Suddenly he wasn’t listening to her and she noticed that he glanced urgently at the big clock behind her.
“I’d just like to say thanks a million for coming right down here, Elaine,” he said, breathlessly. “It was good of you and I’m damned if I’ll ever forget it! Not many people would have come in the circumstances, hardly anyone, in fact! Believe me, Elaine, I do wish you all the luck in the world with the Yank and no hard feelings!”
She too sensed the urgency of the moment and suddenly her mood changed again and she felt glad, very glad, that she had come. She realised now that her instinct had been right, and that the visit had done a good deal to steady her.
“If I can return the compliment I’d like to say that I think you’ve stood up to everything wonderfully, Archie,” she told him sincerely.
“Oh, that!” he shrugged, and she noticed how wide and splendidly muscled were his shoulders, compared with Woolston’s.
“I had it coming to me, Elaine,” he said, “and I’m not sore, not really sore! I sat up and begged for it, and I don’t hold it against anyone for dishing it out! There’s one thing about this place—it does give you a chance to think. I always imagined that I planned things when I was outside, but I didn’t you know. In the main I always acted on impulse and chanced my luck! Well, this business has taught me one thing. It doesn’t do to rely on luck, Elaine. I’ll know better next time!”
“What are you going to do when you get out, Archie?”
“Depends on capital,” he told her, “I’ve got two thousand from the corner shop. That’s not much I know, and the place would have fetched six after the war, when there’ll be a terrific rush for small businesses with living accommodation, but it’s two thousand better than nothing, and I’ll start up again, somehow, some place! I’m not worried!”
“No, you’re not are you?” she said, wonderingly. “You’re not nearly so worried as the people….” She had been on the point of saying ‘the people outside’, but she checked herself, and said “as most people.”
The beefy young officer stood up and coughed, and the women on each side of Elaine scraped their chairs. Then the other officer barked an order. “It’s like talking to a pack of dogs,” Elaine thought as, with a final wink, Archie stood, turned smartly right, and joined the file of men that was already shuffling past her on the far side of the wire.
Elaine followed the other warder out into the yard and retrieved her belongings at the brick shed. A few minutes later she was walking briskly down the concrete ramp towards the town. She had a very thoughtful look as she stood with a group of other visitors waiting for the lights to turn green before crossing the road.
“He’s got so much guts,” she said to herself. “I never dreamed that he had that much guts!” And as she said it her mind drifted away from Archie to contemplate the word ‘guts’ in the abstract.
There were so many variations of the term—guts to charge a machine-gun, the kind of guts that people said Esme had shown, by avoiding capture and working his way home to Judith after already screwing up his courage to breaking-point to fly on operations. Then there were the day-by-day guts, the kind that had revealed itself so readily in the Avenue during the bombing, and finally her own kind of guts, the guts to make a plan, and stick to it, no matter what people said, or how it affected those one lived among!
Could Woolston lay claim to any one of these? Would he, for instance, on finding his world in ruins, brace up and grin, as Archie had grinned when she faced him across that awful wire netting?
She doubted it. She doubted it very much but was there any way of finding out for certain?
Still musing she passed into the main hall of the station and lost herself in the bustle attending an incoming train.
CHAPTER XXXI
Sicilian Encounter
MARGY HARTNELL AND her ENSA concert party had followed the armies across the Mediterranean to Sicily.
They crossed in September of 1943, when Mussolini’s Italy was on the point of collapse and fighting had all but ceased on the island.
They were based for a time on Taomina, the honeymoon town under the slopes of Etna, and here, in a huge marquee, or in an open amphitheatre, they gave a concert each night and played to capacity houses.
Privately Margy did not think much of their programmes. There was no real talent in the party and under different conditions it would have had difficulty in attracting a paying audience in a garrison town on a Saturday night. Out here, however, there was no competition and almost any kind of song, mime or dance was well received by the troops, who laughed uproariously at jokes that had been cracked in the musical-halls of their grandfathers.
Margy acted as relief pianist and instrumentalist, but on certain evenings she had her own vocal spot and sometimes led the community singing. She also played the trumpet but she was at her best with the piano accordion, the ‘squeeze-box’ as it was called by the audiences.
All kinds of men crowded into the marquee to hear her play numbers like ‘Lili Marlene’, and often someone would send up a special request. She liked special requests, for they enabled her to establish a closer contact with her audience, and when a request was handed up she always asked the applicant to identify himself and shout out the branch of the service he represented.
“Here’s someone who wants ‘Lovely Week-end”,” she would announce. “Who is it? Come on now, where are you hiding, Charlie? I’m not going to play it unless you stand up like a man and show yourself! Come on, you can’t be so shy, or you wouldn’t have a lovely week-end to remember!”
Then a young man in khaki, or in navy blue, would bob up from the back and call out something facetious, such as: “It’s not me, it’s my mate Bert, Gorgeous! He wants ‘Lovely Week-end’ because his last one is still costing him seven-and-a-tanner a week,” and the joker would subside, in a scuffle and a gale of laughter.
When she was not on stage Margy would sometimes go round and stand at the back of the tent, looking across the serried rows of heads to the stage, and speculating on the men who so obviously enjoyed these corny programmes.
Such a variety of men she encountered; kilted Jocks, Red Devils, Desert Rats, with complexions walnut brown after two years ‘in the Blue’, grounded fighter-pilots, with their ridiculous moustaches, noisy Free French, broad-shouldered Poles and stolid Dutch, light-hearted British tars, in their flopping bell-bottoms, Royal Engineers, Gunners, and aloof Task Force officers, with the strain of past missions in their eyes.
There were men in their greying fifties, and boys still in their ’teens; there were saucy men, who slipped an arm around her waist, and shy men who blushed when she asked to see a photograph of their girl friend. There were Americans, who looked at her in a certain way, and excessively polite Americans, who called her ‘ma’am’, and came to attention when she spoke to them. There were all kinds of men, every kind of man, but never a merchant sailor, never Ted, with his slow, self-effacing smile, and rhythm-tapping foot, the man who (how many centuries ago?) had drifted into her Woolworth’s Store on the Old Orchard Road, where she was once employed as song-plugger, and asked her to play ‘Wonderful Army’, the hit of the hour, on the Store gramophone.
Sometimes, she told herself, she was a fool to spend so much time thinking about Ted. She was only thirty-one and still mildly attractive in a petite, ‘gypsyish’ way. Scores of men would have been glad to invite her out to a meal, to flatter her and pet her perhaps, in the back of a car, and some might have made her feel that, even though time was racing by, and the war went on and on, it was still pleasant to lie in a man’s arms, and hear him make an issue of the Mediterranean moon.
She never did give any particular man individual encouragement but continued to mother them en masse, to ask after their girl friends, and sing their request numbers, numbers that had, for almost every one of them, some special significance in prewar years.
One stuffy night the atmosphere was so close and heavy that Oscar, the manager, ordere
d the stage to be reversed and the concert performed in the open air, with the audience crowding into a vast circle under a full moon.
During Margy’s second turn with the piano-accordion a man at the back stood up after she had finished playing ‘Johnny Zero’, for an American, and called, loudly and clearly:
“‘Stormy Weather! Give us ‘Stormy Weather’!”
His request was followed by a volley of others, demands for ‘Waltzing Matilda’,‘Sally’, and the eternal favourite, ‘Lilt Marlene’, but the soldier who wanted ‘Stormy Weather’ had been the first, so she moved down-stage, smiled into the sea of upturned faces and said:
“You’re lucky, soldier! That’s an old favourite of mine, chum, so with your permission I’ll get rid of the squeezebox and sing it! Are you with me, Ernie?” as the pianist sidled in from the wings, and Eddy Marks, the tenor, relieved her of the accordion.
‘Stormy Weather’ had considerable significance for her. Years ago, during their honeymoon at Blackpool, she and Ted had sat in a box at the Tower Theatre, and heard Gracie Fields sing it when it was a new and popular number.
She moved across to the piano and began to sing, her mind re-creating the surroundings in which she had first heard the song, and her voice easily adapting itself to the strident sadness of the dirge.
‘Can’t go on…
Everything I had is gone,
Stormy Weather!
Since my man and I ain’t together,
Keeps raining all the ti-ime…
Keeps raining all—the—time!’
She must have excelled herself, for the applause was thunderous and interspersed with a chorus of appreciative whistles that continued for almost a minute.
She patted the pianist on the shoulder and then saw Oscar signalling an encore from the wings. She was tired, and needed a drink, but she could not help being encouraged by the reception. She looked out across the crowded amphitheatre, peering through almost motionless clouds of tobacco smoke that hung above the bowl like an awning.
She lifted her hand for silence and the applause died away.
“Okay, boys! Just one more! What’ll you have? Make it snappy!”
At least a dozen men stood up but one, well away at the back, was a split second in advance of his competitors. He leapt to his feet and shouted:
“‘Margy’! Sing ‘Margy’!”
His voice was at once lost in scattered shouts from all points of the circle, but Margy had heard him and she waved, frantically, for silence.
“Okay! ‘Margy’ it is! Are you ready, Ernie?”
They sailed into the number and as she sang it she reflected that it must be all of fifteen years’ old, that she had sung it in her Woolworth’s days, and that Ted had always regarded it as ‘her’ tune. It was a good, nostalgic number, with plenty of swing and all the zest of the late ‘twenties’, when everybody seemed to have such a good time on so little money, and nobody had ever heard of Hitler or concentration camps.
When she was about half-way through she noticed, but without paying special attention to it, a small stir away at the edge of the circle. Then she saw a man threading his way carefully between the rows of seated figures, and making his way towards the narrow gangway between the converging lines of backless benches.
There was something vaguely familiar about the man’s movements, something that disconcerted her, so that she turned her head away from the audience and fixed her eyes on the spur of rock, marking the right-hand boundary of the valley.
Then, when she was half-way through the second chorus, she saw the man more clearly. He was now ascending the short flight of steps that led to the stage and for another second or so she went on singing, wondering what the man could be doing there, and why he should have chosen this particular moment to climb from the auditorium.
Ernie, at the piano, must have been wondering the same thing, for he faltered, and the accompaniment petered out as the man moved into the direct light of the footlights. She saw then, and with a cry that ended the number on a kind of squeak, that the man was Ted and that he was holding out his arms and speaking to her.
Below her the audience seemed to go mad. Men sprang to their feet in hundreds and began shouting at the top of their voices. Ernie had left the piano stool and Oscar, the manager, had jumped out from the wings. She felt faint and dizzy with the uproar.
Then Ted’s arms were around her and his mouth was pressed to hers and nothing else mattered, not the audience, the concert, or the war! She felt herself lifted and carried across to the piano, where she was dumped and temporarily abandoned, while Ted turned to the audience and waved his hands semaphore fashion, the way he had always asked for silence when about to announce one of her special numbers at a dance at home.
“Okay, fellers! Okay! You can shout your heads off but I can explain everything! Listen, fellers, listen, everyone! Margy here’s my wife, and I haven’t seen her in over a year, so what would you do, fellers? What would you do if you found yourself put ashore in Valetta, heard that your own missus was handy, and then had the chance of a hop over here in a Dakota?”
His speech produced a roar that eclipsed its forerunner. The men nearest the stage began to bunch forward, and those further back climbed up on the benches and began to caper about, waving their caps and behaving, Margy thought, like supporters at a Cup Final when their team had scored a winning goal during extra time.
It was Oscar, the manager-comedian, who at last managed to quieten them.
He waddled down to the footlights and stood beside Ted. He was still wearing baggy, checked trousers, and the billycock hat he had used in the preceding act.
“Quiet!” he shouted, in his harsh, costermonger’s voice. “Quiet! you bell-toothed bush-monkeys! This is an occasion! This is really something, fellers! Quiet! Listen! Quiet, can’t you?”
Slowly the uproar subsided but a continuous murmur persisted as Oscar put his arm on Ted’s shoulder and began to speak again.
“This isn’t a gag, fellers! Take it from me, chaps, it’s no gag! Honest-to-God, I didn’t know a thing about it, and neither did Margy! Damn it, you’ve only got to look at the gal! This is on the level, fellers! This chap really is her old pot-an’-pan. Ain’t that so, Margy? Tell ’em, kid. Ain’t that so?”
Margy nodded, happily, but she was unable to speak.
“What you chaps don’t know,” went on Oscar confidentially, warming to his work as impresario, and rubbing his hands with professional glee, “is that this chap here, Margy’s old man, is Ted Hartnell, a famous, pro’ band-leader and a jazz-drummer, and an artist who ‘as appeared many times on the B.B.C.! Now ain’t that so, Teddy-boy? Ain’t that so?”
Ted had no chance to confirm or deny, for Oscar’s announcement created a renewed storm of cheers. When he had won another respite he went on to say that “maybe—maybe mindyew, Ted and Margy would do a special number right here, after which he was sure the audience would excuse ’em further participation in the concert, because I reckon they got a ruddy sight more urgent things to do!”
A roar of laughter, and a storm of hand-clapping greeted this announcement and Ted grinned as he returned to the piano and held a short consultation with Ernie and Margy.
Finally he came back to Oscar and whispered something to him, whereupon Oscar nodded eagerly, and then addressed himself to the audience yet again.
“They’re going to give you something real appropriate, fellers…something local you might say, or as-near-as-dammit local!”
He raised his voice to an agonised howl: “Margy’s gonner sing, with Ted Hartnell accompanying on the drums, that old-time popular number known to all an’ everyone of you, ‘The Isle of Capri’.”
He bowed himself back into the wings as the grinning drummer bustled on with a set of drums. The drummer arranged his frame and placed a chair for Ted in front of it, then skipped off-stage and left the field free to Ted, Margy and Ernie at the piano.
Margy dabbed her eyes, slipped off the piano an
d moved down-stage with her hands clasped, waiting through the introductory bars with a demureness more reminiscent of a Victorian ballad-singer than an ENSA camp canary.
She sang the lyric quietly and sweetly, without the ‘give’ that Ted had always associated with her delivery of vocal numbers and then, after a verse and chorus, she stepped back and nodded to Ernie, and Ted addressed himself wholeheartedly to the drums and swept into a hotted-up version in his best dance-hall manner.
The troops loved it and applause broke out before he had worked his way through the chorus. He hurled himself at kettle-drum, side-drum, triangle and cymbals, while Ernie’s fingers flew faster and faster over the keys, until at last Ernie gave up and sat back, while Ted entered upon one of his prolonged flourishes submerged in the full tide of applause that swept over the stage.
Watching him from her stand near the piano, Margy’s heart nearly burst with pride, for it was clear to her that three years at sea, and all his dreadful experiences, had done nothing to destroy his touch. Here he was, the same old Ted, beating it up and beating it up as if his life depended on sustaining the merciless tattoo of flailing drumsticks.
The very sight of him, sweating and beaming over the skins, renewed all her hope in the future. Hero he might be, George Medal winner, and merchant-seaman for the duration, but nonetheless he was still her Ted, ace-drummer of the suburbs, and pivot of the Hartnell Eight!
“Ted,” she breathed, “Ted, you’re wonderful…wonderful!”
He finished with a final lunge at the cymbals and abruptly turned his back on the audience, crossing up-stage to her, taking her hand, and leading her down-stage to make a bow to the boys.
They remained standing there a moment and then, with the roar of applause ringing in their ears, they ran into the wings, past Oscar and others, who thumped their shoulders, and jumped down into the empty marquee that had been the auditorium.
The Avenue Goes to War Page 52