by Marie Joseph
‘Stop it! Stop it! Slow flamin’ down and play it proper!’
She screamed so loud that the pianist’s head jerked up, dislodging the stub of his cigarette, which fell on his knees. He knocked it away with a fierce slicing motion, then looked down into the stalls for further instructions.
Bart Boland’s eyebrows ascended almost to his receding hairline. Sitting bolt upright in his seat, he let out a sudden shout of laughter.
‘What’s funny?’ Walking quickly to the edge of the vast stage, Clara’s green eyes blazed down into the auditorium. ‘I’m a singer, not a bleedin’ racehorse!’
She looked so comical standing up there all alone, the long golden hair tucked out of sight beneath a hat shaped like a chamber pot, Bart Boland was reminded for a second of a young Gracie Fields. Putting his arms on the seat in front of his own, he leaned forward.
‘Can you kick, love?’
‘Kick what?’ Clara’s paddy was up good and proper. Joe closed his eyes in despair. ‘Him, for example?’ She jerked her head towards the man at the piano busily lighting yet another cigarette. ‘Oh, aye, I’ll kick him ’ard if you ask me to. Stupid pie can that he is!’
Bart was enjoying himself. Never before had he been cheeked by a young girl at an audition. ‘Take your hat off, love.’ His quiet voice had the ring of authority, and obeying automatically Clara snatched off the hat, dislodging hairpins so that her long white-gold hair fell shining almost to her waist.
Joe felt rather than heard the older man’s indrawn breath of surprise. He relaxed, telling himself they were almost home and dry.
‘Now lift up your skirt.’ Bart made a movement with his right hand. ‘There’s a good girl.’
‘What for?’ Clara stared down at her skirt, worn longer than was fashionable and made for a much taller girl, Joe guessed. He closed his eyes again.
‘So that I can see your legs, love.’ Bart’s tone was all sweet reason. ‘I just want to see their shape.’
‘I don’t sing with ’em, do I?’ All of Clara’s strict Methodist upbringing was in the scorn of her reply. ‘My father used to tell me about men like you.’
The moustache twitched a little ‘So she doesn’t dance?’ With studied insolence Bart Boland glanced at Joe’s card again. ‘Mr West?’
‘No, I don’t dance.’ Clara answered for Joe. ‘I sing to a proper accompaniment. When I get the chance. Covered up decent!’
‘Take her away.’ Bart waved a languid hand. ‘And the next time you present her for an audition, make sure it’s for the heavenly choir.’ And with that he stood up and walked away up the long aisle to the exit doors at the back of the theatre, his hands in the pockets of his trenchcoat and the trilby hat pulled low over his forehead.
Joe watched him go. The pianist watched him go, before shrugging his shoulders and disappearing into the shadows of the wings, leaving a trail of smoke behind him. Clara stood alone on the vast stage, with Joe looking up at her, a thunderous expression on his face.
The row started the minute they were back inside the house. It would have begun before that but Joe was so blazing mad he marched ahead, striding out and kicking an empty cigarette packet so hard it landed on the opposite pavement.
Clara stood by the table in the back living room, arms folded as she glared at Joe. So he was mad. Then let him be. Clara reckoned she’d been the one badly done to that morning. She decided attack was her best defence.
‘How dare that man with a hearthbrush under his nose ask to see my legs?’ She tore at the buttons on her coat in such a fury it was a wonder they didn’t pop off. ‘What would’ve come next if he’d liked them? Me dad told me about wicked men like him. Men like him lead innocent girls into a life of vice, and sometimes they can end up with no nose!’
‘God Almighty!’ Joe clenched both hands and beat the air in front of him. ‘Have you any idea just who that man with a hearthbrush under his nose is? Have you any idea who his father was?’ He gripped the table edge hard as if he needed the support. ‘Bart Boland’s father started his career by sweeping the stage at the Palace in Oldham. Some say he ended up the most powerful manager in all the country, not far behind Mr Cochran. And his son, his son Bart, mark you well, doesn’t need to sit in some crumby theatre listening to nobodies like you, Clara Haydock. He’s got far better things to do with his time.’
‘Why did he then?’ Clara was beginning to feel scared. She’d seen Joe angry many times before, but his anger had never been directed at her. She began to bluster. ‘Him with his posh voice! He insulted me. What would’ve come next if he’d decided he liked me legs? Would he have asked me to take me blouse off so he could have a dekko at me bosoms?’
‘You silly ignorant little sod!’ Joe drew back his hand and hit Clara a resounding slap across her face. ‘Don’t you realize? Are you too stupid to understand what you did? Mr High and Mighty Boland doesn’t come up here all that often. Not him. He’s got a bloody great mansion in Cumberland, as well as a flat in London. He’s loaded, our kid. Filthy rich. An’ he won’t be back to this godforsaken hole for a long time to come.’ Joe actually beat his forehead with his clenched fists. ‘Oh, my God! Chancing on him here this morning was the best stroke of luck I’ve had in years. Bart Boland has his pick of the best! He’s turned down more singers than you’ve had hot dinners, and you just stood there ticking him off! You’re finished, Clara Haydock. Finished before you’ve started.’ He thrust his face close to hers. ‘An’ what about me? He’ll class me with you, now. He never forgets, Bart Boland doesn’t. Got a memory as long as a mill chimney, he has.’
The slap had shocked Clara into silence. Joe was staring at her as though he hated her, and when he suddenly let out a bark of a laugh with no mirth in it, she shuddered. When he took hold of her wrist and drew her to him, she didn’t resist.
‘God Almighty!’ he shouted, and she could see a nerve jumping just beneath his right eye. ‘You really take the biscuit! Bart Boland wasn’t after your bloody virtue. He wouldn’t touch the likes of you with a barge pole. Your head’s filled with rubbish, put there by them mealy-mouthed Methodists singing their bloody heads off every Sunday at the top of the street.’ He began to twist her wrist viciously. ‘A girl doesn’t have to be on the stage to be a wrong ’un. Like I said, Bart Boland wouldn’t touch you if you came gift-wrapped in cellophane.’
‘But you did!’ Clara was weeping with pain and rage by now. ‘You slept with me just so I’d go for that audition.’ Her eyes swam with tears. ‘An’ now I could be having a baby. Sins have to be paid for, Joe West. An’ I’ll pay for what I did, that’s for sure.’
Her nose was running as well as her eyes, and Joe looked at her with something approaching contempt. The bright perky little Clara he loved had disappeared, leaving this ignorant snivelling child, her head filled with religious nonsense.
‘You won’t have a baby,’ he told her slowly, letting go of her wrist. ‘I took care of that. I’ve never slipped up yet.’
‘Oh!’ Clara rubbed her wrist, glaring at him through tear-drenched eyes. ‘An’ did you love all them others as well? Did you promise them you’d marry them and take them away to a better life?’
‘No!’ Joe’s temper was up again. ‘No, no and no!’
‘Why not, then?’
He was going to say because he didn’t love them, but he knew she wouldn’t believe him. She was like all the others, clinging, demanding, wanting to be the only one, to possess him body and soul.
‘Look,’ he said warily, feeling the anger seep from him, leaving in its place his usual devil-may-care acceptance of the way things were. ‘We’re not getting anywhere like this. You have a lot of growing up to do yet. Ban Boland was right when he said your place was in a heavenly choir. You’re so steeped in religion you can’t think straight.’ He stared round the almost bare shabby room. ‘If this is all you want, then there’s nothing more I can do.’ Reaching for his wallet he took out a wad of pound notes and flung them on the table. ‘I’ve got a j
ob to see to down south, but I’ll be back, and when I come back maybe, just maybe you’ll have come to your senses.’
She couldn’t believe it. He was going away again. He had said he loved her, had held her close and made love to her, but he was still the same Joe. No integrity, her father had said. For a moment she saw her father’s face as he warned her about the West boys. ‘Charm and nowt else,’ Seth had said. ‘Break your heart as soon as look at you.’ Her body was shaking with the sobs she couldn’t control, but with as much dignity as she could muster she picked up the pound notes and held them out to Joe.
‘I won’t be needing these,’ she said. ‘What is it for? Payment for what I let you do?’
‘You little she-devil!’ Now his anger was back. Knocking the notes from her hand he scattered them over the floor. ‘Right, then! Get down on your knees, Clara, and see where prayers will get you. Go back to that job of yours, which about pays the rent if I guess right. Go up to the chapel at the top and see if any of them Bible-thumping Methodists will put a hand in their pocket to make sure you have enough to eat.’ Suddenly he relented. ‘I’ll be back, Clara. When you’ve come to your senses and stopped acting like a baby, I’ll be back.’
When the outer door had slammed behind him she gathered up the pound notes. It would have been a good feeling to throw them on the sluggish fire and watch the flames curl round their edges. For a whole minute she hesitated, then remembering the terrible three days she’d existed on stale bread and water from the tap, she reached up to the mantelpiece and tucked them safely behind the clock.
If she could have lied and said she’d been ill it would have perhaps been all right. But a lifetime of being conditioned to tell the truth no matter what forced her to explain to her boss that she had taken the day off to attend an audition.
‘All day?’ he asked. ‘It took all day?’
Clara shook her head. ‘I didn’t think it worth coming in the afternoon,’ she confessed, biting her lips as she thought about the long afternoon spent sitting in her father’s rocking chair, half listening for the sound of Joe opening the front door and coming through into the little back room, holding out his arms and asking for her forgiveness.
She knew that her boss, a dry stick of a man with hair the colour of dead ashes, had a granddaughter just left school. The girl had been down in the basement room once or twice lately, hindering rather than helping, marvelling at the speed at which Clara worked, trying to emulate her, then pushing her fringe back and laughing when she failed miserably.
‘I’m afraid we had to fill your position, Miss Haydock.’ The grey eyebrows were as domed as a church archway. ‘Work can’t be held up while you fancy yourself as Nellie Wallace.’
‘But for all you knew I might have been ill!’ Clara stuttered over the injustice. ‘You wouldn’t have known where I’d been if I hadn’t told you!’
‘The position is filled.’
He had the grace to turn away and, as Clara opened her mouth to speak, the young girl with the fringe came up from the basement, carrying a pile of circulars which slipped from her grasp as she negotiated the curve of the stone steps. Spreading like a fan, the thin sheets of paper spattered, sliding down the basement steps to lie disordered in untidy heaps.
Why, Clara thought with a quick return of pride, I could’ve carried a pile three times that high and never dropped one. The natural good manners, so carefully taught by Seth, dictated that she should at least offer to help pick them up, but remembering the years she had slaved down in that basement room, stopping on without a penny overtime, acting as errand boy, manning the little front office while her bosses had their dinner, brought a flush to her cheeks and the sparkle back to her eyes.
‘I’ll have me cards, if you don’t mind,’ she said haughtily, making for the front office. Treading on one of the flimsy sheets of headed paper. On purpose.
Eight
BART BOLAND CAME from a wealthy Cumberland family. His father, Amos Boland, had been bitterly disappointed when, after a promising career in the Household Cavalry, his son had gone determinedly into theatre management.
‘It’s in the blood, after all,’ Bart had said. ‘Look what you did when Grandfather left you all his money. You went and invested the lot in the running of the Empire Music Hall. Wasn’t it at Northampton? There were so many I’ve lost count.’ He punched his father on the shoulder. ‘Come on, Dad. You know I can’t go on playing soldiers all my life.’
Now, at the age of thirty-seven, accepting no favours, Bart had worked his way up to become managing director of no less than four theatrical companies.
On the day when Clara sang for him he was trying his best to fight off a crippling depression. His wife had refused yet again to travel down to London with him, saying she must stay with their two children. And that on no consideration would she bring them to London to live away from the wide acres of farmland in which their red-brick house was set.
‘Go back to your chorus girls,’ she’d told him after a blistering row. ‘They mean more to you than I do, even though I believe you when you say you’ve kept faithful to me. But it’s only a matter of time,’ she added. ‘I’m nobody’s fool.’
As well as the slow but sure deterioration of his marriage, Bart saw the slow but sure demise of the music hall. One by one theatres were being turned into picture palaces. The new and popular revues he saw as merely mindless stopgaps in the decline of variety.
But in spite of his depression, Bart could still spot genuine and rare talent. It was said that his long nose quivered when his interest was aroused.
And no one could have guessed the extent of his interest on that Monday morning when the young Clara Haydock, in the guise of the Singing Angel, had lost her temper on the stage and shouted her disgust.
The trouble was in finding her. Bart regretted tearing up Joe West’s business card, even though it wasn’t Joe he wanted to see. He’d known more Joe Wests in his time than was good for his incipient ulcer. In his opinion the Joe Wests of the world came like cardboard cutouts, identical in their greed and grasping ambition.
He hadn’t got where he was without using what they called in the north his ‘loaf’, however, so when his Bentley drew up outside the clogger’s shop he tapped his driver on the shoulder.
‘Be a good chap and see those kids across the street don’t climb on the bonnet. I don’t expect to be long.’
He stood on the flagstones, bare-headed in the rain, waiting none too patiently for his knock to be answered, only to step back in surprise when the door was flung open to reveal a girl with sparkling green eyes, obviously all set to hurl herself into his arms.
‘I thought you was Joe!’ Clara stared at Bart in dismay. ‘He said he’d come back, so I thought it was him.’
Recovering herself quickly, she held the door wide and invited him in, staring in amazement at the shiny black car standing at the kerb. ‘I’m sorry I was rude to you yesterday,’ she told him as she led the way through the almost empty shop. ‘But that man playing the piano did ask forrit, you know.’
Bart was enchanted. She was talking to him as an equal again, and they were, God dammit, they were. Snobbishness Bart had never been able to tolerate. She was even more stunningly beautiful than he remembered. She’d been crying, that much was obvious, but there was a proud tilt to her head and a glint in her eyes that showed she wasn’t out for the count, not by a long way.
‘May I sit down?’ His voice was low and courteous, with no trace of the wide vowels of his northern upbringing.
Education, Clara thought, indicating her father’s old rocking chair. That was what education did for a person. Monkey-quick, she picked up the rhythm of his speech.
‘Make yourself comfortable, Mr Boland,’ she said. There was a tiny seed of hope inside her, but she wasn’t going to count no chickens, not yet awhile. Not before he’d said what he’d a mind to.
‘Your manager?’ Bart’s eyes twinkled. ‘I hope he won’t mind my dealing with you dire
ct?’
‘He won’t know, sir.’ Clara’s green eyes twinkled right back at him. ‘I give him the sack yesterday.’
‘Did you, indeed?’ Bart had seen a lot of poverty in his travels round the country, but never anything approaching the desolation and bareness of this small back room. Real poverty had a special smell to it, a kind of lingering sweetness in the air, as if a corpse had been left to rot beneath the floorboards. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. She was so young, this child, so painfully thin, with her waist no bigger than a hand’s span and her great green eyes shadowed as if she hadn’t slept for weeks. And wasn’t that surely a bruise on her cheek with a tiny cut on the cheekbone as if from a signet ring? The blue eyes hardened.
‘I’ll come straight to the point, Miss Haydock. I didn’t feel you had a fair hearing yesterday.’
‘Steve Donoghue on the piano?’
‘Precisely.’ Bart hid a smile, stroking his moustache. ‘In spite of the galloping major at the piano, I did get a decided impression that you have a voice.’
Clara nodded eagerly. No point in false modesty if the little seed of hope inside her was going to germinate.
‘I’m the best singer round hereabouts. An’ the loudest if I want to be.’ She twitched at the neck of the outdoor coat she wore to keep out the cold. ‘I’ll sing for you now, sir, if you want.’
Startled, Bart inclined his head. ‘I’d like that very much, my dear.’
So, clasping her hands in front of her, standing perfectly still on the threadbare oilcloth, Clara lifted her head and sang.
‘Moonlight and roses …’ The lovely melody rose and fell as Clara sang with no trace of embarrassment, each sighing note pure and true. ‘Bring memories of you,’ she ended, drooping her head as if anticipating a thunder of applause.
‘Thank you, my dear.’
The tingle down his spine that Bart never ignored was there strongly now. For a moment he was stuck for words. This girl was a natural. Not a Gertrude Lawrence; not a Gracie Fields; not even a young Jessie Matthews, for whom he predicted great things. This girl was unique. His quick glance took in the terrible room. She was like a flower on a muck midden, he thought, shaking his head.