Bourbon Creams and Tattered Dreams

by Mary Gibson

  She kept to her room, sleeping for hours, resenting the sunlight when it woke her. Mrs Melior, asking no questions and breaking all house rules, brought up her meals, which largely remained untouched. On the third morning when Matty didn’t come down again, Mrs Melior brought her breakfast. The woman placed the tray by her bedside and seemed to be waiting for Matty to start eating. But the thought of food made her feel sick; the idea of eating to stay alive filled her with guilt. Why should she be living when her child was dead? If people knew, they would tell her not to blame herself, but Matty was to blame. If she’d left Frank earlier, then there never would have been that final beating.

  ‘Eat a bit of it, Miss Gilbie,’ Mrs Melior said. ‘You’re wasting away!’

  And she waited until Matty had cracked the boiled egg and eaten a spoonful. At the door she stopped. ‘I’ve run you a bath, nice and hot. I’ve told the gentleman second back, it’s for you, so don’t let it get cold!’

  Mrs Melior had never been subtle. Matty knew she needed a bath, yet it had seemed far too arduous a task. But after eating the egg, she forced herself to get up and go to the bathroom. In the mirror she saw the gaunt face of a stranger; she could barely meet her own dark eyes, red-rimmed and haunted as they stared back at her. ‘All right, all right,’ she urged herself, gripping the basin. ‘A bit of slap, Matty.’ But she would have to dig very deep into her store of stage make-up tricks, if she were to erase the signs of her grief and pass for a woman who cared whether she lived or died.

  But if she was going to carry on staying here, then she would have to work, for Frank had bled her dry. Which meant there was one other person who must know that she’d returned from America – her agent, Esme Golding. Going there was a risk she would have to take, for it was the one place in the world where Frank might know to come looking for her.

  Esme’s office was not far from Mrs Melior’s, in a side court off Charing Cross Road. As she left the lodging house, the uneasy feeling she’d had on the journey home returned and she glanced up and down the street. She had no idea what she was looking for, someone who looked out of place, a flashy American suit or a bronzed face. But she couldn’t hide in Mrs Melior’s forever and so she began walking away from the riverfront towards Charing Cross Road.

  Matty had washed and waved her hair, borrowing some vicious-toothed wave clips of Mrs Melior’s. She’d dressed in her white suit, bought last year in California. She’d been surprised to arrive home during a London summer rivalling that heat, and was grateful for the cool lightness of the soft skirt and loose, long jacket. But by the time she was crossing Trafalgar Square, smuts from the sooty old town had begun to speckle the white suit.

  She passed the Hippodrome, remembering how she’d brought the house down at the Hippo the year before going to America. Back then her music hall triumphs had seemed mere stepping stones to Broadway and a screen career, but hindsight had turned the Hippo, the South London Palace of Varieties, the Star – and all the others – into safe havens she fervently wished she’d lingered in.

  Esme’s office adjoined her flat on the first floor of a narrow old house squashed between a coffee shop and a sheet-music sellers. The front door had been wedged open in hopes of letting in a breeze and Matty walked straight up the stairs. Esme’s waiting room was empty, which Matty found slightly worrying. She knocked on the office door and pasted on her brightest smile.

  The woman’s head was bent over the desk, her grizzled hair cut into a futile bob, ruined by wayward frizzy curls. She was peering at a contract through a fug of smoke.

  ‘Got any work for a cockney canary?’ Matty said and Esme’s head shot up.

  ‘Matty Gilbie! What in God’s name are you doing here?’ Esme hastily stubbed out her habitual black Turkish cigarette and got up.

  ‘My dear, why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’ she asked, giving Matty a warm hug.

  ‘I didn’t know myself until a fortnight ago. Thought I’d surprise you.’

  Esme paused, studying Matty. ‘A fortnight! You were in a hurry. I should think the family were surprised to see you.’

  ‘Yes... yes, they were surprised.’

  ‘You look tired, Matty. Have you just got off the boat? But weren’t you supposed to be in LA making the next talkie?’

  While Esme was firing questions at her Matty had taken a seat; she didn’t only look tired.

  ‘Oh, Frank’s still getting the money together for it... and to be honest I thought I’d come home and raise a bit myself. Every little helps!’ she replied, trying to sound casual. But not even her acting skills could hide the tremor in her voice as she said his name.

  ‘What’s happened? Don’t tell me your American, Frank whatsisname, has been stupid enough to lose everything in the Crash!’ She paused to light another black cigarette and narrowed her eyes as she inhaled. ‘I told you he was bad news.’ Steel-grey eyes assessed Matty, who tried not to flinch, for the woman had felt understandably betrayed when Matty chose Frank to manage her American career.

  Matty flicked a tarry speck from her white skirt and took a deep breath.

  ‘Esme, the truth is, the new talkie has been a bit of a drain on me. I really do need to make some money.’

  Esme looked hurt, as though Matty’s shortness of funds was a slight on her.

  ‘I’ll do my best, sweetheart, but you’ve been away three years, and things have changed. It’ll have to be gradual...’

  Matty flushed. ‘You were the one who told me America would be good for my career!’ Knowing even as she said it that she was blaming the wrong person.

  The woman raised a placating pair of palms. ‘I know, I know, but none of us foresaw the Crash, did we, darling?’

  But Esme was too fond of her to be angry for long. ‘All right, darling, I’ll see what I can do, just have a bit of patience. I won’t say I told you so, but if you’d taken a percentage on London Affair as I advised – you’d at least have some money coming in now.’

  ‘Frank said an upfront fee was better—’

  ‘Better for him,’ Esme muttered, pursing her full lips, so that they curled back on themselves. But Matty couldn’t face any more ‘I told you so’s’ today and got abruptly to her feet.

  ‘I’ll need something soon, Esme,’ she said, trying not to let the desperation she felt show in her voice.

  ‘I’ll let you know, Matty darling.’

  And Matty allowed herself to be enfolded in the woman’s cigarette-smoked embrace.

  *

  Every day for a week she went back to Esme’s office in Charing Cross Road and by the end of it she still had no bookings. Her agent was apologetic.

  ‘I told you I needed to get back to work, Esme. Is there really nothing about?’

  Esme turned to some files on her desk, which she began flicking through. Matty could tell she wasn’t really reading them.

  ‘Truth is, Matty, there’s nothing worth your attention just at the moment. Only a few little piddling jobs over in South London. There’s always the “good ole Saahf”,’ she said in exaggerated cockney. Matty had heard that the once illustrious South London Palace had entered a sad decline, like so many of the old music halls that had made her name. ‘It’s only a couple of nights. Wouldn’t want to waste your time with those. Let me see, the Star does a few shows between films these days...’ Esme shrugged. ‘It’s the economy, darling, and I can’t do much about that. It’s cheaper to go to a talkie than a West End show...’

  Matty slumped back in her chair; she knew Esme was right. ‘I know it’s not your fault, Esme. But if all you can get is the South London or the Star, then just book them.’

  ‘You really don’t mind going back to the South London halls?’ Esme asked.

  Matty didn’t mind, but she felt a current of panic. It was a strange feeling and reminded her of the time Frank had driven the wrong way down Broadway in his swanky Cadillac. Instead of turning round, he’d reversed all the way back to Time Square. Her heart had been in her mouth the who
le way, a sick waiting for the inevitable crunch to come. She’d found that reversing when she’d been cruising so heedlessly forward was disorienting. But whatever her feelings about returning a failure, she couldn’t delay her homecoming forever and the fact that very soon she’d have no money to pay Mrs Melior the rent forced her hand. She left Esme’s and went to the nearby post office to send the telegram. Surprise! Arrived Southampton, home tomorrow.

  ***

  Sunlight glanced off grimy bus windows, blinding Matty alternately with its brilliance and its absence. The rhythmic flickering obscured Bermondsey’s streets and with the heat of this scorching summer sun beating on the window, she was transported back to Los Angeles. She closed her eyes. The silver and the black penetrated her closed lids and she saw again the flickering silver screen, alive with her own image, larger than a human being had a right to be, her face a pale oval, her eyes wide as moonlit lakes and just as bright. She shuddered at the memory. She could hardly believe it had been over a year since she’d sat in that darkened screening room, watching the rushes of her first film with Frank. He’d sat so close that his body heat had been uncomfortable, and his cologne had hung heavy as the scent of California Poppy now drifting in the air from Atkinson’s cosmetics factory as the bus passed through Southwark Park Road. The smoke from Frank’s cigar had stung her eyes as it curled up into the light from the projector, just as now, smoke from Woodbines writhed in the fuggy heat of the bus’s top deck, almost as if last winter’s fog had been captured and preserved there.

  How excited she’d once been watching those rushes. Frank had insisted the film would make her a star. Yet she’d been more interested in hearing the sound of her own voice than seeing herself on screen. But to her ears the voice hadn’t quite the sweet, pure quality she’d always aimed for on the stage and she’d been determined to improve it.

  ‘Everyone’s voice sounds tinny on the talkies, honey,’ he’d assured her. ‘And besides, we got no time for fine-tuning! We gotta finish this thing, before the other backers get cold feet. You’re hot property, Matty! A British accent, a voice like an angel, just when the talkies are taking over. I’m telling you, they won’t be able to get enough of you!’

  So she’d let it go and the film, London Affair – a romance set in a Victorian London, full of fogs and gas lamps, with herself playing the role of a kind-hearted consumptive flower seller, had been a success, Hear the Cockney Canary Sing! the film poster proclaimed, for that was the name she was known by on Broadway.

  She tried to recall that feeling of excitement – a bubbling, expansive feeling that anything was possible. But that had been before the Crash, and before everything had gone so wrong with Frank. She had imagined a very different homecoming to Bermondsey. As it was, she’d prepared herself to face her brother Sam’s disappointment and she’d been prepared to challenge Eliza, the sister who herself had brought up an illegitimate son. But she hadn’t been prepared for this emptiness, this dullness at her core. She had expected to return to Bermondsey with her arms full – the child would be the only explanation she’d need. But all she had to show for three years in America was a film people were fast forgetting, a few hidden scars and an empty heart.

  She could have wished for a longer walk from the bus stop, but if she’d failed to rehearse her story well enough during her weeks at Mrs Melior’s, she doubted a few hundred yards of Bermondsey pavement could help her. Reverdy Road was a respectable street of terraced brick houses, with round arched windows and front doors. Lined with newly planted trees, it still felt small and warren-like compared to the soaring canyons of New York or those wide streets of Los Angeles she’d once cruised along in Frank’s gleaming tan and cream Cadillac. The soot-blackened brick and grey slate closed in around her, bringing her back with a jolt to the Matty she’d been before ever the Cockney Canary had graced the stage of the Star music hall in Abbey Street. The feeling was an uncomfortable one, a claustrophobic mix of shame and failure – she was meant to have escaped all this.

  Matty lifted her head, straightened her back and strode towards her sister Eliza’s house. She would need all her stage presence for this performance.

  The street had a midweek afternoon dullness about it, with its residents still at their factories or schools. The small terraced houses burned quietly in the afternoon heat. A black cat, sunning itself on the wall in front of her sister’s house, was her only audience. She slowed her steps. The cat’s unsmiling eyes fixed her, staring insolently at this stranger in its territory.

  ‘Who are you looking at?’ Matty challenged the cat, staring back at it. But for some reason, under its unblinking scrutiny all her resolve melted away. The old Matty Gilbie never ran away from anything, but life with Frank had taught her that however brave it felt to stand your ground, sometimes it was wiser to run. But this was home, and if she didn’t stop running now, then she never would.

  The woman who answered the door could have been Matty’s mother. With the same faded auburn hair and pale, translucent skin, Eliza’s resemblance to their mother, Lizzie Gilbie, was striking. But Eliza’s embrace was full of a delighted vigour and the tall figure, though perhaps a little more stooped than when Matty had last seen her, was nothing like the enfeebled woman their mother had been at forty-nine. It struck Matty now that Lizzie Gilbie had died too young, not much older than her sister was now. As she allowed herself to be held, Matty was caught by a deep, unexpected wave of sadness at that old grief – the loss of her mother. For a moment she imagined that Eliza’s embrace was her mother’s. It was a fruitless, bittersweet comparison and Matty was ashamed of it.

  ‘Matty, why didn’t you let us know you were coming home?’

  ‘I did, I sent a telegram.’

  ‘But we’ve only just had it. You could have sent it before you set sail!’

  Eliza was holding her at arm’s-length and gazing with undisguised pleasure. ‘Look at you – you’re even more beautiful than you were three years ago!’

  Eliza cupped her cheek with a hand, and Matty armed herself against the intensity of her sister’s dark-eyed gaze. She had never quite understood the late blossoming of Eliza’s interest in her, but she knew that after a lifetime of union activism those intelligent eyes could prise the secrets from the toughest factory boss, and so now she made sure to veil her own. With a graceful sweep, she removed her oyster-shaped hat and presented it to Eliza.

  ‘Ain’t you going to ask me in for a cuppa then?’ Matty beamed.

  She had been on the stage since she was twelve, and she told herself that this was just another part for her to play.

  Eliza led her into the parlour. The room was simply but tastefully furnished. Two glass-fronted bookcases were crammed with political pamphlets, some of which Eliza had written, along with other heavy-looking economic tomes. There were a few pieces of good oak furniture. A drop-leaf table stood in front of the window and two upholstered armchairs were placed either side of the fire. On the mantlepiece were photos of Eliza’s son, Will, when he was a schoolboy at Dulwich College, wearing a cap and striped blazer; a wedding photo of their brother, Sam, and his bride, Nellie, standing on St James’s Church steps; a studio portrait of herself when she was twenty-three and at the height of her career. Eliza’s past was intertwined inextricably with her own.

  Taking Matty’s summer coat from her, Eliza fixed her with a knowing look.

  ‘Let me make us some tea – then you can tell me the real reason you didn’t let us know you were coming home.’

  Eliza gave a wry smile and was gone before Matty could protest. She turned back to the photos on the mantlepiece, picking up a faded sepia photograph of a young man on a penny-farthing bicycle, wearing a cycling cap and hooped jersey. Standing beside him was a rather careworn young woman in the dress of an earlier generation.

  She smiled at her parents as they were when they’d first made the journey from Hull to London, her father riding all the way on the penny-farthing and her mother following reluctantly on behi
nd.

  ‘Oh, Mum, if only you were still here,’ Matty whispered to her mother’s younger image.

  She heard the teacups rattle and turned to see Eliza placing the tray carefully on the table. As she handed Matty the teacup, Eliza fixed her with that intelligent, probing gaze.

  ‘So, what’s brought you home?’

  Matty felt a spasm of pain shoot through her stomach, as if the muscles had been twisted and tightened into steel ropes. She lifted her chin and, taking a deep breath, raked the tiredness up from her chest. She gave Eliza her brightest smile.

  ‘Oh, there was a lull between shows and Frank’s still getting up the backing for the new talkie. I thought I’d make the most of it. Booked my ticket on the spur of the moment... it all happened so quickly, and anyway, I wanted to surprise you all, make a grand entrance!’ Matty said with a laugh.

  ‘Well, you’ve certainly done that. And all on your own – no Mr Rossi with you?’ Eliza asked lightly.

  ‘Oh no, it’s really more of a holiday for me. Frank’s too busy setting up everything for the next film.’ Matty waved her hand, as though the thousands of dollars needed for the project were a minor matter.

  Matty’s acting skills had obviously deserted her, for it seemed Eliza was not convinced. Her sister glanced at the photograph of their parents, back in its place on the mantlepiece and said, ‘I can’t promise to be as wise as Mum, but you can always talk to me, Matty, you know that, don’t you?’

  Matty knew now would be the time to confide in her sister. If anyone could understand about the baby, it was her sister. But as the seconds ticked away, she found herself choking back the words. Then the sound of a key in the front door interrupted her thoughts and the moment was gone. Matty shot Eliza an enquiring look.