Sweet Songbird

by Sweet Songbird (retail) (epub)

  ‘It’s lovely.’ Kitty turned. ‘And so’s the room. I really don’t need to see the other. Your advertisement said three and six a week?’

  ‘That’s right, dear.’ The little widow glanced up at her, bright and birdlike again. ‘Though if you think that’s too much I could probably see my way to—’

  ‘Oh, no. I can manage that.’ On a guinea a week – unheard of riches – Kitty knew herself to be well off, even though she was committed to saving up for Pol.

  Amy Buckley seemed as pleased as she was herself. ‘Well, good, that’s settled then. I’m sure we’ll suit. Felt it as soon as I saw you. You’ve got references, of course?’ This last was said with a beaming smile and no question in the tone.

  Kitty hesitated. ‘References?’

  The little woman’s smile faded. ‘Well – I can’t say I’d considered taking any young woman without references.’

  Kitty wondered, dourly, what sort of reference her present landlord would give her. ‘Please – I can pay in advance if you’d like – it really is the nicest room I’ve seen.’

  ‘Haven’t you someone who’d stand for you?’ The poor little woman was obviously distressed at Kitty’s disappointment. ‘I’m a woman alone, you see – I really must be careful.’

  ‘Well yes, of course, I can see that—’

  ‘You’ve got work?’ The words were hopefully expectant. It came to Kitty that Mrs Buckley was trying as hard as she was to find a way out of their difficulty. But here, of course, could be another stumbling block.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and then, quickly, to get it over, ‘I sing. On the stage.’

  ‘Sing?’ Amy Buckley repeated. ‘You sing? On the stage?’

  Kitty’s sinking heart settled lower. ‘Yes. But truly, Mrs Buckley, it’s—’

  ‘But how lovely! Good heavens! A real singer! Oh, the lovely times that Mr Buckley and I had at the Music Rooms down the street! A fine voice, he had, Mr Buckley, a fine voice. I used to love to hear him sing.’ She blinked, swallowed, looking vaguely astonished at her own emotion. ‘We’ve a piano in the parlour. I’d be pleased to have you use it any time—’

  ‘You mean – you’ll take me? Even without references?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t see why not, dear, do you? We’ll give ourselves a couple of weeks and see how we do, shall we? No obligation on either side of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ Relief welled in Kitty. ‘And thank you.’

  ‘Now – why don’t we go down into the scullery and have a nice cup of tea?’ And you can tell me all about yourself—’

  * * *

  In the event it was a lot harder to leave Stepney than she had anticipated – not that she had the slightest regret at turning her back at last on the dirt and squalor that she so detested, but saying goodbye to Matt and to Pol was quite another matter. And not made easier by the fact that both of them seemed quite surprisingly – and, it occurred to Kitty, quite callously – ready to see her go.

  ‘It’s what you’ve wanted, moi owd Kitty,’ Matt said. ‘What you’ve been working for all along. You deserve it. And you aren’t going a million miles away, are you? I daresay your Mrs Buckley isn’t such a dragon that she won’t let your brother visit you, is she?’

  ‘She isn’t a dragon at all.’

  ‘Well, then! – And anyway, the Guv’nor isn’t moving house as far as I know, is he? So I daresay we’ll still be seeing a fair bit of you?’ He grinned, and with some difficulty winked. His right eye was still all but closed, a legacy of Dyce’s fists, the bruise around it fading now to ochre and blue. Since his outburst in the cellar he had mentioned neither Moses nor the girl Sally-Anne, and Kitty had thought it best to steer clear of the subject. She had long ago given up trying to force her brother to confide in her.

  She sighed. ‘Matt – be careful?’

  He flicked back the hair from his brow, the faintest irritation in the gesture. ‘’Course.’

  If Matt’s equanimity at her impending departure did not particularly surprise her, Pol’s did – and hurt her not a little as well, though she did her best to hide it. Pol’s theme was, sensibly, much the same as Matt’s. ‘You aren’t takin’ ship for bloomin’ America, yer know. We’ll be seein’ plenty of one another, you’ll see.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Her friend’s apparent unconcern disconcerted Kitty. Her voice was subdued. ‘Pol – I’m so sorry I couldn’t get Moses to let you come with me.’

  ‘Think nothin’ of it, love. When yer don’t expect nothin’ yer can’t be disappointed, can yer? Want an ’and with yer packin’?’

  A few days later, escorted by Luke, she piled her few possessions in a hackney and at last left Stepney for good. No one came to see her off, there were no last-minute tears or goodbyes. It was strangely anti-climactic and not at all somehow what she had expected. She stared stonily from the cab window. Luke, beside her, cast an amused glance but thankfully held his tongue.

  When they reached Pascal Road, Amy Buckley, hearing the cab, opened the door with a wide smile that faded a little when she saw Luke.

  ‘I – oh, Miss Daniels – I thought you’d be alone—’

  ‘This is a friend of mine. Mr Peveral.’

  ‘How do you do?’ Amy Buckley worriedly bobbed a neat little head at Luke. He looked very big and very out of place indeed in the little hall. ‘A gentleman friend. I didn’t know you’d be bringing a gentleman friend.’ The little woman fussed nervously with her spotless apron.

  Kitty cast a quick, fiercely warning glance at Luke, knowing his acid humour, ready to kill him if he so much as opened his mouth.

  She need not have worried. ‘Mrs Buckley!’ Warmly Luke held out his hand and bent his most charming smile upon her. ‘I’m so very pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Why – charmed I’m sure.’ Suddenly cherry red, Amy Buckley took his extended hand and then dropped it like a hot cake.

  ‘Miss Daniels has told me all about you – and about your delightful house. It seems she was very lucky to find you.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that—’

  ‘Oh, but yes, Mrs Buckley.’ The narrow, dark-lashed eyes crinkled beguilingly. He lowered his voice a little, laid a confidential hand lightly upon her arm. ‘Miss Daniels needs a friend, Mrs Buckley. Someone kindly and sensible, who’ll look after her. I suspect – I greatly hope – she may have found that someone in you.’

  Kitty winced and cocked a derisive eyebrow. Luke, surely, was laying on the charm just a little too heavily.

  But no – Luke, as always, had gauged his victim to a nicety. Blushing like a poppy, Amy Buckley beamed. ‘Well, do come in both of you.’ She glanced up at Luke with an eye that could only be described as coy. ‘If you wouldn’t mind carrying Miss Daniels’ case, Mr—?’

  ‘Peveral,’ he supplied easily. ‘And of course not, Mrs Buckley. That’s what I’m here for.’ Grinning, Luke waited as Kitty fetched her reticule from the cab, then stepped back for her to precede him through the door. As she did so she thought she saw the curtain at the front bedroom window twitch. She glanced up sharply. An indistinct figure drew back.

  ‘You’ve let the front room, then, Mrs Buckley?’ A faint, unreasoning disappointment stirred. She had already, perhaps absurdly, come to think of number twenty-three as home. She did not want to share it so soon with a stranger.

  ‘Yes, dear. Just yesterday. Nice enough young woman. Very quiet.’

  They had arrived at Kitty’s room. Luke looked round approvingly. Kitty thought of his own eccentric taste in accommodation and could not prevent a smile. ‘Very nice, Mrs Buckley,’ he said. ‘Kitty was absolutely right. What a pity the front room is taken. I might have been tempted to take it myself.’

  ‘Mr Peveral!’ The little woman was quite delightedly scandalized. ‘I couldn’t see my way clear to taking a gentleman lodger. Oh, dear me, no!’ Her small hands had begun their agitation with her pinafore again. ‘Mr Buckley would never have approved of that!’

  Luke turned to her. ‘That,’ he
said with a smile, Kitty thought, that might have charmed a winkle from its shell, ‘is my loss entirely, Mrs Buckley.’

  Amy Buckley was blushing again. ‘I’ll – go and make some tea,’ she said, and fled.

  Luke, behind the door, was convulsed with laughter. Kitty slapped him none too gently with the gloves she was carrying. ‘You pig! Poor Mrs Buckley! You’re not to tease her, do you hear? Poor little thing—’

  Luke gurgled but could not speak for his repressed laughter. Kitty stifled her own, holding on to severity. ‘You really are a pig! Stop laughing – she might come back!’

  He struggled for composure.

  The door at the other end of the landing opened.

  Kitty stood, half-laughing, hands on hips, watching Luke. ‘Honestly – you think that all you have to do is to turn on that disgusting charm of yours and half the female population will drop dead at your feet—’

  ‘While the other ’alf spits in ’is eye,’ a familiar voice put in, caustically, from the door.

  Jaw dropping, Kitty turned. Pol lounged, brassy head cocked at the familiar, affectionately mocking angle, laughter in her eyes.

  ‘Pol! What are you doing here? How—?’ Kitty stopped. Her eyes travelled beyond Pol to the open door at the other end of the landing. ‘You?’ she asked, faintly. ‘It’s you? In the other room?’

  ‘That’s right. Me. Large as life an’ twice as awkward,’ Pol said, grinning widely. ‘An’ with a whole envelope full of forged references at that. Thanks for the tip.’

  ‘But – how? How did you get round Moses?’ Kitty intercepted the small, significant glance that flicked between Pol and Luke. She turned to him. ‘Luke? You did it? You paid Moses off?’

  Luke smiled, said nothing.

  ‘That’s what ’e did all right.’ Pol’s voice was light, as if even now she could not bring herself to speak warmly of the man she had always so disliked.

  ‘Oh!’ Kitty stepped towards Luke, hugged him fiercely. ‘Oh, thank you! Thank you! I’ll pay you back, I promise, every penny—’ She turned. Pol held out her arms. Kitty flung herself into them. ‘Pol! Pol!’ The two girls held each other, laughing and crying together. ‘Oh, I thought I was going to be so lonely and miserable without you – and I thought you didn’t care.’

  ‘Goodness gracious me!’ Amy Buckley said, uncertainly, from the top of the stairs. ‘I came up to tell you that tea’s made. And to introduce you.’ She looked from one to the other, puzzled, yet obviously pleased at the happiness in their faces. ‘Seems I don’t have to?’

  * * *

  Up to the terrifying night that she opened at the New Cambridge Kitty found herself working harder than she had ever believed possible. Until now she had worked instinctively; now the professionals took over and she discovered how much she had to learn. In a cold, bare rehearsal room she worked and reworked her act under the shrewdly critical eye of Patrick Kenny himself, rehearsing every note, every step, every movement until she could have screamed with the frustration of it all.

  ‘No, no, Miss Daniels! Can’t you see? You’ve got to move about more – use the whole stage. Get down to the front there – involve your audience! And exaggerate, Miss Daniels – exaggerate! Get that chin up – stick those elbows out! Good Christ, you’re supposed to be the cockiest pickpocket in town, not a sneak-thief who pinches pennies from old ladies! Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Smarten up! Swagger a bit! That’s better—’

  Sometimes she thought she hated him. Sometimes she knew she would never be able to face the vast stage and huge, intimidating, critical audience with which he so often threatened her. She lay sleepless through the long hours of the night, staring into darkness, hearing the echoes of that carping, critical voice, seeing nothing ahead but disaster and humiliation.

  ‘For God’s sweet sake, Miss Daniels – how often must I say it? Stop creeping around like a beaten child! Stand up straight! Get your shoulders back! And sing, girl, singl Don’t whine – oh, Christ, you aren’t snivelling now, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. Right – back to the beginning. Start over in that corner and come towards me—’

  If it had not been for Pol and little Amy Buckley she was sure she never would have stuck it. Pol it was who held her hand, wiped away her tired tears, mocked her gently and encouraged her fiercely when the mockery failed. She also showed unexpected skill with her needle and was invaluable in helping with costumes and props.

  ‘You’ll be there, won’t you?’ Kitty asked, anxiously, ‘to help me dress?’

  Poll grinned. ‘Try ter keep me away!’

  Time and again Kitty had tried to thank Luke for his magnificent gesture in paying off Moses so that Pol could join her. The debt, she knew, went beyond the money it had cost him, yet he brushed her thanks aside and utterly refused to discuss any idea of repayment. If, however, he had hoped – not unreasonably – that his gift might have made some difference to Pol’s unflattering opinion of him, he must have been disappointed. Though unreservedly grateful, she with bland obstinacy reserved her right to dislike him, and made no secret of it. And Kitty sometimes thought that Luke admired her for it. She visited him at least twice a week, oases of pleasure in a grinding round of hard work. Their lovemaking was as fierce and as pleasurable as ever and in it she found the antidote to the fears and worries that beset her when faced with what seemed to her as Patrick Kenny’s heartless persecution.

  ‘Don’t be so silly, Songbird!’ Luke kissed her nose lightly, brushed warm lips along the line of her jaw. ‘He wants you to be a success, that’s all. And it doesn’t grow on trees, to be picked with no effort. You don’t get more than one chance in this business. You flop, and that’s that. No second go. Kenny’s putting his own reputation up with yours, you know – and he has more to lose than you have. Listen to him. He knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘Well, I just wish he’d stop shouting for a minute every now and again while he’s doing it,’ she said, gloomily unconvinced.

  Inexorably the night grew closer and, as surely, Kitty’s nerves grew taut as strung wire. The night before her debut at the Cambridge Pol insisted upon pouring a large tot of the detested brandy into her tea.

  ‘Ugh! I can’t drink this!’

  ‘’Old yer nose!’ Pol said, firmly, ‘it’ll ’elp yer sleep. Yer don’t want ter go on stage lookin’ like a bleedin’ ghost, do yer? Sorry, Mrs B,’ she added and without waiting for protest. Their friend and landlady, Kitty was astonished to note, was in her determinedly respectable way toning down Pol’s vocabulary considerably – a feat which a few short weeks before Kitty would have believed impossible.

  She woke the next day, after a night of broken sleep, to the low-slanting red sun of a late autumn morning, the first crisp touch of winter in the steamed window panes and the cloud of her breath on the air. It surprised her. In her preoccupation she had hardly realized how the year had advanced. She lay quite still for a long moment. This, then, was the day. By this time tomorrow she would know what the vastly different and more sophisticated audience of the New Cambridge thought of her. Success tonight could mean an open door to fame, prosperity and safety. Failure could condemn her to a return to Smith’s Song and Supper Rooms and the shackles of poverty.

  With a sudden, determined briskness she threw back the bedcovers and braved the unexpectedly chill air.

  * * *

  Her success that night went beyond even her wildest and most private dreams – a success, she realized later, that was aided and abetted by an audience already strongly predisposed towards her.

  ‘There’s nobs in,’ she heard someone say, excitedly, ten minutes or so before the curtain went up. ‘They’ve packed the place. Pat Kenny’s jumping about like a monkey with pepper up his you-know-what—’ The speaker, a young girl in the spangles and tights of an acrobat, cast a quick, inquisitive glance in Kitty’s direction as she flitted gracefully past, but said nothing directly to her. Earlier Kitty had seen her nursing a tiny, undernourished baby who la
y, now disregarded, in a cardboard box in the corner of the dressing room.

  ‘Nobs?’ Kitty asked uncertainly of Pol’s reflection in the mirror. ‘What does she mean, nobs? What’s she talking about?’

  Pol tweaked a lock of hair. ‘Sit still. Your bloody ’air’s ’ard enough to ’andle without you jumpin’ about like a scalded cat. Luke’s invited a few friends, so I ’ear – oh, come on, don’t be daft’ – she sensed Kitty’s stiffening, had caught the swift, concerned glance in the mirror – ‘not them kind of friends. Gawd girl, give ’im credit fer some sense! No – I ’eard ’im tellin’ Mr Kenny ’e’d arranged a party fer some of the toffs ’e knows. The West End mob ’e ’angs about with.’

  ‘Oh, God!’

  ‘Come on – what’s the difference? Toffs – dockers – they’re all the same underneath. They’ll take one look at them long legs o’ yours an’ that will be that, you mark my words. They’ll love yer. There. Yer look top notch. I’ll get the other outfit out.’

  ‘We only have four minutes to change,’ Kitty fretted.

  Pol was unruffled. ‘That’s all right then. We only need three.’ The dressing room was empty now. The neglected baby mewed in the corner. Music sounded in the distance. Pol grinned into the mirror encouragingly.