Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars. Miranda Emmerson
tie and smelled of cigarettes.
Wingate started talking before he was even in the room. ‘Miss Green, thank you so much for seeing me between performances.’ Lanny – who had arranged herself modestly on the chaise longue, legs covered by a lap blanket – sat very still and looked at Mr Wingate.
‘My dresser didn’t tell me who it was.’
‘That’s because she has no idea who I am.’
Lanny stood, letting the blanket fall from her lap. She tugged at her green silk dress, pulling the fabric free from its belt so that it hid the curve of her breasts. Nobody spoke.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know that I was meant to know,’ Anna said at last. ‘Shall I get you both something to drink?’
‘Mr Wingate interviewed me for Harper’s Bazaar – this past summer – just as I was finishing filming on Macbeth.’
Wingate sat down on the chair provided for him and drew out his notebook and a small stack of papers. ‘A coffee would be delightful,’ he said without looking up.
Anna went to the kitchenette by the green room and rifled through the cupboards for coffee. Did snotty journalists drink Nescafé? Leonard – the company manager – found her staring at the jar.
‘Lanny ripping the audience to pieces?’
‘No more than usual. Someone called James Wingate wants a cup of coffee.’
‘Wingate? Ugh. Okay. Take a cup, go across the road to the 101 and get them to put real coffee in it. Might be worth a nice write-up in The Times.’
‘Seriously?’
Leonard held up his hands. ‘This is the idiocy we live with. Make the best of it.’
The windows of the 101 were steamed white against the cold and the afternoon custom seemed mostly to consist of taxi drivers, off shift, who sat at separate tables silently contemplating the melamine.
A radio muttered on a shelf above the head of the proprietor. ‘Teams of police are this evening continuing to search a vast area of moorland on the Cheshire–Yorkshire border.’ Anna tuned it out and leaned across the counter.
She slopped some of the coffee down her skirt as she climbed the stairs back to the dressing room and Wingate barely acknowledged her as she handed him the cup. He was leaning in towards Iolanthe, brows furrowed, head tilted to one side. ‘I assume you wanted to be in films as a girl? Don’t all young girls want something of the kind?’
‘I … Well, I don’t know. Let me think. I knew from an early age that I’d have to earn my own money. Supporting myself. No one was going to do that for me.’
‘Because you didn’t come from money.’
‘Well, no. But also by the time I was eighteen my father and my mother were both dead.’
‘And brothers and sisters? I don’t think we covered brothers and sisters at our last meeting.’
‘It was a very small family.’
‘Just you, then.’
‘Well, no. Not exactly. But I was the one who had to earn.’
‘You supported your parents?’
‘No. I didn’t mean … I guess … Everybody worked.’
‘Sorry, I’m just a little unclear here. You are or you aren’t an only child.’
‘I had a brother.’
‘Okay. Good.’
‘I’d rather not …’
‘You don’t like talking about him?’
‘Yes. Well … no. I don’t. Can we talk about the films?’
‘Is he proud of you? Is he jealous of your success? I mean, what does he do?’
‘He doesn’t do anything.’
‘At all?’
‘He’s dead.’
Wingate sat back in his chair and slowly crossed his legs. ‘I’m so sorry, Iolanthe. I didn’t know.’ Anna glanced up to check that Lanny was okay but the woman was staring at the floor, looking a bit perplexed, as if she was trying to remember something.
‘That must be very hard for you,’ Wingate went on.
‘I don’t know …’ Lanny sat in silence for a minute. When she spoke again she addressed herself to the rail of clothes on the far wall. ‘He was killed in 1946 when he was stationed in Japan. He was riding in a Jeep and it turned over on a bad road. He’d been too young to fight and around where we lived … well, boys were getting fake IDs and signing up at sixteen and I think Nat saw it as a mark of shame that he hadn’t … He was seventeen years old. It was his first posting.
‘It’s very strange. It’s very strange to find yourself all alone at twenty-one. And to think … well, whatever I do in my life now … I mean … other people, they do it for their parents, they do it to make their parents proud. But I couldn’t do that; that was gone for me.’ And Lanny sat in silence as if she’d forgotten they were there.
‘So tell me, Miss Green, your parents … they were from Ireland originally.’
‘My parents? Oh, well, no. Second generation. My grandparents were from County Cork. I think they left in 1880, 1885, something like that.’
‘Not because of the famine, then?’
‘No. More general.’ Lanny waved her hands in the air. ‘You know, the whole making a better life thing.’
‘And have you ever been back to Ireland. I mean: have you visited?’
‘No. I have never had that pleasure or that privilege.’
‘Do you know where in Cork they were from?’
Lanny’s voice rose a little. ‘Anna. Anna! I’m so sorry, James. There’s something nagging at the back of my mind. Do I have someone in tonight?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Anna stood. ‘Do you want me to double-check who’s got the house seats?’
Lanny waved her hand frantically. ‘No. No. No. It doesn’t matter. I’m being silly. Sit down. Pre-show nerves.’ She directed this last remark to Wingate whose eyes were rather wide.
He waited a moment and then began again. ‘I only wondered. Partly, I suppose, because Green is not a typically Irish name. I wondered if it had been changed along the way?’
‘Green? No. I think if I’d chosen a stage name I’d have gone for something a bit wilder.’
‘I wondered if it had been anglicised. If you were once all O’Gradys or MacGoverns.’
‘Well … that’s very interesting. You see, my daddy was Green, but I didn’t know my grandaddy at all because he died so young. And, well now, I assume that we were all Greens – not my mother’s family of course, they were Callaghans – but I never really asked. I mean, it’s not something that you think of, is it? “Daddy, is that definitely your name?”’ Lanny laughed, showing Wingate all of her teeth.
‘Are you tempted now to go digging around and find out?’ Wingate asked her.
‘You’ve got me interested, James, you really have.’
‘Might you make a pilgrimage?’
‘To Ireland? Perhaps. If time allows and they want me back.’ Iolanthe laughed and Wingate joined in with her. He tasted his coffee, made a face of disgust and deposited it at his feet. Lanny’s eyes wrinkled into a smile. She held his gaze for a moment.
***
After the show that evening, Anna stood by Lanny’s side as she always