by Sue Welfare
Helen nodded. ‘That’s right.’
‘Chance for me too then,’ said Christov brightly, before finally leaving to the strains of ‘Strangers in the Night.’
Christov was right; Helen did feel better after eating and was ready for Natalia and the crew when they came upstairs to collect her.
The streets of Billingsfield unfurled themselves like a great colourful banner beyond the windows of the limousine that the Roots team had hired for the shoot. If they had wanted to make discreet progress this definitely wasn’t the car to do it in. Helen glanced out of the car window as they slowed down at the traffic lights outside the hotel. People stared at the car.
The crew, Felix and Natalia had crammed themselves into the jump seats while Helen had the back seat all to herself. Helen was conscious of them all watching her, as if they were all poised waiting for her to perform.
Natalia, clipboard in hand, leant forward. ‘What we’d like is for you just to talk – give us your impressions, your feelings – recollections of life when you lived here. We’re going to drive around, take in some of the places you’re familiar with –’
Helen nodded.
‘It’s been a while since you’ve been back here, hasn’t it? Can you tell us about the last time you came home?’
‘It was for my dad’s funeral.’
‘And when was that?’
Helen took her time before replying, trying to work out exactly how many years it had been. ‘Ten years or so, maybe more like fifteen,’ she said, after a few moments.
Helen could see from Natalia’s expression – a very slight raise of the eyebrows – that she was undoubtedly thinking that she had barely been out of junior school fifteen years ago.
‘You were on TV by then, Cannon Square was getting record viewing figures and you were a household name. I imagine it must have been quite an emotional home-coming for you, meeting up with all your old friends while you were back here?’
‘I didn’t really catch up with anyone,’ said Helen flatly. ‘My dad had always been a pretty solitary soul. He didn’t have many friends. I think his sister came – she died a couple of years later – one or two of his neighbours. One of the men he used to work with and a couple of the women from the nursing home that he went into towards the end.’
‘And you?’
Helen nodded. ‘That’s right – and me, and Arthur.’
‘Your agent?’
Helen nodded. ‘That’s right. Although I think we were still married then.’
‘You were married to Arthur?’ asked Natalia, doing a double take in amazement.
‘Don’t tell me you missed that?’ Helen laughed. It was obvious from Natalia’s expression that she had. ‘We were married for years.’
‘But you got divorced?’
‘Eventually.’
‘And you still manage to work together? I mean he still manages you, doesn’t he?’
Helen laughed. ‘In a manner of speaking, he does, yes. It was just that we didn’t get on as well married as we did as agent and client. I really truly love Arthur, he just made a terrible husband – almost as bad as I did a wife. But we’ve always been friends. Good friends.’
Natalia was frantically writing herself another note. ‘I am amazed we didn’t pick that up,’ she said.
‘So you’re saying that when you came back you didn’t take the time to go round and see your old friends?’ asked Felix.
Helen shook her head. ‘No, no I didn’t. I know it sounds strange now but I was up to my eyes in work at the time. We came back for a flying visit.’
‘So you didn’t even go and see Harry?’ asked Natalia.
Helen smiled wryly. ‘No, not even Harry. I probably should have done. I meant to, but I was right in the middle of filming a new series of Cannon Square. I think I was getting ready to do a live show as well. We were pushed for time. So many things had changed by then, and Dad was gone. My life was focused elsewhere.’ She turned her attention back to the view from the window. ‘It felt a bit like by coming home for the funeral I was closing the final pages of a book.’
‘So are you saying there was no one here to bring you back?’
‘That’s right.’
Outside the earlier downpour had washed away the listless urban dust, making the colours of the buildings seem unnaturally sharp and bright in the sunshine, the lines of the shop facades and town houses crisp and newly drawn, as if her brain was reinventing and repainting the whole place, making everywhere brighter and showier just to show her what it was she had missed all those years.
‘And your dad died in a nursing home?’
Helen nodded. ‘He’d been ill a little while. I didn’t realise how bad he was. I organised some help for him but –’ Helen stopped.
‘He was sicker than you thought?’ prompted Natalia.
Helen nodded. ‘I had no idea how ill he was, but it was just like him not to say anything,’ she said softly, turning her attention back to the view. ‘Things move on.’
The strange mix of the memories, the amazingly familiar and the completely alien landscape gave Helen an odd sensation in the pit of her stomach. The market square was framed on all four sides by shops and offices, with a road running all the way around and exits on each corner, and a statue of one of the town’s most famous sons in the centre, set into a fountain.
The stalls were closing down for the day, people busied themselves, hurrying between the cars, crossing the roads, slowing the traffic to a crawl. Helen even recognised one or two of the stallholders – the fish man and the flower man, apparently unchanged after all those years. But behind them – where once there had been council offices, crammed into an ugly grey concrete box that looked as if it had come straight out of Stalinist Russia, there was now a stunning new high-tech office block and parade of stylish shops. She felt displaced and slightly out of sync.
‘Isn’t that a bit of a cliché?’ pressed Felix. ‘Things move on?’
‘Being a cliché doesn’t make it any less true,’ said Helen with a sigh. ‘I was busy, Harry was busy –’
‘Busy?’ said Natalia, leaning a little further forward.
Helen laughed at the two of them. ‘What is this? Good cop, bad cop?’ Neither of them spoke.
‘All right,’ Helen continued, holding up her hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘I didn’t go and see Harry because by that time he was with someone else.’
‘And that hurt? Did you think he might wait for you?’
Helen made the effort to smile. ‘No, of course I didn’t think he’d wait for me. We were both young, and he is the sweetest man but –’ Helen hesitated, not wanting to have what she thought about Harry aired on national television. ‘I was married to Arthur by that time, so no, of course I didn’t expect him to wait for me. But it changed things between us.’
The words didn’t seem anywhere near big enough.
‘Him being with someone else?’ said Natalia.
Helen nodded.
‘We thought we’d drive past the theatre while we’ve still got the light, and do a bit to camera there, with all the posters and things,’ said Felix.
Helen nodded.
The car fell silent as they pulled away from the lights.
Natalia craned around. ‘It’s around here somewhere, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, about another hundred yards. It’s just up there on the right,’ said Helen, pointing. ‘On the other side of the next set of lights.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Felix. ‘Can we pull in there?’ The driver nodded. Moments later they pulled up on the pavement outside the Carlton Rooms.
‘I know it might seem a bit disjointed,’ said Felix. ‘But you know how it works – it’ll all come together in the edit. So if we can just do a whistle stop here, that’ll take the pressure off when we come back tomorrow for the show. I’m thinking we’ll film you getting out of the car and then if we can just follow you up the steps to the main doors. Is that okay?’
The camer
aman was nodding, but Helen was already opening the door, getting out of the car and staring at the front of the old theatre.
‘Can we just do that again?’ Felix was saying. ‘I’d like to get that – the whole looking up at the name in lights thing.’
Helen stared up at the showy facade of the Carlton Rooms. They had her photo up on the billboards and her name printed on a huge banner above the main doors in three-feet-high lettering. It gave her an odd feeling.
‘Can you tell us what it was like last time you were here?’ Natalia asked. ‘I’m right in thinking this is where you started your career in show business, aren’t I?’
Helen nodded. ‘Saturday March 15th. I was seventeen,’ she said wistfully, wondering where all the years had gone.
SEVEN
‘Come on, come on, can you get yourself up here, girls? You’re the Wild Birds, aren’t you?’ asked one of the stage hands, waving them up the steps towards the stage.
‘That’s us,’ said Helen. ‘Harry Finton said that we should come round here to do our sound check.’
‘Well, he was right about that, but we need to get a move on,’ the man said, leading them into the wings. ‘If you’d like to get yourself down the front there, then Tony will sort you out. We’ve got your music. If you want to leave your coats and bags over there out of the way, I’ll keep an eye on them; they’ll be fine.’
Helen felt the tension in her stomach beginning to ease. She took a minute to run her hands over her hair and straighten her clothes. ‘Thank goodness Harry was able to sort something out,’ she murmured in an undertone to Charlotte.
If Charlotte had heard her she didn’t show it and certainly didn’t reply: instead she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and painting on a thousand-watt smile, breezed out onto the stage, with Helen trailing in her wake.
Helen hadn’t completely recovered from Charlotte’s bad-tempered outburst. Charlotte had always been hot-headed but she had never behaved like this before – Helen hated the way that Charlotte had spoken to her. How could they have known each other all this time and she not have guessed how Charlotte really felt?
Far from being empty, the stage was a hive of activity. Men were hurrying to and fro carrying boxes, tables and pieces of scenery. There was a scattering of people sitting in the front seats of the auditorium, while other seats were stacked with coats and bags. In amongst all the rest of the activity, a local TV crew beavered about setting up lighting and cabling.
‘Hello, where do you want us?’ said Charlotte, to no one in particular.
Helen hadn’t been quite sure what to expect but it certainly wasn’t the noisy hubbub that confronted them. A man was hammering something into one of the walls by a fire exit. Members of the TV crew were busy setting up a camera in one of the boxes, and on stage another man was fixing cables along a track inside the footlights, calling out for instructions from the crew as he went.
‘Where would you like us?’ Charlotte called again,, projecting her voice out into the void as she crossed the stage. As she moved a spotlight clicked on, and then another, apparently following her progress. Charlotte swung around to look at Helen and grinned.
‘How about that, then? This is more like it, isn’t it?’ she said, executing a perfect pirouette. ‘On stage, in the spotlight. This is where we should be. I belong here …’
Helen wasn’t altogether convinced.
‘That’s fine,’ shouted a man in the wings, who was blissfully unaware of either Charlotte or Helen. He was calling to someone deep in the darkness, way up above the tiered seating. ‘Can you just try three and four now?’ he continued.
‘Wild Birds?’ asked another man. He was standing in the aisle by the front row of seats and was dressed in a shirt, tie and jeans, his jacket slung onto the seat behind him, and from his expression, his concentration for the most part appeared to be on the sheaf of papers he had clutched in his hands.
Charlotte nodded. ‘That’s right, that’s us. Wild by name and wild by nature,’ she said.
‘Really? Well, don’t tell the lads in the band that, will you?’ He laughed, barely giving them a second glance. ‘Right, well, let’s get this sorted out then, shall we ladies? We haven’t got an awful lot of time. So –’
Charlotte giggled. It sounded horribly hollow and false. ‘So are you Tony?’ she asked, all breathy and little-girly. She was making a real effort to make him notice her.
‘That’s me. Why, what have you heard?’ Tony said, writing something.
‘Harry said that you’d let us have –’ Helen began but Charlotte was already ahead of her.
‘Oh, you’d be surprised,’ Charlotte purred.
This time the man did look up, and grinned. ‘Probably all true,’ he said. ‘And more besides. Now if you could get yourselves down the front here, please, ladies. What’s your name?’
‘Kate Monroe,’ said Charlotte, wiggling provocatively.
‘Well, Kate Monroe, you and you friend will be out there on the apron for your number,’ said Tony, waving them down towards him. ‘That’s down here in front of the curtains. They’ll be closed behind you because we’ll be setting up for the magician while you’re singing.’ He swung round. ‘Can we get the bloody curtains shut, somebody?’ he shouted, and then he beckoned Helen and Charlotte even further forward to where the man with the cables was now busying himself setting up two mike stands.
‘Right. Now if you could just come a bit closer, and stand together, and you, love – yes, you –’ he beckoned Helen into the middle, ‘that’s great – the compere will announce you – ladies and gentlemen, well you know the score – and then if you could get yourselves down here. Vince will have sorted out the mikes by then, won’t you, Vince?’ The man sorting out the stands raised a hand in acknowledgement.
There was a swish and creak and slowly the curtains closed behind them.
‘So if you can get yourselves out and stand there –’ He pointed to a taped cross on the bare, scuffed boards. ‘That’s centre stage,’ he said, in case they couldn’t guess. He turned his attention to someone up in the lighting gallery. ‘Do you think we have a spot for these two young ladies, Frankie?’
There was a momentary pause and then a click and suddenly Charlotte and Helen were caught in a great halo of brilliance. Helen blinked, blinded by the glare, while Tony continued. ‘We’ve got a cabinet, two tables and some sort of mummy thing to bring on while you’re doing your number. Bloody heavy they are, so sing loud. Shame you aren’t a rock band really,’ he laughed.
Helen held up a hand to block the light and looked down at him, wondering if he was joking. She was too nervous to be able to tell. He winked. She suspected the wink was meant for Charlotte, who made a great show of winking back. Helen knew that she was trembling and hoped that no one else could see.
‘Right, now our resident keyboard genius, Ed-the-fingers-O’Keefe, will be playing for you. So he’ll do a bit of an intro to get you onto the stage and then as soon as you’re settled just give him the nod and he’ll go into your song and you’re away. So, you okay with that, ladies?’
Charlotte nodded. ‘Sounds fine to me.’
In the orchestra pit below them a plump balding man with a comb-over was seated at an electric organ. He was sweating and dabbing at his face with a limp paisley handkerchief, the spotlight reflecting on his shiny bald pate. He glanced up at them and smiled. ‘All right, girls,’ he said. ‘You’ll be fine. There’s nothing to worry about, nothing at all, just follow me.’
‘You’ll be in safe hands with Ed. He’s been doing this since before you pair were born – although take my advice, watch him, and don’t go anywhere near him when he’s out of that pit,’ Tony said with a sly grin.
‘What are you telling them about me?’ said Ed, aping offence. ‘What sort of thing is that to tell anyone? You take no notice, girls. He’s all mouth that one; you can trust your old Uncle Eddie. Now let’s have a quick run-through, shall we? Settle those nerves. Show these lads
what you’re made of. How about we do a little something to warm up?’ He raised his hands above the keyboard and a burst into a chorus of “I do like to be beside the seaside.”
Charlotte’s lips formed into a pout of displeasure.
‘Come on, Ed,’ said Tony. ‘We haven’t got the time to bugger about.’
‘I was just trying to get them to relax,’ protested Ed.
As her eyes got used to the lights Helen could just pick out Harry sitting a few rows back next to a plump woman with a notebook and pen who looked as if she might be interviewing him. Harry was looking very earnest and self-important. As Ed struck up with the opening bars of their song Harry looked up and grinned at her.
Helen was so nervous and distracted by Harry that the music took her by complete surprise and rather than come in on the first note she stood there with her mouth open, while Charlotte thundered on alone.
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ snapped Charlotte, glaring at her.
Tony rolled his eyes and looked heavenwards. ‘Whoa there, whoa,’ he shouted to Ed and then turned his attention to Helen. ‘Presumably you’re going to be doing more than just standing there catching flies, are you, love?’
Helen blushed furiously and nodded. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she began, feeling increasingly anxious. ‘I didn’t mean to, I wasn’t ready.’
‘We noticed,’ said Tony. ‘Anyway, don’t be sorry, love, let’s just give it another go, shall we? Why don’t you come on again? Actually why don’t you come on from back stage to the front, have a bit of a practice, and as soon as you’re settled Ed will start the intro. All right, you got that?’
Helen, blushing furiously, nodded.
‘Great, now I don’t like to rush you, ladies, but we’re on the clock here and I’m doing you a favour fitting you in at all – so, if you’d just like to get yourselves organised.’ He made a wafting motion with his hands. ‘Off you go. Let’s see if we can’t get this show on the road.’