But on that trip two things happened. Mr and Mrs Hubert F. Conroy came aboard, on their way home from London where they’d been celebrating thirty-five years of marriage. And Glorette Gilder was quarantined with a temperature of 105° and a nasty rash.
They asked Tex Lane to stand in first but as Tex himself admitted they were leaning on a weak reed. Being a front-liner is a high-pressure business. ‘Give it to the boy,’ he said. ‘He’s hungry for it.’
And that was how Sel got his chance as featured vocalist, with two hours’ notice. He unpacked his gold suit and Hazel steamed the creases out of it and goffered the frills on his dress shirt; Mother Carey brought him a cheese omelette on a tray, and while Tex opened the batting in the Starlight Club, Sel lay on his bunk wearing nothing but his Y-fronts and a mud pack.
He must have been nervous. I know I was. But he didn’t show it. He made his entrance cool as you like, strolled on, carrying a tea towel and two plates, deadpan face. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Who ordered the turbot?’
Glorette used to just stand there, like she was propped up and daren’t move. A smoker’s voice and low-cut backs, they were her stock-in-trade. But Sel was a natural. Put him in front of a microphone and there was no stopping him. ‘Old Black Magic’, ‘If I Loved You’, ‘Beginning to See the Light’. ‘The Anniversary Waltz’, for Mr and Mrs Conroy. ‘A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes’, for ‘anyone who ever wished upon a star’ as he put it.
It was nearly daybreak before they let him go and he was buzzing. ‘Eh, Cled, eh!’ He kept hugging me and thumping me on the back. ‘They loved me! And just wait till the next show. Tonight I’m really going to shake my feathers.’
I said, ‘What if they let Glorette out of quarantine?’
‘Get down to the infirmary,’ he said. ‘Put a pillow over her face.’
But there was no need. Glorette was out of action for the whole crossing and Sel saw this as his big chance. ‘Come upstairs with me,’ he said. ‘I’m going to need extra shirts.’ There was a branch of Austin Reed in First Class, but it was strictly off limits for us.
I said, ‘Smile nicely at Hazel and she’ll freshen your things up between shows.’
‘I know she would,’ he said, ‘but that’s not the point. What kind of star wears the same shirt three nights in a row? Anyway, come on up, see how the other half lives. How we’ll be living.’
There were stewards you had to get past. Tourist Class weren’t allowed into Cabin Class, Cabin weren’t allowed into First Class and crew weren’t allowed anywhere except in the line of duty. But Sel breezed us both through, greeted the gatekeepers like old friends, told them we were on urgent outfitting business for the Starlight Club.
‘Ask for George,’ one of them said. ‘He gets stuff brought back, already worn. He’ll fix you up with something.’
He did too. He had a dress shirt with a pin-tucked bib and a slightly imperfect cuff, and a silk waistcoat with a seam that had taken too much strain.
Sel said, ‘How about shirt studs? Have you got anything glittery?’
But everything George had was from Garrards, top of the line, in beautiful silver-bronze display cases.
Sel said, ‘How about on loan, like a library book?’
George said he didn’t really see how he could, considering the value of the goods.
‘Unless somebody stands surety for you,’ he said. ‘How about your uncle? Won’t he treat you?’
I always had a more mature appearance than Sel.
Sel said, ‘What, Uncle Cled? No, he’s as tight as a duck’s arse. Oh well, I’ll just have to hope nobody notices I’m wearing the same old studs.’
That was when Hubert Conroy stepped forward. ‘Why if it ain’t Mr Starlight!’ he said. ‘Can I help? My money any good around here?’
So Hubert left a precautionary deposit with Austin Reed and Sel walked out with a set of lapis lazuli shirt studs and a new name. Hubert only called him ‘Mr Starlight’ because he couldn’t remember his name. All he knew was he’d seen him in the Starlight Club. But anyway, it stuck. Ever after that Sel styled himself ‘Mr Starlight’.
Hubert said, ‘Come and meet Kaye. She’s in the Garden Lounge ordering tea and pastries.’
Hubert was a retired refrigeration tycoon from Los Angeles, California. He was a big man, very friendly considering his wealth, and he knew what he liked. ‘It’s a pleasing thing’, he said, ‘to find a vocalist singing tuneful songs and not ignoring his audience. Eye contact, that’s what I like. There are too many performers who act like they’re singing to an empty room, never mind the poor Joe who’s paid for his seat. And enthusiasm is another thing I like. Me and Kaye have seen big names and there are some come out on the podium and look like they’re doing you a biggest favour just being there. You this boy’s manager?’
‘No …’ I said.
He said, ‘Well, you should be. I know a good thing when I see it and he’ll go far. Have a pastry.’
Kaye wanted to know all our history and Sel was never afraid to embellish a story, or ‘make it more entertaining’ as he put it. How we’d grown up barefoot and starving. How we’d had to sing for our supper even when we were nibs, and then the Virgin Mary had visited him on his deathbed and told him to head for America.
I said, ‘That story better not get back to Mam. You’ll get a clip round the ear.’ We’d always had shoes and three meals a day.
He laughed. He said, ‘It won’t get back to her and anyway, I was just giving value. Fans want a story. Rags to riches or riches to rags. Mam’d understand that.’
We were walking aft along the sheltered promenade when we ran smack into Milligan, the Ship’s Writer. He never forgot a face. ‘Well, what have we here?’ he said. ‘Two lost boys.’
You got a warning the first time you went out of bounds. After that they sacked you.
Sel said, ‘I’m glad I’ve run into you. I’ve been thinking, now I’ve replaced Glorette I should be getting my own cabin.’
Milligan looked at him. He said, ‘On this occasion I’m going to pretend I’m deaf as well as blind, Mr Boff, but it’ll only be temporary, the same as your promotion, so don’t depend on being so lucky a second time.’
Sel never batted an eye. ‘Temporary!’ he said. ‘We’ll see about that.’
His name was on the agenda they printed every day. The first time it said ‘Tonight in the Starlight Club, Sel Boff replaces Glorette Gilder who is indisposed’. The next day it said ‘Midnight in the Starlight Club, Selwyn, with the Lionel Truman Band’. The last day it said, ‘Au Revoir Gala with Mr Starlight, Midnight in the Veranda Grill’.
I said, ‘You must be driving them round the bend in the print room.’
‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I’ve brought a bit of interest and variety into their lives. And I’ve been talking to Lionel, too. I’m going to loosen things up. Take requests, talk to people. I’m not up there to see how fast I can race through the play list.’
I said, ‘Well, while you’re redesigning the show, you might think of singing one of my compositions. That’d give the evening a bit of added interest.’
‘Such as?’ he said.
I said, ‘How about “You’re the Vinegar on my Chips”?’
‘I don’t think so, Cled,’ he said. ‘I think it still needs work.’
See, he was all for himself.
He wore the blue lamé jacket for the Au Revoir, with the lapis studs in his shirt and he fetched Kaye Conroy up to the microphone, kidding her to do a daft old Max Miller song with him, ‘La-di-dah-di-dah’. Now there’s a song that needed further work. But he pulled it off, wisecracking between verses. He had them in stitches. And then he did a canny thing. He changed the mood. Number 22: ‘Till Then’. He played it straight to settle them down, and then he went roving, like he’d started doing at the Birmingham Welsh, casually looking for a place to perch. But I knew him. He’d already weighed up the scene. He knew exactly who to aim for. Mrs Gertie Walters, widow of Walters the suet king and
worth a mint, but Sel didn’t pick her out because of that. He picked her because she was sitting on her own, looking wistful, and he took her hand and sang to her as if he was singing to our mam.
Although there are oceans we must cross
And mountains that we must climb
I know every gain must have a loss
So pray our loss is nothing but time
Ooooh ooooh …
He closed with ‘A Grand Night for Singing’, then straight into number 49, ‘We’ll Meet Again’ and there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.
It was a grand night for singing, and for playing. I was proud to be there; proud to think he was family. I thought, ‘Perhaps he has got what he takes. If he can light up an agent the way he’s lit up this crowd …’ This wasn’t the Nechells Non-Political. This was Lord and Lady Delacourt, and Aly Kahn, plus a very big name in suet.
We didn’t go to bed. We never did before a New York docking. Mother Carey made us smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, and then we went up to the dog deck to watch the pilot take us through the Narrows. There was the kind of mist you get before a hot day so they blasted the foghorn a few times, bottom A. I loved the sound of it.
I said, ‘So today we go looking for an agent.’
‘Correct,’ he said. ‘Hubert sees me in musical shows for family audiences. Hubert’s got contacts in Los Angeles.’
Hubert Conroy giving him this inflated opinion of himself didn’t help Sel strike the right attitude when we went to sign off. Glorette Gilder had got a clean bill of health for the next sailing.
Massie said, ‘You can put your iridescent garments back in mothballs, Selwyn.’
Sel said, ‘You’re not having her back, after the way I performed?’
Massie said, ‘Of course I am. Glorette is our featured vocalist.’
Sel said, ‘You’re out of your mind.’
But as Massie said, Sel had only ever been a stand-in. And he’d been paid extra.
Sel said, ‘What about the paying public? Why don’t you ask them who they’d rather see?’
Massie said, ‘Do you mean the passengers who just disembarked, or the passengers who’ll be arriving on Thursday, expecting to be entertained by Miss Gilder?’
I said, ‘Leave it, Sel. You’ve got your bonus.’
‘Mind your own!’ he said. ‘And you want to wise up, Massie. Call yourself an entertainments manager? You wouldn’t recognise entertainment if it flew in wearing a leopard-skin jockstrap. I’ve had offers from California, you’ll be interested to hear.’
Massie said, ‘That’s neither here nor there. Miss Gilder has a contract.’
‘Well,’ Sel said, ‘now we all know which old lizard is sucking your dick.’
Massie sacked him on the spot. Ripped up his discharge book. ‘I’ll not delay you a moment longer, Mr Boff,’ he said. ‘I’m sure California is impatient to have you.’
Sel stormed off, left me with everybody staring at me. They’d all been earwigging, of course.
I found him in the cabin, sitting on his valise, trying to fasten it. ‘Don’t start,’ he said.
I said, ‘Nice work. You’re out of a job, out of a bed for the night and you’ll be out of money by tomorrow the way you spend it. You haven’t got the sense you were born with.’
‘No?’ he said. ‘Well, I’ve got no regrets neither. I’m ready to move on. Onward and upward.’
I said, ‘Don’t you move in any direction. You’re to wait here while I see to a bit of business.’
‘Just don’t go crawling to Massie,’ he shouted after me, ‘because I wouldn’t take his poxy job back if he came in here on his knees.’
But it was Hazel I had to see.
I thought, ‘Well, this isn’t quite how I planned it, but why not? She’s a pretty little thing, hard worker, not averse to a roll in the Ripening Room.’
I intended asking her to come with me. We could have got engaged, set ourselves up in America. She’d have been handy to have around with Sel, too. He was more likely to listen to her. But there he was, when I got to her billet, leaning in her doorway chatting her up, still in his whites. That ruddy pastry chef.
I said, ‘I see.’
‘What?’ she said.
I said, ‘I thought we were a pair, Hazel. I thought we had a future.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ she said.
He sidled off, scared I was going to put one on him.
I said, ‘Sel’s given his notice. I was going to ask you to come with us, but now I see how the land lies …’
She said, ‘The land doesn’t lie anyhow. But anyway, I wouldn’t walk away from a good job. I’ve got my security here.’
I said, ‘Right then.’
‘Look,’ she said, ‘I wish you well, Cled. But I never made any promises. I’m happy in my work. And I’m too young to get serious.’
She wasn’t that young. Neither of us was.
I said, ‘How about that pastry chef? You looked pretty engrossed with him.’
‘Oh for crying out loud, Cled,’ she said. ‘He slips me a cream slice sometimes, that’s all.’
After all the nylons I’d brought her.
I was in a very difficult situation. I’d have signed on for another stint, but I couldn’t just go and leave him behind. He was full of big talk, but talk doesn’t pay the rent and there was a careless side to him, too, after he’d had a drink. He’d follow the lead of any bunch of delinquents. If I wasn’t around to keep an eye on him he was liable to wake up one morning, dead in a gutter. I’d never have heard the end of it from Mam and Dilys.
I caught him, ready to leave without me. I said, ‘Now what are you going to do?’
‘Brush this lint off my blazer,’ he said. ‘Alert New York to my arrival.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘never let it be said I shirked my responsibilities. I’ve decided I’m coming with you.’
‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘Please yourself.’
TEN
Sel wanted to stay in a hotel. He believed if you wanted to be treated like a star you should live like one, but I soon put a stop to that. I could remember how Mam used to put her money in piles, this one for the electric, this one for coal, robbing Peter to pay Paul, and hiding it all over the place to keep temptation out of the way of Gypsy. And now it was my job to keep Sel on the straight and narrow. We took accommodation in a rooming house on West 43rd Street, rent paid a week in advance, and had our dinners at a cafeteria called Horn and Hardart. The food was in little compartments and you walked along with your tray and picked out what you could afford. Beans on toast. Lemon meringue pie. You could eat very well there for very little.
We started at the top of the list. The Aaronson Agency said they didn’t see people who walked in off the street. The Colbert Agency said they were only seeing recommendations.
Thursday afternoon I watched the Mary slide past the end of the street. Sel was out, fetching our business cards. An agent called Milo Freeman had invited us to leave our card with him, only we didn’t have one, as such. Sel had shot straight off to find a printer. ‘An investment,’ he called it. Any excuse to spend money.
I said, ‘I waved goodbye to my future this afternoon.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘You waved goodbye to your past.’
Then he showed me the business cards. ‘Cunard front-liner, Mr Starlight’ they said.
I said, ‘Where’s my name?’
He said, ‘It looked too fussy with both names. Anyway, you’ll be playing for me when I do try-outs, so they’ll know you’re on the payroll.’
I said, ‘I’ll tell you what makes them look fussy, you slippery bastard. Having that great big star instead of a normal dot over the i.’
‘Trust me, Cled,’ he said. The number of times I heard that. ‘I know what I’m doing. I know what catches people’s eye.’
We got to the Vs on the list. Marcia Vine, who also happened to represent Glorette Gilder. She said, ‘Take my advice you’ll hitch a ride home. This town’
s full of singers with more talent than you and most of them are working as soda jerks.’
We tried Patch Wolff.
Sel said, ‘I’ve got a feeling about this one.’
‘Boys,’ Wolff said, ‘in the unlikely event I start representing sugar-frosted shit, I’ll confine myself to the home-grown product.’
Sel said, ‘I think we should head west. Hubert said to look him up. He knows names.’
I was getting tired of hearing Hubert Conroy’s name. I said, ‘We’ve already gone west. Two more weeks’ rent and we’re flat.’
‘Oh ye of little faith,’ he said. I was ready to wring his ruddy neck.
There were a couple of dancers staying in our digs and I got talking to one of them, waiting on the landing to use the facilities.
She said, ‘I know where they need a rehearsal pianist.’
And that was how we turned the corner.
It was a touring production of a show called Daisy Days, never did make it on to Broadway. The place smelled of sweaty shoes and the piano needed tuning, but it put a few dollars in my pocket and then way led on to way. That’s how it is in show business. You can’t go to the Labour Exchange. You have to keep your ears open and your craft honed. Just before Daisy Days opened I heard that an audition pianist was needed for More Is Better! and then the caretakers at the Polska Club, where the auditions took place, told me about a little piano bar that gave new faces a try.
Sel came along with me but they didn’t want him. It was a very small room and the vocalist who’s willing to sing quietly hasn’t been born. All they needed was somebody like me, tinkling in the background. They gave me a Friday night, with no assurances, but I ended up with two nights a week till further notice. I was the one bringing in money, I was the one who could write and tell Mam I was appearing at the Sinbad Club on Madison Avenue, and that was a hard thing for Sel to swallow.
He got more and more morose. He wouldn’t even stir himself to send Mam a postcard because she’d be expecting him to be the toast of the town, wherever he was, and he couldn’t bring himself to fib to her. Not in those days, at any rate. He said, ‘I should never have let you hold me back. I could have gone straight to California, linked up with Hubert Conroy if you hadn’t taken my money.’
Mr Starlight Page 7