Maisie

It seemed, when it came to it, rather an anti-climax. There should have been more to it, somehow. More ceremony, more fanfare. Professional mourners in their severest black, weeping ostentatiously, dabbing at feigned tears with delicate lace handkerchiefs. Due respect paid to a promising career struck dead before it had even properly begun.

But there wasn't anyone around to notice Maisie collecting her few possessions from the shared dressing room. No matinee on Monday, so the dancers weren't due in for hours and hours. In the cold light of that November morning was no trace of the glamour that she -- that they all -- struggled to project come performance time; the Empire was just another grubby brick factory among many. A factory churning out dreams and nightmares rather than sewing machines or typewriters or shoes, but a factory nonetheless, a toe-cutting sweatshop of unregarded toil. She threw her tap shoes and signed photograph of Tommy Steele into a cardboard box and, with barely a backward glance, walked out for the last time.

It was her own fault, she knew well enough. Only a fool gets romantically entangled with the producer of their show, especially a producer as in thrall to his harridan wife as Thomas Everson. It wasn't even as if she'd slept her way into the job -- she'd been dancing for the rowdy East End audiences two weeks already when she somehow found herself kissing Tommy in the wardrobe room, and sneaking away to the darkened offices on the third floor to fuck on some unsuspecting secretary's desk. What on Earth was she thinking?

Eric at the Stage Door waved her off without a hint in his expression that he had any idea why she was leaving, but Maisie blushed anyway. Eric had always been a gentleman, and she was grateful for his discretion, but she didn't doubt he knew the score. Gossip is a universal solvent that those stout theatre walls couldn't have contained for much longer than a heartbeat. She tried to pretend it didn't matter at all that, wherever she went now, the news would have got there long before; but it was not her most convincing performance.

Walking away with the box in her arms she was painfully conscious of how little it contained, of how minimal was the impact she'd made in her little stint on the stage; but there was an undercurrent of relief as well. At least the sordid affair was over. She was free to breathe the -- not fresh, but somehow refreshing -- air of Hackney without the weight of the stupid, meaningless, affair pressing down, without having to think of Tommy and his blandly seductive assurances and his hateful bitch of a wife, without having to feel like a whore. She was free.

Not that this rediscovered virtue would put food on the table. Not that her freedom would help in the least when touting around the theatres of Shaftesbury Avenue, or even around the rankest public houses on the Commercial Road. Not that the sudden, idiotic unemployment didn't cut her to the quick.

There are times when a sigh can be the loudest sound in the world, and perhaps this was one of those times. Perhaps some moments are more sensitive than others, perhaps it just depends who is listening, but at this moment Maisie sighed, and at this moment the world changed, for better or worse.

Approaching London Fields, Maisie became aware of a gentleman walking beside her, a gentleman in the most ludicrously bright green car coat and drainpipe trousers, and a hat no self-respecting person would be seen dead wearing in this city -- with, of all things, a pheasant feather out the top. The sort of man that, if you know what's good for you, you pay no attention to; and Maisie knew what was good for her.

They walked side by side for a bit. Clutching her cardboard box tight, Maisie tried to walk slowly, to let this strange man get ahead; to no effect. She sped up, striding as purposefully as she could without actually breaking into a panicked run; the man matched her stride for stride. She resumed her natural gait and stared pointedly straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge her unwanted companion. Step by step, he walked alongside, smiling like a man without a care in the world.

At the far side of the Fields, Maisie stepped off onto the street, and the green man didn't follow. "At last," she thought... but the relief quickly turned into something else. She could feel him standing there, behind her. Waiting. Without looking back, she could see his smirk, his poise, the hand on his hip, all cocksure and expectant. It was too much. She turned on her heel, intending to face him down, full of indignation.

"What?" she bellowed into his face, summoning every scrap of the volume she might use to reach the back row of the Upper Circle on the rowdiest Saturday night. "What the fuckin' 'ell do you wan'?"

"Language, my dear!" said the man, gently reproachful, and his voice was like morphine syrup flowing over her raw nerves. She glared into his eyes and the fight dropped out of her in that same instant.

"I'm... I'm sorry."

"Please, dear lady, think nothing of it. The fault was mine." Maisie said nothing, just floated on the pavement in a world containing the green man's eyes and the green man's voice and nothing else at all. "Sometimes I forget myself."

Twinkle.

In her mind, Maisie assured him that there was no blame to take, that he had been the most courteous gentleman that ever lived; but her lips just quivered, and if any sound emerged it was but the merest breath.

"Anyone would think I had no manners at all! I have not even introduced myself."

And in tones more unctuous than any heard by human ears for three centuries, the green man told her his name.

*

It was late afternoon when Maisie returned to her Bethnal Green bedsit, and already nearly dark. She tucked the cardboard box under the sink, unable to summon up any interest in unpacking. She felt fuzzy and aching, as if she had a cold coming on.

The job loss, which had seemed so liberating that morning, now started to take on a depressing immediacy. She didn't need to open her savings book to know how little was in the account, and there wasn't much more than tea, porridge oats and a half-bottle of gin in the cupboard. At least the rent was paid up a month in advance.

Somehow, she seemed to have wasted a whole day that might have been spent looking for work. She couldn't remember exactly what she'd been doing all afternoon, but it didn't matter anyway. Glumly trudging the streets nursing your sorrows is no way to get on in life, and she felt ashamed for allowing herself to be in such a mood.

A fresh start, that was what was needed; she resolved to make one first thing in the morning. The next dancing job might be months or years away, if she ever found one at all, but she wasn't too fussy or proud to take whatever work she could find in the meantime. She would rise first thing, and ask in every shop and pub from here to Ealing if that was what it took.

The bedsit was chilly, so she made herself a pot of tea, and put a nip of gin in the cup to warm her tired bones; but she was sound asleep before she could even drink it.

In the dream, she was onstage again; the little misunderstanding with Tommy's wife was long forgotten, and now she was the unquestioned star of the show. Every spotlight in the theatre was on her; as was every eye. Hundreds of chorus girls formed a backdrop for her, row after row of anonymous beauties in bugle beads and lace, their high kicks and fixed smiles masking the despair of knowing that when Maisie was in front of them they might as well be so much discarded old furniture for all the attention anyone paid.

Maisie arched an eyebrow at her adoring public, batted a beaded lash, struck an attitude; and across the stalls young men swooned. Even as the orchestra struck up the opening chords of her most famous song, the entire audience was on its feet, cheering and clapping. With a glance she silenced them all. Savouring the moment, she prepared to sing; and the house held its breath.

Afterwards, the applause went on forever. Countless curtain calls and encores were never enough. Even the other dancers were in tears and begging for more; they knew they were nothing beside her, and hated that, but they didn't hate her because she deserved it all. Anyone who saw her was her willing slave.

Later still, she mingled with the highest of high society, and she was higher than them all. Princes fought to fetch her drinks and canapés. Matinee idols threatened to shoot themselves if she would not dance with them; one actually pulled out a gun. Her attention was like a shaft of sunlight, bringing forth life and vigour wherever it fell, leaving gloom and dullness when it passed on. She stood at the centre of a vast ballroom, and every single glass was raised to toast her.

Every glass except one.

In a sea of smiles and shining eyes, she was shocked to see one man looking grim and unimpressed. He was small and chubby and meanly dressed, and yet somehow she could not help looking at him in the midst of all this finery. He slipped through the crowd towards her, and if anyone even noticed his passing they gave no sign.

A cry went up for Maisie to sing again, and soon the whole room was clapping and chanting. She felt quite dizzy from the attention, and her heart swelled with pride. She feigned reluctance, of course, but there was never any doubt she would comply. The crowd parted to give her room, and the band struck up again.

But before she could sing a note, before she could move a muscle, the unsmiling man was beside her, hissing into her ear.

"You might have it in you to be the greatest dancer of the age, Maisie Kinsela; you might yet. But you do not want this job. Please believe me. Please remember. I won't be able to come again, so remember: you do not want this job!"

The dream began to drift apart around her, all the smiling faces and cut crystal and silver and silk breaking into fragments like a flurry of confetti, the music and laughter fading to noise, but the man gripped her shoulder and whispered desperately to the last: "Look in the box, Maisie. Wake up and remember. Look in the box..."

The grimy bedsit congealed around her and for a moment the shock of its smallness and dimness left her suffocated. A thin, drear light seeped through the single curtain, so she knew it must be day, but when she looked at the clock and saw it was past two it took several befuddled moments to add it up. She must have been asleep for more than 20 hours.

The pillow was damp with sweat. Her face hurt, and her joints ached, and her throat was hot and raw. Evidently the cold she'd felt coming the day before had arrived in full force during the night. She was tempted to just roll over and try to sleep it off, but her mouth was too dry, she had to have a drink first.

She filled the kettle and put it on. As she stood rinsing last night's cold, stewed tea out of the pot, her gaze fell on the little cardboard box of possessions, scant souvenir of her brief moment of glory, and a vague memory nagged at her. There was something she had to do.

While a fresh pot brewed, she emptied the box onto the bed and started to blearily sort through its contents. Shoes, blouse and tights went into the wardrobe; Tommy Steele on a nail above the sink; her second favourite mother of pearl earrings into her jewellery box. She felt sure there were some things she'd left behind, but that no longer seemed important.

At the bottom of the pile was a page torn from a newspaper, which she didn't recognise at all. She scanned the stories in bemusement, wondering where the page had come from and why she'd kept it. None of it meant a thing to her. It was only when she started to crumple it up that she noticed a small "Help Wanted" advertisement in the corner, circled in pencil.

There were no details, just a name and address in Stepney Green, but for some reason it seemed promising.

After a cup and a half of hot tea, she felt a little better, and it seemed absurd to go back to sleep so soon. She should at least get a bit of fresh air, and why not make a start on the job-hunting while she was about it? Now was as good a time as any.

She put on her shoes and hat, and tucked the torn page into a coat pocket.

"All right, Mrs E Mulberry," she said to herself as she closed the door behind her. "Let's see what you've got."
Posted by matt at July 22, 2004 06:00 PM