by Marie Joseph
‘Cheeky!’ Dora sounded like her old self again, then suddenly her face sobered and her eyes filled with a bleak despair. ‘I’m living too long, Bart, lad.’ She held up a misshapen hand. ‘No, don’t contradict me. They’d put me down if I was a dog. It’s only this stubborn old heart of mine keeping me going, and that’s not behaving as it should. The doctor told me last week he could find me a place in a nursing home where I could have proper care.’ The loose chins quivered. ‘And I’d like to go, but it’s twenty-five guineas a week and where would I get that kind of money?’ She fixed him with a beady stare. ‘And I haven’t told Clara because she wouldn’t let me go. And if I insisted she’d offer to pay. She knows I get lonely sitting here for hours at a time while she’s working. So she’d pay, and she’d go and live in some awful little room and visit me every day.’ Her rough voice rose. ‘That’s how good she is! She’d ruin her life for me because I won’t die easy. Not if I was being looked after proper and having the kind of company I need.’ She leaned forward showing a wrinkled cleavage down the front of the long frilled teagown. ‘There’s a lot of the old timers in that home. Top of the bill most of them were at one time. Singsongs they have, so I’ve heard.’ Her feet tapped out a rhythm as she rambled on, talking too quickly as the lonely do.
Bart looked round the room, at the bric-à-brac of a lifetime in the theatre cluttering the low tables, at the Spanish shawl draping the back of Dora’s chair.
‘My father used to tell me how you stopped the show when you sang about the Spaniard who blighted your life.’ He smiled. ‘He said a man once threw himself over the balcony and broke his neck trying to get to you.’
‘Poor mad fool,’ Dora said, her face alight with the joy of remembering. ‘I went to his funeral with a wreath made in the shape of a Spanish guitar.’
Bart sat back in his chair and crossed his legs. This was where he had to tread carefully, very carefully indeed. ‘I think I know of a way in which we could all be happy,’ he said slowly. ‘I don’t suppose Clara’s told you that I want to take her to America with part of the company?’
Dora gave an unladylike whistle. ‘She rushed out …’ she began, then clamped her mouth tight shut. ‘Go on.’
‘She refused, of course.’
‘Because of me?’
He nodded. ‘But it would be the making of her, Dora. You see, the Americans are slowly weaning themselves away from variety. They’ve already had a taste of a more intimate kind of show. Gertrude Lawrence and Beatrice Lillie and Jack Buchanan have shown the way.’ His eyes were ablaze with enthusiasm. ‘The way I see it is this: for Clara’s first song she wears a drab skirt and blouse and a hat covering her hair.’ He waved a hand to illustrate. ‘A backcloth of greys and browns, with maybe a clogger’s bench in the foreground. Just the one spotlight on her as she sings. Then, when they’re stunned by the beauty of her voice there’s a moment or two of complete darkness. A pale green curtain comes down and she steps in front of it with the shabby clothes whipped away, leaving her in a long white dress.’ His voice quickened. ‘Just as the spotlight picks her out again she takes off her hat, throws it into the wings, shakes her head and lets down that wonderful hair. Then she sings a modern song. There’s a beauty called “Bye, Bye, Blues”. She has a natural rhythm and when she closes her eyes and sways …’ Suddenly he seemed to remember where he was. ‘There’s nobody like her, Dora.’
‘And you’re in love with her?’ Dora’s question was merely a continuance of his thoughts.
‘I’m in love with her, Dora. I think I’ve loved her since the first time I set eyes on her.’
‘So, if I can convince her …’
‘That she must go to America. That the nursing home is where you most want to be. That the fees will be paid from some benevolent society.’
‘That I’ll be shocking the matron with my rendition of the Spaniard who blighted his bleedin’ life …’
‘Then we’re home and dry.’
‘Have a fag and give me one,’ said Dora. ‘You’re wicked, Bart Boland.’
‘That makes two of us,’ said Bart, taking out his cigarette case.
Clara’s face was coated with cold cream when the knock came on the door of her dressing room. She asked whoever it was to come in and didn’t bother to turn round, so sure it would be Matty come to reason with her again.
She saw him first reflected in the mirror, an exceptionally tall man with a flop of thick fair hair falling over his forehead; with amber eyes that laughed into her own.
‘John! John Maynard! Oh, it is good to see you! Oh, what a wonderful surprise!’
Without quite knowing how it happened, she was lifted out of her seat and turned into his arms, sticky face pressed against his.
‘Little Clara Haydock.’
Grinning from ear to ear he held her from him.
‘What do I see when I come back to London but a face I know well looking at me from a dirty great photograph outside the theatre! So what do I do but join the queue for the three and nines, and voilà! There you are warbling away on the jolly old stage.’ His eyes crinkled into laughter. ‘Remember when you stood at the front of the whole school to sing “All things bright and beautiful”?’
There and then he sang the first line, and there and then Clara joined in, gazing up into the tanned face, like a musical comedy star singing to her handsome leading man.
It was a miracle. Maybe it was the miracle she had prayed for. This man was a part of her childhood, a joyous part, with no dark shadows clouding her memories of him. John Maynard, whose father had listened to her recite the Catechism every Monday morning. John, who had worn a shirt and a pullover to school, and got his nose bloodied for her. Whose mother had played a piano on which rested a plaster bust of Beethoven, or was it Chopin?
‘I’m taking you out to supper.’ He looked down at the glowing face upturned to his own. What marvellous luck finding her like this, just when his job was turning out to be far duller than he had anticipated. Surprising himself, he bent his head and kissed Clara full on the mouth, a lingering sweet caress.
And that was the scene Bart saw as, without knocking, he opened the door.
‘Forgive me,’ he said, walking quickly away down the musty corridor, a dignified man in a brown suit with a calm expression on his face belying the aching disappointment in his heart.
Twelve
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, because there was no matinée, Clara rode on the top of a bus with John Maynard to Regent’s Park Zoo. They were alone on the top deck and beneath the stiff tarpaulin over their knees John held her hand.
Most of the girls he’d known – and he’d known plenty – had cropped their hair in a style called the bingle, a club cut part way between a bob and a shingle, but all Clara had to do was to pin her hair high on her head, so that beneath the small cloche hat her vivacious little face was like a flower. He burned with desire for her, and as the red bus swung into Park Lane he turned her gently towards him and kissed her full on the mouth.
Although she didn’t pull away, her green eyes darkened.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I love you. We’re going to get married. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ Shaken by her nearness, he heard the words say themselves. Then knew that he meant it. ‘Now that I’ve found you, it has to be.’ Slowly he trailed a finger down her cheek. ‘I won’t stand in your way. In the way of your career, I mean.’
When they climbed down from the bus and went through the turnstile into the zoo, Clara shivered and pulled her fur collar closer round her throat. Since John had walked into her dressing room the night before, her life seemed to have taken on a dazed intensity, so that, as Dora would undoubtedly have said, she didn’t know whether she was coming or going.
Dora had been asleep in her room when, after the cabaret, Clara had crept into the flat. They’d had another row this morning when Dora had said she was going into a nursing home, paid for by some benevolent society Clara had never heard of.
&nb
sp; ‘Over my dead body!’ Clara had shouted dramatically, wan through lack of sleep, spreading her arms wide the way Dora had spread hers the night before.
‘And you’re going to America,’ Dora had told her. ‘I’m doing what I want to do, and you’re going to do what’s right for you.’ Then she’d blushed, remembering too late that Bart had asked her to keep his visit a secret. ‘Matty told me,’ she’d lied. ‘He phoned me after you’d gone on from the theatre. That’s how I know.’
Standing by the railings, staring at a stork huddled deep into its feathers, Clara leaned against the man by her side, glad that his arm was round her, glad that he loved her, reminding herself that he had come in answer to her fervent prayer for a sign. Tall, very English-looking, with his fair hair and complexion, John Maynard had grown into a handsome man. Clara sighed and leaned a bit closer.
‘Cold, love?’
Clara nodded. It was good, too, to hear the familiar Lancashire endearment, although like herself John had lost most of his northern accent.
‘I like being somebody’s love,’ she told him childishly, and he swung her round and gazed deep into her eyes.
‘Then marry me,’ he said softly. ‘Next month, next week. Tomorrow?’
‘John,’ she said suddenly. ‘Let’s go somewhere we can talk. Somewhere warm.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘This place smells.’ Pinching her nose between a finger and thumb, she grinned. ‘I’m not an animal person, John.’
‘So you don’t want to see the monkeys with red bottoms?’
‘Not particularly.’
Laughing, hand in hand, they made their way out of the zoo. Hailing a taxi, they rode to Trafalgar Square, crowded with people buying pigeon food and standing to be photographed with the birds perching on their shoulders and outstretched arms. The taxi was stuck in a traffic jam, so John paid the driver off and held out a hand to help her out.
‘There’s a teashop over there,’ he told her. ‘Just in time to escape the rain.’
‘Toasted teacakes and a pot of tea for two,’ he told the waitress bustling to serve them before they’d begun to remove their gloves and unbutton their coats. ‘Now. When shall it be? You don’t want to wait until June to be a bride, do you?’
Clara looked directly at him. Behind her, through the huge window, John could see a pair of ex-service men, medals in place on their breasts, one of them playing a trumpet and the other beating a drum. Nine years or more since they’d stood ankle-deep in mud in the trenches, and still they begged for coppers.
‘Tell me again about the man you work for,’ Clara said.
She’d been going to say something else, John was sure of that, but he obliged. She’d tell him whatever it was in her own good time. Bottling things up had never been one of the young Clara’s habits. He had a sudden vision of her chasing round the school playground with the West boys, yelling her head off and swearing like a trooper because one of them had pinched her hair ribbon.
‘Well, as I told you, he’s got a title. Lord Broughton.’ The two men had walked past the window now, so he could forget them. ‘He has two private planes, and I fly one of them for him. Mostly round Europe. He’s a newspaper proprietor and I fly copies of his papers to Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam. I’ve been doing it for a year now and the pay’s tremendous. The old man talks about pounds like we talk about shillings.’
John shifted comfortably in his chair. The warmth of the restaurant was getting to him and he felt relaxed and happy, flattered by the way Clara seemed to be drinking in his every word. There was nothing like being seen in public with a pretty woman to give the old ego a boost. He raised his voice deliberately as the waitress came to place a heavy plated teapot and hot-water jug on the table.
‘I think the most disappointing job I had was after I stopped doing commercial flying. I joined a circus putting on shows with the old Avro trainers up and down the country. Risking your neck when there isn’t a war on isn’t much fun.’ By the way the waitress put down the milk jug John guessed she was listening. He leaned back in his chair. ‘One of these days I’m going to fly over the Alps, but I’ll need a better plane. One to reach a sufficient altitude.’
‘Oh, my goodness …’ Clara’s reaction was all he could have hoped for.
‘There are problems with frozen fuel lines over fifteen thousand feet, but give or take a few years and I reckon passengers will be flown on the Munich–Milan–Rome route as a matter of course.’
When the buttered toast came he ate his with gusto, licking his fingers and accepting a piece from Clara’s plate. His total absorption in whatever he did, his exuberance, amused and disconcerted Clara at one and the same time. She found herself watching his movements, almost willing him to be still. Wondering if he was nervous, and knowing he was not.
He drained his cup and held it out for a refill. ‘I’m ready for a change,’ he told her, screwing up his paper napkin and dabbing his mouth with it. ‘Yes,’ he said, as if continuing a sentence begun in his head, ‘the new aircraft are more luxurious than the most up-to-date express train. Prince George enjoys flying, princes and film stars catch the headlines when they fly, but it’s the well-to-do businessman who keeps the European routes going. Fifty per cent more expensive than travelling by train and boat, but why should they care?’
‘I have to go now.’ Clara began to pull on her gloves. It was no good. John wasn’t in a listening mood. And besides, for what she had to tell him the place, the time, everything had to be right. She was sure the waitress was trying to hear their conversation, standing there with her order pad hanging from a black ribbon tied to her belt, her eyes behind the whirlpool lenses of her spectacles blank with apparent boredom.
‘I have to be at the theatre in just over an hour’s time, and before then I have a hospital visit to make,’ she said. ‘It’s only across the road.’ She hesitated. ‘It’s someone you used to know well.’
She looked very young, very vulnerable in her chamber-pot hat, with little tendrils of hair escaping at the sides to fall softly onto her cheeks. So serious. He couldn’t help smiling at her, couldn’t stop reminding himself of his luck in meeting up with her like this. Paying only scant attention to what she was saying, he immediately got up to settle the bill, joked with the cashier in her glass-walled booth, then bounced back to leave a far too lavish tip beneath a butter-smeared plate.
‘Joe West.’
Clara said the name as they ran across the street, dodging the traffic, John’s hand firmly beneath her elbow.
‘He was with you in the top class, but he stayed on after you passed for the grammar school.’
‘Not one of the snotty West boys?’ John stood quite still on the opposite pavement, the fine lines at the corners of his eyes crinkling into laughter. ‘There were dozens of them, weren’t there?’
‘There were two less when the war ended.’ Clara moved slightly away from him. ‘Two of the West boys never came back, John.’
‘Good Lord, I’ve offended you!’ He looked astounded. ‘I’d no idea you were that thick with them. Which one did you say is in there?’ He jerked his chin towards the big teaching hospital with its wide frontage, standing back from the road.
‘Joe.’
‘Ah, Joe.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘Of course I remember him. Weasel-faced bloke, always in and out of the nick.’ At last she had his attention. ‘What’s he doing down here? Running a betting shop in the Mile End Road?’
Clara drew herself up to her full height. ‘He’s ill. Ill and alone.’ A gust of wind ruffled the lynx collar, seeming to add to her anger. ‘He never had your advantages. He was working when he was seven years old!’ Her green eyes dared him to speak. ‘My father told me he used to leave the house long before the mills started. To chop up blocks of salt, John. And his moth …’ Her face flamed as she recalled the inescapable fact that Lily West had wetnursed her. ‘His mother cared for me when I was a baby, so Joe is like …’
‘Your brother?’
‘Yes!�
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Stunned by what she could only see as her own hypocrisy, Clara turned swiftly and walked in front of the taxi rank to the entrance of the hospital, but before she could go inside John was beside her.
‘I’m not coming in with you,’ he said.
For a moment he thought with amazement that she would hit out at him.
‘I never asked you to,’ she said coldly.
‘We’re quarrelling,’ he said, astounded. ‘What about, in heaven’s sake, love? What about?’
She walked quickly away from him, small heels clicking, her back ramrod straight.
‘I wouldn’t if I was you, mate.’ A cab driver, hunched over his wheel, shook his head in mock dismay. ‘Let her cool off, mate. It’s always the best way.’
Nonplussed and furious, John stood for a moment looking down at his shoes as if trying to make up his mind. He winked at the cab driver, turned up the collar of his coat and strode long-legged towards Trafalgar Square. A bus trundled by, caught in a mesh of traffic, and he swung himself aboard.
Joe was much better. Clara could see that cleaned up, shaved and with his dark wavy hair neatly combed he was halfway to being human again.
‘You’re out of breath,’ he accused, gazing at her from beneath hooded eyelids. ‘And that’s a daft hat. It’s like a po.’
‘Joe,’ she said, coming straight to the point, ‘where did you go that night you left my flat?’
‘You mean after that old woman charged at me?’ A faint suspicion of the grin she remembered so well lifted the corners of his dry lips. ‘It’s not long since I could’ve lifted her and a bucket o’ coal up in one hand.’ He tried to raise himself up on his elbows, only to flop back on his pillows, his head spinning.
‘I want to know where you were living, Joe. Because, before the ambulance came, that man in Stacey Street told me he’d found you down on the Embankment.’
‘That’s it, then.’ Joe lifted an eyebrow. ‘That’s where I was living.’ His cracked lips twisted in a wry smile and his dark blue eyes mocked her. ‘Cardboard’s the next best thing to a blanket. That’s if you can find the right size.’ He closed his eyes, waving a hand in front of his face as if dismissing her. ‘Thank you for coming to see me, Clara Haydock. Isn’t this where you say a prayer over me?’ The afternoon had died quickly and the harsh ward lights were suddenly snapped on. ‘The visitors went ages ago,’ Joe told her, looking at her steadily. ‘You’ll cop it if the ward sister catches you. You have to be pegging out before they have even next-of-kins in here out of visiting hours.’