by Maggie Ford
But he would never get married. If Cissy never came back, he would remain as he was, unmarried to the end of his days. And his new tug, Cicely, would be his reminder of that – in the face of all those who thought he was being a bloody fool, and childish.
For Daisy things were going splendidly. Spring 1926 with Rose Marie still playing to packed houses, she was relishing every second of it. Of course it was hard work. Of course it left her tired after two shows a day. But what a wonderful tiredness.
All the family had been to watch her, straining for a glimpse of her among the Indian maidens forming the chorus. Mum and Dad were so proud of her they had seen it three times, once on complimentary tickets and twice paying for themselves – the second time meaning Mum had to hock her best teaset to buy the tickets. Daisy would have like to have paid for them, but the salary for her few moments on stage wasn’t all that much. Still, one had to start somewhere and her hope of going further was stimulating and certainly better than dressmaking at Cohens.
She often thought of those days when she and Cissy would sit at one another’s bench to eat their sandwiches; the evenings they would go up the West End. Now she was working in a West End theatre and Cissy was in Paris; had been to Biarritz for the winter, she’d sent her a postcard from there, and her last letter once more bore a Paris address.
That old boyfriend of hers, Eddie Bennett, had come when she had still been at Cohens last autumn, asking if she knew where Cissy was. It had left her feeling pulled both ways and terribly guilty. She had mentioned Paris but hadn’t given him Cissy’s address, nor intended to, because Cissy’s letters all sounded so tremendously happy.
Biarritz had been heavenly. Lounging in deckchairs, the sun beating down on bare arms and legs, making it hard to remember it was winter. Cissy’s thoughts had often wandered to what it must be like in London. Rain, wind, fog, snow, and even on a clear day, the frost hanging on.
She had been sorry to leave when they had all decided it was time to return to Paris.
‘We’ll go back next winter, my darling, you can be sure of that,’ Langley had soothed, as she craned her neck round for a last lingering look at the craggy Basque coast as the long train snaked on into the pine forests of the Landes.
Now they were all back in Paris to pick up where they had left off: resuming the unending round of dining elegantly at Maxim’s, Escargot-Montorgeuil, Lucas Carton, Ritz; and less elegantly – in fact spilling over with high spirits – at the Coupole, the Dome with its jazz band upstairs and its jazz-age wallpaper downstairs; La Boeuf where they played jazz into the early hours; the Select which stayed open all night and Falstaffs that sold a drink with a kick enough to see its patrons wanting to climb lamp-posts as they left; and of course, the Jockey Club where the Americans were apt to gather. There were a thousand and one places to enjoy oneself, and yes, Paris in its way was quite as heavenly as Biarritz in its way, where one danced all night and slept all day and had seen its famous wonders so many times they’d all become boring.
‘How long will we be staying here now?’ she asked, as she unpacked in their apartment before going off to La Rotonde for a snack.
He paused in the act of draping one of his vacation jackets, a blue and fawn striped jacket, over a coat hanger in his wardrobe. ‘How long did you want to stay?’
She was taken by surprise. ‘As long as you, I expect.’
‘Ah, yes.’ He paused to regard her. ‘You weren’t thinking of going back to England soon?’
Alarm overcame her as she stared back into that, she felt, purposely enigmatic face. Sometimes he could look like this, and sometimes in the midst of her happiest moment, there would come a fear that he was tiring of her, though she would rather have died than let him see her fear. Now she laughed, the tinkling laugh he often remarked on as delicious, hoping it didn’t strike him as false.
‘Why should I want to go back to England?’
‘We’ll have to go back eventually.’
Cissy’s face brightened. The word ‘we’ made all the difference between heaven and hell for her. ‘Not yet, though?’ she queried, relieved.
He gave a casual chuckle and went back to hanging things on rails. ‘No, not yet. I was thinking, we might stay the summer and autumn and then all pop off down to the Med for the winter. What d’you say?’
Cissy let the sandals she was holding clatter onto the floorboards. ‘Oh, darling! It’d be just divine! Oh, can we?’
‘Why not? Of course it’s early days yet and we might have a change of companions by then. Effie and Dickie plan to go back home around June. Effie had a letter from Margo saying she’s coming over. Not sure it’s with anyone, but she’ll have Effie and Dickie’s apartment.’
A stab of jealousy shot through Cissy. Margo Fox-Prinshaw, the dark-haired girl who’d looked so certain of Langley that first time she’d met her. As if she was his. Had there once been something between them and was he indeed tiring of her and fancying Margo Fox-Prinshaw again? Suddenly the sunshine beyond their small window didn’t seem so bright.
‘Would she come here on her own?’
‘She knows how to look after herself.’ Langley seemed unusually interested in folding up one of his used shirts. There was something.
‘Oh, she could always do that,’ Cissy said acidly, and had him glance at her, grinning, the blue of his eyes accentuated by the dark lashes, adopting a knowing, teasing look.
‘You’re not jealous, are you?’
Cissy pouted. ‘Why should I be jealous?’
‘Because she was once my girlfriend, you know.’
‘I had guessed as much.’ Cissy forced herself to shrug, blinking away the tears already stinging her eyes. ‘If you want her to be that again, I can always go home.’
Langley didn’t reply. The shirt he had been so carefully folding, he laid back onto the bed, smoothing it with exaggerated care. His silence could only mean one thing, she was sure. Then just as she was becoming convinced of that, he straightened up, and coming towards her, took her gently by the arms, bringing her towards him.
‘You’re a silly little fool, Cissy. Don’t you realise, you’re the one I asked to come here with me. D’you think I’d bring you all the way here, give you everything you want if I fancied her over you? It was over long ago with her. Silly, silly darling…’
His lips found hers, pressing their need of her with a slow yet deliberate insistence. Unable to help herself, Cissy responded, the last of her tears dampening his cheeks as he bore her slowly down on the bed between the cases and scattered paraphernalia of unpacking, her tears drying and forgotten as he made love to her.
It was no pleasure to Eddie that business was managing to do better than he’d first expected. Time and again he told himself that with Cissy at his side there would have been nothing they couldn’t have achieved together. As it was, he was merely going through the motions of making a go of it. Yet it seemed to make a go of itself, despite him.
Hardly had the Cicely been licked into a shape, when two salvage operations came, one after the other. In both cases he had been on the spot – in a thick February fog a Spanish vessel grounded in the Lower Hope towed off successfully, his and two other tugs got her off, and a week later, again in fog, a freighter had gone ashore on the east coast, he again being on hand. His share of the salvage agreement in each case combined to almost cover what he’d laid out on the Cicely.
A fortnight later came another lucrative salvage job. What he had expected to take years to recuperate on his outlay had taken a month. With more than enough to pay for the work on the Cicely’s boilers, the scraping off of rust and repainting, he had a trim-looking vessel and even showed a profit. Moreover, the salvage jobs had got him known enough to be given work over some of the bigger companies. It was more likely he was a fraction cheaper, but they had proved his worth.
By March he was toying with the idea of plunging in on the strength of what he was earning to try to procure a loan for a second tug – to go into bu
siness properly. In time he would get himself an office from which to operate instead of the corner of his bedroom at home. His father looked worried when he outlined his plans.
‘You go easy, lad. Overstretching yerself, yer could come a cropper an’ lose everything.’
‘I know what I’m doing,’ he countered.
But his father was a sceptical man, had been out of work too often in his life to go seeing it through rose-tinted spectacles, despite the café that Eddie had insisted his mother try to run. She had promptly insisted he get an agent to sell it, saying she didn’t fancy being worried to death by things like running cafés. With everyone in agreement it had finally been sold, Eddie insisting she take half the money which she did begrudgingly, saying that it would be there if ever he needed it. She hadn’t spent a penny of her six hundred, just as she hadn’t spent any of the two hundred her sister had left her. ‘It’ll be for a rainy day,’ she’d stated, but in her view it hadn’t yet been rainy enough. He had agreed with her – business could be a headache at his time of life. With a younger man just starting out, it was different. But young men were headstrong, apt to get carried away.
‘You’d do well ter sit down and do a few sums,’ he said now to Eddie. ‘If yer do get a second tug, who’s goin’ ter skipper it? You’ll ’ave ter pay someone. And you’ll ’ave ter make sure he knows ’is job. That means paying ’im a bit more. If you ’it ’ard times, who’s goin’ ter buy the tug back orf you? ’Ard times can come out of the blue.’
Eddie was alive to that. Anything could come out of the blue. Had it not been like that with Cissy – one day talking of marriage, the next, gone? Yes, he knew how suddenly things came out of the blue.
Thrusting aside that dismal memory, he concentrated on how best to avoid taking someone on and paying them wages – if of course he could get a mortgage to buy a second tug, which he rather doubted anyway. He had no collateral but for the tug he owned. If he couldn’t meet the repayments and had to sell the only tug that was his…
‘What I need,’ he said, ‘is for someone to go into partnership with me.’ A working partner bringing in his share of money.
‘I wouldn’t trust partners,’ his dad growled.
That was true. Better someone you know. His eyes growing bright and hopeful, Eddie gazed at his father. ‘You’ve driven tugs half your life as well as lighters. You know the river inside out. Would you come in with me?’
‘You want me to put yer mother’s bit of money in your business?’
‘That wasn’t what I meant.’
‘I know, son. But ain’t…it old to start goin’ into business?’
‘Old? You’re not fifty yet. But once you’ve got your own business, no one can give you the push, pension you off when they think you are too old to work.’
‘You can just as likely get the push in your own business, lad. When work drops off. When you get in debt and ’ave ter sell up.’
The enthusiasm fading from Eddie’s eyes, he nodded. ‘You’re right, Dad. I can’t ask Mum to risk her nest egg, can I? Sorry, Dad, I got a bit carried away there.’
‘That’s all right, son.’ His father’s lean hand came upon his shoulder. ‘I wasn’t saying I wouldn’t. Yer mum’ll ’ave to be asked what she thinks. I know what she’ll say. She’ll say she’d rather lend the money to you than get upset worrying about business.’
‘I don’t want her to lend me anything,’ Eddie burst out. ‘It was just a thought, that’s all.’
‘A good thought. The more I think about it, the more I like it. But you ’ave to realise, it is a risk. And I don’t intend to use any of her money, you understand, son? It ’as ter be paid back to ’er as soon as possible. It’s just a loan. No interest of course. That way any bank loan you get won’t kill yer with the interest they ask. But it’ll all ’ave to be thought out carefully, gone into properly.’
Eddie could have kissed him, but he merely pumped his father’s hand knowing they were more than just father and son but partners in business, working together between them to bring in the profits…God grant there’d be profits. But the way he felt at this moment, how could there not be? His father, who he would come more and more to call by his Christian name Alfred, or Alf as he was more usually known, was a seasoned, no-nonsense waterman. He knew the river like the back of his hand and could stand up to any man. Yes, he and Alf would make a formidable team. It was all so exciting. Thinking about it, he forgot to think about Cissy for six whole hours.
His father proved to have a natural flair for business. Alf Bennett, with his length of time on the river as well as his weight of years affording him respect, was seen as a tough man who knew his stuff, whereas Eddie, for all his determination – that given time would rival his father’s – had a hidden soft centre that, coupled with youth, was in some eyes not up to the hard dealings of the towage business.
Almost immediately the partnership was formed, their luck seemed to take off to even greater heights, the first in the form of another tug which they finally got for a relatively silly price.
From the quayside, they regarded the vessel with a sceptical but calculating gaze, the name Cosmo was barely distinguishable for red rust.
‘It’ll go for scrap, that one,’ whispered Alf, out of the hovering owner’s hearing. ‘He’ll get next to nothing for it and he knows it. Could offer him a silly price, see what comes out of it.’
The owner moved towards them, noting the interest. ‘Nice little craft,’ he announced. ‘Goin’ cheap.’
‘How much?’ Alf spoke up, his deep voice commanding.
‘Just under a thousand. She’s as sound as a bell.’
‘Rust bucket,’ Alf said bluntly. The man gave him a hurt look.
‘Just needs a coat of paint, no more’n that. Rest of ’er’s good as new. I might go a bit lower, I suppose.’
‘Five ’undred?’ Alf smiled affably.
Eddie held his breath. Silly prices were one thing, but five hundred – it was a ridiculous offer. But he knew better than to contradict his partner in front of someone else, making them both look amateurs. As he had expected, the vendor looked affronted.
‘I should cocoa! If you’re gonna talk daft, I got no time!’
‘Fine with me,’ Alf said, and touching Eddie’s arm, led him away.
‘What’re you doing, Dad?’ Eddie hissed as they moved off. ‘What happened to bargaining?’
His father was walking slowly, not allowing too much distance to develop between them and the man. ‘Bargaining? It ain’t worth the rust it’s got on it. If he don’t bite, we ain’t lost nothing. If he does, then we’ve got ourselves another vessel and it ain’t cost us an arm an’ a leg.’
Before Eddie could argue or agree, there came a shout from behind. ‘ ’Arf a mo!’
Alf paused and looked back over his shoulder. ‘Whatcha want?’
‘Don’t go orf ’alf-cocked. ’Ow much did yer say?’
‘Five ’undred.’
‘I can go down ter eight, maybe.’
‘Ain’t worth it,’ Alf called back. ‘D’you think it’s worth it?’ he addressed Eddie.
Eddie picked up on his dad’s cue. ‘Ain’t worth ’alf that. No.’
The man was coming towards them. ‘You ain’t even looked ’er over. Looks is deceptive. Take her fer a run up the river. I guarantee she’ll perform well…for what I’m askin’ for ’er. I ’ad a marine survey done on ’er.’
‘How long ago was that, then?’
‘This year.’
‘Bent, I bet,’ Alf whispered from the corner of his mouth to Eddie. Aloud, he said, ‘If we take ’er up the river, how far d’you think she’ll go?’
The man hesitated. ‘I admit there is a bit of work to do on ’er.’
‘As I thought. ’Fraid we’re wastin’ yer time, mate. Sorry but she don’t look worth four ’undred as she is. You’d just about get that for scrap. Tell yer what, we’ll take ’er, five ’undred, no more, and give ’er a short run to see how she
handles.’
The man gave a yelp as though his toe had been trodden on by an elephant. ‘Go on, yer bastards! Sod orf! I don’t deal wiv crooks!’
This time, both men stood their ground in silent accordance, both looking erudite, watching the man switch his eyes several times from them to his rusting hulk and back again, his expression desperate.
Half an hour later, Eddie and his father sat together in the pub hoping against hope that they had done the right thing, the so-called satisfactory test run having exposed all the faults imaginable.
‘Five hundred!’ Eddie gasped, fearing to think how much getting the vessel into shape was going to cost. At least there would be no bank loan at a crippling interest, his mum sighing as she handed over most of her nest egg on an agreement to pay her back with a bit extra.
It took three months hard work getting the Cosmo into decent repair, much of the cost of that luckily being derived from regular towage work with the Cicely. Though their second tug was never to be a good-looking vessel, she did prove herself a workhorse, her engines, when finally working without breaking down every other day, were far more powerful than the CICELY’s.
The two tugs found plenty of work: taking down the stevedores who handled the high explosives for the PLA at Hole Haven; repositioning seagoing vessels who’d dragged their anchor or had no facilities for raising steam after being laid up, the help of a tug being far more economical; at Corytown oil depot shoving awkward vessels across its short jetty, one tug ahead, one astern; standing by to ease the big passenger ships gently to the landing stage and off again out into the main stream, needing usually only one tug, maybe two if the wind was driving the liner towards the stage; and there were still a hundred and one smaller jobs, dock work, taking a ship through the Old Entrance to Tilbury Dock, towing lighters, full and empty.
Eddie’s hope was to procure an agreement to escort the big incoming liners up to Tilbury, but usually the big companies like Wilkins had this. Maybe in time. And one day, if Cissy ever came back, he would have a company as large as any of them to offer her. Such dreams…