The Town in Bloom Read Online Free

London except when you see the tops of buses above the high garden wall.
    I am alone in this ‘village’ at the moment as I have come to bed early. Molly Lorimer, the tall girl I met in the hall, told me that this is mainly a theatrical village and I must not mind if people come to bed late and talk into the small hours. I shall quite like that, if they talk about the theatre. Molly and the girl who was with her, Lilian Denison, are in musical comedy. Glorified chorus, Molly said, but Lilian said they had small parts. They were very fashionably dressed, in shapeless clothes that barely covered their knees. I think this is an ugly fashion. Anyway, Aunt Marion said I ought to have a style of my own and I shall always strive for one.
    Though Molly and Lilian were extremely kind – they gave me tea in the Club lounge and I had dinner with them – I doubt if they will become real friends of mine as they are not interested in serious acting. After they had gone to their theatre I met someone who will be more important to me. She spoke to me when I was sitting alone in the lounge. Her name is Evangeline Esmond and she has played leading parts – I can’t think why I have never heard of her. She was surprised that I wasn’t going to train at some school, and when I told her I couldn’t spare the time or the money, she offered to coach me and said she would only charge me half price as she was sure I had talent. I explained that my aunt had taught me voice production but Miss Esmond still thought I needed tuition – she said she could give me introductions but only if she had trained me. I told her about the introduction I had brought with me and she said, ‘Oh, my dear child, you’ll never get work at the Crossway Theatre without training. I happen to know Rex Crossway very well indeed.’ Perhaps I will afford myself a few lessons with her but I shall try on my own first.
    Now I am going to put the light out and think. Someday this journal entry will bring back how it felt to be me, at eighteen, on my first night alone in London.
    But does it? Yes, perhaps the scribbled words do make me feel a little nearer to the girl who wrote them. But as regards actual facts, the entry mentions only a fraction of what I remember. How could I have dealt so cursorily with that first entrance of Molly and Lilian?
    They stood on the stairs looking down on me, two streaks of beige from the crowns of their felt hats to the toes of their glacé kid shoes. The hats were cloches which came down so low that it was only later I learned that Lilian was dark, with a sleek shingle, and Molly a red-head , who wore her hair in a plaited coronet. (She thought, rightly, that a shingle would make her head seem too small for her height; and apart from that, few women would have cared to sacrifice such magnificent hair.) Both girls were strikingly pretty, Lilian with a gardenia-like sophistication and Molly with a milkmaid freshness.
    Why were they so kind to me? Later, I asked them and Molly said: ‘You looked so funny and pathetic – a sort of Little Black Riding Hood.’
    I wore a circular black cape and a black straw hat that resembled a coal-scuttle bonnet – placed well back on my head to show the thick brown fringe of my childish, straight, bobbed hair. My dress was pale grey, tight-bodiced and full-skirted. Not for me nude-looking stockings. Mine were grey and my black shoes had cut-steel buckles. I was, I believe, quite nice looking, though slightly too strongly featured for a girl of my tiny physique – not that this worried me. When I studied my face in a dressing-table glass I knew I could play Lady Macbeth; when I pranced in front of a long glass I felt I should make an ideal Puck. I was thankful for such versatility, both of talent and appearance.
    After it had been decided I should take the vacant cubicle Molly said: ‘Lilian, I think we should now give this little person tea. Come, child.’
    I never found Molly’s manner of speech