Maddy Alone Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  1 MADDY REBELS

  2 THE FENNYMEAD LEGEND

  3 MADDY FINDS A FRIEND

  4 MADDY IN FILMLAND

  5 THE FILM TEST

  6 MADDY, FILM STAR

  7 MADDY STORMS A CASTLE

  8 ENTER LORD MOULCESTER

  9 THE POTTER-SMITH REBELLION

  10 THE SUMMER IS OVER

  11 FAREWELL, LEICESTER SQUARE

  12 FORSAKEN CROWN

  13 LONDON ROAD

  14 ANOTHER PREMIÈRE

  15 MORNING PAPERS

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Copyright

  NOTES ABOUT THE SETTING

  Maddy Alone was first published in the 1940s, and the following references may require some additional explanation for the modern reader.

  Before decimalization in 1971, British currency consisted of pounds, shillings, and pence:

  12 pence = 1 shilling

  20 shillings = 1 pound

  21 shillings = 1 guinea

  so three and six means “three shillings and sixpence”.

  Deanna Durbin and Shirley Temple were popular child film stars of the time.

  Lyons Corner Houses were a chain of restaurants.

  The School Certificate was a school exam taken at age 16. It was replaced in 1951 by O-levels. O-levels were replaced by GCSEs in 1988.

  1

  MADDY REBELS

  Maddy woke up, remembered it was arithmetic this morning, and flung her teddy bear out of the bed on to the floor. Then she turned over and went to sleep again.

  “Maddy! Get up! You’re late already and your breakfast is getting cold,” Mrs. Fayne shouted up the stairs for the third time that morning.

  “I am getting up.” Maddy pulled the eiderdown over her head, feeling as bad-tempered as an advertisement of night starvation. The thought of her unfinished homework was a weight on her mind, and there was something else – something worse – what was it? Sleepily her thoughts groped for it – Oh, of course! The holidays. The others weren’t coming home. Sandra, her elder sister, had gone to Dramatic School together with their next-door neighbours, the Halfords, Nigel, Bulldog, and Vicky, and Lynette and Jeremy Darwin. Maddy, being too young, was left at home to continue her schooling. For weeks she had looked forward to their return for the Easter holidays, then yesterday she had received a letter from Sandra to say that she was the only one coming. The others were all wanted for a holiday show that their academy were giving.

  Maddy went over in her mind all the preparations she had made for their coming; how she had scrubbed out the Blue Door Theatre, the disused chapel where they used to give their shows; her efforts to renovate all the costumes in the wardrobe; her searchings in Fenchester Public Library for suitable plays. And now they were not coming. All that lay ahead was examinations and then the blankness of the holidays. For the hundredth time Maddy thought, “Oh, why am I only twelve? Why do the others always do all the exciting things before me?”

  The sound of her mother’s feet on the stairs made her leap out of bed and into the bathroom for a “lick and a promise”. As she dressed she muttered, “Horrid old tunic – Beastly old stockings—” and made an extremely ugly face at herself in the glass as she tied up the stumps of her yellow pigtails.

  Mrs. Fayne sighed as Maddy banged the dining-room door on entering. “Oh, here you are at last. I thought you must have got sleeping sickness.”

  “Wish I had,” growled Maddy.

  “Now don’t be naughty, Maddy, dear. Do hurry up and eat your breakfast. Did you do your arithmetic eventually last night?”

  “No, Mummy.”

  “But won’t you get into trouble?”

  “Yes, Mummy.”

  “I really don’t know what’s come over you since the others went away. I’ve never seen you so bad-tempered. You really must pull yourself together. Whatever will Sandra think of you?”

  Maddy drew patterns in her porridge. “I don’t care what she thinks.”

  “Really, Maddy, I despair of you. I shall tell your father what a naughty girl you’re being.” Mrs. Fayne’s tone was sharp.

  “And what could he do about it?”

  “He could stop your pocket-money and then you wouldn’t waste it on going to the cinema all the time.”

  Maddy dropped her spoon. “But it’s Deanna Durbin’s new film next week. Oh, Mummy, you are horrid. You know I want to see it.”

  “Well, you’ll have to improve a lot if you’re to be allowed to go,” said Mrs. Fayne firmly. “The first thing to be done is that arithmetic!” She handed Maddy a copy of Simple Arithmetical Problems. “Are these the ones?”

  “Yes. But it’s no good. I can’t do them.”

  “You can if you try. Now here we are. Listen. It’s quite easy. ‘If three men, A, B, and C, have to dig a field one acre in size, and A does one-twelfth, and B does eight-fifteenths, what does C do?’”

  “Goes on strike, I should think,” Maddy growled into her grapefruit.

  “Oh, Maddy, dear, please try to concentrate,” pleaded Mrs. Fayne. “That’s not funny. No wonder all your teachers complain about you.”

  “Some of them quite like me,” said Maddy complacently.

  “They wouldn’t if they saw you at home. I sometimes wish you had gone away with the others.”

  Maddy jumped from the table. “You wish I had! How do you think I feel about it? Here I am learning about horrible men digging beastly fields when Sandra and all the others are learning the things I want to know. I’m not interested in fields, or digging, or arithmetic, or algebra, or geometry, or spelling, or anything they teach me at school. I’m wasting my time – that’s what I’m doing – I’m wasting the best years of my life. Youth is passing me by while I sit at a desk wearing a stuffy gym tunic—” She burst into tears of self-pity. “Well, I’m not going to any longer! So there! I’m not even going to school any more and you can’t make me, and if you try to I shall do something terrible, so that you’ll be sorry for ever after!”

  “Maddy! How can you be so naughty!” exclaimed Mrs. Fayne.

  Tears rolled down Maddy’s face unchecked. “I’m not naughty! I’m not naughty!” she screamed, “I’m just unhappy and nobody cares. You don’t care, nor does Daddy, or Sandra, or Jeremy, or Nigel, or anyone, not even the bishop—” At the thought of the bishop’s apparent desertion of her since the others left, she wept even more bitterly.

  “And what would the bishop say if he were to see you now?” demanded her mother. “He’d be sorry he ever let you play in the Blue Door Theatre and took you to Stratford-on-Avon. In fact, if I see the bishop in the town this morning I shall tell him what a wicked girl you’re being.”

  Maddy gasped. “Oh, Mummy! You couldn’t do that—”

  “I most certainly shall.”

  Maddy’s tears burst out afresh. “I shall never forgive you if you do. I’ll – I’ll go upstairs and lock myself in my room and I won’t come out until you promise not to tell the bishop about me.”

  Mrs. Fayne assumed nonchalance. “I’m sure I don’t care how long you stay there. You’ll get into trouble for not going to school this morning, but I know you’ll come down when you’re hungry.”

  “I shan’t!” shouted Maddy, “I’ll starve and then you’ll be sorry—”

  “Oh no, I shan’t,” her mother told her airily, “I should be quite pleased if you lost a little puppy fat.”

  Maddy ran upstairs to her room shouting, “Oh, you’re horrid – you’re horrid – and I won’t ever come down from my room – Never—” She flung herself on the bed until her sobs subsided and then began to reflect what a nuisance being naughty was. She didn’t really enjoy crying and being difficult, but
sometimes it was so ne essary. She stared hopelessly round the room, picked up her teddy bear and dried her eyes on him. What on earth was she going to do now? Going to school this morning was out of the question, but there would certainly be trouble when she did go – and then there was the question of lunch-time. The only refreshment her bedroom offered was on the mantelpiece – a tin of cough sweets that made one sick after eating too many. The possibilities of a siege were not very promising. Her eye fell on a copy of Modern One-Act Plays. She was half-way through one about Mary Queen of Scots. She picked up the book and was soon immersed. The tears dried on her cheeks.

  Mrs. Fayne set off to do her shopping with a heavy heart. So Maddy was being difficult again. Secretly she was sorry for her. It was only natural that she should miss the other six children after the exciting times they had had over the Blue Door Theatre. But these tantrums were impossible and must not go on. In the distance she saw a familiar figure approaching. The large black hat – the thin gaitered legs – yes, it was the bishop, seraphic of countenance as ever. His lean face brightened as he recognized her.

  “Ah, Mrs. Fayne, how nice to see you! It’s many weeks since I called, I fear.”

  “Good-morning, Bishop. You’re looking well.”

  “And how is Madelaine, may I ask? Looking forward to the return of the prodigals, I suppose?”

  “Well, yes, Bishop. She was. But now we’ve heard that only Sandra will be home for the holidays. The others have got to stay in London for some show they’re doing. So all Maddy’s hopes of opening up the Blue Door Theatre again are smashed.”

  “Oh, I am sorry to hear that. I was looking forward to seeing them all, too. But I expect Maddy is taking it all as philosophically as usual, isn’t she?” asked the bishop.

  “Well – er – I’m afraid she isn’t, Bishop. We had a little scene at breakfast time, ostensibly over her arithmetic with the result that Maddy has retired to her bedroom and proclaimed a state of siege.”

  The bishop tried not to smile.

  “Now this is most unfortunate. Most unfortunate. I was just coming up to visit you, but as you are on your way out and Maddy is in a state of siege—”

  “Oh, Bishop, I’d be very grateful if you would go up and have a few words with her. She might take some notice. You know that she thinks a great deal of you.”

  “I will see what I can do, Mrs. Fayne, I promise you. May I have permission to take her out to lunch if she will honour me with her company?”

  “Certainly, Bishop. And if you can make her go to school this afternoon it would be a great help.”

  “But why this sudden aversion to school?” the bishop wanted to know.

  “I expect she’s lonely without the other three girls. And she finds the work boring, too, now that her head is so filled with the stage and being an actress.”

  “Ah, yes, I begin to see light. Well, I will see what I can do. Good-morning, Mrs. Fayne,” and he continued up Goldhawk Avenue in the direction of the Faynes’ house.

  Maddy was just reading aloud a dramatic speech of Mary Queen of Scots before her execution when there was a knock at the front door. “Enter,” declaimed Maddy, “I am ready to die—” then she realized it was not merely imaginary noises off, but someone actually at the door.

  “Bother!” she thought, “I won’t answer, but I’ll see who it is.” She flung open the window, recoiled at the sight of the familiar gaunt figure of the bishop, and bumped her head on the window frame. The bishop looked up.

  “Hullo, Maddy. Aren’t you going to come down and let me in?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m locked in my room.”

  “Oh! And who locked you in?”

  “I did.”

  “Well, can’t you unlock yourself?”

  “No. I’m in disgrace.”

  “So I gathered when I met your mother just now. You’re having a one-man siege, I suppose? Wouldn’t you like to come out and have a breath of fresh air? You could return to your fortress before your mother comes back, if you wished.”

  “But I told her I was going to stay here until she promised not to tell you about me,” Maddy demurred.

  “Well, she has told me already, so your stay-in strike seems somewhat useless, doesn’t it? Besides, if you continue it you will miss your lunch, whereas if you come down from your tower and accompany me on my morning walk we might finish up by having lunch at Bonner’s in the High Street. They have remarkably good duck there on Tuesdays.”

  Maddy wavered. It was ages since she had seen the bishop, and there was tons she wanted to say to him. It would be much nicer to be out in the sunshine with the bishop than to be in disgrace in her bedroom. And lunch at Bonner’s—

  The bishop said casually, “One can also have meringues and cream!”

  Maddy’s mouth watered. “Can you have ice-cream with them as well?”

  “I shouldn’t be at all surprised.”

  “I’ll be down in two ticks, Bishop. Must I wear a hat?”

  “No, Maddy. I think mine will furnish enough respectability for two. Hurry up, my dear. I want to get as far as the Fennymead fields if I can, and there’s not a great deal of the morning left.”

  Maddy hurriedly washed the tear-stains from her face and put on her blazer. Soon they were walking down the avenue. Their shadows went before them on the pavement, one tall and stately, the other short and inclined to bounce.

  2

  THE FENNYMEAD LEGEND

  Out in the fields the air was warm and spring-like. Maddy took off her blazer and rolled her stockings down to her ankles. She chased lambs, picked catkins, and got her feet wet in the river, while the bishop swung along at a steady pace, talking all the time whether Maddy was within hearing distance or not. Maddy was the first to tire.

  “Phew! We’ve walked miles,” she gasped, after swinging on the branch of a tree that broke and landed her in a puddle. “Can we sit on this fence, Bishop?” They perched on a stile and surveyed the landscape. “Where are we now, Bishop? I don’t think I’ve been round here very often.”

  “We’re just approaching Fennymead.”

  “Isn’t that where the castle is?”

  “Yes.” The bishop pointed with his stick. “You can see some of the turrets among the trees over there.”

  “Does anyone live there now?” Maddy wanted to know.

  “I believe the present Lord Moulcester is still in residence. He’s a bit of a hermit, though. They always were a peculiar family.”

  Maddy dived into her blazer pocket and produced a sticky package.

  “Will you have a piece of chocolate, Bishop? It’s inclined to be squashy, but it’s rather nice.”

  “Thank you, Maddy, I will.” The bishop took a piece. “Yes, as you say – squashy, but nice. Talking of the castle, by the way, I suppose you know the legend about the Maid of Fennymead?”

  Maddy screwed up her face in an effort to appear intelligent.

  “Didn’t she run away or something because they wanted her to be one of Henry the Eighth’s wives?”

  The bishop groaned. “Oh, Maddy, Maddy! Your history is sadly at fault. No, Elizabeth of Fennymead was believed to be a daughter of Catherine of Aragon and Arthur, Prince of Wales. Catherine married him before she married Henry the Eighth, you know. The Maid was kidnapped by a second cousin, Richard, Lord Moulcester, when she was quite young, and held at Fennymead with the intention of placing her forcibly on the throne at the death of Henry the Seventh.”

  Maddy licked the chocolate wrapping with great care and then said, “Does that mean they were going to make her the queen?”

  “That was the idea.”

  “Then why did she run away?”

  “I suppose she didn’t want to be queen. She knew that Lord Moulcester would be the ruling power, and she would just be a figure-head.”

  “And what happened to her?” Maddy wanted to know. “Where did she run to?”

  “Nobody knows. So
me people say she lost herself in the forest and died, others that she was adopted by a wood-cutter and his family. Oh, there are numerous tales as to what happened to the child.”

  Maddy stared at the bishop in surprise. “Child? Was she a child? I’d always heard she was grown-up.” The bishop warmed to his subject.

  “Oh, yes,” he said, “that is the general belief. But in some old manuscripts I found in my library the other day, I discovered some rather interesting verses that throw a little light on the matter. ‘Ye Riming Chronicles of Thomas Attewater, sometime Domestic Chaplain to Richard, Earl of Moulcester.’ It’s all in an illuminated black-letter.”

  “What’s that?” interrupted Maddy.

  “Well, black-letter is the mediaeval type of script, and illumination means that the capitals are coloured and have little illustrations inside the letter. I must show you some one day. They are extremely beautifully done.”

  “And what does it say about this child, Elizabeth?” Maddy wanted to know.

  “The whole story is there in rhyming couplets. I can only remember the last two lines – something like this—

  ‘At twelve years old away she fledde,

  Forsook her crown but saved her hedde.’”

  Maddy repeated it.

  “Oh, I like that—

  ‘At twelve years old away she fledde,

  Forsook her crown but saved her hedde—’

  “Why ‘saved her head’? Who would have beheaded her?” she wanted to know.

  “Henry the Eighth wouldn’t have stood for any hanky-panky, I’m afraid,” said the bishop. “The revolt would have been quelled inevitably, and she would have met with the same fate as Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel in the previous reign.”

  Maddy giggled. “I love Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel. They sound like crosstalk comedians. But what an exciting story – It’s just like a film. Not like history at all.”

  The bishop said rather disapprovingly, “I believe they are going to film it very soon, as a matter of fact, but I expect they’ll make the heroine a ‘glamour girl’, as they say, with eyelashes yards long, and give her some sort of romantic reason for running away. They’ll probably make Robin Hood the hero, or something equally absurd.”