The Town in Bloom Read Online Free PDF Page B

myself, feel sure he will remember me.’ Although she smiled, as if with pleased reminiscence, it was a deeply sad moment, for we both knew the letter would only be presented after her death.
    Before going to my bath I had told Molly and Lilian about the introduction and my determination to deliver it that morning. Lilian at once said, ‘Wait! Couldn’t you afford yourself one smart outfit before you try to see Rex Crossway?’
    Molly squashed this. ‘Smart clothes wouldn’t suit her as well as her own do. She needs to be original.’
    Lilian considered this idea, then made it her own and began improving on it. ‘Then she should be even more original. Let me see all your clothes, Mouse.’ She opened my cupboard door.
    My aunt, too, had favoured originality for me, though, paradoxically, the word had often meant for her that my clothes should be like somebody else’s. I had a taffeta dress with a fichu said to be ‘like’ Marie Antoinette, and a high-waisted chintz dress ‘like’ Kate Greenaway girls. My black cloak worn without a hat (over party dresses) was ‘like’ a conspirator; worn with my straw bonnet it was ‘like’ Jane Eyre; accompanied by a small black tricorne hat it became ‘like’ Dick Turpin. Then there were my ‘Studio’ frocks. (Neither my aunt nor I had ever set foot in anyone’s studio.) These were of excessively bright colours. Everything was well made; my aunt had employed a good dressmaker. But nothing bore any resemblance to what was being worn in the middle nineteen-twenties. Lilian, inspecting an orange wool dress intended to be worn with an emerald shawl, had remarked, ‘Seriously, Molly, if she goes out in that she’ll get mobbed.’
    By the time I got back from my bath the girls had decided that the black cloak and grey dress in which they had first seen me would be best for my onslaught on Mr Crossway. ‘But I’ve cheered things up a bit,’ said Lilian. She had taken a small pink feather from one of her own hats and pinned it on to my coal-scuttle bonnet. It looked like a pink question mark.
    I wore my best pale grey suede gloves and carried a handbag made of black velvet trimmed with cut steel. This had a draw-string like a work-bag and could, if swung when it contained a good supply of coppers, have proved a formidable weapon. I also had a grey umbrella which had been my aunt’s. She had been a tall woman and it was a tall umbrella – unusually so, with its length increased by the ivory shepherd’s crook which formed its handle. I thought highly of this umbrella. Molly admired the handle through her lorgnette and then we all went downstairs and out to the bus stop.
    As the bus approached Molly wished me luck and said: ‘I shan’t be at all surprised if Miss Mouse comes back with a job.’
    ‘Neither shall I,’ said Lilian, flashing her wide smile. ‘In fact, I have one of my feelings about it.’
    Molly instructed the bus conductor to put me down as near as possible to the Crossway Theatre. He eyed my umbrella handle with interest and said he would take good care of Little Bo-Peep.
    My visit to London six years earlier had only lasted a week, and though I vividly remembered all the theatres I had been taken to, I had no idea where they were. Looking out of the bus window I could not believe I should ever learn my way about. And when I got off I lost myself almost at once, in spite of the conductor’s careful directions. But at last, after several enquiries, I reached the theatre.
    It was at the juncture of four narrow old streets – I remembered my aunt saying it was named with double aptness as it was both at a crossway and the property of the Crossway family. One of London’s oldest theatres, it still retained its late Regency façade, now freshly painted cream. Baskets of dwarf tulips swung between the slender pillars of its portico. On my earlier visit the baskets had been filled with pink geraniums. At twelve, I had gazed at that theatre with far more