by Maureen Lee
‘Well, I’m sorry, Miss Raines, but Mr Abel didn’t mention either of you.’
‘The stinking bastard,’ the girl spat. ‘He promised.’
‘The trouble with Mr Abel,’ Jerry said as he led Anne and Herbie back to the stage, ‘is that he can’t keep his trousers buttoned. Them’s the times he makes promises that he don’t mean to keep. Anyway, I’m the stage manager, so we’re gonna see a lot of each other from now on. With Eric Carrington and Patricia Peters starring, Roses are Red is sure to be a really big hit.’
‘We’ve done it, Anne!’ Herbie threw his arms around her. ‘We’re gonna be on Broadway.’
‘So, you’ve had a boy at last!’ Irene snorted. She limped across the sun-drenched room and peered at the baby in Mollie’s arms. ‘The nurse told me on the way in. A copper called late last night to say you’d gone into labour. Our Tom had asked him to. I didn’t sleep a wink thinking about you and praying you’d have a boy.’ She chucked the baby under his wrinkly chin. ‘He looked a tough ’un. What did he weigh?’
‘Eight pounds, two ounces, and I didn’t care whether I had a boy or a girl, Irene, and neither did Tom,’ Mollie said firmly.
‘Men prefer sons,’ her mother-in-law stated as if it had been carved in stone, a truth never to be denied.
Mollie didn’t bother denying it. She just knew Tom couldn’t have loved their daughters, Megan and Brodie, more had they been boys.
‘What are you going to call him?’
‘Joseph, but Tom’s already started to call him Joey.’
‘Joey’s the gear.’ She settled in a chair beside the bed. ‘What sort of time did you have, luv?’ she enquired, her voice throbbing with sympathy.
‘All right.’ Mollie winced, remembering. It had been anything but all right. In fact, it had hurt like blazes and gone on for hours, but it was fatal to tell that to Irene, who would then go through her own four labours, every one of which would have been ten times worse than anything Mollie described. Her sisters-in-law, Lily and Pauline, were just as bad, competing with each other for the worst experiences, the most stitches, the longest labours. Gladys was all right. She was married to Enoch and the youngest of the three. Since Mollie had married into the Ryans, Gladys had become her best friend after Agatha.
‘I’ve brought you some oranges,’ Irene announced. ‘Jaffas.’
‘Thank you very much.’ Mollie was starving, not for oranges, but for fish and chips soaked in vinegar, preferably wrapped in newspaper. They tasted better out of newspaper than on a plate.
The baby sneezed. ‘God bless you,’ Mollie murmured. The sneeze must have woken him and he opened his big blue eyes and stared at her vacantly. He was a crumpled little thing with a button nose. ‘He looks worried about something,’ she remarked, kissing the nose.
‘Probably worried where his next meal’s coming from. Boys are hungry little buggers, never off the breast. Our Tom was the worst. I had to learn to cook with one arm for a whole year after he was born.’
‘Really!’ Mollie took everything her mother-in-law said with a great pinch of salt.
The door opened and Lily came in carrying a bunch of carnations from her garden and said the nurse would be in soon with a vase. Gladys called her Lily the Lampost she was so tall. ‘So you’ve had a boy at last,’ she remarked. As well as a long body, she had a long face and a long nose, and was inclined to sniff disapprovingly at everything. She sniffed disapprovingly at the baby, though Mollie took for granted it was just a habit and she didn’t really mean it.
‘I wouldn’t have cared if it had been another girl.’ You had what God sent you. She and Tom had picked a name, Jane, in case they’d had a girl, as if she’d have cared any less for the baby in her arms if it had been Jane instead of Joey.
‘You’re just saying that, Moll.’
‘No, I’m not, Lily,’ Mollie said through gritted teeth.
‘Every man wants a son.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Leave the girl be, Lily.’ Irene rolled her eyes in exasperation, as if she hadn’t said exactly the same thing herself a few minutes before. She and Lily didn’t get on. They argued over everything, even if it meant one had to discard a lifelong-held opinion in order to win. There were all sorts of tensions in the Ryan family that Mollie hadn’t been aware of before she’d married Tom. Not only did Lily not get on with her mother-in-law, she didn’t get on with Pauline, either. In fact, they detested each other, though were united in their opinion that Gladys was a hussy who led Enoch a pretty dance.
Enoch’s furniture business was prospering and he earned more than his three other brothers put together. Lily and Pauline’s opinion of their sister-in-law could have been influenced by the fact that Gladys bought her clothes from George Henry Lee’s, whereas they could only afford to shop in Blackler’s. Moreover, she had bright-red curly hair, green eyes and a flirtatious manner, and their own husbands always made a beeline for Gladys whenever the families met in the house in Turnpike Street.
The bell rang to indicate morning visiting times were over. Irene and Lily kissed Mollie, then Joey, and promised they’d come again that evening.
The door closed. ‘Well, I’m glad they’ve gone, aren’t you?’ she said. She opened her nightdress and attached the baby to her breast. He began to suck eagerly. She’d been reluctant to feed him in front of the visitors, who would have told her she was holding him the wrong way or using the wrong breast. ‘Your dad’s going to do his best to get here in his dinner-hour,’ she told him. ‘And Agatha’s coming tonight after work. You’ll like Agatha. She can’t wait to meet you.’ Agatha had telephoned the nursing home from the chemist’s as soon as she got in that morning, so she already knew about Joey.
The nursing home was in Princes Park where Megan and Brodie had been born. The woman who owned it was married to a police inspector and offered special rates to policemen’s wives. It was so much better than a hospital where visitors were only allowed twice a week and the wards were crowded, the nurses brusque and not very kind to the new mothers. Here, Mollie had a room to herself. The walls were painted cream and there was a white net curtain and a dark-green blind on the open window. The curtain billowed in and out, touched by the soft breeze, and she could hear the cries of children playing in the park.
‘Are you enjoying that?’ she asked Joey. He had brown hair, just like Tom’s, short and neat, as if it had already been cut by a barber. It felt soft and downy to the touch. Her swollen breasts felt tender and her stomach ached like mad. She stretched out her legs and wiggled her feet, worried she was about to get cramp.
Yet she felt completely happy. It was June - Midsummer’s Day, in fact - and the sun was out as if to prove it. Through the net she could see the trees in the park, the leaves shimmering like diamonds. But had it been winter and there’d been snow outside, she would have felt just as happy. Next month, she would be twenty-one, she had three beautiful children, and was married to the best husband in the world.
The door opened to admit the best husband in the world. ‘Hello,’ Tom grinned.
‘Hello.’ She wondered if her face wore the same expression as his, slightly bemused, as if they couldn’t quite believe their luck in having found each other.
‘How’s our son?’
‘He’s all right, but he’s not doing my left breast much good.’
‘Change him to the other one.’
‘He’s already made short work of that.’
Tom came over and cupped her face in his hands. ‘I love you,’ he said, kissing her full on the lips.
‘And I love you.’ She caught one of his hands and kissed the palm. It tasted warm and salty. ‘Do you feel tired, darlin’?’ He’d stayed until after Joey had been born just after three, but had been due at work by eight.
‘Not as tired as you must be.’ He sat on the edge of the bed.
Joey released her breast and smacked his lips. She handed him to his father. ‘Here’s your son. You can bring his wind up for the
very first time.’
‘The first of many.’ He hoisted the baby on to his shoulder and began gently to rub his back. Mollie leaned against the pillow, exhausted, thinking what a beautiful picture they made: the handsome young man with the son who wasn’t yet half a day old.
‘Did you manage to see Megan and Brodie this morning?’ she asked.
‘They were still in bed, fast asleep.’ Their daughters were being looked after by Elsie Hardcastle who lived next door. Elsie was also married to a policeman. She was in her forties and her own children were grown up and married with children of their own.
‘I can’t stay long,’ Tom said. He coughed importantly. ‘We’re in the middle of this dead interesting case. This avvy, I’ve got to interview a chap in Smithdown Road whose wife has gone missing. Me, I think she’s just run away, but it’s got to be investigated.’
Six months ago, Tom had been recommended for the plain-clothes unit and was now a detective constable, using his brain, following clues and relying on his instincts in a way he’d never had to do before. He had re-read all his Sherlock Holmes stories and frequently came up with the most bizarre explanations for a crime that had been committed. Occasionally, he was actually right.
Joey gave a loud, hoarse burp and spurted a little bubble of milk on to the shoulder of his father’s dark suit. ‘Oh, I should have put a towel over you,’ Mollie cried.
Another man might have cursed his newly born son, but Tom just handed Joey to his mother and wiped off the milk with a damp face flannel out of the sink. ‘It’s all right, Moll, don’t worry. Anyroad, it’s a badge of fatherhood, isn’t it?’ His face glowed with pride. ‘I’m going for a drink with me mates tonight. We’re going to wet the baby’s head. But I’ll still come and see you afterwards, always assuming the chap in Smithdown Road hasn’t murdered his missus and hidden the body in the cellar.’
‘You said you thought she’d run away.’
‘Yes, but I could always be wrong,’ he conceded, though she could tell he seriously doubted it.
Olive Raines was still simmering with rage more than an hour later as she and Flip sat hunched over their cold coffees on a 8th Avenue dinner not far from the theatre.
‘He promised,’ she said for the twentieth, or it might have been the thirtieth, time.
Flip stroked her hand. ‘I know, honey.’
‘I never dreamed I’d do anything like that,’ she whispered. She hadn’t done too badly in New York. At least she could tell people she was ‘on the stage’, even if a lot of the time she was working as a waitress. Twice she’d been in the chorus of a really big show, had sung in a few tenth-rate nightclubs, and been a magician’s assistant in a travelling vaudeville company. But real success had proved as elusive as the Holy Grail. Then Roses are Red had come along and she and Flip had found themselves in the last five couples. She’d felt it wouldn’t hurt to give the process a little nudge and sleep with the producer. The casting couch, it was called. Lots of women used it to get on in show business.
‘I wish you hadn’t, Ros. I begged you not to.’ She’d never told Flip her real name was Olive. Another thing she hadn’t told him was the way she’d used to earn her living back in London. Conrad Abel was a repulsive little man, but sleeping with him hadn’t been as much of an ordeal for her as for most women.
‘I know you did.’ He hadn’t begged all that hard. The same desire to succeed burned as strongly in him as it did in her. Had Conrad Abel swung a different way, she knew Flip would have been just as willing to offer himself. She would have begged him not to, but in the same half-hearted way as he’d begged her.
‘I bet that Herbie Blinker’s folks are loaded,’ Flip sneered. ‘I could just tell. There was something about him. He looked well fed and pampered; the all-American boy.’
‘What about the girl, his partner? What did you think of her?’
‘She was OK,’ he said grudgingly. ‘She looked like a dancer, walked like one.’
‘I know her,’ Olive said in a low voice. ‘At least, I used to. She was on the boat from England.’
‘Jeez!’ Flip gasped, astounded. ‘Why didn’t you speak to her? I wonder if she did the great Mr Abel a favour?’
‘She didn’t recognize me. Her name’s Annemarie Kenny, not Anne Murray.’ Had she thought that one day Annemarie would beat her to such an important part, she would have left the bitch on Ellis Island to fend for herself. ‘I doubt if she went anywhere near Conrad Abel.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Flip conceded. ‘She looked too classy.’
The comment made her angry. ‘And where does that put me?’
He grinned. ‘Same level as me, honey. We’re two of a kind. We’ll do anything to get on. That’s why we’re attracted to each other. Waiting in that green room, I felt as sick as a dog. ’Fact, I actually threw up in the bathroom.’
They’d met, her and Flip, a year ago in one of the nightclubs where she was singing and he worked behind the bar. They’d clicked immediately. His full name was Filipo Ungaretti, but he called himself Flip Ungar. His folks were Italian, and his dark good looks and lazy manner disguised a feverish ambition to succeed. Within a week, he’d moved into her cold-water apartment on 8th Street. They were good for each other. Roses are Red was the first time they’d auditioned as a couple and they’d done well, if not well enough. Perhaps they should do it again one day.
‘There’s always other parts,’ he said. ‘Today’s not the end of the world, though it feels like it.’ He signalled to the waitress to re-fill their cups for the fourth time. ‘After we’ve had this, let’s go back home and join the protest.’ The tenants of their building had gone on a rent strike when the owner had tried to double the rent. This morning, when they’d left, there’d been a crowd outside the building with placards and banners. These days in New York, there were protests, marches, and demonstrations against something or other wherever you went.
Olive agreed. ‘But I’d like to call my agent first, see what else he’s got on his books.’
‘Yeah, and I’ll call mine.’
Ollie decided to throw an impromptu party to celebrate Herbie and Anne’s success. Anne said she’d telephone Lev and invite him.
‘I’m sorry, darling, but it’s too short notice: we’re having people to dinner and they’ll be arriving soon,’ Lev said. He sounded old and tired. ‘I would have loved to be there. I promise faithfully to come and see the show. When does it open?’
‘September. We start rehearsals next week. I’ll send you tickets for the opening night.’ She doubted if Tamara would come with him.
‘Thank you, darling. I’d better go. Tamara’s making faces at me, I’m still not properly dressed. Anyway, congratulations to you and Herbie, I’ll be thinking of you tonight.’
She replaced the receiver, feeling sad. This exciting life she was leading was entirely due to Lev, yet he was unable to share it. She sighed, changed into a red silky dress, and combed her shoulder-length hair. It was even curlier since she’d had twelve inches cut off because it got in the way when she danced.
The doorbell went: the guests had already started to arrive. She imagined them sitting by their telephones earlier, hoping for a call and an invitation out. There were voices outside close to her window: people were on the balcony, the best place to be on such a beautiful evening. What would the inhabitants of the Hoovervilles think, she wondered, if they could see the rich, well-dressed folks sipping cocktails while they lived in squalor? It hardly seemed fair. It wasn’t fair. Lights exploded in the corners of her eyes and she hoped she wasn’t getting one of her headaches. She’d been having them a lot since she came to live with the Blinkers. Sometimes, the pain was so great she wanted to scream.
There was a knock on her door. It was Herbie. ‘What are you doing in there?’ he shouted. ‘Peggy Perlmann’s arrived and wants to see you.’
Anne sighed again and went to join the party.
Peggy was doing the routine that went down well at parties: danci
ng while pretending to be a scarecrow, flopping all over the place. It probably helped that she was, like most people there, a bit drunk. The only ones completely sober were Anne, who didn’t drink, and Ollie Blinker, who was never without a drink in his hand - only his wife knew it was the same drink he’d been carrying around all night. Ollie’s life had been, still was, a dangerous one and he liked to remain in complete control of his senses.
When Christina, the maid, came in during Peggy’s performance to tell him there was a telephone call and that the caller had refused to give his name, Ollie guessed immediately who it was. ‘It’s the phone in the den,’ Christina said.
The den was where Ollie made his business deals, played pool, smoked cigars - Lizzie couldn’t stand the smell - and went for some peace and quiet when Lizzie was entertaining her friends or when the kids had been young and making a row. He went in now and picked up the receiver. ‘Ollie Blinker here,’ he said cheerfully.
‘It’s me, Conrad Abel,’ said a surly voice.
‘This is a wasted call, Mr Abel. The cheque’s already in the post.’ He’d heard through the grapevine that the producer was a gambler - not a very good one - and owed big money to a dangerous character who went by the name of Al Capone.
A satisfied grunt came from the other end of the line. ‘Does your boy know I was persuaded to give him the part in my show?’
‘It’s not your show, Mr Abel,’ Ollie said stiffly. ‘You’re just the producer, and my boy thinks he was picked on merit. You and I are the only ones who know the truth. If you tell a living soul, you’ll be finished in the theatre. And my boy and his partner were down to the last five when I made my offer, so there’s a good chance they’d still have been given the parts.’
‘The partner, yes - she’s a peach of a girl, a real humdinger - but not your boy. He’s good, but he’s not brilliant. For one thing, his knees are too stiff. There was another young fellow came today: him and the girl would have gone perfectly together, but I turned him down.’ Ollie sensed regret in his voice. ‘That girl carries your son, Mr Blinker. He’ll never get anywhere without her.’ The receiver at the other end was abruptly replaced.