Mr Starlight

by Laurie Graham

  The only thing that saddened me was we didn’t have space for a piano nor the time for me to do any composing. I missed bringing pleasure to an audience and as soon as our guests heard about my hit single they wanted to hear me play, but there it was. As Hazel said, when you run your own business, sacrifices have to be made. Hazel wasn’t musical, of course.

  We hadn’t planned on going in for a family till we ’d had a few seasons with Hazelwyn running to our satisfaction, but these things happen and anyway, Hazel wasn’t getting any younger. Our Jennifer Jane was born on 4 December 1957. My thirty-sixth birthday, and I couldn’t have asked for a nicer present.

  Dilys said, ‘What did Sel say?’

  I said, ‘Nothing. I haven’t phoned him. And I’m not going to neither.’

  She said, ‘Will you stop this? You’re like a mardy kid.’

  I didn’t care. He’d started it.

  ‘I’ll phone him, then,’ she said. ‘He’ll be thrilled to mint balls.’

  And when we took Jennifer Jane to Ninevah Street when she was five weeks old, to introduce her to the family, there was a beautiful rocking crib waiting for her, white rattan with flowered sheets and a quilted bumper and two pink waffle blankets, shipped from a very high-class shop in Los Angeles. ‘To Jennifer Jane from Uncle Sel,’ the card said. ‘Hope you’re better looking than your Dad. Come to think of it, you’re bound to be.’

  Dilys said, ‘Cheeky beggar! Don’t worry, I’ll tell him. She’s beautiful. Like a delicate little flower.’

  Mam said, ‘Selwyn was only making a humorous quip. It’s his way of showing he’s forgiven Cledwyn for running out on him.’

  Hazel said, ‘Not that old chestnut. We must have told you a hundred times it was Sel’s doing, not Cled’s.’

  Mam said, ‘I’m not going into that. Selwyn’s not here to speak up for himself. He’s gone to expense and sent a beautiful cradle, for a child he’ll probably never see. Selwyn always does the right thing, that I do know.’

  And he did turn out to be a good uncle. He sent quite a sum to Dilys for her girls’ eighteenths, to be put in the bank for them for later, and he never missed a birthday or Christmas with Jennifer, although she was three years old before he met her. Of course, he loved shopping, and not just for himself. He could shop all day and by the time he got home he’d have forgotten half of what he’d bought. He’d phone sometimes, after he’d broken the ice with the cradle. ‘Put her on,’ he’d say. ‘Tell her it’s her Uncle Sel.’ He just liked to hear the funny little noises they make. ‘I envy you, Cled,’ he said.

  I said, ‘No sign of activity on the romance front?’

  He just laughed.

  I said, ‘How’s Kitty?’

  ‘Kitty who?’ he said.

  And then when I got off the phone, I had Hazel quizzing me. ‘Who’s Kitty?’

  Jennifer was a sunny baby, and the Hazelwyn Guest House was doing very well. We were pretty contented, really, although Hazel did have a few black moments, dwelling on the little baby she’d given up.

  I said, ‘Cheer up! You’ve replaced her now. You’ve got Jennifer Jane.’

  ‘You don’t replace a child, Cled,’ she said.

  Some days whatever I said was wrong. In the end I left Dilys to deal with all that side of things. Hazel had told her all about the business of the baby, so whenever Dilys and Arthur came to stay, in the off season, she’d send me out with Arthur for a game of crazy golf so she could spend on hour with Dilys and enjoy a nice cry. Funny creatures, women.

  Sel had got his own show at the New Frontier in Las Vegas. People’d say things sometimes. We had one clever dick staying with us. He said, ‘You must feel like Cinderella, stuck here frying eggs.’

  But I had no regrets. I said, ‘I’ve played in Las Vegas, thank you very much. I had my fill of luxury hotels and standing ovations. I like being able to walk down to the seafront, get a breath of soft Welsh air before I start on the breakfasts.’

  ‘Still,’ he said, ‘golden discs.’

  But those records weren’t anything special: Starlight Songs and Love by Starlight, the same old stuff rehashed. He could have done with something novel. Something by Cled Boff.

  Then a book was brought out, about the house he’d had built on Rancho Drive: Desert Star. He sent copies to everybody. We got two, so Hazel insisted on putting one on the hall table, next to the guest register. ‘It’s a conversation piece,’ she said.

  Desert Star was a pink stucco bungalow, designed by himself, with a front room big enough to hold the Treorchy Male Voice Choir and a swimming pool with a big mosaic star in the bottom. ‘All the light fittings were specially imported from Venice, Italy,’ Hazel would read aloud in bed. ‘Mr Starlight relaxing in a favourite zebra-skin chair in his book-lined den.’

  He was in all the pictures, of course. You could never keep him away from a camera. Sel on a big white settee with Crackers and two more Westies he’d acquired, Brandy and Soda. Sel in the kitchen, with Pearl who looked after him, pretending to supervise her chopping an onion. Sel in his bedroom, with pink satin sheets and a fur rug, and a painting of the Virgin Mary looking down at him. And Mam’s favourite: Sel in his swimming pool being served a beverage by a boy in a Tarzan suit. Once he hit the big time Sel always kept a boy. He never learned to drive, for one thing. I don’t think he even learned how to turn the wipers on.

  Then Nerys, who helped in the kitchen, borrowed the bloody book. Started quoting from it while I was trying to concentrate on my frying pans. ‘Mr Starlight has no fewer than three pianos in his Las Vegas home,’ she said, ‘including one reputed to have been played by world-famous composer Franz Liszt.’

  I said, ‘Nerys, that’s ridiculous. Three pianos and he can’t play a note.’

  Hazel said, ‘Ignore him. He had a bad night with cramp and now he’s in a mood.’

  Nerys said, ‘I wonder you don’t have a piano, Mr B.’

  Hazel said, ‘Here we go.’

  I said, ‘I don’t have a piano because my wife needs a whole room for her towels and bedding. Other people manage with an airing cupboard, but not my wife. She thinks she’s still on the Queen Mary.’

  Nerys said, ‘My Uncle Penri has a piano, Mr B. He never plays it since Aunty died.’

  Hazel said, ‘We don’t have room, Cled. I don’t care how cheap it’s going for.’

  But that was all right. Penri said I could play it in his house, whenever I liked. He let me have a key so if I wanted to play on a Thursday afternoon, which was when he played for the Lorina School of Dance, I could just let myself in.

  Hazel said, ‘You haven’t got time, Cled.’

  I said, ‘Yes I have. If you’ve got time to keep leafing through that book, keeping me awake with light fittings from Venice, Italy, I’ve got time to play piano in the afternoons.’

  ‘I see,’ she said, ‘Sel gets three pianos, so you have to fritter your time away round at Penri Clocker’s. What next? You going to start swimming at the corporation baths? Tell them to bring you a drink on a tray to the shallow end? You going to find yourself a film starlet?’

  Sel was a regular in Celebrity Secrets and Out and About, and once in a while there’d be a picture of him squiring a pretty girl to a nightclub. Dilys would say, ‘Perhaps this is the one. Perhaps he’s going to settle down.’

  And Mam would always say, ‘There’s no hurry.’

  Sometimes he’d walk out with older ladies too, like Thelma Arden who lived across the street from him on Rancho Drive. She’d been quite big in films before the war. It was Thelma he took with him when he was invited to the White House to sing for President and Mrs Eisenhower. It was a very great honour, of course, and it was soon after that he converted. He became a fully paid-up American.

  Mam said, ‘Quite right too. This country never appreciated him. It had its chance.’ He had a bit of a following in Britain, but he was up against artists like Dickie Valentine and Ronnie Hilton, boys who just wore a nice collar and tie and didn’t run around
in the audience. Boys who had more tuneful voices. Americans are more excitable and over there Sel had all the following he could wish for. But it niggled him to be overlooked by the old country.

  Dilys used to say, ‘When are you coming back?’

  ‘When I need a police escort,’ he’d say.

  Then Milo pulled it off.

  Sel telephoned Mam to tell her. ‘Book yourself a permanent wave,’ he said. ‘I’m coming to the London Palladium in the spring and you’re going to be in the front row of a box.’

  Then the arguments started. Mam expected us all to go to every show he was doing: the Palladium, the Leeds Empire, Cardiff Stadium, Birmingham Hippodrome.

  I said, ‘I can’t trail around the country like that. I’ve got a living to earn.’

  ‘Not in March, you haven’t,’ Mam said. ‘Nobody goes to Llandudno in March.’

  That’s what you get when you’re in the hotel business. People think you only work half the year. I said, ‘And Arthur can’t just drop everything neither. Nor Betsan and Gaynor. And we’ve got a bab, don’t forget. Jennifer can’t stay up, sitting in smoky theatres.’

  Mam said, ‘You’ve just got a monkey mood on you. You’re just jealous.’ And there was a bit of a stand-off until we had something else to argue about.

  Dilys’s girls were both courting and there had been talk of them getting engaged at Christmas, a double celebration. Then, when we heard Sel would be paying a visit Dilys thought they should have a double wedding too. She said, ‘We’ve waited long enough for him to come so you’d better get on with it while he’s here.’

  Mam said, ‘And get your pictures in the paper with your famous uncle.’

  Gaynor said she didn’t want her picture in the papers and Betsan said Elvis was what she’d call famous.

  Betsan was seeing Terry Eyles, who worked in a clock spring factory in Loveday Street, and Gaynor was seeing Clifford Millichip, who had his dispensing certificate and was on his way up at Boots the Chemist. Everything was agreed and the church was booked, and a nice private hotel out near Sutton Coldfield for the reception. There were frocks being made left, right and centre: wedding dresses, bridesmaids’ dresses, evening dresses for Mam to wear to Sel’s shows. And big silly hats were bought, that you could only ever wear the once.

  Then, just before Sel was due to arrive, Betsan broke the news that she was expecting and after that it wasn’t wedding bonnets we needed. It was steel helmets.

  EIGHTEEN

  The big question was whether Terry Eyles would stand by Betsan. Arthur was sent to talk to him man to man, but Arthur wasn’t up to the job and Terry still appeared to be wavering, so our mam went down to Loveday Street herself and had him fetched out of work and gave him such a telling off he clocked out, jumped on a bus and wasn’t seen again for quite some time.

  Dilys said, ‘She’s stuck her oar in one time too many.’

  Mam said, ‘Somebody in this family had to show some leadership. I’ve written to your Aunty Gwenny. She’ll have to have Betsan there, till it’s all blown over. And Gaynor and Clifford can have a quiet wedding, befitting the change in circumstances.’

  Betsan said she wasn’t going anywhere and Gaynor said she’d only ever wanted a quiet wedding, but expense had been gone to and bridesmaids’ dresses had been made.

  Dilys said, ‘There was no need for all this upset. Brides expecting, it happens all the time. All that matters is that Betsan doesn’t get herself in a state and bring things on too early.’

  Mam said, ‘Betsan already brought things on too early.’

  Ruddy families. Sel was well off out of it.

  Dilys said, ‘All that matters is that that little bab has a good home and it will do, whether Terry Eyles ever shows his face again or not. I’ll mind it myself if I have to and Betsan can go back to work.’

  Mam said, ‘That’ll be a nice thing for the neighbours, an unmarried mother walking around in broad daylight. Well, I’ve done my best, God knows. But bad blood will out.’

  Hazel said, ‘Your mam’s got a nasty mouth on her, Cled. Why don’t you ever stand up to her?’

  I said, ‘I don’t even know what she means by “bad blood”. There’s nothing untoward on Arthur’s side. Perhaps she means our dad. He was definitely irregular. Perhaps she’s seen the light at long last.’

  ‘Oh, Cled!’ she said and she threw a dish mop at me. It was that time of the month, I expect. She said, ‘It’s not badness that makes babies! It’s feelings and the heat of a moment. Well, Dilys and Arthur are doing the right thing by Betsan and we should be behind them a hundred per cent.’

  So by the time Sel docked at Southampton, Hazel wasn’t speaking to Mam, Gaynor wasn’t speaking to Betsan and the whereabouts of Terry Eyles were still unknown.

  We watched Sel’s arrival at Victoria railway station on the television news. ‘Crowds of excited fans’, they said, ‘greeting the Birmingham boy who came home a star. Extra police sent for.’ He was wearing a fur coat, right down to the ground, waving and grinning and calling out, ‘Hi, there! Y’all here waitin’ on somebody special?’

  Hazel said, ‘Oh, love him, he’s turned American!’

  He’d put on weight as well.

  I drove to Birmingham the next morning. Sel was having a car sent to take us to Claridge’s Hotel in London, Mam and Dilys, with me to keep the peace. It was a black Bentley with leather seats and a driver in a hat. Mrs Grimley was pretending to do a bit of weeding by her front door.

  Mam said, ‘You go and get in the car, Dilys. I’ll just check everywhere’s locked up. I’ll just pay a penny.’

  Ten minutes Dilys was sitting out there. Mam was farting around putting stuff in a carrier bag: custard creams, pear drops, socks from Aunty Gwenny, white heather bath salts. ‘Things he’ll have missed,’ she said. ‘How are things looking outside?’

  I said, ‘Same as they were five minutes ago. Will you get a move on!’

  She said, ‘I’m surprised the Edkinses don’t just happen to be passing by.’

  I said, ‘They’re watching from their front window. It’s cold out there.’

  That satisfied her. She didn’t want to leave the house till she was sure Ninevah Street was watching her go.

  I was glad to sit up front with the driver and chat. Leave the pair of them to sit in the back, staring out of the windows and having the hump with one another. He had some stories about the people he’d driven: Lady Docker, Mr Pastry, Albert Dell the hangman. And of course, I had my own anecdotes: Patti Page, Rosemary Clooney. I’d known them all.

  He thought he remembered my hit single. He said, ‘There’s nothing to beat a live show, though.’

  A man after my own heart. I said, ‘I’ve made dozens of television programmes but playing for Gracie Fields was one of my greatest thrills.’

  ‘Tommy Steele,’ he said. ‘I had him in the car the other week.’

  I said to Mam, ‘Now when we arrive, leave everything to me. I’m used to these grand hotels.’

  But she had to take matters into her own hands. ‘I’m visiting my son,’ she said to the doorman. ‘Selwyn “Mr Starlight” Boff. He’s appearing at the London Palladium. Dilys, your skirt’s all creased. If you smoothed it down … Cled, here’s sixpence for the driver. You bring our gowns in and I’ll tell this girl to announce us.’ Then the carrier bag split so we had pear drops all over the floor of the lobby.

  Dilys clung on to my arm all the way up in the lift.

  I said, ‘It’s only our kid we’re visiting.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t feel like it, though.’

  Sel was in a corner suite with a view of Hyde Park and a fireplace and a grand piano. He was on the telephone when we walked in, leaning against the mantelpiece warming his backside on the fire. He said, ‘Let’s talk later. I gotta run now. Something important just came up.’ And then he did a funny thing. Even though Mam and Dilys were there, that he hadn’t seen in a very long time, it was me he came to first. He made out to
wrestle with me and gave me a hug, then he stood back and inspected me and I do believe he had a small tear in his eye. He was looking very well: suntanned and shiny and everything immaculate, hair, nails, trouser creases.

  He took Mam in his arms. Neither of them said a word. He just picked her up and swung her round, with her feet off the ground.

  She said, ‘I think you’ve grown.’

  Then he brought Dilys over, so he had them sitting either side of him on a big settee, and he rang for tea and cucumber sandwiches to be brought in. ‘I’ll be mother,’ he said. ‘How do you take it, Dilys? I can’t remember.’

  She was quite shy with him. We all were, in a funny way. There can be a lot of silences after ten years.

  He’d booked the suite next door for the three of us.

  I said, ‘You didn’t have to pay for me. I could have found digs.’

  ‘Cled,’ he said, ‘don’t be an idiot. I want you here, with Mam and Dilys. I want you to make sure they’re all right. Know what I mean? Make sure they’re not backward about asking for anything they need. Anything at all. And I want you to ride with them to the theatre. Ladies should always have an escort.’

  Mam said, ‘I suppose you’ve heard? Betsan’s defying me. I arranged for her to go to Aunty Gwenny’s but will she!’

  I said, ‘Mam! This isn’t the time.’

  ‘Of course it’s the time,’ she said. ‘He has to be put in the picture. We need a man in this family. Someone to back me up. See, Selwyn, your brother allows his wife to wear the trousers and Arthur Persons wouldn’t say boo to a goose. And all the while Betsan is going to the bad. But I know you won’t let me down.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘how about we talk this over in a day or two? When I’m in Birmingham? Time’s getting on now.’

  ‘Whatever you think,’ she said. ‘I know I can depend on you.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Because I have to think about getting to the theatre and you’d better go and unpack. And prepare to be titivated. There’s a beautician coming for you at six, manicure, facial, the works. And when she’s finished with you, Cled, with any luck she might have time to look at you girls as well.’