Little Stars Read online

  I read it to Diamond for an hour or so when we got home. She liked the tumbling down the rabbit hole part. She became intrigued when Alice found the bottle marked DRINK ME, laughing in delight when the author declared it had a ‘mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast’.

  ‘Will I really have a drink that tastes so delicious when I play Alice?’ she asked.

  I said yes to encourage her, though I very much doubted it.

  She chuckled when Alice grew tiny as a consequence of the same drink. ‘I can do that, look!’ she said, crouching in a little ball and looking very sweet.

  She liked the idea of a cake with EAT ME spelled out in currants too, though was more disconcerted at the thought of growing very, very tall with a giraffe neck. ‘How will they make me do that? Will they stretch me? Will it hurt, like Mister cricking me?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘No, of course not,’ I said, though I couldn’t work out how they would manage it either.

  The story was extraordinary and very funny, but it seemed impossible to stage. How would they manage a Pool of Tears? And what about all the strange creatures? I knew animals could perform. I’d seen Elijah the Elephant put through his paces every day at the circus, and Mr Marvel’s monkeys had a brilliant act, but how could there be a performing mouse, or indeed a dodo, which was surely extinct? Then there was a caterpillar, and two frog footmen, a baby that turned into a pig, and a cat with a grin that kept disappearing!

  I couldn’t work out which part Miss Royal would play. There were no beautiful women in the story whatsoever, just a very bad-tempered Duchess and an even more terrifying Queen of Hearts who kept yelling ‘Off with her head!’

  Diamond dozed off and I skipped through the rest of the story, puzzling. I couldn’t quite follow the plot, especially when they were suddenly at a beach with a Gryphon and a Mock Turtle and they all danced a bizarre Lobster-Quadrille. How could there be a seaside down a rabbit hole? And why were there suddenly so many playing-card characters?

  I searched for another child part that I could play, but there wasn’t one. And I was starting to worry dreadfully about Diamond being Alice. She would be on stage all the time, and she had the longest lines of anyone. I wasn’t at all sure she would cope – though at least she looked the part.

  I got her up early the next morning and showed her the key pictures of Alice in the story book, and she was quite good at striking poses, copying them. She looked calm and composed for the most part, not at all overwhelmed by her bizarre adventures.

  ‘There you are! You’ll be perfect, darling,’ I said, dressing her in her best blue dress and white pinafore. I knew that most actors wore their oldest clothes for rehearsals, but I wanted Diamond to look the part.

  Miss Gibson was annoyed when we said we were off to the theatre for rehearsal. ‘But you’re supposed to help me sew, Hetty! That’s the way you earn your keep,’ she said petulantly. ‘You spend all evening at the wretched Cavalcade. You don’t need to go there during the day too!’

  ‘But we do, Miss Gibson, because we’re going to be little actresses now, not just music-hall artistes. Diamond is going to be the star of the Parkinson Players. Alice in Alice in Wonderland! We have to rehearse,’ I said.

  ‘And I have to make a living, and here I am needing to attend to new customers in the shop all day long because we’re so unaccountably busy, and if I’m stuck there, I can’t get on with all the costumes, can I?’ she moaned.

  ‘I think you’re unaccountably busy because of the new designs in the window, Miss Gibson,’ I said meaningfully. ‘And I will parcel up an unfinished gown each day and take it to the Cavalcade. I will only have a small part and so I can sit in the stalls and sew while Diamond performs. There! You’ve nothing to complain about now, have you?’ I put my arm round her and rubbed my cheek against her fat one.

  ‘Get away with you!’ she said, batting me away. ‘You think you can charm anyone, Hetty Feather, but it won’t work. I haven’t forgotten how impertinent you were to me.’ But even so she packed us up a little bag of jam tarts to sustain us.

  It was a thrill to saunter past grumpy Stan so early and see his surprise.

  ‘What are you two doing here? It’s rehearsals only for them actor folk!’ he said fiercely.

  ‘We are the actor folk,’ I said grandly. ‘Miss Diamond is going to be the star of their new production.’

  But poor Diamond didn’t shine. The players were all gathered on stage in various shabby but artistic outfits – worn velvets, tattered silks and trailing paisley scarves. The very fat person who was actually a man wore tight crimson cord trousers and a grubby dressing gown in daffodil yellow. He was playing another lady again, the fierce Duchess with the pig baby, shaking imaginary pots of pepper and causing havoc, making the rest of the cast laugh.

  ‘Ah, the Little Stars!’ said Miss Royal. She was wearing a faded floral tea gown and silver slippers, with several jade bangles clinking on either arm. ‘My heavens, Diamond, you look the part in that outfit! Pop up here on stage, dearie. Find her a copy of the script, someone. You’ll have to read your lines until you’ve got it all in your noddle.’

  Diamond looked round at me, aghast. I’d tried to teach her to read properly, but she had barely progressed beyond The cat sat on the mat.

  ‘Diamond has a little trouble with her eyesight,’ I said quickly, not wanting to embarrass her. ‘Generally I read the line to her and then she remembers it.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Miss Royal. ‘Just for today. If it works for you.’

  But it didn’t work. They went back to the beginning of the scene, with Stella playing the Cook, and the funny fat man playing the Duchess. He told us his name was Harry Hungerford. It sounded familiar. I remembered reading about him in one of Bertie’s stage journals. He was a very famous pantomime dame. He didn’t have a real baby – or, indeed, a real pig on his lap. He just had a pink cloth with pink sausage arms and legs and an alarming screaming head. He made it cry and squeal very realistically. Diamond stared, fascinated, and Miss Royal clapped her hands.

  ‘There! Look at that expression. Exactly right! Well done, child. You see, Gerald. She’s born to be Alice,’ she declared.

  But when Diamond had to say her lines, she failed miserably. I held the script and whispered the words to her with the right expression and intonation. After several stumbling attempts Diamond did manage to repeat a few lines, but in her usual monotone.

  ‘No, dear. Not in that little doll voice. You’re not a ventriloquist’s dummy now. You’re a real little girl, in a most peculiar situation, but you’re very sensible, the only sane person on stage. You say: There’s certainly too much pepper in that soup! in a lively manner, proclaiming it to the audience, and then you pretend to sneeze.’

  Diamond repeated the line syllable by syllable and attempted a very false sneeze.

  Mr Parkinson raised his eyebrows and sighed. ‘Perhaps this isn’t such a good idea after all, Marina,’ he said.

  Diamond looked miserable. By the time she’d repeated the line five more times tears were pouring down her cheeks.

  ‘Do it this way, Diamond,’ I said, going over the line again. ‘Look, I’ll sit in the stalls, and you can turn your head and say it to me.’

  Diamond tried. She turned her head and looked exactly right. She just sounded terrible.

  ‘I’m sure she’ll pick it up quickly once she gets used to acting,’ I said.

  ‘But we haven’t got time, dear. She needs to be perfect by Monday week,’ said Mr Parkinson.

  ‘I’ll rehearse with her. Don’t worry – we’ll make it work, I promise.’ I tried all day long, slipping Diamond a jam tart as a reward every time she remembered two consecutive lines.

  ‘Jam tarts – how perfect!’ said Miss Royal.

  ‘Please, do try one,’ I said.

  ‘Mmm, absolutely delicious. Which baker did you go to? We’ll order some for the Knave of Hearts scene.’

&nb