The Town in Bloom by Dodie Smith

affection from everyone. (Hence my astonished resentment of Brice Marton.)
    It was true that I enjoyed working with Miss Lester. She preferred to cope with most letters herself so I did littletyping and even less shorthand, though she sometimes dictated to me simply so that I should not forget all I had learnt. As a rule I did quite interesting and varied jobs, answered the telephone, and occasionally went shopping for her in the small streets around the theatre. And if I had any time to spare I read plays; there were always piles of scripts on the old leather office sofa. They had already been turned down by Mr Crossway’s play-reader but Miss Lester always feared he might have missed something good.
    I tried not to sulk about not understudying but my depression must have been obvious. Miss Lester coaxed me into eating a specially good dinner at the pub that night. (I remember those pub dinners as richly brown, whereas Club lunches were likely to be pale beige or dim pink.) And she kept me amused by telling me about her early days at the Crossway. She seemed so modern that I was surprised she could remember Edwardian London. She said the atmosphere was very gay then and there were more flowers about.
    I said, ‘But there are lots now, surely? I’m always seeing them – in shops and on barrows and in flower women’s baskets; and of course in Regent’s Park. Window boxes, too.’
    ‘Are there? I don’t seem to notice them now. Remind me to have those tulips in the hanging baskets replaced by geraniums.’
    ‘Even though the theatre’s dark?’
    ‘Yes, indeed. One must always give a particularly good impression when a new play’s in production. It encourages the advance booking.’
    The theatre felt dark when we went back to the office. I asked if we were the only people working in it. She said Brice Marton would be back-stage somewhere – ‘He spends as much time here as I do. We’ll knock off early tonight.’
    But we didn’t. When we had finished work we sat talking over our coffee. I now drank it black – having got bored with carrying up milk – and was becoming an addict.
    ‘Are you still miserable about not understudying?’ she asked, pouring me a third cup.
    ‘A bit. You see, while I thought I’d get an understudy, I could tell myself I’d made a start on the stage.’
    ‘Shall I send you home in a petty-cash taxi?’
    ‘No, thanks. I’m not eager to get back. I shall have to break my bad news to Molly and Lilian.’
    ‘Poor Mouse.’ I had told her the girls called me that and she now did, too. ‘But we really should go. It’s nearly eleven.’
    On my way to the bus I decided to walk part of the way home; walking had often helped me during my aunt’s long illness. I went now along Shaftesbury Avenue and saw the audiences coming out of several theatres. Not one theatre had I been to since arriving in London. I had been too absorbed to worry about this, still … ought I to let myself settle down as a secretary? Those introductions from Mr Crossway might never materialise.
    I intended to take a bus at Piccadilly Circus but they were so crowded that I went on walking. I was half-way up Regent Street when a large chauffeur-driven car stopped beside me. One of its rear doors opened and MrCrossway leaned out and told me to get in. As I sat down beside him he said I ought not to be walking alone at this time of night.
    I assured him I hadn’t minded at all.
    ‘Well, I mind for you. You’re too young – and you look even younger than you are. Someone might kidnap you. What’s the address of this Club you live at? I’ll drive you home.’
    He relayed the address to the chauffeur, then told me he had been to a first night. ‘My wife went on to the management’s party but I said I had work to do. There’s nothing, nothing, worse than a first-night party after a doomed play.’
    ‘Is this one doomed?’
    ‘I fear so. And I keep thinking, “But for the grace of God there go I” – in three