The Melody Girls

by Anne Douglas

  Eyes swinging back, the girls, fingering their instruments, stared; waited.

  ‘I expect you’ll all be wondering about the wee boy I’ve brought here today,’ Lorna began. ‘I brought him because I wanted you to meet him. His name is Sam Fernie. And he’s my son.’

  A buzz of sound ran round the band, then ceased. Silence fell. No girl moved, no girl took her eyes off Lorna, who, now that she’d got out the magic words ‘my son’ was feeling rather better. Though her cheeks were flushed and her eyes wide and bright, she knew now that she could do this.

  ‘Maybe you’ll be thinking I should have told you about my boy before. That’s probably true. But you can guess it isn’t always easy, managing to do the right thing.’

  Looking towards Sam to see if he was listening, Lorna saw that George had gone to him and was playing with the ladders on the fire engine – quite enough to take his full attention, she knew. With a faint smile, she went on.

  ‘Anyway, I’ve decided that now the time’s come for you to meet him and him to meet you. He’s no’ a baby any more, he’s a person in his own right, as well as part of my family. So, it’ll be nice, eh? If we all get to know one other?’

  Her voice trembling, Lorna picked up her baton. ‘Shall we get on with the rehearsal now?’

  There was a brief silence before Bridie cried, ‘Oh, have a heart, Lorna! We all want to talk to the little guy! Come on, girls!’

  ‘No, wait, how about this?’ Trish had picked up her saxophone. ‘How about a solo from me specially for Sam?’

  ‘What solo?’ voices were asking.

  ‘Listen and you’ll find out. Here it comes. If you know it, join in!’

  And as George brought Sam over, his eyes large with wonder, the music of ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ rang round the studio, with some of the girls joining Trish with their instruments, while others sang, and Lorna and Tilly, standing arm in arm, were radiantly smiling. And trying not to cry.

  After the music, Sam was hugged and fussed over until Tilly said she’d better take him outside to play, the band had to get on with their rehearsal, which of course was true, though no one felt much like it – least of all Lorna. However, they were professionals, they played, they made themselves ready for the evening performance, but when it was over, one by one the girls came up to Lorna and shook her hand.

  ‘We want you to know, we understand what it’s been like for you,’ Bridie told her earnestly. ‘You must have had a hell of a time, eh?’

  ‘Couldn’t have managed without Ma,’ Lorna answered, dabbing her eyes. ‘In fact, we wouldn’t be here now, if it hadn’t been for her.’

  ‘Between you, you’ve done a grand job, anyway, bringing up Sam,’ Flo told her, to murmurs of agreement from the band. ‘And, you see, no one’s judging.’

  ‘You bet we’re not,’ cried Trish. ‘It’s all a piece of nonsense, anyway, that folk look down on girls who don’t happen to be married.’

  ‘Some folks,’ Bridie said. ‘Not us.’

  ‘I can’t tell you how happy you’ve made me,’ Lorna said in a low voice. ‘I wish now I’d brought Sam to see you long ago.’ She raised her head, put back her shoulders. ‘But there’s something else I have to tell you girls. Might as well say it now.’

  They looked at her with interest. More news? This was proving to be quite a rehearsal day.

  ‘You’ll have seen me with Josh Niven?’ Lorna asked.

  The lovely Josh Niven? Of course they had!

  ‘So, I think I should say that you won’t be seeing him any more. In fact, he’s left Edinburgh, got a job in London.’

  No one knew quite what to say. Was Lorna upset, or not? She was giving no more away, but her girls made sympathetic murmurs anyway. After all, it didn’t take higher education to work out that Josh Niven’s departure might have had something to do with Sam no longer being a secret. Whatever her feelings on losing Josh, though, anyone could see she was certainly happier, now that the secret was out. It was as though a cloud over her had been lifted, revealing afresh her youth and beauty, and as they left her that morning, all her girls, looking at her, marvelled.

  ‘I’ve never felt so free,’ she said to her mother, Flo and George, as she locked the studio door. ‘Somehow, I feel I’ve been given a new lease of life.’

  ‘You look as though you have,’ Flo told her warmly. ‘And I think this calls for a celebration.’

  ‘Good idea, I say we should go out for lunch,’ George said at once. ‘My treat, eh? There’s a little cafe round here that might just suit Sam.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Tilly was looking dubious. ‘He’s never been to a cafe before.’

  ‘First time, then! Come on, let’s go, I’m starving.’

  After the lunch that was a great success, with Sam choosing fish fingers and chips and the grown-ups having something more substantial, George and Flo said they’d be on their way, and Tilly said she wouldn’t mind doing a bit of shopping, if Lorna could take Sam home.

  ‘Sure, I can!’ Lorna, flushed and happy cried, ‘Oh, this has been such a great day, eh? I’m really looking forward to walking out with Sam and no’ minding if I meet someone I know.’

  Which was why, when she was looking at the window of a stationer’s at the end of Princes Street and met the eyes of an assistant, she walked straight into the shop. For the eyes were Claire Maxwell’s.

  Forty-Nine

  As soon as Lorna entered the shop, with Sam in his pushchair holding his fire engine, Claire retreated behind the counter, looking towards an older woman assistant some way off, as though needing protection.

  ‘Hello, Claire,’ Lorna said cheerfully. ‘Fancy finding you here, then.’

  Claire, finally meeting Lorna’s gaze, fiddled with some pencils on the counter and said nothing.

  ‘Is this where you used to work?’ Lorna pressed.

  ‘That’s right.’ Claire coughed. ‘Got my old job back.’

  ‘Without saying a word to us? Without resigning, or fixing up formalities? What did you think you were playing at?’

  ‘I . . . didn’t want to see you.’

  ‘After what you’d done?’

  ‘Everything all right, Miss Maxwell?’ the senior assistant called down the shop. ‘Need any help?’

  ‘No, thanks, Miss Barbour. I can manage.’

  ‘I’ll go for my lunch then, as you’ve had yours.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Barbour.’

  Lorna and Claire remained silent, until the senior assistant, giving Sam a quick smile, let herself out and they were alone.

  ‘Claire, this is ridiculous,’ Lorna said softly. ‘You working here, giving up your music—’

  ‘I haven’t given up my music. I just haven’t been able to find a job.’ Claire shook her head. ‘This is the best I can do.’

  ‘Look, you’ve no customers at the moment. Why don’t you tell me why you did what you did? It wasn’t for the money, was it? You just wanted to hurt me.’

  Claire, her cheeks dull red, looked down again at her counter. ‘That’s right,’ she said quietly. ‘I told you, you seemed to have so much – you were like my sister, and I wanted to get back at you. Afterwards – after I’d spoken to you – I felt bad, though. I . . . hated myself.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘Mostly, I do, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, Claire! If only you’d let someone help you!’

  ‘I’m OK now. I’ve got this job, I can get by.’ Finally raising her eyes, Claire swallowed a sob. ‘But I’m sorry for what I did, Lorna. I’m sorry if I made trouble for you with Josh. Don’t know if it’s any good, saying that.’

  ‘It is good, because I know, in your heart, you didn’t really like what you were doing.’ Lorna hesitated. ‘I did lose Josh, but maybe it was just as well.’

  ‘You told him, then?’ For the first time, Claire really looked at Sam, who was crooning to himself over his fire engine, his eyes beginning to glaze. ‘And he wouldn’t accept your little boy? Oh, I feel bad about that, I really do! When your son’
s so lovely, too. But you must be so proud of him. I’m so glad I’ve seen him.’

  ‘Everyone’s seen him now. I mean, all the girls in the band. That’s where some good’s come out of all the trouble. I knew I had to stop keeping Sam a secret, and I told the band this morning. Claire, they were wonderful, so kind, so sweet with him.’

  ‘That’s good to know.’ Claire took a deep breath. ‘Listen, I want to thank you for coming in to speak to me, Lorna. I’m amazed you’d want to do it.’

  ‘Better than that, I want you to come back to the band, Claire. We still haven’t got a pianist, so there’s another old job vacant for you. What do you say?’

  ‘Back to the band?’ Claire’s mouth fell a little open. ‘Oh, no, Lorna, I couldn’t! I couldn’t show my face, with everybody knowing . . .’

  ‘No one knows except Flo and George, and they’ll be happy to see you back.’

  ‘You know they won’t!’

  ‘Once we’ve explained that you feel differently now, they will. People are allowed a second chance, you know.’

  Claire, her face working, put out her hand which Lorna shook.

  ‘If you really mean it, I’d love to come back. I’ve missed it all so much, can’t tell you—’

  ‘Got any A4 envelopes?’ a man asked, appearing at the shop door. ‘Don’t tell me they’re in short supply, like everything else!’

  ‘No, I can get you a packet in a minute,’ Claire almost sang. ‘If you wouldn’t mind waiting till I’ve served this lady?’

  ‘Come in next Monday, and we’ll do the formalities,’ Lorna whispered. ‘Then you can give in your notice.’

  ‘You’re sure, Lorna, you’re really sure you want me?’

  ‘I’m sure. Don’t let me down, Claire.’

  ‘I won’t!’

  As Claire went off to find the A4 envelopes, the customer opened the door for Lorna, who went through with her pushchair, holding Sam who was now fast asleep.

  What a day, she was thinking, her head in a whirl. So much had happened, she could scarcely keep track, except that the thought of Josh was gradually receding. One day, it would perhaps have gone altogether. As she had told Claire, that would probably be just as well.

  Fifty

  Time went by, pleasantly, serenely, and suddenly it was 1953 and Lorna and Flo woke up to the fact that their band was taking off.

  In this new Elizabethan Age, as people were beginning to call the times, after the young Princess Elizabeth had succeeded her father, George the Sixth, the Melody Girls were becoming known and in demand. Not only for the high standard of their playing, but also for their looks and personality, and the new blonde vocalist, Dawn Lamond, they’d managed to find who had been wonderfully admired by all, even Claire. Or perhaps especially by Claire, who had turned over a new leaf, becoming strangely anxious to please, and even a good deal happier.

  Everything, it seemed had suddenly come together for the Melody Girls, who found themselves wanted for radio contracts and recording deals, for more tours in Germany, in England, in the far north of Scotland, in Ireland. Even America had been suggested but that had been firmly vetoed by Lorna, even though George had looked glum over it.

  ‘Might be turning down real fame,’ he told Lorna. ‘America’s the hub of everything, our music included.’

  ‘We’ve got fame here,’ Lorna retorted. ‘People know who the Melody Girls are now.’

  ‘Not in America, they don’t. Just need a bit of extra publicity to push us into the real big time over there.’

  ‘No, Lorna’s right, we’re OK where we are.’ Flo was chipping in quickly on Lorna’s side, for she knew well enough why Lorna didn’t want to go to America, and George, defeated, said no more.

  ‘Are you still worrying about Rod?’ Flo asked Lorna, when they were alone. ‘What does it matter if he knows about Sam? Maybe he should.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say worrying.’ Lorna bit her lip. ‘In fact, I did think about telling him one time, but then I thought, no, it’s all too late. If I was going to tell him, I should have told him before. Not that I know where precisely he is.’

  ‘There are ways and means of finding out.’

  ‘I know. But I think I’ll leave it, Flo, all the same.’

  ‘What you’re really wanting is a quiet life, eh? As far as emotion goes?’

  ‘A quiet life, as far as emotion goes, is what I’ve got, and yes, it’s what I want,’ Lorna answered quietly. ‘Suits me fine.’

  But then the piece in the gossip column of an Edinburgh magazine appeared. Full page spreads in other popular magazines featuring the Melody Girls and their ‘flame-haired girl conductor’ were common enough, but this was different. Very different.

  It was Flo who brought it into the studio one morning and laid it on Lorna’s little desk. ‘Seen this?’ she asked huskily.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Somebody’s written a piece in Edinburgh Cross Talk – you know that magazine, comes out monthly?’

  ‘About the band?’ Lorna was leafing through the magazine.

  ‘No. About you.’

  ‘Oh? Where is it, then?’

  ‘I’ll find it for you. It’s just a few lines.’

  Flo found the page and folded it back for Lorna to read. ‘I shouldn’t worry about it. Probably nobody’ll read it, anyway.’

  ‘Now I will worry,’ Lorna said with a smile. ‘If you tell me not to.’

  But then, as her eyes went over the piece, her brow darkened and a deep flush rose to her cheeks. ‘Oh, my God, Flo, who’s written this about me and Sam?’ Her voice shaking, she read the snippet aloud.

  ‘“Rumour has it that Lorna Fernie, lovely conductor of the well known girl band The Melody Girls, has been seen strolling in Princes Street Gardens with a delightful little boy calling her, so accounts have it, ‘Mammy’. True, or false? And if true, who would Daddy be? Interesting, anyway.”

  ‘Oh, Flo, what a terrible thing!’ Lorna had laid down the magazine and was staring at Flo with huge, horrified eyes. ‘I mean, it was one thing to tell my friends about Sam, but I never wanted gossip like this to come out about me!’

  ‘Look, that mag’s no’ read much, and nobody takes any notice of that sort of stuff, anyway—’

  ‘They do, they do, that’s why folk write it. It’s interesting, like they say. Details of other people’s private lives are always interesting, eh?’ Lorna was walking round the office, shaking her head. ‘But we’ve just built up a public, Flo, people who really care about us. What are they going to say, when they read that about me?’

  ‘Lorna, you always said you wanted people to know. You said you felt free, that you’d nothing to fear.’

  ‘Like I say, that was only when I was thinking about friends, or colleagues. I remember Ewen saying once, let the whole world know, but I said the whole world had got nothing to do with Sam or me.’

  ‘Maybe it has now. Or, at least not the whole world, but part of it.’

  ‘There’ll be letters,’ Lorna said drearily. ‘Folk will write in, telling me what they think of me. How I’ve let everybody down, giving the wrong signals to young women, all that sort of thing . . .’

  ‘You’re just looking on the black side, Lorna! Wait till the letters do come in and see what they have to say.’ Flo put her finger to her lip, suddenly seeming to be lost in thought. ‘Lorna, maybe the best thing you could do would be to fight back?’ she cried, when she’d come to a decision. ‘Give a little interview in another magazine – something more serious, maybe. Give your side of the story, let people see what the struggle’s been, but how it’s all been worth while and that sort of thing? What do you think?’

  Lorna sat down, putting her hand to her brow. ‘I don’t know, Flo, maybe it might still give the wrong impression?’

  ‘No, I don’t agree. I think folk would appreciate what you’ve done for your boy. I think they’d understand and maybe no’ sit in judgement. Worth a try, anyway.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right.’
>
  ‘At least, you wouldn’t be sitting around, nursing more secrets, hoping nobody’d read the gossip!’

  ‘That’s true!’ Lorna leaped to her feet. ‘I’ll do it, Flo. Let’s choose the right magazine, then, and ask if they’ll give me space.’

  ‘I’ll get George. He’ll know.’ Flo was breathing fast, relishing the fight. ‘Let’s give those folk as good as they get!’

  George, of course, knew the very magazine to approach with the offer of an interview with Lorna, which was a rather old fashioned but reputable Scottish journal much read all over the UK. The editor, a friend of his, jumped at the chance to publish something with the lady bandleader who’d recently become so popular, and after a joint collaboration on what should be said, Lorna gave the interview.

  It had been George’s view that her special problems as a single mother should just be part of a broader picture of her life and that of the girls in the band, without too much emphasis on the down side of bringing up a child without a father.

  ‘But enough to make it clear what’s involved,’ Lorna had insisted.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ George had agreed. ‘You’ll be able to say how much you’ve gained from bringing up Sam, and how any woman in your position shouldn’t just think of the problems, but take pleasure in having the child, just like any other mother.’

  ‘The truth is, it’s all a lot more difficult than that,’ Lorna sighed. ‘I mean, I couldn’t have run the band in the early days without Ma.’

  ‘No need to stress that,’ Flo put in. ‘All you’re wanting to do here is assure your fans that you’re an OK person, in spite of what happened.’

  ‘I feel I’ll be walking through a minefield, though, and I keep asking, why should that be? Why shouldn’t folk accept that these things happen and just be easy about them?’ Lorna shivered a little. ‘I’m dreading the response, you know. I mean, the letters.’

  ‘As I said before, wait to see what the letters say before getting upset.’

  ‘OK, I’ll wait,’ Lorna sighed.

  As she had foreseen, it was difficult, hitting the right note in the interview, but the woman journalist who asked the questions was not only sympathetic but experienced. She seemed to know just how to get the best from Lorna, allowing her to come over as a sensible and talented young woman, who had faced difficulties with courage and resolution and been rewarded with joy and fulfilment, not only from her music but also in bringing up her boy.