by Marie Joseph
And yet … and yet … Suddenly in that crowded place he wanted her. Just thinking, imagining what she had done with that roughneck Joe West flamed his senses. He felt the heat rise in his body.
‘Are you going to go on seeing him?’ he asked gruffly, taking a bread roll and breaking it into crumbs. ‘I couldn’t stand that.’
Her eyes were downcast. ‘I’m going to see him at the hospital tomorrow morning.’ Clara hesitated, some instinct warning her not to mention the money. When she lifted her eyes he saw the pain in them. ‘Terrible things have happened to Joe’s family. If your parents hadn’t moved away from the north they would have known. It would have been in the papers.’
‘I don’t want to know.’ Aversion to hearing what she might tell him sharpened John’s voice. ‘But knowing the Wests I can imagine.’
‘No you can’t!’ Clara was instantly furious. ‘How can you possibly imagine what it was like for them? A mother left with six boys to bring up. With no money coming in but what she got from charity, and what little they earned. I was poor, John. I know what it was like, so don’t look at me without remembering how I used to be.’
‘Charity … ah, charity.’ The anger and the desire in him suddenly dissolved. Stretching a hand, he ran a finger lightly down Clara’s cheek. ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.’ His smile was very sweet. ‘See? I haven’t forgotten all my father taught me.’
The tall man settling his companion into her chair at the next table saw the tender gesture. He was very elegant that evening in his white waistcoat and tails, suave in a subtle way, the furrow in his forehead etched deeply, the eyes bleak.
Raising her eyes, Clara met Bart Boland’s cold blue gaze and as she acknowledged his slight nod her face flamed. Flustered, she inclined her own head.
‘Someone you know?’ John waited until Bart was seated with his back to them before he whispered the question.
‘Yes, I know him.’ Clara spoke in a low voice. ‘He’s Bart Boland.’ She shielded her face with her left hand. ‘Remember Me is his show. And the girl with him is Adele Astaire. She’s in Lady Be Good at the Empire Theatre, a dancer with her brother Fred. She’s very pretty, isn’t she?’
Already they were talking animatedly. Clara could see the way Miss Astaire was listening intently, her chin cupped in her hand and a smile playing round her lips. Although she couldn’t hear a single word Clara could imagine Bart’s voice, soft, almost soporific. She could see his long fingers curved round the stem of his glass. Was he asking the dancer to join him on Broadway? Was he promising her the moon and the stars if she and her brother would choreograph the Broadway version of Remember Me? And did any of that matter? Did she give a tuppenny damn about Mr Bart Boland’s plans?
‘When we’re married I won’t expect you to give up the stage,’ John was saying. ‘I wouldn’t want you to stop singing.’
‘You still want to marry me? After what I’ve told you, do you still feel the same?’
‘It’s gone,’ John said quickly. ‘If you never mention it again, then neither will I.’
He means it, Clara thought, feeling the tears prick behind her eyelids. He is a good man, just as his father was a good man. Believing in forgiveness and putting that belief into practice.
‘You came into my dressing room that night in answer to a prayer.’ Her expression was serious. ‘I’ll be a good wife to you, John. I give you my promise.’
John smiled at her. It had always been his way to blank his mind against any unpleasantness, as thoroughly as if it had never been. It was the only way he could cope. And, oh, dear God, she was so lovely. And innocent too. He felt sure of it, in spite of what she’d just told him. Suddenly he felt about ten feet tall.
‘My own career isn’t decided yet.’ The smile on his lips seemed to be spreading right through his body. It was a long time since a girl had looked at him the way Clara was looking at him now. It was the feeling he got when he was soaring high above the clouds, as if there was nothing he couldn’t do. It was the feeling he’d had flying with the circus, when he’d looped the loop, his plane merely an extension of his own well-controlled body. The smile seemed a part of him.
‘I won’t be working for Lord Broughton for ever,’ he told her. ‘I’d rather be flying passengers than bundles of newspapers any old day.’ The flop of fair hair had fallen over his forehead and he pushed it back with an impatient hand. ‘The advances in passenger flying are unbelievable. They have heated cabins, and sponge-rubber seating. One bench for three passengers and easy chairs for two more. And a speed up to a hundred and twenty miles an hour!’ At that moment he looked about eighteen years old. ‘If only I hadn’t to leave you tonight to pick up that damned plane in Amsterdam … Give me your hand, love.’
Clara held out her hand, then felt his thumb moving in tiny caressing circles round and round her palm, up and onto the pulse at her wrist.
‘I want you so much,’ he whispered.
Experienced in lovemaking, knowing exactly how to arouse with the slightest of movements, he was gratified to see the blush staining the fresh colour in her cheeks to an even deeper hue.
When the waiter with the Rudolph Valentino hairstyle brought the note to Clara, she thanked him with a bemused expression on her face. When she’d read it she pushed it quickly into her purse.
‘Just a request to be at rehearsal earlier than usual in the morning.’ She glanced briefly at Bart’s back. ‘A summons really,’ she added, a hint of defiance in her voice. ‘Nothing to worry about at all.’
With no regard at all for visiting hours, Clara walked into the big teaching hospital the next morning straight from a hurried visit to her bank.
‘Stars lie abed in the mornings!’ Dora had shouted from her room. ‘All this gallivanting will ruin your looks, you mark my words.’ Sinking back on her pillows, she’d remembered how it had been when she was young, when sleep was merely a waste of time, to be taken in snatches, when after appearing on the stage she had sometimes talked all night. And loved all night … ‘Old age is a bore,’ she muttered, turning over and going back to sleep again.
Fate was on her side, Clara decided, hurrying past sister’s little room, seeing her bent over her desk engrossed in paperwork. Thanking God for small mercies, she made her way into Joe’s ward.
At the foot of his bed she came to a sudden halt, eyes wide, the carefully worded speech she’d prepared in her head dying on her lips. There was a man in the bed, a bearded man with a gaunt face and staring dark eyes, a man who raised his head to stare at her with obvious pleasure.
‘I seen you,’ he grinned. ‘I seen your picture. Pull up a chair, doll. Just what the doctor ordered, you are. Come to cheer us all up with a bit of a song, dearie?’ Winking at the patient in the next bed, he levered himself up on his elbows, baring his lips in a toothless smile.
With his laughter following her down the long ward, Clara walked away with as much dignity as she could muster, the small cuban heels on her patent leather shoes making little tapping noises on the well-scrubbed floor.
‘Joe? Joe West?’ She stood in the doorway of sister’s little office. ‘He’s not … ?’ She faltered, knowing he was dead, but waiting to be told. She could feel her heart beating so strongly it whirred in her ears. In that moment she forgot she had come to say goodbye to him; all she knew was that he had died, alone with no one to hold his hand.
The sister looked up from her desk. Taking off her spectacles, she pinched the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. And stared at Clara with something akin to distaste.
It wasn’t fair that anyone could look like the young woman staring at her with large green eyes wide with anxiety. Not at that time on a cold winter’s morning, with the rain lashing down outside. The pale green of Clara’s princess-line coat accentuated the colour of those incredible eyes. Tendrils of pale gold hair escaped from the close-fitting matching hat, and her li
ps were rouged to match the wild rose in her cheeks.
Sister put up a hand to her own face in an involuntary gesture. Without needing to look in a mirror she knew exactly what she looked like. Drawn, exhausted after a night spent at the bedside of a dying man, hearing his rasping breath, waiting for the exhalation that never came; she was so tired her mouth felt stretched as she spoke.
‘Visiting hours are from seven thirty to eight o’clock in the evenings, and three o’clock to four Wednesday and Sunday afternoons.’ She turned back to her desk. ‘And if you’ve come to see Mr West then you’re wasting your time. He discharged himself during the night when the staff were busy with other things.’
‘But he’s not got nowhere to go!’ In her distress Clara used the double negative of her Lancashire childhood. ‘It was raining all night. Where would he go?’
‘He’ll be back, no doubt.’ As she saw the colour drain from Clara’s face, the sister’s nursing training took precedence over her emotions. Moving forward to take Clara firmly by an elbow, she pushed her down into a chair. ‘Did you eat breakfast?’ Her voice softened as Clara stared up at her without understanding. ‘Mr West is beyond help, my dear. You must surely know that?’
‘So he is ill? Really ill?’ Clara stared down at the purse on her lap. ‘He hasn’t got any money. Nothing at all.’
‘He has now.’ Sister pointed to a space at the corner of her desk. ‘Pennies for the blind. Only coppers, but enough to buy him that first drink or two.’ The telephone rang and after she unhooked it from its stand she covered the mouthpiece with her hand. ‘You’ll want to talk to the almoner. It’s the ground floor, the door on the right at the foot of the staircase … Hello? Hello? Yes?’
When she turned round again Clara had gone.
On the way to the theatre, sitting in the back of a taxi, Clara found herself making wild and dramatic plans for finding Joe and weaning him off the drink herself. She saw herself wandering along the Embankment in the middle of the night, bending over sheets of soggy cardboard to see if Joe was lying underneath. She would make it quite clear to John that together they must find Joe and restore him to health. They were after all fellow Lancastrians, Christians, dedicated to helping each other. In spite of what John had said, he wasn’t a hard man. Oh yes, John would help her to find Joe when she asked him to.
She was not yet twenty. Her thinking was still an unsophisticated jumble of belief in what was right and intolerance of what was wrong. Joe was weak, she acknowledged that, but he was a victim of circumstance, the result of his mother’s total lack of discipline. Lily West had loved her sons in spite of their thieving ways, because of them, Clara suspected. Joe had never known the comfort of an ever loving God holding him fast in love. Joe had sneered at God.
The cab driver, turning round as he drew up outside the theatre, saw his passenger sitting with eyes tight closed and gloved hands clasped together on the back seat. Praying she’d get a part in the show, he concluded, not recognizing her.
‘Good luck, miss,’ he shouted as Clara crossed the rainswept pavement. ‘I’ll say one for you, if you like.’
Clara didn’t hear. She was late for rehearsal, and if there was one thing Bart couldn’t tolerate it was unpunctuality. If he could find the time to sit in the earliest rehearsal, then he expected his girls to be there before him. It would be a waste of time explaining that for the past hour she’d been all alone in the hospital almoner’s tiny office waiting for her to finish her round of the wards. For Mr Boland, the show was all.
He was there in the stalls, sitting in a swirl of cigar smoke, with his heavy greatcoat round his shoulders. Waiting, Clara knew, for a note out of place, ready to tear down the aisle, overriding the producer whose job it was to correct and advise.
The entire company was on stage, singing the opening chorus, and Clara, whose appearance was confined to her own solo at the end of the first half of the performance, breathed a sigh of relief. With any luck her absence would have gone unnoticed.
‘Here!’ Bart’s voice was curt and clipped. ‘Sit by me, Miss Haydock. I suppose we should be grateful that you’ve turned up at all.’
He had eyes in the back of his head, Clara told herself, doing as she was told, muttering apologies that were waved away with an impatient sweep of the hand holding the cigar.
As the chorus came to an end a hush descended over the auditorium. The rehearsal pianist, a wizened old man who had once played with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, ran his fingers up and down the keys in a final flourish. The company waited for a soft-shoe shuffler to take his place in the tableau.
Bart, wearing his coat like a medieval cloak, walked down to the footlights.
‘So that’s the new song?’ Holding out a hand, he addressed the pianist. ‘I’ll have that sheet, if you don’t mind. Is the composer here?’
No one moved. If the luckless one was there, Clara surmised, he was having the sense to keep quiet.
‘The lyrics are fine.’ Bart held the music at arm’s length. ‘But the music is lamentable.’ He ran a finger down the sheet. ‘Who told the orchestra they didn’t need to come in this morning?’
Again no one moved or spoke. Bart put a hand to his forehead. ‘Well, has anyone passed on the message to eliminate the violin for this number? Or told the violas they’ve to serve the rhythm as well as the melody?’
He knew it all, Clara thought, sitting quietly in her seat. If he had the time he could write the score, improve on the lyrics, produce, find the backing, choose the dancers, even choreograph the dancing numbers. And make the costumes, she wouldn’t mind betting. No wonder he was so intolerant of weakness in others.
‘Either this tune is rewritten or I find a different composer,’ Bart was saying. ‘I don’t expect perfection from your voices. If folks want that they can go to the opera, but I’ve heard many a chapel choir sing with more feeling than you lot put into this number. What are you trying to do? Turn the customers away?’
All at once his shoulders slumped; the heavy coat slid from them and dropped to the floor. He was very aware of the small girl waiting as still as a mouse behind him. Without turning round he could see the bruised look around her eyes telling of an almost sleepless night, and in his imagination he saw the fair-haired man lean across the table in the restaurant and run a finger down her cheek.
‘That’s all for today.’ He nodded at the pianist. ‘But you stay. I want to go through Miss Haydock’s song.’
On stage Clara took off her coat and laid it across the back of a chair by the prompt corner. In her pale green woollen dress with its draped cowl collar she walked centre stage and waited quietly for the pianist to play her introduction.
‘Take off your hat!’
She did as she was told, shaking her head to release the long shining fall of her glorious hair. Bart closed his eyes, knowing that the sensuous movement was entirely without provocation, despising himself for his gut reaction to it. There was a depth to his blue eyes Clara hadn’t noticed before as he jerked his chin downwards telling the pianist to play the opening chords.
It was the song beginning to be associated with Clara’s name, the lyrics by Herbert Reynolds, the music unmistakably by a Jewish boy born of German stock in New York to a father with a gift for making large sums of money. Jerome Kern.
The plaintive melody might have been written for the girl who had never had a singing lesson in her life, but who sang straight from her heart. Bart had to remind himself that he was there to listen critically, not to stand like some stage-door Johnnie openmouthed in silent adoration. By the final chorus there was the suspicion of tears in his eyes, a moisture he blinked angrily away.
‘And when I told them how wonderful you are,
They didn’t believe me,
They didn’t believe me …’
Bart’s bones seemed to liquefy with tenderness.
‘And when I tell them,
And I’m certainly going to tell them,
That you’re the boy
whose wife one day I’ll be,
They’ll never believe me,
They’ll never believe me,
That in this great big world you’ve chosen me …’
The tired old man at the piano slid his fingers from the keys and bowed his head. If he wouldn’t be laughed at for a sentimental old fool he would say that the voice he’d just accompanied was that of an angel down from heaven, each note silvered with heartfelt sweetness.
‘This young girl,’ he said to himself, ‘will one day be the greatest name on the British stage. Given the right teachers she might have sung the leading operatic roles anywhere in the world – Florence, Naples, Paris, London …’
His head jerked upwards as he heard Mr Boland say in his quiet voice, ‘Half an hour’s break, Mr Bach, and thank you. You play well.’
The bent old man shuffled his way into the darkness of the wings. Of course he played well! Hadn’t he once conducted his own orchestra before the war, before they took everything and everyone belonging to him, branding him as a spy? He’d thought he’d come to the end of the road before he met Mr Boland. Bart Boland, the English gentleman, the famous West End impresario, who had the courtesy to remember and to call a very old and very tired man by his name.
‘That song,’ Bart was saying, joining Clara on the stage, ‘is one of the songs I want you to sing when we open in Boston.’
Clara wheeled round to face him, one arm inside the sleeve of the pale green coat. ‘But I’m not going to America! I told you.’ Her eyes were bright with anger. ‘You thought that when you’d …’ she struggled to find the right word, ‘when you’d manipulated Dora into the home everything would be settled.’ Furiously she fought her way into the tight armholes of the single-breasted coat. ‘I meant what I said, Bart. I’m not going.’
‘Because you want to be on hand to visit Dora every day.’ Bart’s tone was weary. ‘Because you refuse to realize that Dora will be happier with her own kind. That you can’t see she’s come to the end of the road anyway, that her mind is slipping into senility, that in three months’ time, if she lives that long, she won’t even recognize you.’