by Marie Joseph
The women hadn’t enjoyed the comic at all. He had delivered his patter in a broad Lancashire dialect they pretended not to understand, and most of his jokes had been on the risqué side. Corset bones dug into soft flesh as they clapped politely, then sat back waiting for the next turn.
When the MC announced that a Miss Clara Haydock would be taking the place of Mr Arnold Leadbetter, they tapped gloved hands together, then raised their eyebrows to their hairlines as Clara walked slowly to the centre of the ballroom. In the midst of all that colour and light she was like a small black rusty scarecrow. Hands clasped together, she announced her first item.
‘“I’m For Ever Blowing Bubbles”,’ she said, nodding in the direction of the man seated at the piano.
Joe, watching from the open doorway, crossed his fingers behind his back, feeling the sweat break out on his forehead. ‘Laugh at her at your bloody peril,’ his grim expression said. ‘Stop smiling at each other and listen, for God’s sake!’
Halfway through the first chorus the fidgeting stopped. Clara’s pure distinctive voice soared, every word clear, every note true.
‘Just like my dreams they fade and die,’ she sang, a hurt, plaintive, swaying note in her lovely voice. When she finished and the last notes died away, there was a telling moment of silence before the crack of applause.
Joe uncrossed his fingers, feeling a shiver run up and down his spine. ‘I knew it,’ he whispered, closing his eyes. ‘I’ve always known it. Always, always, right from the beginning.’
‘For my next item I am going to sing “Because God Made Thee Mine”,’ Clara was saying, giving the little nod to the pianist.
A professional to her fingertips, Joe told himself, giving himself the thumbs-up sign.
They wouldn’t let her go. When she walked towards Joe, he pushed her back. ‘An encore, love,’ he whispered. ‘You arranged with the pianist for an encore?’
She shook her head, laughing up into his face, cheeks flushed to a wild rose, eyes glittering with a feverish excitement. ‘No piano for this one, Joe. I’m singing this one on me own.’ Slowly she walked back to her place, holding up her hand to stem the clapping. ‘This last one is for my father,’ she said.
And for the first few moments her audience was as stunned and surprised as Joe himself. ‘She’s singing a bleedin’ hymn,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Oh, Clara, love, you’ve done it now!’
The stillness in the room was profound. Not a cough, not a sigh, not a rustle of printed programmes. He saw a woman in a green taffeta dress reach for her husband’s hand; he saw a florid-faced man wipe away a tear; and he felt a tingling in his fingertips. Real genuine star quality was a rare thing. Joe had seen enough of third-rate performances to realize that. His lips moved into their curvaceous smile. There was something in Clara’s voice that reached out and touched even the hardest heart. It was a voice that played on the emotions, seductive without meaning to be, as sensual as a lingering caress.
‘The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended,’ she sang. ‘The darkness falls at thy behest.’
A mother of a son lost on the Somme had tears running unchecked down her powdered cheeks; a businessman with a woman who wasn’t his wife hung his head in momentary shame.
‘Thy Kingdom stands and grows for ever,
Till all Thy creatures own Thy sway …’
The last pure note died away. Clara stood with head bowed, the centre light turning her glorious hair to spun gold. The pianist, a classical musician fallen on hard times, played a surreptitious note as if to convince himself that Clara had ended the five verses as correctly true as he suspected. And the audience, after that drawnout momentary silence, went wild.
In the little anteroom the MC mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. ‘One number,’ he told the scarlet soldiers, ‘that’s all. We’ve overrun our time and they’ll want to get on with the dancing.’ He turned to Joe as the three girls pranced out into the ballroom. ‘If I’d known what your girl was like I’d have put her on last.’ He nodded towards Clara, quietly buttoning up her coat over the dowdy dress. ‘Where did you find her, lad? She had that lot eating out of her hands.’
The loud music and the stamping of dancing feet as the girls went into their routine made him wince as if in pain. ‘Sacrilege putting that lot on after hearing singing like that.’ He peered round the doorway. ‘See, they’re talking amongst themselves, the audience. Not taking a blind bit of notice. Asking each other who she is.’ He fingered a toothbrush moustache. ‘I was over in Russia with the Royal Engineers when the Reds began their revolution in 1918. Slept in the tsar’s palace I did, aye, and saw Pavlova dance. Heard the first guns firing in Petrograd, then ended up on a train to Siberia.’ He straightened his bow tie. ‘Pavlova had the same magic. She danced like that young lass sings, if you know what I mean. She’s a proper singing angel, that’s what she is.’
‘My card,’ Joe said, fishing in his pocket and handing one over. ‘I’m her manager.’ He tapped the card with a forefinger. ‘I’m London-based, but any queries will reach me from there.’ The Singing Angel, he pondered. Not bad. Not at all bad.
Already the three girls were back, the slight spattering of applause dying away to silence. The oldest girl, a bottle blonde with a made-up, haggard face, threw down the baton she’d been twirling round her head in the dance routine and marched straight up to Clara.
‘You little bugger!’ Her voice was tight with uncontrolled anger. ‘You ran over your time on purpose. You knew you was practically cutting us down to nothing. There’s a name for what you are!’ Before Joe could move to stop her, she shot out a hand and gave Clara a stinging slap across the face. ‘Who d’you think you are, singing a bleedin’ hymn for an encore? What d’you think this is? A bleedin’ church?’
‘They wouldn’t have you in a bleedin’ church!’ Tears of shock and outrage filled Clara’s eyes. Joe could see that she was all for having a go. He stepped forward quickly.
‘Naughty, naughty,’ he told the panting girl, wagging a finger in her scarlet face. ‘I was thinking of putting you on my books, but I’ve changed my mind. Sorry.’
‘Professional jealousy, love,’ he told Clara, leading her away, stopping only to accept an envelope from a bemused steward standing by the door. ‘That was your first taste, and it won’t be the last, you mark my words.’
‘Were you really going to put her on your books?’ Clara whispered as they went down the wide staircase leading to the main doors.
‘Wouldn’t have her handed to me on a shovel.’ Joe put an arm round her, grinning down into her troubled face. ‘Back end of a horse in a pantomime, that’s all she’s good for.’ He kissed Clara’s nose, pulling her round to face him for a moment. ‘The rule in this game is never hit back. Dignity is what’s called for. That girl’s been working the clubs for years and she’ll never get no farther – and she knows it. She’s on her way down, and you’re on your way up. Right to the top, my little sweetheart.’
‘Was I all right, Joe?’ Clara asked the question with no intention of fishing for a compliment. ‘I was that scared I never even saw their faces, but they seemed to like me all right. Did you think I was good, Joe?’
‘Not bad, love.’
For the first time in his life Joe West was drunk without having raised an elbow. Stuck in the doldrums for months now, he saw the future opening up like a shining road to wealth and success. He saw the money rolling in; he saw Clara’s name in lights.
‘Your clothes were all wrong, chuck, but we can remedy that.’ He was walking so quickly Clara had to take little running steps to keep up with him. ‘And your name’s all wrong. I can’t see Clara Haydock raising much interest. Too ordinary.’ He pretended to think. ‘How d’you fancy being billed as the Singing Angel? Wearing white. With maybe an ’alo hovering over your nut?’
‘Oh, Joe …’ The indignity of the little scene in the anteroom forgotten, Clara’s infectious laugh rang out. ‘I’m not wearing no ’alo. I’d look a right pi
e-can in an ’alo.’ Her voice faltered. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about, Joe. You’ll be gone soon, and I’ll be back at work on Monday, same as ever.’
‘Nothing’s going to be the same as ever.’ They were outside the clogger’s shop by now, and Joe swung her round to face him. ‘You’re not going to work on Monday. You’re never going to work in that basement dungeon again.’ Tipping his trilby to the back of his head, he stared up at the navy blue sky. ‘From now on you’re working for me, Joe West, theatrical agent and talent scout. You’ll have a fur coat, and diamond rings on your fingers. We’ll stop in posh hotels and send down in the middle of the night for a potted-meat buttie. You’ll never blacklead a fireplace nor scrub a table again. You’ll have a maid to brush your hair and another one to paint your fingernails red.’ Pushing open the door, he held it wide and bowed. ‘An’ your toenails, Miss Haydock, if you’ve a mind.’
Holding her hand, he led her through the shop, empty now apart from the scarred bench, the counter and Seth’s three-legged stool, into the little back living room. ‘What’s wrong with the gas, love?’ He came and took the box of matches from Clara’s hand. ‘Why are you messing about with candles?’
‘Because candles are cheaper than gas.’ Clara set the candlestick before him. ‘You can go when you’ve lit that, Joe West. It’s late, and people’ll talk if they’ve seen you coming in with me when it’s gone dark. Mrs Davis at the top end misses nowt.’
Joe put the candlestick down on the table. In its soft glow, lighting Clara’s face from below, she seemed to him the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Her eyes were big and yet uptilted at the corners, her mouth had a sensual droop to it, and her neck was so slender he felt he could have encircled it with one hand.
When he kissed her she clung to him. Because he was Joe, and because she loved him. As the kiss deepened, a fear took hold of her and she struggled, only to have his arms press her against him so that she felt the hardness of his body all down the softness of her own.
‘You belong to me now,’ he whispered into her hair. ‘I’m going to look after you, and be with you, and love you.’ He brought his face round to look into her eyes. ‘An’ the loving’s going to start right now.’
This time when he kissed her she stayed quietly in his arms. There was no response, but no resistance either. At first, when he urged her towards the bottom of the stairs, she pulled back, but he held her face in his hands, trailed his lips round her eyes, down her cheeks, lingering before he covered her mouth again. The fear was still there as they climbed the stairs, but he was Joe, wasn’t he? Nothing Joe did to her could do her harm. He had said he would make her into a star, but he was her star, the one bright star in her life. Where Joe was there was warmth and laughter, always had been, and always would be.
She trembled as he urged her over towards the bed. It had been a strange night, a mixture of terror and elation. Singing in front of an audience like that had made her feel happier than she’d felt for a long time. It was still there, that feeling, glowing inside her as he undressed her, tossing the atrocious black dress from him in a crumpled heap on the floor.
When he slid into bed beside her, she crept into his arms the way a child would creep into a loving father’s arms after a bad dream. All she wanted was to be held, to have the fear and the loneliness of the past months soothed from her heart and mind. She was being a bad girl, but where had being good got her?
‘Oh, Joe,’ she whispered. ‘I do luv you.’
He felt her tears on his own cheeks as he took her and when she cried out, what passed for his conscience made him draw back for a split second. But it was too late, and when her arms came round his back a fierce exultation took possession of him. She was his; little Clara Haydock had always been his, and he would make her happy if it was the last thing he did.
‘You’re crying, Joe,’ she whispered when it was over. ‘Don’t be sorry. I’m not.’ Lifting a finger, she wiped away a tear from his cheek. ‘We’ll get married now, won’t we? An’ you can come an’ live here with me an’ never go away again.’
‘With me mam across the street, and you going out to work till I find myself a steady job?’
She missed the heavy sarcasm in his voice. ‘Yes! Oh, Joe, we’ll be so happy.’
Her long hair was across his face. He twined his fingers in its silky weight. ‘We’ll be happy, chuck. But not in that way.’ He raised himself on an elbow. ‘Weren’t you listening when I told you things were going to be different? Starting on Monday, they’re going to be so different you’ll wonder how you ever lived like this.’ He stared round the room, lit to vague shadows by a drifting moon seen through the square of window. ‘We can’t stop here, love. This house gives me the creeps.’
‘Where will we go, Joe?’ Her voice was thick, on the very edge of sleep. She was only a child, his troublesome conscience told him, and long after she slept in his arms he lay awake, hearing in his imagination the tap-tap of a hammer from the shop below as the ghost of Seth Haydock plied his trade. He saw in his fevered imagination the thickset man sitting on his stool, holding the nails in his mouth, and he saw himself as a small boy sliding up and down the long bench, waiting for his clogs to be mended before he could go to school.
He saw, too, his mother across the street, old before her time, worn out with worry and sorrows, still living in an overcrowded house with a future before her as bleak as the moors not all that far away.
‘We’re getting out of here,’ he whispered to the sleeping girl, then, accepting that sleep for him was impossible, he gently moved himself to the edge of the bed, sat up and lit a cigarette, smoking the next hour away as he made his plans.
The man sitting in the second row of the stalls in the cold and empty theatre that Monday morning tipped his hat to the back of his head and flipped Joe’s business card with the tip of a finger.
‘So you say, dear boy, so you say. But what else can she do apart from sing?’ He glanced at the card. ‘Mr West?’
‘She doesn’t need to do nothing else.’ Joe jerked his head in Clara’s direction where she waited with head bowed in the aisle. ‘Just give her a chance, Mr Boland. She’s got a voice that could wring a tear from a spud’s eye. You’ve heard nothing like it.’ He spoke in a whisper. ‘There’s an opening for her in London, but she’s a young girl and her family are set against her going.’ He winked. ‘She’s a singing angel in every way, if you get me. Pure, like her voice.’ The nervous grin lifted the high cheekbones. ‘She’s different, Mr Boland. Not a common bone in her body. You can see that just by looking at her … She’s no Gertrude Lawrence and she’s no Evelyn Lave.’ He spoke as if he knew them personally. ‘But she’s one on her own, Mr Boland, an’ that’s just what the customer wants.’
As Clara waited, a feeling of panic attacking every nerve, for this important man to speak she studied him from beneath lowered eyelashes. It was a strong face, and yet fine-featured, with the width of the broad forehead made more pronounced by the fact that the brown hair had already begun to recede. The bushy moustache was to make him look older, she guessed, but the bright blue eyes were what scared her most. The vivid colour of bluebells, they were staring at her now, seeming to see right through her, as lazy and condescending as his cultured voice.
‘Two minutes,’ he said wearily. ‘And she’d better be good.’
The stage was bigger and dirtier than Clara had imagined it would be. The rows of empty tip-up chairs seemed to stretch into infinity, and the pianist, a small man with a cigarette stuck to his bottom lip, was playing her music much too fast. Vamping with his left hand, he crouched over the keyboard like a tiger about to spring.
‘Slowly. More slowly!’ Had she shouted the words or were they just in her head? It was too late anyroad. Joe was glaring at her, nodding with his head to show her to get on with it, and Mr Boland had tipped his hat back over his eyes as though he deemed it a good time to have a quick kip. Clara hated him so much at that moment she could feel the e
motion pricking under her skin like fine needles.
That man at the piano was crucifying her song. In a fever of anxiety Clara flapped her hand at him, but he was playing the introduction as if possessed. Jazzing it up so that it was hardly recognizable.
Joe had chosen the song for her. He’d told her that its plaintive melody and sliding rhythm suited her voice perfectly. It was by an American called Jerome Kern, Joe had told her, rehearsing her until she was word perfect.
‘Look for the silver lining,’ she sang, her liquid voice seeming to linger and caress each phrase, ‘when e’er a cloud appears in the blue …’
She was actually gabbling in a vain attempt to keep up with the chain-smoking man at the piano thumping away crouched low over the keyboard, smoke wreathing him as if he sat in the middle of a cloud. He was enjoying himself immensely. He liked this tune and remembered playing it in pantomime at Birmingham the previous year for a chorus line of girls with grey clouds on their backs and yellow suns on their fronts, tap-dancing through their routine.
‘A heart full of joys and gladness …’ he played, going tiddly-boom, tiddly-boom, tiddly-boom-boom-boom with his left hand, hearing in his memory the tap-tap of the steel tips on the girls’ shoes as they shimmied towards the footlights.
Down in the stalls Joe turned angrily to Bart Boland slumped down in his tip seat, the hat pushed back now to reveal the blue blue eyes dancing with amusement. But before Joe could open his mouth to point out the obvious, Clara, almost beside herself with nerves and frustration, wheeled round on her heels, hands on hips, to face the pianist still belting away with eyes closed.