Joe Vincent stood at the window of his flat and scrubbed Mabel’s teeth with a nailbrush. He’d tried using her toothbrush, but the dentures were coated in a grey, slightly furry accretion that the softer bristles couldn’t shift. He wasn’t really surprised; they’d never been immersed in any liquid other than water – and saliva – and she’d always been lazy about cleaning them. The work did not disgust him; he was grateful to be able to perform a last, small task for her. He’d spent most of the day staring at her things, unable to believe that she wasn’t coming back.
He gave the teeth a final swill in the bowl and laid them out to dry on a sheet of newspaper. Why hadn’t she been wearing them? And why not the fox fur jacket? She’d told him once that she wanted to be buried in it – ‘Unless you can lay your hands on a mink, dear.’ They’d told him at the hospital it was suicide, but he couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t seen her in the morning – she liked to sleep late – but the night before, when he’d gone to the pub after his shift at the cinema to escort her home through the blackout, she’d been fine. Tight, as usual, but quite happy, reminiscing about her days on the set with Gertie and Bertie, the child stars known as the Terrible Twins (‘I wanted to strangle the little bastards, dear. We all did.’). He knew she had a habit of leaning out of the front window and throwing her keys to her few visitors to save walking down the four flights of stairs, but if she’d toppled out doing that, someone would have seen her – unless she’d just thought she’d heard someone and leant out too far trying to see who it was … The window’d been wide open when he got back and there was no guard-rail, so it was possible. But then, why were her keys still in her handbag? All the same, it must have been an accident. She’d be the last person to take her own life, he was sure. There’d be
an inquest … The thought of a suicide verdict was unbearable; surely they’d let him say something? After all, he’d known her best.
At least she’d been wearing her wig. Her real hair had been doused so many times with chemicals that it had snapped off and had to be cut short. They hadn’t thought to straighten the wig at the hospital – she’d been lying there with it cocked over one eye. He’d adjusted it as best he could without causing her further pain, and sat holding her hand, numb with shock. Then he’d heard her whisper, ‘Joe …’ She’d died after that. He’d asked the nurses whether she’d said anything else, but if she had, none of them had heard it.
He looked down at the railings below, then drew back, feeling nauseous, trying to wipe away the image of her stomach impacting on the deadly spikes, the lethal prongs spearing her flesh and puncturing vital organs.
He wandered back to Mabel’s room, took a framed photograph from the mantelpiece and blew on it to get rid of the dust. Huge, wistful eyes, rippling blonde hair (still, at that time, her own), a heart-shaped face and a rosebud mouth: sheer beauty. It was taken in 1920, when she’d come third in the Picturegoer survey for the ‘Greatest British Film Player’, before the fire that scarred her, and before the work dried up, leaving her, by the time of their meeting in 1937, almost destitute. Joe had been just six in 1920, but his aunt Edna, who’d brought him up, had been an avid picturegoer and had taken him and his sister Beryl to see everything. Beryl had longed to be an actress, but she didn’t have the looks. Joe had got those; eyelashes wasted on a boy, Auntie Edna had always said, and as handsome as they come. She’d been pleased when he became a projectionist – it got her a weekly free seat at the Tivoli, where he worked – although she’d fantasised about him being up on the screen.
He sat down in the rumpled wreckage of Mabel’s bed, clutching the photograph. He hadn’t known about the scars until he’d met her. Her career had been over for several years before the fire that had marked her face and killed her director husband, and she was already forgotten. He’d read about how she’d been discovered, aged eighteen, in 1911, but he’d been shocked the first time he’d heard her speak: a Cockney accent, not far off his own. ‘They wouldn’t
have me in the talkies, dear. I couldn’t do it. They wanted people from the stage, who could speak right.’
They’d met in a café. He’d been sitting over a cup of tea, minding his own business, when he’d noticed her. She’d been seated - deliberately, he realised later – next to the wall, beside a sign that read ‘Eat Here and Keep Your Wife as a Pet‘, and there was something about the flawlessness of her right profile that seemed familiar, though he couldn’t for the life of him think why. Staring into space across an empty table, there was something undefeated about her, in the tatty grandeur of her clothes and the defiant bravado of her jauntily angled hat. He didn’t think she’d noticed him until the manageress, who’d been glaring at her for a quarter of an hour, had approached and asked her, loud enough for everyone to hear, to pay up and go. He’d thought she was going to leave, but, halfway to the door, she’d come up to his table and said, without ceremony, ‘Can you spare a fag, dear?’ Seeing her full-face for the first time, he’d been caught off guard, embarrassed by his gasp at the sight of her damaged cheek and the circle of shiny, raw skin round her sealed eye. Hastily pushing the packet across the table - only three left in it to last the day – he’d lit a match for her. He thought she would leave then, but she’d lingered, watching him, apparently quite oblivious to the glowering manageress, until he’d felt compelled to ask if she’d like a cup of tea.
‘Thank you, dear. Now the old bitch’ll have to put up with me, whether she likes it or not. I’m Mabel.’ She’d extended a hand as if she expected it to be kissed, and Joe, blushing, had obliged. The manageress had slapped down the cup between them, slopping tea into the saucer. ‘None of that here,’ she’d snapped, and marched back to stand guard over her urn. When she was out of earshot, Joe’s new companion had leant across the table and said, ‘What’s your name, then?’
‘Joe.’
‘You’re a kind boy. I don’t suppose you remember me, do you dear?’
Unsure, he’d blurted, ‘Did you know my aunt, Edna Vincent?’ ‘I don’t think so, dear, I meant from the pictures. I suppose it’s not likely.’ She tapped her temple. ‘I got this in a fire. They gave me new eyelids, but they don’t work.’
‘Were you in pictures, then?’
‘That’s right, dear. Mabel Morgan.’
He’d stared openly then. Of course he knew her! She was burnt into his consciousness through a thousand afternoons watching her melt into the arms of barely noticed leading men. It wasn’t until later he’d started to look at them; as a young boy, he’d watched only the actresses (‘Looking for hints, ducky,’ as a sympathetic chum had said later). And now she was in front of him, a phantom made flesh.
‘I do exist, you know. Some might say it’s a mistake, but still …’ She stuck out her arm. ‘Go on, pinch me if you don’t believe me.’
‘But … why are you here?’
‘Nowhere else to go, dear.’ She indicated a large, battered suitcase, which Joe hadn’t noticed before. ‘Lost my room.’
‘Your hotel room?’
‘No, dear. Where I live.’
‘But …’ He’d paused, not wanting to offend her. It was hard enough to reconcile the lustrous beauty of the silent screen with the blemished, Cockney reality, even though he could see they were one and the same, but he’d always thought that film stars – even film stars who no longer made pictures – lived in mansions like the ones he’d seen in newsreels. Embarrassed, he’d changed the subject. ‘The first picture I ever saw was one of yours. David Copperfield.’
‘I died in that one. I did a lot of that, swooning and dying. I enjoyed that, especially the suicides. I was very good at those.’
‘Like The Passionate Pilgrim.’
‘Oh yes! Aubrey Manning had to lay me down on a tomb. We filmed it after lunch, and his breath stank of sardines. Worse than the dog it was.’
‘Which dog?’
‘Oh, you won’t remember that one, dear. Old Faithful, it was called. First one I ever did. I had to keep on kissing this great big dog. Mind you, I got along with him, despite the …’ Mabel fanned her face with her hand. ‘It was the director I couldn’t bear. Henry Thurston. There was this one moment, dear …’ She leant across the table. ‘I had to look frightened, you see, and he kept saying it wasn’t good enough, so he said, “I’ll give you a fright,” and he undid his trousers and took it out. Scared me half to death. I was only eighteen, I’d never seen one before.’
Joe had been captivated. He’d used up the last of his money buying cups of tea while she talked, and then he’d taken her back to see his landlady. Mrs Cope, who liked Joe because he didn’t cause trouble, had seemed willing – for a small consideration on the rent – to accept his explanation that Mabel was a relative, fallen on hard times, and allowed her to share his tiny flat.
And now she wasn’t here any more. She’d never be here again. Joe laid the photograph on her pillow and went to her chest of drawers, where he opened her jewellery box and fingered the few items she hadn’t been able to pawn, then kissed the wooden pate of her wig-stand and, turning, ran his hands along the shoulders of the four dresses that hung from a rope strung across one corner of the room. He slid his favourite, a fine red wool, off its hanger and inhaled its scent before taking off his dressing gown, stepping into the dress, and zipping it up at the back. He was slim enough for it to fit, although the fabric across the chest, unsupported by breasts, sagged and puckered. For some reason it was the sight of this, as he stood in front of the mirror, which brought the tears.