by Marie Joseph
‘If there isn’t a real birthday girl or boy in the audience, we plant one,’ he’d told Clara. ‘And nobody’s ever cottoned on to the fact that the cake’s made of cardboard.’
Miserably, Clara gloomed out to sea. ‘Matty says I should be in opera.’
‘He could be right at that, chuck.’
Dora wasn’t being deliberately unkind. It wasn’t in her nature, but for the first time in her long career she was doubting the wisdom of her beloved Mr Boland. This small girl, in spite of her startling beauty and unusual singing voice, didn’t fit.
‘I saw Archie Pitt’s show, last summer.’ Dora’s boot-button eyes regarded Clara steadily. ‘Mr Tower of London, it’s called. I don’t suppose you’ve seen it, chuck? No, well, never mind. Anyway, there’s an actress in it called Gracie Fields,’ Dora continued mercilessly. ‘She has a fine voice, too, but as well as singing she takes part in the sketches, and clowns and ad-libs. She’s versatile, chuck, in other words.’
‘And I’m not?’
‘Well, hardly, chuck.’
‘An’ you think they’ll boo me off the stage when we open tonight?’
Oblivious of the panic in Clara’s voice, Dora nodded. ‘They might at that. Maybe if you moved around the stage a bit? Put some actions in?’
The professional side of Dora’s nature had taken her over completely. Constructive criticism was food and drink to a real pro anyway. Why, she’d had her own act changed many a time, with only an hour to curtain call. Suddenly, to Clara’s horror, there on the promenade, with holidaymakers walking up and down, she whipped a scarf from round her throat, lowered it to her hips and proceeded to wiggle.
All that was puritanical in Clara’s nature came out in her voice. ‘Dora! People are staring!’
Holding the scarf at arm’s length, Dora pirouetted round it, blowing kisses at a startled man in tweed plus-fours. ‘It’s not a bit of good standing there like a stick of celery looking for the salt. Folks on their holidays come for a laugh, for a good night out, with a pretty girl’s figure to ogle at.’ Throwing back her head so that the three chins did their disappearing act, she proclaimed in a ringing voice, ‘The Folly Theatre of Varieties, Peter Street, Manchester. Eighteen eighty-three. Miss Dora Vane, appearing with Dan Leno, Lottie Collins and Marie Lloyd! That was me, folks!’
Clara felt as if her whole body was one big blush. She tried to catch hold of Dora’s arm. ‘Please, Dora! People are laughing at you!’
‘I’ve got it!’ Swinging round, Dora faced the sea, holding out her short arms as if to embrace the waves. ‘This is what you should be singing tonight. A song with a bit of oomph in it.’ Her voice, the rattle of cockleshells in a tin can, wheezed across the sand dunes:
‘Yes, sir, that’s my baby,
No, sir, don’t mean maybe,
Yes, sir, that’s my baby nee-ow …’
A small semicircle of fascinated onlookers had gathered, and suddenly Clara could stand no more. By the time she had reached the foot of the stone steps leading down to the sands, Dora had turned to face her audience.
‘By the way, by the way,
When we reach the preacher I’ll say …’
Her raucous voice followed Clara, who ran as if pursued by devils across the stretch of clean golden sand riffled up into hard ridges by the receding tide. It was painful to her feet; she felt every undulation through the thin soles of her boots, but undaunted she ran on.
Dora might be a professional through and through, but Clara was not. What fragile confidence she had possessed in her own talent had gone, squeezed out of her like air from a pricked balloon. Whatever had made her think she was good enough to face an audience of hard-headed northerners? The audience tonight would be a far cry from the kindly neighbours sitting in their pews at the chapel, sending out waves of sympathy and encouragement to a local girl they’d known since she was big enough to play hopscotch on the flags outside her father’s shop. The audience tonight couldn’t be compared, either, to the Masonic ladies and gentlemen soothed into responsiveness by a five-course meal and top-price brandy.
A stick of celery? Singing ‘The Old Rugged Cross’? Wearing a dress like a nightie, and without a single wiggle to raise a laugh?
Oh God, dear God, the Father of the Jesus she had once imagined lived in the chapel at the top of the street. Clara’s cry was a prayer. Was He there, this God of her childhood, somewhere out across the wide stretch of shimmering sea? If she asked Him nicely, would they like her tonight? Was a voice without a wiggle no good at all? What would she do if they booed her off the stage? Where could she go?
And where was Joe, who had started it all? Was Mr Boland wrong and Joe right? Was she a fraud, a nowt? And if Joe came back now, this minute, running towards her across the sands with his cheeky grin, would this terrible fear leave her as he took her in his arms? Joe had said the sea was big and wet, and he’d been right about that!
Clara cried her terror aloud. ‘Oh, stop thinking about a man you know is no good! Stop pretending you love him! You’re not Joe’s girl, an’ you never have been. You’re on your own, Clara Haydock, an’ you’ve just got to make them like you tonight, because if they don’t then you’re finished!’
The water was lapping round her feet; the far horizon gleamed like a silver ribbon. A seagull swooped and wheeled, but she felt and heard nothing.
Turning round she walked slowly back; even raised a hand in greeting when Dora called her name in a voice that would have put a foghorn to shame.
‘What’s wrong with her?’
Standing in the wings that night, Matty Shaw faced Dora Vane, his face beneath its layer of greasepaint tight with disbelief.
‘Why isn’t she singing the song she was supposed to sing? What the ’ell’s got into her? She’s murdering it! Oh, God, they’ll murder her!’
Already the audience, faces burned brick red by the sun and wind, were fidgeting in their seats, nudging each other, actually laughing out loud.
‘Oh, my God!’ Matty covered his eyes with his hands. ‘What is she trying to do with that awful red feather boa? They think she’s a stripper!’
‘Baby, won’t you please come home?’ sang Clara, tripping first to one side of the stage, with the spotlight desperately trying to keep up with her. And missing.
‘’Cause your mamma’s all alone …’ She beckoned coyly as if to an unseen lover, and the rowdier element in the audience began the slow handclap.
The glorious voice, pitched far too high, rose in a wail of despair. An orange, neatly fielded by the violinist in the orchestra pit, convulsed the, by now, almost hysterical audience.
‘The curtain!’ Matty, making frantic signs, wheeled on Dora in fury. ‘This is your doing, you dimwitted has-been! I wondered what you were doing coming down so early.’ Almost purple with rage, he waved both arms at the prompt side. ‘The curtain, for God’s sake! Get her off!’
‘Now you just stop that and listen to me!’
Five minutes later he was down on his knees by Clara’s side in the bleak dressing room with its row of empty firebuckets lined up against the wall. His voice was so gentle and tender that Clara’s noisy tears flowed afresh.
‘Do you know what young Mr Boland would have done if he’d come into the theatre in time to hear you killing a song that was all wrong for you in the first place?’
‘He’d’ve sent me packing. After he’d admitted he’d made a terrible mistake in giving me a chance.’ Clara’s head drooped so that her hair fell forward, hiding her face completely.
The old comedian’s fish-flat eyes filled with pity. ‘He made no mistake, love. Mr Boland’s too canny and hard-headed to make that kind of mistake. He wanted you to sing your own kind of song, in the way you sing, without embellishments …’ Matty snatched the red feather boa from the back of Clara’s chair and hurled it to the far corner. ‘He knows you are different, so different that folks sit up and take notice.’
He talked to the top of Clara’s head, knowing she
was listening, praying she was taking heed.
‘Pretty girls who sing and dance are two-a-penny in this business. Mimics are two-a-penny. Bum wigglers are two-a-penny.’ He said the word deliberately, knowing it would shock and, sure enough, Clara lifted her head. ‘But beautiful girls with special singing voices don’t exactly grow on trees. There’s a freshness about you that catches the throat. A goodness.’
Turning to Dora hovering guiltily behind him, Matty’s voice hardened. ‘And you ought to be down on those rheumaticky knees of yours begging this lass’s forgiveness. Aye, and Mr Boland’s as well, because if he ever hears of your flamin’ interference you’ll be the one sent packing.’
‘He’s right, chuck.’ Dora’s chins wobbled with the force of her emotion. ‘I was trying to turn you into another Dora Vane. You don’t realize that, but Matty does.’ She clasped Clara’s shoulder with a heavy hand. ‘It’s the nineteen twenties now; they want a straight delivery, no playing to the gallery.’ She exchanged a nod with Matty. ‘And that’s what you’re going to do. You’re going on in the second house and you’re going to put your own song over the way Mr Boland told you to. No moving, no nothing.’ The fingers pressed hard into Clara’s shoulder. ‘For my sake, love. For old Dora’s sake, chuck.’
‘Never!’ The green eyes were wide and staring with sheer terror. ‘I’d rather die! I don’t belong. Mr Boland was wrong.’ She stared wildly round the dingy room. ‘Even he can be wrong sometimes, I bet. I’m going to go back to me digs, then in the morning I’m going to catch the first train home. I’m engaged,’ she improvised. ‘I’ll be getting married soon.’
The sympathy on Matty’s broad face disappeared as quickly as if someone had taken an india rubber to it. Reaching out, he hauled Clara to her feet.
‘You’ve heard of Charlie Chaplin? ’Course you have. Well, you listen to me, me girl! He didn’t walk straight into a solo spot like you. Not him. Dancing in the street to a barrel organ was the way he got started. Took a part in a pantomime playing a dog, Charlie did. No spotlight for Mr Chaplin.’ Matty shook Clara none too gently. ‘You listening? Played your home town in 1903, and what as? A page in a two-bit play, and a wolf in Peter Pan two years later. Years and years of taking any part before he made it big in America. And you imagine he’s got where he is without getting the bird?’
Wrenching her hands from Matty’s horny grasp, Clara made for the door, only to bump into seven girls of the chorus shedding feathers as they went, screaming for Dora to help them change into their costumes for the next routine.
This time Matty made sure. Holding Clara by both arms pinioned to her sides, he thrust his sweating face into hers.
‘You give up and Mr Boland’ll want to know why. He’s a good man till he’s crossed, and when he finds out, Dora’ll have to go.’ He twisted Clara round so she could see Dora feverishly buttoning a redhaired dancer into a sequinned catsuit. ‘And where will she go? To the workhouse? The country’s littered with old timers like Dora, starving on account of dedicating their lives to the theatre. Bloody starving, Clara. Is that what you’d do to her?’
‘Mr Boland wouldn’t do that.’ But even as she protested Clara remembered Bart Boland’s penetrating blue gaze and suspected that Matty was speaking the truth. From somewhere inside her bruised heart she dredged up the remnants of her courage.
‘All right, then,’ she said slowly. ‘I’ll try again. Just this once. For Dora.’
Clara’s solo spot was just before the interval. The act preceding hers was a trio of girl contortionists, scantily dressed, who twisted their lithe bodies into unlikely positions. They weren’t meant to be funny, but the second-house audience, determined to enjoy themselves or bust, laughed uproariously. When one girl actually managed to sit on her own head, a man from the circle shouted, ‘Oo’s got a filleted backside!’, provoking the audience into delighted laughter.
Standing in the wings, Dora turned to a whey-faced Matty. ‘God help the poor little lass,’ she whispered. ‘They’re out for blood tonight.’
Tripping off, the girls made straight for the dressing rooms. ‘It’s a bullfight that lot should be watching. Ignorant devils.’
Delaying her entrance to the last possible minute, Clara walked slowly out of the shadows of the wings, her eyes fixed, as if she stared at some distant horizon.
Silently Dora and Matty watched her move into the centre spotlight. In the pit the conductor took up his baton. The pianist played the opening chords, stopped, played them again, then swivelled round on his stool with a questioning expression on his face.
‘She’s dried.’ Matty’s whisper was a moan. ‘Oh, dear God, she can’t find her voice.’
Sheer blinding terror held Clara in its grip. Her heart was pounding so loudly and unevenly she felt she must surely die. Frantically she turned towards the wings and saw the easel by the footlights with ‘The Clogger’s Child’ printed on the board in large letters.
She clenched her hands so tightly the nails dug into her palms. ‘The Clogger’s Child’. That’s who she was. Little Clara Haydock who had been able to sing almost before she could talk. Clara with the godgiven voice. Hadn’t her father once told her that?
Suddenly her vision cleared. She saw the dim shapes of heads, the white blur of faces upturned. Waiting to diminish her. Just biding their time to show their contempt.
Her head lifted, the green eyes blazed, and pure and clear her glorious voice poured out.
For the first few bars the audience were obviously startled into submission. Was this what they’d paid good money to see and hear? A slip of a girl in a white frock singing a flamin’ sacred song? The joker in the circle leaped to his feet, only to be dragged back by his companion.
‘Give ’er a chance, mate. Just pipe bloody down, will you?’
‘So I’ll cling to the old rugged cross …’ Every word distinct, every note as pure as rainwater. The quiet after the storm. Still serenity after the noise and colour that had gone before. Not a rustle, not a movement. From the front stalls right up to the gods where the audience sat on wooden seats. The music soaring, dying, caressing, then rising again. Memories of mothers humming the same words as they rocked in their chairs by the fire. Gramophones wound up, the needle lowered onto the record. Sunday afternoon tea of bread and jam and fatty-cake spiced with currants.
‘And exchange it one day for a crown …’
In the wings Dora and Matty leaned on each other, overcome by emotion.
‘Mr Boland was right.’
‘He’s always right. I deserve to be shot.’
Clara came off, bemused by the thunderous applause, to be pressed to Dora’s scented bosom.
‘Go back, chuck. Hold out your arms to them, then curtsey low.’
‘But like Mr Boland said, no encore.’ Matty wagged a finger in Clara’s flushed face. ‘Keep ’em shouting for more.’
‘Oh, my God!’ Dora’s face was as purple as the chiffon pussy-cat bow at her throat. ‘They’re giving her a standing ovation!’
Blackpool, Burnley, Bolton, Warrington, Wigan and Manchester. Six towns in as many weeks, with Remember Me often showing the ‘House Full’ sign.
The small company travelled by train each Sunday afternoon, each member carrying his own props and costumes as well as personal belongings. Wherever they went Dora took Clara with her to share a room, and more often than not a bed.
‘This sweetheart of yours? The one you said you was engaged to. Funny he’s never once turned up to see the show.’ Dora, searching the bed in the Bell Vue lodgings at Manchester for bugs, straightened up to rub her aching back. Her tiny eyes were shrewd. ‘You made him up, didn’t you, chuck?’
Clara didn’t want to talk about Joe. For over a month now, ever since what should have come hadn’t, she had tried to put Joe West to the back of her troubled mind. God was kind and all-forgiving. He wouldn’t punish her for what she’d done with Joe. Not now when things were getting better and better. Hadn’t God said that none of man’s
sins would be remembered against him? God never sent affliction as a punishment for sin. Not if you repented and prayed for forgiveness. As she’d been doing, night after night, lying beside a snoring Dora in some lumpy bed.
Dora was rubbing this particular mattress with a bar of yellow soap. ‘Always fetches ’em. Little red blighters aren’t blessed with brains.’ She stared hard at Clara. ‘Aw, don’t look like that, chuck. Better than rats anyroad. I remember one digs I was stopping in …’ Her expression deepened into anxiety. ‘You’ve gone as white as a piece of bleached fent, love. Here, come and sit down for a minute.’
Living so closely together, in enforced intimacy, hadn’t left room for secrets, not even feminine secrets. Dora stared down into Clara’s pinched face, feeling the scalp beneath her thatch of red hair tighten as she allowed a suspicion to take hold of her. For almost seven weeks now she’d been closer to Clara than if she’d been her own mother, and not once had Clara had an ‘off’ day, or mentioned a backache, or moaned about what the other girls called the ‘curse’.
‘Oh, love,’ she said helplessly. ‘If you’ve anything to tell me, then tell me now. Look at me! Come on. Old Dora’s heard it all before, you know.’
‘What are you on about?’ Clara stood up abruptly, turning her back. ‘It’s time we were unpacked. I’ve got to go and rehearse my song for this week.’ Her smile was as strained as if it had been painted on her face and left in that position to dry. ‘It’s a new one called “The Bells of St Mary’s”. They’re going to try and get a bell effect into the orchestration.’
Dora levered herself up off the bed and told herself she could do no more. Time would tell. Oh, dear, dear God, time would surely tell.
Dora was wearing an accordion-pleated chiffon dress that day, a dress more in keeping with a state banquet. It billowed out beneath her velvet cloak, and when they went out into the little grey street Clara saw a woman across the way nearly fall off her doorstep in astonishment.
‘Hope she got ’er eye full.’