by Marie Joseph
‘But I … ?’ Clara couldn’t quite take in what he was saying. ‘Can you honestly see me with a big ostrich feather pinned on my head?’
Bart smiled. ‘Let me explain. I won’t be taking all the cast from Remember Me. Most of the acts wouldn’t make the transition anyway, and I’m hoping for a continued run here.’ He finished his cup of coffee. ‘But you’re different. The Americans haven’t seen or heard anyone quite like you. They’re a simple folk, Clara, in the main. Religious too, most of them.’ He gave her a shrewd glance. ‘I predict your name will be up in lights on Broadway before the end of the year.’
‘I’ve never been abroad.’ Clara was trying hard to adjust to the idea. ‘And I don’t know any Americans. Dora will love it. I can just imagine her face when I tell her.’
‘Dora won’t be going.’
‘Then I’m not going, either.’
Bart’s face changed. ‘Do you know how old Dora is, for Pete’s sake?’
‘Seventy something. She doesn’t like to talk about her age.’
‘Eighty something! She was an old trouper before you were even born.’
Beckoning over the waiter, Bart requested the bill. The head waiter moved forward and presented Clara with two dark red carnations and a pin.
‘I’m not going anywhere without Dora,’ she said softly, fastening the flowers at the neck of her dress. ‘If she’s as old as you say she is, then she needs me all the more, doesn’t she?’
‘If you want to powder your nose, I’ll see you in the lounge.’ Bart’s voice was tight with anger. ‘I have another appointment at three, so don’t be too long.’
‘I don’t want to,’ Clara said quickly, following him miserably out of the restaurant. ‘Powder my nose I mean.’ She allowed herself to be helped into her coat by the same waiter who had taken it from her. ‘Surely you can understand?’
‘We open in Boston.’ Bart’s voice was tinged with impatience. ‘I wan you. I’m not an easy man to cross, Clara.’
‘And I’m not an easy one to be dissuaded once I’ve made up my mind.’
‘Rehearsals begin in July.’ Ignoring her, Bart strode furiously ahead, the set of his shoulders showing his anger.
‘But where would she go?’ Clara was still seething as she walked with Bart through the foyer and into the bustle of Regent Street. ‘I’m paying the rent of the flat we’re in now.’ She stood still on the pavement, almost in tears. ‘Her arthritis is so bad there are lots of things I have to do for her. She can’t look after herself.’
‘Then you must see she can’t go.’
All the happiness of the lingering lunch in the palace of velvet sofas had evaporated. It was beginning to rain and Bart knew that if he didn’t get a taxi straight away he would be late for his next appointment. A newsboy ran along the pavement, shouting at the top of his voice, ‘One thirty winner! Paper! Paper!’ A taxi drew in to the kerb and, to Clara’s dismay, Bart climbed in.
‘I’m not going!’
Beside herself with rage at the high-handed way he was treating her, Clara actually shook her fist at the back of the taxi moving off into the afternoon traffic. Leaving with her the furiously annoying picture of Bart Boland’s smooth head framed in the window, with the smoke from his not quite finished cigar curling up and round his ears.
All the way back to Conduit Street Clara justified her reaction. People, feelings came before ambition. ‘Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.’ Jesus had said that. Her inherent ability to fit a Bible quotation to any given situation had never deserted her. Dora needed her now, just as she had needed Dora in those first hard months of joining the company.
Who would button Dora into her flowing gowns now that the misshapen arthritic hands could no longer manipulate the tiny buttons and loops? Who would help her in and out of the bath, and who would apply the henna to her still luxurious hair now she could no longer lift her arms? For years Dora had dressed others; now it was only right that someone who loved and understood her fierce sense of independence would do the same for her.
The high heels of Clara’s flimsy shoes did a sharp staccato rap on the pavement as she hurried back to the flat. No wonder Mr Bart Boland was no longer living with his wife, if the rumours were true. Him with his blue eyes and a moustache like a hearthbrush stuck beneath his long nose. Important he might be, not too important for Clara Haydock to stick up to him. He’d come to the wrong shop for that kind of subservience.
Dora was waiting for her when she ran up the stairs and opened the door of the flat. Through Bart’s eyes, despising herself for doing so, Clara noticed the way she had to bend almost double before she could rise from her chair. When Dora picked up an envelope from the low table, Clara saw how she had to slide the paper over the edge before she could grasp it between finger and thumb, leaving the other fingers sliding away useless like so many limp sausages.
‘This came by hand, chuck,’ she told Clara. ‘Not long after you’d gone. I tried to get to the door in time to see who it was going back down the stairs, but I wasn’t quick enough.’ Her smile was apologetic. ‘I’ve lost my stick again, love, or I’d have spotted whoever it was.’ She wrinkled her thickly powdered nose. ‘You’d better wash your hands after you’ve read what’s inside, that envelope looks as if it’s been somewhere nasty.’
‘It’s about Joe.’ Clara looked up from the sheet of cheap lined notepaper. ‘He’s ill.’ She pointed to the address, holding it out, until she remembered that without her glasses Dora was almost blind. ‘Stacey Street, off Cambridge Circus.’ With a swift pull the carnations at her throat came adrift from their pin. ‘Don’t bother to put them in water. I never liked carnations, anyway,’ she told Dora. She glanced at the Westminster-chime clock on the mantelshelf. ‘I can be back in an hour. Plenty of time to get to the theatre.’
With a speed that surprised Clara, Dora shuffled herself towards the door to stand dramatically with her arms spread as wide as they would go.
‘Over my dead body!’ Her chins, loose and hanging now from lack of flesh to support them, wobbled furiously. ‘For one thing, you’ve to have your rest. You’ve got cabaret on top of the theatre tonight, and you didn’t sleep well last night.’ She glared at Clara. ‘I heard you moving about after you came in. And for another thing, that letter’s a trick to get you there. He won’t come here because he knows I’ll kill him, so he’s trying it on.’ There were tears in her raucous voice. ‘He’s no good for you, chuck. I got his measure the minute I clapped eyes on him. He’s a scrounger, a liar, and he made you more unhappy than any girl has a right to be.’
‘I know, Dora.’ Clara walked to the door, standing so close to the old woman she could see the rouged cheeks drawn down into creases, each crease filled with orange-shaded powder. ‘You are right. Joe is no good. I knew that a long time ago, but if he’s ill and if he needs me, I have to go to him.’
‘Why? For God’s sake, why?’
Clara nodded. ‘Yes. For God’s sake. That’s why.’
Knowing when she was beaten, Dora moved aside. She couldn’t fight God, not Clara’s God anyway. ‘Don’t blame me if you’re dead on your feet. And don’t blame me if it’s all a trap. I wish I’d never given you the letter,’ she shouted, her rough voice spiralling after Clara as she ran down the stairway.
When she went back in and closed the door she found that her heart was beating wildly in an uneven rhythm. When she knocked her glasses case off the table and onto the floor she tried to bend over, forgetting that her spine was as rigid as a poker.
‘Bugger that Joe!’ she yelled. ‘And bugger this arthritis! What’s happening to me? Me, Dora Vane, who once could stand on her head!’
Stacey Street, off Cambridge Circus, was a cul-de-sac shadowed by tall early-Victorian houses. Clara paid off the taxi and, checking the number on the letter still clutched in her hand, made her way to the far end.
At that time of day there were no bookies with their bowler-hatted lackeys carrying Gladst
one bags, no punters sidling towards them; but the door at the end house was ajar and, hesitating momentarily, Clara pushed it open and went inside.
For a second or two she blinked, trying to adjust her eyes to the harsh light from a naked lightbulb swinging from its cord above a table covered with betting slips. A man wearing a brown overcoat with the collar turned up was studying the small print on the back page of the racing edition of the Evening News and picking his teeth with a silver-plated toothpick. He stared at Clara with a decided lack of interest.
‘You come abaht Joe?’
She nodded, holding out the letter. ‘This was delivered to my flat.’ She glanced round the almost bare room, wrinkling her nose at the stale smell of cigarette smoke so pungent she felt if she put out a hand she could touch it. She shook her head. ‘But there must be a mistake. Joe can’t be here.’
The man picking his teeth put the paper aside and leaned across the wide desk. His neck was thick, his face as florid as a bruised tomato, and the teeth he’d been working on were as yellow as clotted cream. Until his sixtieth birthday his broad body had taken and absorbed every excess that life could give, but lately his overindulgence was beginning to take its toll. At one time the beautiful girl standing before him would have brought a glint to his eyes and an even more hectic flush to his cheeks, but today he felt his age.
‘You’ve made no mistake, gel. He’s here all right. And if he’s not out of this place before I lock up for the night I won’t be responsible.’
‘But the letter says he’s ill!’ Clara handed over the scrap of paper. ‘How can he be here if he’s ill?’
With an enormous sigh the bookie got to his feet, catching his head on the low-hanging lightbulb, setting it swinging, throwing shadows on the walls like dancers in some evil rite.
‘In here,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘An’ you ’eard what I said. Take him home wiv you. Do what you like wiv ’im, as long as you get him out.’
When the door closed behind her Clara’s heart jumped. The winter afternoon was dying now and the only light came from a narrow window set high in the wall. If the bookie had made his fortune, Clara thought wryly, he hadn’t spent any of it on this place. It was as cold as a tomb, with the walls running damp and mud oozing through the cracks in the concrete floor.
‘Joe?’ Moving forward, stepping gingerly over a heap of rotting cardboard, Clara went towards a mattress set at right angles to the window, to stand looking down on what at first glance appeared to be a pile of rags. ‘Joe? Oh, Joe …’ Heedless of the fine silk stockings, the expensive coat, she knelt down on the uneven filthy floor. ‘You really are ill. Oh, Joe, is this where you live?’
He was running a fever. Through the dim light coming from the filthy little window she could see the way his eyes sparkled and glittered. His mouth was swollen, his lips dry and caked with a white scum, and his dark curly hair looked as if it hadn’t been combed since she’d seen him the previous week.
Reaching for her hand he gripped it fiercely. ‘I had to get drunk,’ he told her in a strange rambling high voice. ‘After you sent me away I began to drink.’ His head moved restlessly from side to side. ‘I thought I’d never do it again, not once I’d found you, but when I need to drink I can’t stop. Five, six days I was at it, then somehow, don’t ask me how, I found my way here.’ He looked away from her. ‘I used to spend a lot of time hereabouts before I went to South Africa. You know?’
‘I know, Joe.’
All at once she was a little girl again, seeing Joe standing on windy corners with his flat cap perched on the back of his dark curly head, waiting for bets, taking the rap when the police caught him at it, knowing the bookie would pay his fine so he could begin all over again.
‘I don’t blame you for sending me away.’ His voice was maudlin now, slurring on the edge of the fever which burned inside him. ‘I’m no good for you, Clara. I’d only drag you down.’ He coughed weakly. ‘You were always a cut above me. Even as a snotty-nosed kid running around in your father’s clogs. You’ve always been a cut above.’
‘Stop it, Joe!’ Getting to her feet, Clara walked as quickly as she could round the rubble to the door.
‘May I use your telephone, please?’
The man in the brown overcoat was picking his teeth again, staring morosely at the newspaper through a magnifying glass. Wearily he indicated the telephone surrounded by piles of paper at the corner of his desk.
‘Help yourself, gel. Ring Timbuctoo as far as I care, as long as you get him off my back.’ He narrowed eyes set in valleys of mottled flesh. ‘What in Gawd’s name is a gel like you doing with the likes of him? I don’t wish him no harm, but he’s trouble, gel. Big trouble. From the day he was born, I reckon.’
Clara made her entrance on the stage that evening with only seconds to spare. Settling Joe into hospital hadn’t been as easy as she’d thought it would be. When she’d told the sister she couldn’t wait even another minute to see the doctor after he’d examined Joe, the expression in the nurse’s eyes had withered Clara’s ebbing confidence.
What was she going to do with Joe when he came out of hospital? This time the issue wasn’t cut and dried, black or white, a straight choice. All Clara’s religious convictions warred one against the other in her head.
‘If you were the only boy in the world …’ she sang, causing every man in the audience to smile as if she meant it just for him. She didn’t love Joe. Her love for him had died a long time ago, but that didn’t mean she could desert him.
‘There would be such wonderful things to do …’ A man in the front row sighed audibly. Clara could actually see his eyes glistening.
Joe and Dora. Both of them needing her. She stood with bowed head as the applause rose to a deafening crescendo.
‘How can I go to America?’ she asked Matty, sitting in her dressing room surrounded by flowers.
‘How can you not go, love?’ Matty was having to work harder than ever for his laughs these days. His square face oozed sweat through his clown’s make-up. ‘The graveyards are full of indispensable people. Have you never heard that saying?’
When he left her, she bowed her head in prayer. ‘Oh, God. Show me what to do. Give me a sign. Help me to decide.’ But when she opened her eyes the indecision was still there, hurting hard inside her, and not for the first time in her life she realized that the values instilled in her by her father didn’t always translate to the life she had chosen for herself.
As she stood in the darkened wings waiting for her entrance in the second-house performance, her mind was still in turmoil. ‘In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He will make plain thy paths …’ As for her father before her, the comforting words came easily to her mind, but this time without meaning. Slowly she walked into the spotlight, as lovely as a dream in her white dress.
The song she sang was a wistful number, a new song being whistled by every errandboy in London. To Bart Boland, standing alone at the back of the stalls, it seemed to typify all he was beginning to feel for his young protégée. His anger had evaporated by now and as far as he was concerned the American trip was on. Not an hour before Dora had told him … He half closed his eyes, seeing Clara walking down Broadway clinging to his arm, or more likely riding with him in a big black limousine down 42nd Street.
‘Won’t you tell him, please,
To put on some speed,
Follow my lead?
Oh, how I need
Someone to watch over me …’
Bart was so engrossed in the audience’s mesmerized reaction to Clara’s interpretation of the song he failed to notice a tall fair man rise from his seat and make his way quickly out of the exit doors at the back of the theatre. And if he had seen, it would have signified nothing. Bart was a man with a purpose, and after his talk with Dora in the upstairs flat of the house in Conduit Street, that purpose looked like being brought to a satisfactory fruition. He frowned as a chorus girl moved her lips in a silent exchange with the girl on her right. The
audience, he knew, would notice nothing but, making a mental note of her name, he narrowed his eyes, already in his mind giving the befeathered girl the ticking off he felt was her due.
‘You look more like your father every day, God rest his soul.’
After letting Bart in, Dora had groped her way back to her high-seated chair, holding on to the furniture to steady herself. Bart was shocked at the deterioration in her and wondered how on earth Clara could have imagined Dora would have coped with the rolling deck of a transatlantic liner.
Dora, settled now, gave a dry chuckle. ‘Clara told me to go to bed, but I like to please myself.’ Putting her red head on one side she simpered at him from beneath eyelashes stiff with mascara. ‘Why don’t you marry her, Bart? She’s crying out for a man to look after her, and your marriage is finished from what I’ve heard tell.’
Now it was Bart’s turn to laugh. ‘You’re a wicked old woman, Dora Vane. You don’t improve with keeping and that’s a fact. I can’t marry anyone till the divorce comes through, and besides, what makes you think Clara would have me?’
‘She’d have you if I put her up to it. That lass is like a ship without a rudder. You put her in this game without a thought as to how she would cope. She’s still sticking to the rules ingrained in her by her religious fanatic of a father.’ Dora sniffed. ‘Religion is all right as long as it doesn’t stop folks from getting on with living.’
‘I put her in your charge Dora.’ Bart’s vivid blue eyes narrowed. ‘It strikes me you’re the one in need of looking after, old girl.’