The Boat Girls Read Online Free PDF Page B

bag of granulated sugar, a metal spoon and a packet of Mazawattee tea.
    â€˜There’s a tray around somewhere,’ the woman told her. ‘And there should be some matches.’ She smiled at her. ‘I’m Beryl. I do the character parts.Sir Lionel likes his tea nice and strong, just a dash of milk and one sugar. Good luck, dear.’
    The matches were in a drawer and she was well used to lighting temperamental gas rings in theatrical lodgings. While the kettle was boiling she emptied the teapot of a wad of old, cold leaves and rinsed out the mugs. She found a tin tray under the sink, and used a rag draped over the waste pipe to wipe off the old ring marks before putting out the clean mugs. When the kettle began to sing, she warmed the pot, made the tea – strong – and poured it out, adding milk. Since there was no sugar basin, there was no alternative but to put the soggy bag on the tray, together with the spoon. One of the mugs was larger and better than the rest and she put one spoonful of sugar in it and stirred it carefully.
    The great man, Sir Lionel, was still sitting in the middle of the row, smoking a cigarette. He was wearing, she saw, a black cloak draped around his shoulders, and his thick silvery mane was long enough to reach its velvet collar. She handed him the best mug and he drank from it, paused dramatically, mug aloft, and drank again.
    â€˜Excellent. You’re hired, Miss Flynn. Tea-maker and general dogsbody. Seven shillings a week.’
    Beryl, the kindly character actress whose husband was away in the army, offered her the spare room in her rented cottage outside town forfour shillings a week and included a hot meal once a day; otherwise she lived on pork pies and Smiths crisps from the local pub. The seven shillings was often late appearing, but somehow she managed. At the theatre, she did everything: making the tea, sweeping the stage and the auditorium, cleaning the Ladies and the Gents, painting scenery, moving props, mending costumes, running errands and prompting from the wings. Nadine, who had resented her arrival from the first, resented even more any prompts she had to be given by Rosalind.
    â€˜Does that girl have to shout, Lionel? She’s supposed to whisper. I’m not deaf.’
    â€˜Don’t keep blowing your lines, darling, then she won’t have to say a word.’
    The plays – by no means always Shakespeare – changed regularly, attracting respectably large audiences and sometimes leading drama critics:
The Tempest
,
Major Barbara
,
Much Ado About Nothing
,
The Constant Nymph
,
Hay Fever
,
Uncle Vanya
,
She Stoops to Conquer
. . . Sir Lionel always directed and very occasionally took interesting supporting parts himself, effortlessly eclipsing the rest of the cast whenever he did so. His company, Rosalind soon realized, was made up of actors and actresses who were either too young or too old to be called up, or were unfit for military service. Paul, the actor who had played Orlando, for instance, had flat feet, while the one who had been Jaqueswas so short-sighted he kept bumping into scenery, and Nadine was quite a bit older than she had looked from the back of the stalls.
    Whenever the air raid warning sounded during performances it was ignored. The audience stayed firmly put, the play continuing without pause to the accompaniment of ack-ack guns booming. A near miss did some more damage to the roof and to the auditorium ceiling, which showered down plaster particles like a fall of snow. One day, as she was sweeping the gangway during a rehearsal, the great man beckoned her from his seat in the stalls. When she stood before him, broom in hand, he looked up at her and smiled.
    â€˜
More than common tall
. . . like your namesake. You’d make a lovely Rosalind, darling, if we could only find you a matching Orlando. Perhaps one day . . . Meanwhile, I’ll see if I can find a little part for you soon . . .’
    She played one