Chapman’s offer was for an American tour with appearances in theatres in New York, Boston and San Francisco. The magnitude of the idea made both Quinn and Sadie suck in their breath in astonishment. The money he was talking about was immense, two hundred pounds a week, more than middle-class family men in London earned in a year. Lark remembered how her grandmother laboured in the fields for tenpence a day, and she gave a little shiver at the memory. To be offered so much money for singing seemed immoral.
But the expressions on the faces of Sadie and Quinn brought her back to reality.
‘I’ll go,’ she said.
* * *
The American trip was planned for the winter and she was to spend the summer resting and rehearsing a new programme. She took a house near Bognor Regis and every day lay on the terrace in a long chair, staring out at the sea.
Now that she was rich she could well afford to go back to Charterhall, but something kept her away. It was better, she thought, only to remember it. Perhaps to see it again would spoil those memories. She wrote to the Hepburn family to ensure that the cottage was kept watertight, and Sim answered her letter with a polite note. She could tell from the tone of his reply that he thought he was writing to the child who had left them years ago. When she herself tried to imagine what he would be like, she could only summon up the tousle-haired, lean and daring boy she had hero-worshipped.
She was tired, very tired. Chapman was right, she needed a rest. When invitations came in asking her to join parties for the Derby, she turned them down. She had been there last year when the Suffragette Emily Davidson threw herself in front of the King’s horse, and the memory stayed in her mind in horrifying detail. Fanaticism seemed to be all around her, blaring out from every newspaper she opened. Other Suffragettes tried to blow up Lloyd George’s house; at the end of June the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated at Sarajevo by a student called Gabriel Princip. She read those reports and thought of her mother. It seemed that Hannah’s type of militant action was at last taking over the world. Frightened, she stopped reading the news and it was a surprise when Sadie came running onto the terrace brandishing a copy of The Times…
‘Look at this, Larkie, Germany’s declared war on Russia. Your mum’s still there, isn’t she?’
She sat up and took the newspaper. Its black headlines made her stomach lurch with apprehension, not just for Hannah but for something much deeper.
‘Yes, the last I heard she was in St Petersburg but that was in the spring. There’s no knowing where she is now,’ she said.
Sadie, who was reading the news over her shoulder, tried to console her. ‘Your mum’ll be all right. But it’s not nice, is it, all this talk of war? We’ll be next.’
Suddenly the sunshine that was blazing down on to the pretty garden was dimmed. Three days later, on 4 August, Britain declared war on Germany and the world went mad.
The American trip was called off but Chapman was not too dejected because he had other plans for Lark. He launched a series of patriotic shows because he realized that masses of men would soon be on the move and London theatres would be packed out with them. His
Songbird, Lark Chardelle, would entertain the soldiers. She would spearhead the theatrical war effort.
Her restful summer ended abruptly. The hopeful suitors who made appointments to take her on the river, or escort her to picnics in lovely private parks, were disappointed, for she was back in the theatre every day, rehearsing a series of songs calculated to stir the blood of the British. Wrapped in a Union Jack, with a gilded helmet on her head, she sat on a huge throne and belted out lyrics extolling home and country, urging every young man to enlist in the forces and help to defeat the wicked Hun.
They stamped and cheered when she appeared on stage as Britannia but it was still her nostalgic yearning ballads that really brought them to their feet. Her songs of loss and homesickness touched a raw nerve now and people wept openly in the theatre. The nation was girding up its loins for a terrible war.
A kind of desperation seized everyone. Young men flung themselves at her feet in the street and pleaded with her to marry them. Then Quinn and Sadie surprised her one morning with the news that they were going along to St Bride’s Church in Fleet Street to be married. She watched them standing in front of the clergyman, their tough faces solemn, and tears slipped down her cheeks.
She had been courted by many men. She’d liked some of them and been entertained by others but she had never felt love and certainly not passion for anyone. Her apparent immunity to this obsession that took over other people worried her. Was there something wrong with her? Was she incapable of love? Even Bill and Bella, growing old now, had that strange bond between them that she recognized between Quinn and Sadie, that knowingness, that acknowledgement of a mutual secret, that sensual enjoyment in each other’s presence that she longed to experience.
When they came out of the church, Quinn paused on the pavement and kissed Sadie on the cheek.
‘Well, that’s that,’ he said, ‘you’re really my old woman, gel. Just go back to the theatre with Lark and I’ll meet you there in half an hour. I’m off to join up.’
Stunned, the two women walked slowly back up the Strand to the theatre which was plastered with huge posters bearing Lark’s name. Already a queue of men in khaki was forming on the pavement so, with heads down to avoid Lark being recognized, they scuttled round a corner to reach the back door.
* * *
‘They’re from that Sir Harry Lewis again. They must have cost him a pretty penny,’ said Sadie approvingly as she brought in a huge cane basket filled with orchids. Lark was making up her face in the mirror and the magnitude of the basket made her eyes widen in surprise.
‘I wonder which one he is,’ she said as she rouged the line of her mouth. ‘He’s never spoken to me, he just keeps sending those flowers every day.’
‘Quite romantic that, really,’ said Sadie, who since her own marriage had begun to want a similar status for her friend. The trouble was, in her view, that none of the men who worshipped at Lark’s feet was half good enough for her. They were all young men about town who made a habit of courting actresses and whose intentions were rarely honourable.
The arrival of the soldiers however had changed things. As far as Sadie could see, a nicer class of man was coming to town. This Sir Harry was evidently rich and generous, for his flowers had arrived every day for a fortnight – and he was not pushy, either, because he had not followed them up as the others did. Besides, Sadie loved a title and the idea of her Larkie as Lady Lewis delighted her. What a slap in the eye for Hannah with her ‘all titles are corrupt’ cobblers!
* * *
The war lurched on inexorably but Lark did not have time to brood on the killing toll that mounted daily. Her task was to entertain those who were about to die.
She stepped forward to the front of the stage for the last part of her act and looked down at the faces of the men lifted towards her in the stalls. Some were dark, others fair; some old, but most of them were very young, little more than schoolboys. She sang with extra feeling tonight because just before she had gone on stage, Sadie had told her that Quinn was going to France. She had hoped that his age – he was over thirty – would have excused him but as the death toll in the trenches rose, more and more men were needed.
As she turned to leave the stage, she saw a thin young man standing up clapping in a box on the right-hand side of the theatre.
That’s him, she thought, that’s my mysterious Sir Harry.
He spoke to her when she was getting into her cab at the stage door. ‘I hope you like my flowers,’ he said, and she paused on the step to stare at him. He was dressed in officer’s khaki with a gleaming Sam Browne belt that made him look like a schoolboy dressing up, for he was in his early twenties at the most and very thin, with the sort of yellow hair that looked as if it were dyed, so pale was it. His voice was soft and he sounded nervous, like a lovesick boy.
She smiled and said, ‘Thank you, they’re beautiful, but you shouldn’t spend your money like that on me.’
He shrugged and smiled sweetly back at her before drifting off into the crowd.
He asked for nothing but his constant presence in the box and the daily arrival of his flowers made her very conscious of him. She wanted to know why this young boy was so taken with her and what he wanted from her, but though she often saw him outside the stage door after the show, he never again spoke to her. One night however his flowers failed to appear and his seat in the box was occupied by a group of older men in the scarlet uniforms of a mounted regiment. Her heart sank. Had that child been sent to France and killed? He looked so like a sacrificial victim.
Three months later however he was back, announcing his arrival with a bouquet of roses so big that the florist’s man could not get them through the narrow stage door and had to bring them in by the front. That night she smiled brilliantly at his box and as he saluted her, she saw that he looked stronger, browner, more manly than before. Whatever he had seen, it had made him grow up.
As she left the theatre he was in the crowd, so she told Sadie, ‘I’ve got to talk to him, ask him to come over.’
Sadie pushed her way through the crowd and grabbed his sleeve, tugging him after her into the cab. This was the first time she had seen him really close and she noticed that his eyes were very pale blue and that he was indeed young, not long from school. Her heart filled with pity for him, such a child having to face this terrible war!
The two women questioned him as they drove along – where had he been for the past weeks?
His eyes darkened and his face stiffened. ‘I’ve been at the Front… I’m on leave now for seven days so I thought I’d come across and see your show. I think you’re wonderful, Miss Chardelle.’
‘The London flower shops must think you’re pretty wonderful too,’ said Sadie with a giggle. ‘They must be glad to see you back. Do you send flowers to all the stars?’
He grinned slightly. ‘No, this is the first time I’ve done it. You make me think of flowers every time I see you, flowers and the countryside, like the place I come from.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘A place in Herefordshire near the Welsh border. My family have a house there.’
Sadie was a good interrogator. ‘Do you come from a big family?’
‘Not really, there’s just my grandmother… and my mother, but she’s not at home. My father was killed in the Boer War and my grandmother didn’t want me to join up, but when I left school I enlisted. It seemed so cowardly not to.’
Men, mused Sadie, thinking of her Quinn, are such hopeless romantics. She then asked him a very direct question: ‘How old are you?’
He straightened his shoulders and looked her in the eye. ‘I’m twenty-five,’ he said.
They knew he was lying but he awakened their maternal instincts and so they invited him into the Mount Street house for supper.
When he left he gravely kissed Lark’s hand and said in a low voice, ‘I’m madly in love with you, you know that, don’t you? I want you to marry me, that’s why I came back from France.’
* * *
‘Of course I can’t marry you,’ she told him, but he ignored her protests and kept coming back to invite her to spend the day with him driving in the London parks or wandering along the crowded streets where he paused in front of jewellers’ shop windows, trying to persuade her to allow him to buy her a ring. She steadfastly refused to accept his offer.
He pleaded, ‘Why can’t you marry me? You’re not promised to anyone else, are you?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not, but you’re too young for me. I’m twenty-four this year. You’re probably five or six years younger, if you told the truth.’
He grinned and said, ‘Actually, I’m five years younger. But that’s not important. I feel about twenty years older than you.’
As he spoke his face hardened again into the grim lines she had seen when she saw him in his box on the first night of his return from France.
‘Oh, marry me, Lark, I’ve never felt like this about anyone before. I’ve got to go back to France the day after tomorrow. You don’t know what it’s like over there. If you marry me or even just promise to marry me, I’ll have something to live for.’
A cold shiver made the hairs on the back of her neck stiffen. She had heard stories of the war in the trenches but preferred not to think about them. Yet here was this boy ageing visibly as he remembered the war that was being waged only a few miles away in a world so very different from busy, fashionable London. She felt a great sympathy for him and took his hand softly between her gloved ones.
‘Harry, my dear boy, if I married you, your family would say I’d only done it because I wanted your money or your title.’
He laughed uproariously at that. ‘You’ve more money than I have, Lark. I only get an allowance from my grandmother and I spend most of it on flowers! As for the title, it’s nothing special. The real gentry that live near us think we’re very vulgar because my grandfather got his title for lending money to Edward VII and he’d made that money when he was a mill owner in Yorkshire. No, if you marry me, you won’t be marrying into the real aristocracy. I know you could do much better for yourself than me.’
She sent him back to France without any promises but her heart was sore for him and she lay awake at night wondering what would have been so wrong in making him happy with a promise to marry… His voice saying ‘It would give me something to live for’ kept ringing in her head.
Next day Quinn came home on leave, transformed into a smart sergeant in well-pressed khaki who came striding into the theatre and surprised Sadie, who had not expected him. He held his weeping woman clasped to his chest and once again Lark realized what it must mean to love someone wholeheartedly.
Sadie took seven days off work to be with him – she had never left Lark before – and when she returned she had just seen Quinn off at the station.
‘My God, it was terrible! Victoria was full of men and women all saying goodbye to each other and, Larkie, I couldn’t help wondering which couples would never see each other again.’
Lark tried to comfort her friend. ‘Quinn’ll be all right, Sadie, you know how resourceful he is. He’s a survivor is Quinn.’
‘I used to think that too, but this is a terrible war. My Quinn cries out at night and grinds his teeth something terrible. One night he woke up screaming… My God, it was awful listening to him! He told me some horrible things too, about rats that grow fat as cats on dead bodies and how the lice infest his clothes. You know how fussy Quinn is? He rubs candle grease along the seams of his clothes and washes himself in paraffin to try to get rid of them but nothing works… They feed on him, he says.’
She gave a shudder and went on anguishedly, ‘Oh, what’ll I do if he gets killed, Lark? He says all his mates have gone already – picked off one by one by snipers. One young lad only lasted five minutes – the first time he stuck his head up, he was shot right between the eyes.’
‘Stop it, Sadie, stop it. You know how quick Quinn is and he’s so careful, he won’t get shot. Stop thinking about it.’
But in the summer of 1917 the dreaded telegram came regretfully informing Mrs Quinn that her husband, Sergeant Alfred Albert Quinn, had died a hero’s death at Messines Ridge in the third battle of Ypres. He was awarded a posthumous Military Medal for gallantry in trying to rescue a wounded man on the battlefield.
Sadie collapsed and lay like a shrunken doll in the middle of Lark’s vast bed.
Bella came to comfort her and, as she was leaving, she whispered to Lark, ‘This is awful. There’ll be no men left by the time this war’s over.’
* * *
After a long gap, a letter came from Harry saying he had been wounded and was in an officers’ recovery centre in Derbyshire. ‘But I’m better now and will be in London next week. Please marry me,’ he wrote.
As she held the thin sheet covered w
ith schoolboyish writing she asked herself, ‘What would be so wrong about making him happy?’ For herself she felt like an empty shell, and the only time she became animated was when she stepped on to the stage.
‘Harry Lewis is coming back, he still wants me to marry him,’ she told Sadie.
‘Poor kid, he’s really gone on you. He’s a strange one… poor kid.’
Lark knew from her tone that, like her, Sadie thought Harry would not survive the war.
‘I think I’ll do it, just to please him,’ she ventured.
Sadie nodded. ‘You might as well, it would make him happy.’
He looked strained and much older but there were no visible signs of a wound – no limp, no folded sleeve. Yet obviously something terrible had happened to him, she could see that from the anguish in his eyes.
‘Have you been home to see your family?’ she asked as they sat together in her drawing room and she watched him drinking tea with such an uncontrollable tremor that he had to hold the cup with both hands.
He nodded. ‘Yes, I went home on my way down from Derbyshire. My grandmother’s getting old. She seems to think we’re still fighting the Boers.’
‘What about your mother?’
‘She’s still alive but she lives in South America. After my father was killed, she married a jockey and they sent her away. Even for my family a little jockey with a drink problem was too much. I’ve not seen her since I was five.’
The key to Harry was coming clearer. He longed for love, he needed a substitute for the mother he had never had.
‘My mother’s a runaway too,’ she told him. ‘She’s in Russia organizing a revolution or something.’
The newspapers had been full of the revolution in Russia and though there had been no news of Hannah, Lark was sure that she would be involved in it somehow. She’d waited so long for revolution, how could she miss it?
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