‘It’s a telegram,’ said Mr Jones.
Never before having received such a thing, Mrs Jones was speechless for a few moments, sat down quietly, propped the worrying document against the milk jug and gazed at it from various angles.
‘I think you should open it,’ said Francis.
A cup of tea having restored her courage, Mrs Jones slit open the telegram before her spellbound audience.
‘Well, I never! It’s from our little Glenda,’ said Mrs Jones.
‘Who’s Glenda?’ asked Francis.
‘Your cousin. My late sister’s daughter. What a turn up. She’s visiting Norfolk and wants to stay here for a few days.’
‘No room at the inn,’ said Mr Jones, ‘if she’s the Glenda I think you mean.’
‘I think it’s wonderful news, Reg. I haven’t seen Glenda since she was a little slip of a thing at school, must be fifteen years ago. Such spots she had, and a big girl. Buck teeth and a terrible lisp. Those National Health spectacles too, you’ve never seen thicker glass. My sister would be so pleased to think Glenda and I had met up again. To think my niece has taken the trouble to look up her old auntie.’
‘Ay, and taken her time, too,’ said Mr Jones. ‘So fond of you she couldn’t wait to get in touch fifteen years later.’
‘She’s arriving Monday week,’ said Mrs Jones with a note of finality.
Mr Jones had heard enough, and slunk back into the garden, where the woody warmth of his cramped shed offered instant consolation. He lit his pipe and picked up that week’s edition of Tit Bits. It was an especially interesting edition. Not for the first time, he read an account of the forthcoming show at the Hippodrome, Ladies Without. The photographs were worth a look, too.
*
‘A most unusual request,’ said Lady Darting. ‘Most unexpected from a man of the cloth.’
Her gimlet eye fixed on the spindly form of the Reverend Challis. The meeting of the Watch Committee had wound mournfully on for two hours in the bitterly cold council chamber at the Town Hall.
‘As if the sordid details pertaining to the gentlemen’s public convenience in Station Road Back Passage were not disturbing enough,’ said Miss Simms, ‘now we have to consider this.’
‘Perhaps we should allow Mr Challis to expand on his proposal,’ said Lady Darting.
‘With pleasure, madam chairman,’ replied the reverend. ‘As I explained, I have been approached by the theatrical management which is about to present a glamorous entertainment at the Hippodrome, entitled Ladies Without. This is, as I am sure you will already have heard, a variety show in which its female participants appear at certain moments naked on stage.’
‘So there should be no misunderstanding, Mr Challis,’ interjected Lady Darting, ‘by naked, you mean …?’
‘Naked as in denuded of any covering, madam chairman.’
‘I have it noted,’ replied Lady Darting. ‘I have it on authority from my husband that such entertainments have been – in his words – pulling them in in London for some years.’
‘So I believe. The general manager of the Hippodrome is loath to accept such displays, but these are difficult days for the theatre. Last week’s Peer Gynt played to very few patrons. He referred to the problem of bums on seats.’
‘An earthy profession at the best of times,’ said Lady Darting. ‘One cannot imagine that a community such as ours will welcome such a production as Ladies Without. We can I am sure depend on the high mortal standards of our citizens to boycott such a salacious offering.’
‘The week is completely sold out, madam chairman.’
A clacking of teeth and tut-tutting permeated the council chamber.
‘Please continue, Mr Challis.’
‘Lord Darting is quite correct in pointing out that such displays as this are highly popular in our capital city.’
‘Popular among fleshpots, perhaps,’ interrupted Miss Simms.
‘And have been approved by the Lord Chamberlain, who insists that during scenes involving nudity none of the young ladies may move so much as a muscle. In investigating this matter, I have learned that the moments of nakedness are often presented as historical scenes from the classical past, Greek and so forth. ‘The Fall of Carthage’ and ‘The Rape of the Sabines’ are tableaux to be presented during Ladies Without.’
‘Are you suggesting that this so-called entertainment is educational, Mr Challis?’ asked Colonel Chatter, his neck suddenly popping up from his Inverness cloak. ‘No wonder our scholastic institutions are going to pot.’
‘Well, I cannot recall any allusions to classical history during recent shows at the Hippodrome. Last week, for example, Ronnie Ronalde appeared to be totally ignorant of the finer points of Ancient Greece.’
Lady Darting put away her papers and pulled on her gloves.
‘Then I see no problem. After all, the Lord Chamberlain has sanctioned the performance.’
‘But the Watch Committee has not,’ said Miss Simms, slightly trembling.
‘Small mindedness,’ said Lady Darting. ‘As an elderly unmarried sub-postmistress who has never caught a train to London, you can hardly be expected to have experienced life to the full. Even as we speak, they will be queuing up at the brothels of Lower Cairo! Indeed, my husband has left his panama hat in two or three of them on more than one occasion.’
‘Then I may assume the committee agrees to the management’s request?’ asked the Reverend Challis.
‘Two altar boys?’ asked Lady Darting.
‘Purely to add verisimilitude to the scene depicting some vestal virgins, the chief of them of course Miss Bunty Rogers, a famed exponent of the art of the unclothed.’
‘A stripper,’ said Lady Darting. ‘No need to mince words, reverend.’
‘The boys will be faced away from the female performers, one boy holding a lyre and the other a Grecian urn. They will be chaperoned at all times. Mr Penderbury, the manager of the Hippodrome, assures me that the show is run along strict moral lines, as if the girls were in a convent.’
‘Hardly a good place to take two boys, then.’ Lady Darting gave a flashing smile to the assembled company. ‘You will of course have to select your boys carefully, Mr Challis. Do you have two clean-living lads in mind? I know that as Branlingham Scoutmaster many such pass through your hands.’
‘That will not be a problem’ said the Reverend Challis.
*
The remaining days before the arrival of Glenda Clatten (Mrs Jones’s sister having married a Mr Clatten) were busy ones. At Bundler’s Cottage, Gordon assisted Uncle Billy with the annual spring clean, dusting, polishing, emptying cupboards and washing china until the little home quite sparkled. Life at Red Cherry House was just as hectic. Mrs Jones was in a welter of pastry making, enjoying a festival of shortcrust activity, and ran up a pair of new curtains for the spare bedroom in which Glenda would be installed. The spring weather likewise had its effect on Mr Jones. He was much looking forward to an outing with some of his work colleagues, the precise details of which he seemed unwilling to divulge. He was certainly not looking forward to entertaining Glenda Clatten, whom he remembered as a most unprepossessing specimen with demented pigtails.
It was a thrilling time for Francis and Gordon. May was burgeoning, and the two boys were eager to make the most of it. It was the ideal season for excursions into the woods at Branlingham Minor, Francis alert with binoculars, and Gordon scouring the hedgerows for birds’ nests. He was well informed of what to look out for in the countryside at such a time, having lately been given a copy of Enid Blyton’s Book of Nature, much more fun than an adventure of Noddy. But even Noddy had never been invited to appear in what Mr Jones described in an unguarded moment as a nude show.
‘Or,’ the Reverend Challis had suggested when he visited Red Cherry House, ‘naked as nature intended. Do not be alarmed, my friends. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden had to do without a branch of Debenham and Freebody. The star of Ladies Without, Miss Bunty Rogers, has appeared in the West End of London, and
been described by one of our leading dramatic critics as a true artiste. Francis and Gordon will be chaperoned at all times, and never exposed to the nakedness of Miss Rogers or her colleagues. It is, I suggest to you, an opportunity not to be dismissed.’
Initially, Mrs Jones hadn’t been easily convinced. Mr Jones wondered if there might be a part for a slightly more mature male. Agreement was reached when a modest fee for the boys was agreed. They had been enthusiastic from the beginning. To think that for one week only they would leave school in the afternoon and at night step into the magical world of the theatre.
As it happened, their first night at the Hippodrome coincided with the worrying arrival of Glenda, and Mrs Jones rose to the double occasion with enthusiasm. Mr Jones was due out that evening with some male acquaintances at what he described as a ‘social’, but made sure he was at home during the day to look over his unwelcome guest. Uncle Billy drove Gordon to Red Cherry House, from where he and Francis would be collected by the Reverend Challis and taken to the theatre. All were in place when, at eleven o’clock, the sound of an approaching car drew their attention.
‘A taxi!’ said Mrs Jones. ‘Fancy! A taxi! I do believe it’ll be our little Glenda,’ and, scurrying to the front door, she opened it and seemed at once to receive an electric shock.
‘Hello, Aunt Doris. How lovely to see you, darling.’
The assembled company heard Mrs Jones’s startled gasp. The young woman standing on the doorstep looked as if she had stepped out of a fashion magazine. As a corseteer, Mrs Jones instantly recognised the beautiful cut of her clothes, the cusp of her coat, the quality of her leather gloves, the sheen of her stockings. Gone were the spots, the National Health spectacles. The buck teeth were now exquisitely white and even. The grating lisp had vanished too. The voice might have been that of an angel, and the face resembled something Mrs Jones had seen only in advertisements for expensive cosmetics.
‘I’ll catch my death out here, darling’ said the young woman, and laughed, and the sound seemed to Mr Jones to be the breath of a zephyr breeze. And then, when they were settled in the living room with cups of tea and slices of Mrs Jones’s Madeira cake, came the thunderbolt.
‘I just can’t take it in,’ confessed Mrs Jones. ‘I’d never have believed it.’ She burst into tears. Her niece opened her faux alligator handbag and took out a lace handkerchief that she squeezed gently into her aunt’s hand. Glimpsing across, Francis noticed a copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost nestling in a corner of the handbag.
‘Oh, poor darling!’ said Mrs Jones’s niece.
Mr Jones had never met anyone who used the word darling almost every time she drew breath.
‘Honestly, darling! I’ve got so used to being Bunty Rogers that I’ve quite forgotten I was once Glenda Clatten. It wouldn’t have looked good in lights, would it darling?’
‘And all these years you’d never been in touch,’ said Mrs Jones.
‘I know. And I’ve felt awful about it. When Mum went away, I was on my own, and eventually – well, I don’t really want to go through it all, Aunt Doris - I started doing some modelling, and then I got a job abroad. It was there that I got into showbusiness, and Bunty Rogers became a pin-up in Scandinavia.’
Mr Jones suppressed a wolf whistle.
‘Scandinavia!’ exclaimed Mrs Jones. ‘Just fancy! Our Glenda in foreign parts.’
‘When I came back to England, I was taken up by a management that specialised in girlie shows.’
There was a palpable silence in the room as her onlookers wondered what to say to this. Of course, Branlingham was vaguely aware of such things, but imagined they only took place in shady clubs in the back streets of Soho.
‘And I knew that you and Mum didn’t get on very well, so I suppose I’d rather drifted away from the family. But now I’m back, my dears, and it’s wonderful to know we’re together. Even more wonderful to know that Francis and Gordon are in the show this week. So exciting, darlings, and you are such handsome boys. You must take me all over Branlingham tomorrow, and show me the churches where you do your brass-rubbings, and let me into the secrets of your detecting, and not spare me any of your adventures. I’ve read about your amazing cases in the newspapers, and always felt so proud of you, and now to think we are together as we should be. I can’t tell you how happy I am to know two such gorgeous young men.’
The family gazed at the vision that was Bunty Rogers until it was almost time for her and the boys to get ready for the theatre. Mrs Jones was in a whirl of excitement, fascinated by every detail of Glenda’s (or Bunty’s, she supposed now) make up. And that gorgeous blonde hair, arranged in rolled bangs, set off her oval face like a picture in a gallery.
‘You’ll come round for champagne after the show,’ insisted Bunty. Mrs Jones could hardly refuse. Three hours earlier she had considered it her duty to go to the first night to see that Francis didn’t disgrace himself (or her); now, she felt at the very heart of the theatrical profession, a proud guardian of this beautiful young woman with a figure in little need of one of her aunt’s corsets.
When Bunty had gone to her bedroom for a brief rest, and Mrs Jones had taken off her slippers to air her feet, Francis and Gordon had some sorting out of family history to attend to.
‘It’s just like your Mum said,’ exclaimed Gordon. ‘It is a turn up for the books. Very strange, isn’t it, that Glenda …’
‘You mean Bunty,’ interrupted Francis.
‘That Glenda stroke Bunty should reappear after all these years.’
‘Well,’ said Francis, and he lowered his voice, crept to the kitchen and softly closed it, ‘it would probably upset Mum to talk about it too much. She didn’t really get on with her sister.’
‘Glenda’s mother?’
‘That’s right. Auntie Grace. I never knew her,’ said Francis, ‘but there was a sort of family scandal when Glenda was still a small baby. Her mother left home and went off with another man.’
‘What happened then?’
‘So far as I know, Glenda stayed with her father, but he died a few years later and Glenda was taken in by some foster parents.’
‘What a terrible chain of events,’ said Gordon.
‘Yes, but think how she’s overcome it all,’ said Francis. ‘She’s a star. Imagine that, Gordon. A star in the family!’
*
As arranged, the Reverend Challis arrived at Red Cherry House later that day in his Morris Minor to collect Francis and Gordon.
‘Now, boys’ said the Reverend Challis, ‘the world you are about to enter is one of fantasy and fleshy delights. The first is harmless and the second best avoided. However, I have it on good authority of the manager at the Hippodrome, that all the saints in heaven would have no objection to your involvement. The world of theatre is a mysterious and beguiling one, to which I myself have on occasion succumbed.’
‘We have appeared on stage before, you know,’ said Francis. ‘Gordon was one of the train of little Japanese ladies in The Mikado last term.’
‘And you, Francis …’ said the Reverend Challis, taking his eyes off the road, ‘how well I recall your bewitching Lady Macbeth. Your mad scene reverberated with me for many months. Unfortunately, you will be required to do very little in this production. Movement, indeed, is forbidden, although as clothed altar boys you will perhaps be allowed to glide across the stage. It will make for a simple but striking effect, in those fetching Grecian tunics. Now,’ he said as he parked the Morris Minor in the crescent forecourt of Norwich Hippodrome, ‘you are about to enter the temple of Thespis.’
After reporting to the stage door keeper, Francis and Gordon bid goodbye to their chauffeur and were escorted through long stone passages that seemed to go deep into the earth. All around was a musty smell of underground damp, mingled with what the boys thought an air of intense anticipation. Eventually they emerged through the pass door into the auditorium of the Hippodrome, a sea of faded red velvet seats, chandeliers, balconies, boxes, and, at either side of t
he proscenium arch, what Francis recognised as caryatids, although Gordon only saw plaster versions of naked ladies in Greek costumes.
Francis and Gordon had visited the Hippodrome on various occasions (usually the Christmas pantomime), but neither had ever seen it so disorganised, so noisy, so alive with potential excitement, despite the dingy naked bulb that hung over the stage, and the great dust cloths and bits of forlorn scenery scattered here and there like monstrous confetti. They found two seats on the aisle in the stalls, and began to soak up an atmosphere that had echoes of their experiences in their school productions, but heightened a hundredfold! Some male acrobats were tumbling through a routine, sometimes vanishing into the wings before leaping back on stage into the arms of one of their colleagues, and narrowly avoiding some female dancers who were practising some steps.
‘Hello boys. A nice routine, that one,’ said a voice behind Francis and Gordon. They turned and saw that their newly discovered cousin Bunty had taken a seat behind them. ‘They are not bad dancers. Two of them only joined the show last week at Rotherham, so they are still learning. How are you boys looking forward to your professional debuts?’
‘A little nervous, Miss Rogers,’ confessed Gordon.
‘Call me Bunty. We’re family, remember.’
It was difficult to believe that this glamorous creature was indeed one of their own circle. It was, Francis thought, as if a beautiful swan had suddenly landed on a pond of ugly ducklings. Bunty leaned forward and put her arms around the boys. Francis breathed in so much perfume and face powder that for a moment he thought he would choke.
‘You’ll be the envy of East Anglia,’ she said. ‘There are men who would give their eye teeth to be on stage with us girls, and you’re getting paid for it!’
In the orchestra pit a portly, balding man was speaking to a florid-faced man in a loud check overcoat on stage. The red-faced one was leaning over and handed the portly one what looked like sheets of paper.
‘This is the band call,’ said Bunty. ‘Dick Slocombe is the comedian for the week, so he’s just giving Bert the music he needs for his play on and off.’
THE BOY DETECTIVES Page 4