A Marriage of Convenience by Tim Jeal Page A

entrance, was immediately admitted.
    Backstage the air was stuffy and overheated, savouring of ammonia and the glue used in the scenery; up a flight of badly lit stairs, Clinton heard the noise of wash-basins and people laughing and calling to each other. Here in the dressing room corridors, the musky scent of make-up mingled with the pungency of hair warmed by curling tongs and the odour of damp powder.
    An old crone of a dresser with thin yellowy hair opened Theresa’s dressing room door and reluctantly let Clinton in. In front of a dressing-table covered by a grease-stained cloth and dotted with bottles and jars, the actress sat sponging her face, while the dresser unpinned her wig. Without moving, Theresa scrutinised Clinton in the mirror. She had made no preparations for the arrival of a strange man, and was wearing a dirty waist-length cotton chemise to protect the dress she had worn in the play.
    ‘Well, sit down, Mr Higgs,’ she said waving a bare arm impatiently in the direction of a sagging armchair next to a cracked cheval glass. As the dresser lifted off the wig, Theresa shook out her own rich copper coloured hair, which fell to her shoulders, at once softening and transforming her face. Without the stiff black mascara around her eyes and the white layer of make-up, Clinton was suddenlyaware of the beauty of her eyes and skin. Disconcertingly she had not wiped the carmine from her lips.
    ‘Don’t you think it rather presumptuous, Mr Higgs, to involve yourself in a man’s affairs without his consent or knowledge?’
    ‘Concern for his well-being compelled me, madam.’
    ‘I’m a fiend, isn’t that so, Mary?’ she asked the dresser, who was now waiting to unhook the back of her dress. ‘Demanding this spot for my entrances, that one for my exits; bullying everyone in sight … ruining my lover.’
    The old woman shook with silent mirth and then broke into wheezy laughter.
    ‘You demand anything, Miss Simmonds … bully people …? Oh dear me … oh …’ Her laughter caught her breath and changed to a violent fit of coughing.
    Theresa turned and faced Clinton.
    ‘Being a humanitarian, I’m sure you won’t want to delay Mary getting home.’ She stood up and picked a towel from the floor, which she handed to the dresser. ‘Put that over Mr Higgs and we can get on.’
    Mary advanced on Clinton and looked at him sternly.
    ‘No peeping, mind,’ she croaked, dropping the towel over his head.
    While Clinton was shrouded, Theresa’s bodice was carefully unhooked and her skirt unlaced at the back. As Theresa stepped out of the dress, wearing only a petticoat, Mary, herself bent and withered, cast a solicitous eye over her mistress’s full upward tilting breasts. There was nothing the younger girls could improve on there. She hastily fetched Theresa’s long cambric dressing-gown, and, with a covert eye still on Clinton helped her into it.
    ‘You can go, Mary; and you may come out now, Mr Higgs, if you haven’t suffocated.’
    How in his own character he would have responded to having a damp towel placed over his head, Clinton did not know, but in the role of Mr Higgs, he thought it best to accept any indignities gracefully. The stilted awkwardness of his note had predetermined his behaviour, however ill it accorded with his appearance. When the dresser had gone, Theresa sat down on her dressing stool and smiled kindly at Clinton, as though trying to help a gauche embarrassed boy.
    ‘You look like someone well-accustomed to coming backstage, Mr Higgs. A man much in society, I’d imagine.’
    Clinton studied the peeling flower-patterned wallpaper with dignity.
    ‘Society and I, madam, only have a nodding acquaintance.Insignificance has that advantage.’ He leant forward and said as solemnly as he could: ‘Mr Danvers is not a happy man, Miss Simmonds. It’s not right, you know, to tantalise a man of his character.’
    ‘You sound like a physician, Mr Higgs.’
    ‘It needs no special knowledge to