirted outrageously with them and when the song was done, almost the entire audience erupted from their seats as one, cheering and roaring and yelling for more, while others stamped their feet, clapped and whistled.

Kitty Little, as always, was a triumph.

In the wings Esme, Felicity, Suzy, Reg and the rest, even Frank, were laughing and applauding and cheering just as madly - glad for her - believing she deserved this success after all her hard work. Archie was looking on with a stunned expression on his face and Charlotte was purple with rage.

She refused absolutely to take part in the final curtain and, loudly complaining that the audience must be illiterate peasants, flounced off to her dressing room where she glared in the mirror as if defying it to find any flaw in her own image. Pinching her cheeks, trailing a finger to test the firmness of her chin, Charlotte came close to asking herself if she could possibly be past her best. This was dismissed almost instantly as quite impossible and the blame for a less than adoring response from her usually devoted fans was laid entirely upon Suzy, who had dressed her hair. Snatching up a pair of scissors she began to snip and tidy silken strands but when this only made the image worse, she flung the scissors into the far corner of the room. She should have gone to a proper hairdresser, tried one of the newer, more daring styles. Perhaps she’d worn the wrong dress, blue suited her far better than this dull maroon. Charlotte began to rip it off, tearing the fabric in her fury.

‘Kitty overheard us that night in my dressing room at the Blossom Club.’ Esme spoke these words with creditable coolness and Archie appeared nonplussed, caught out, like a naughty boy again; an expression quickly masked as the lines of his face hardened and tightened.

‘I see.’

Kitty smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve promised to say nothing to Charlotte. She’s
your
problem. But I would recommend that you
do
tell her. I may be a touch over-sensitive on the matter, having had some personal experience of betrayal myself, but I happen to think it’s a pretty lousy thing to do, however awkward and difficult your wife happens to be. Particularly when it’s with a mutual friend. It’s not as if you didn’t have the chance to choose Esme instead, before you married Charlotte, is it?

‘You
were
going to tell her about us though, weren’t you Archie?’ Esme said, eyes bright and trusting. ‘Ask for a divorce and marry me, as you promised.’

‘Of course.’

Kitty said, ‘Why don’t you explain to Esme about your being quite prepared to betray her too, as well as Charlotte. Oh yes, I’ve told her about your recent attempt to seduce me, that you’ve hardly stopped trying since I came home.’ Kitty flung the accusation at him like a lance, brown eyes blazing.

‘You aren’t going to believe this nonsense, are you Esme?’ Archie smiled disarmingly before turning his narrowed, icy glare full upon Kitty. ‘It was unfortunate that you should find out about my affair with Esme in quite that way. In normal circumstances, betrayal, as you so beguilingly term it, might well be considered a pretty rotten trick. But these aren’t normal circumstances.’ He began to cough and mop his brow.

‘Why aren’t they? Because there’s a war on? I’m talking about before the war. Admit it Archie. You shamelessly use your charm to
exploit
people.’

‘I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to us all getting together again. I thought it would lead to trouble. But I never deliberately exploited either of you. We’re old friends, after all. Therefore I can take whatever you’re willing to give.’

‘But what do
you
give in return Archie? Nothing. You
use
us, for your own selfish purposes. You even help yourself to Esme’s earnings. That is utterly despicable.’

He looked suddenly like a stranded fish caught on the end of a line, gasping for air. Esme ran to grasp his arm.

‘I told her it wasn’t true, Archie. You’d never do such a thing, not now you’ve declared your love for me.’

Something inside him seemed to snap, as if he wanted rid of pretence and prevarication. He shook her impatiently away, reaching for his cigarette case. ‘Love. Love. Love. That’s all I ever hear from the pair of you. What good is love, I ask you? I’ve seen what love can do, it can destroy a man. I saw what it did to my father and I vowed never to allow such a thing to happen to me. He adored my mother and do you know why she didn’t come to the concert with us that night? Well, let me tell you. Because she had an assignation with her lover. She died in the hotel fire in another man’s arms, and yet it was my father who was driven mad over losing her. Love? I do assure you I’ve been happier without it. Causes far too much pain. My one aim in life has been to protect myself; to live a life of ease and comfort without commitment or responsibility of any sort, and so long as one or other of you was prepared to provide me with those comforts, why not? What are friends for? That’s the long and short of it.’

‘Dear heaven,’ Kitty said. ‘You’re the one who’s mad. Unfeeling, insensitive, calculating - entirely cruel and self-serving. Amoral.’

‘Nonsense. Our
affaire
was most enjoyable, quite titillating in its way. And seeing Esme cavort herself in front of all those leering men, knowing that I was the only one she allowed anywhere near her, was really most entertaining.’

‘But you’d never any intention of giving Charlotte up, had you? Because you suit each other admirably. You’re two of a kind.’

Archie simply smiled. ‘Of course. Charlotte may be demanding in practical ways, money,
objet d‘art
, nonsense of that sort, but she makes no demands on me emotionally, do you see?’ He drew on the cigarette and blew smoke down his nostrils, considering them both through narrowed eyes. ‘I loathe emotion.’

Esme was quietly weeping. ‘But what about our plans for you to leave her? For you to divorce her and marry me?’

‘Never actually said that. Never told you any
real
porkies, sweetie. You heard what you wanted to hear. I always think it’s best not to disagree with people and let them believe what they like, don’t you?’

Kitty was beside herself with fury. ‘We can clearly see the extent of your cruelty - your unfeeling heartlessness. We should have recognised it for what it was years ago. You’ve made fools of us, Archie, by your determination to think only of yourself, you and Charlotte both. But perhaps you’ve been hoist on your petard, as it were.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ He was laughing at her now, which enraged Kitty all the more.

‘Perhaps it’s time to put an end to secrets.’ So saying, Kitty swivelled on her heel and made for the dressing room. Archie’s shout was ignored as, closely followed by Esme, she thrust open the door and stormed into the room. ‘Well, are you going to tell her, Archie, or shall I?’

‘Tell me what?’ Charlotte, seated at her dressing table in her silk dressing gown, set down the pot of cold cream, picked up a wad of cotton and began to calmly wipe her face as she considered their reflection through the mirror.

Archie went to bend over his wife and plant a kiss upon one greasy cheek. ‘That you were superb in the show, my darling, no matter if the audience didn’t fully appreciate the chosen extract.’