by Peter Rimmer
“Then you go out with the wrong girls.”
“Not really… Men like to be in control. Or, more correctly, they like to think they are in control… Do you have a flat in town?”
“No. I live in Surrey and the last train has left Waterloo. You see, I was going…”
“And you told Mummy you’re staying with a girlfriend.”
“Exactly. So you see, I’m in your hands.”
Sweetly, they smiled at each other while Byron called for the waiter and ordered a bottle of champagne.
By the time the second bottle of champagne was put on their table the club had filled up and the small dance floor was crowded. After three stiff gins and half a bottle of champagne, Byron was floating, the feeling not unpleasant. A woman he would have run away from in normal circumstances was looking prettier by the glass and had once put her hand on his knee to emphasise a point, making Byron wonder what she was wearing under the stiff tweed jacket and skirt.
When they danced she folded quite nicely into his arms, her body as soft as the clothes were hard. Their eyes met an inch apart, and she kissed the end of his nose before gently resting her soft cheek against his. The music was pure and mellow, the piano melding with a soprano saxophone, the double bass keeping the beat, a mix of jazz and Latin American. There was nowhere else in the world but the spot where they swayed, folded together as one. The music stopped, and they waited, not breaking their hold, ignorant of everyone around. The lights were dim, and the floor crowded making them quite invisible to other people. She licked the end of her finger and touched it to his mouth, their eyes locking, the music playing, their bodies in tune with each other.
And the evening went on, dance after dance, glass after glass.
At midnight, the band changed, but neither took any notice, not wishing to break their spell. Very softly a young girl’s voice began to sing with the band, the sound part of the piano and clarinet, each weaving around each other, playing the sweet notes to each other’s calls. The music swelled, and the singer took charge, building the song, stopping the talk at the tables. Byron, half-drunk with wine and torpid pleasure, his back to the music, swayed to the melody, his feet no longer moving.
“That girl can really sing,” he said when the music stopped.
“The band is taking a break. Champagne makes me float. You should have seen her. The men were transfixed.”
“Let’s drink the night away,” said Byron, and led her by the hand back to the table. “We should have done this before.”
“You never asked.”
They drank to each other and smiled.
“What the hell did she look like?” snapped Byron, turning back to the empty bandstand.
“What’s the matter, Byron?”
“The singer. What did she look like?”
“She’s coming back, look for yourself. And she’s changed her costume. This time the men will go crazy.”
“The bitch!”
“What did you say?”
“The bitch.”
“You know that girl? You’d better quieten down. She’s going to sing.”
This time the singer took control from the start and when she finished, every person in the room was standing on their feet, including Byron and Beatrice. The ovation sounded like thunder, broken by the girl singing again, taking the room and holding everyone in it to listen to her song.
“Who is she?” asked Beatrice.
“Shelley Lane… The best thing you and I can do is get out of here.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t want to.” Shelley took hold of the microphone.
“This next song is dedicated to my manager without whom I would not be able to sing… And thank you all.”
Byron sat down at the table while Shelley sang to him, their eyes locked together.
“She’s in love with you, Byron, and silly me, you’re in love with her… What a pity. Mummy would have been ecstatic. That girl is going a long way as a singer… This really has not been my best night.”
“Don’t try and go, Beatrice. This is strictly business. She’s a bitch because I told her not to sing in public until she was ready.”
“She’s ready… So you’re the manager?”
“I own seventy per cent of that girl.”
In the dressing room at the back, Shelley was in tears.
“What’s the matter, Shel?” said the piano player. “You blew their minds.”
“What made him come here tonight?… And who was that bitch at his table?”
“Who are you talking about?”
“My bloody manager.”
The audience called again and again for the singer until the club manager took the microphone.
“The lady was a guest in the club, not a professional singer, and she doesn’t wish to sing anymore.”
“Then who’s her manager?” someone shouted.
“Sorry, folks, the lady’s gone… Boys, take the music, build the night.”
“There’s one thing about it,” said Byron after reflection. “I don’t have to take her on trial up north. I put her with the best voice trainer in London and it worked… Did you recognise any of her songs?”
“Not one.”
“I’ll need to tie up the songwriter… You mind waiting here a minute? Better still, come and give me a hand.” Byron caught the club manager’s eye and beckoned him over to the table.
“Has Shelley gone, Max?”
“Right out the door. How do you know her, Byron? Used to sing here a year back but not like that.”
“Who wrote the songs?”
“She did.”
“The bitch. Writing music isn’t in her contract.”
“Are you her manager?”
“Yes. All the way.”
“How much do you want for her? Full-time. Six days a week.”
“Not here, Max my boy. Not for money. Maybe a few evenings like tonight but no publicity.”
“She’ll get publicity whether you and I like it or not.”
“Maybe… Can you call me a taxi, Max? Suddenly I’m sober… How did she affect you, Beatrice?”
“As a woman or a singer?”
“As a singer.”
“Before she looked at you, she had my stomach melting.”
“Come on. There’s another bottle of champagne in my flat. You can have the couch in the lounge.”
“You mean that woman means nothing to you personally?”
“Nothing at all. Strictly business.”
“Maybe Mummy will be happy after all.”
The taxi dropped them outside 47 Buckingham Court. The moments of magic had gone with the singer and neither of them knew what to say. Gloria Kendle’s advice ran through her daughter’s mind: ‘If you’ve nothing to say to a man, keep your mouth shut.’
They walked up the steps to the ornate front door which was opened by the night porter who raised his top hat.
“Why is England so cold in the winter?” she said. Beatrice was shivering as Byron put his latchkey into the door of 47.
“It’s late, Beatrice. Two o’clock and I have a meeting at nine.”
“You mean the couch?”
“I mean the couch. It’s warm. The flat is heated. It was a lovely evening but I never take advantage of a girl who doesn’t have the means of getting home.”
“A glass of hot milk will make us both sleep.”
She was practical if nothing else. ‘My,’ she said to herself. ‘And what was that Italian’s name?’ The last thing she remembered before falling asleep was having a chuckle to herself.
Byron found sleep more difficult and the dreams when they came were strange and convoluted.
They ate breakfast together before Byron drove her to the solicitors’ office before going on to Pall Mall, parking in the basement. At night, he took taxis.
The plane tree outside the French windows was stark and bare of leaves. A light flurry of snow was falling through the branches and melting on
the rickety table and wooden bench. Shelley had the blankets drawn right up to her nose. Deep inside the old house, Mrs Page’s grandfather clock struck eleven o’clock. Snug in the warmth of her bed, she counted the eleven chimes as she watched the cold day through her open bedroom door and the French windows.
Her hair, the colour of a raven’s wing, blue-black and shining, fell around her oval face on the pure white pillow. Her eyes were dark brown and set in their almond home. Her skin was white, tinged with the down of orange-red. Her mouth was large, inviting, slightly open to the day, white teeth gleaming with the purity of youth. Her small, seashell ears were free of the raven hair. Outside the French window a pigeon watched her from the ground, waiting for the crumbs she threw to the birds each winter’s day.
At last, to herself, she had proved she could sing. Twice she turned and looked at the bedside telephone, white-yellow and quiet. Soon it would ring and her life would start again. She had been alone in the world too long. Turning her perfect face away, only her nose above the sheet, she tried to remember the days in her life when she had been happy.
The war had seen her evacuated to Cornwall when she was three. She had known neither of her parents who had met and mated just before the war and given her up for adoption. She did not even know their names. The other small orphans in Cornwall were as bewildered by life and war as much as she. They were pushed from one house to the other, sometimes laughing, sometimes not. The winter days were long and cold, the summer days long and warm.
Three sets of foster parents had followed after the war, all ending with Shelley on her own. At twelve the Jane Lamb in her ration book was changed in a childish hand to Shelley Lane. At fifteen she had left the last home in Croydon and gone up to London. No one, not even the police, had tried to contact her since. She found her first job in a Lyons Corner House, lying about her age. The girls were friendly, cheerful and the little hat sat well on her raven hair.
The following four years tumbled through her mind, a kaleidoscope of shared rooms, girlish laughter, the first boyfriend, crying for her virginity after it had gone and a week later wondering why she had waited so long. The days became short and exciting, never enough time to do all the things that swam before her grasp. Boredom had vanished, lost in her childhood, and all the way through the rhythm of her days played her need to be a singer, to be made someone by herself, to prove the casual mating of her parents was more than one lost orgasm.
One time soon he would phone and the sun would come out in her life forever.
Shelley drifted back into the daytime dreams with the applause ringing in her ears, her man standing up to clap with the others clapping from the dance floor.
By four o’clock in the afternoon, the pace of business had prevented Byron thinking of anything but work. The lack of sleep or Shelley’s singing were far from his mind. Even his secretary had not had time to lose her temper. Balance sheets and propositions littered his desk. The job Byron set himself was to find entrepreneurs with good ideas and then match the ideas to risk capital with himself overseeing the financial planning. Where possible he took a small share in the enterprise with the ultimate goal of floating the company on the London Stock Exchange when his profit would be reaped as a non-taxable capital gain. For every feasible proposition, thirty were discarded and Langton Portfolio Management Limited depended upon an eighty per cent success ratio to attract the risk capital that funded the new entrepreneurs.
Madge went home at five-thirty and Byron had not left his office all day, Madge bringing up sandwiches and coffee from a corner shop off Piccadilly Circus. By seven o’clock all he wanted to do was go home to his flat, soak in a hot bath and go to bed. Without going out of the building, he walked down to his car in the basement and drove to Knightsbridge. The first thing he did on entering his flat was take the phone off the hook. By eight o’clock he was sound asleep without the thought of a dream.
The next day, Friday, saw the same pressure of work.
“You need an assistant,” said Madge O’Shea.
“So do you.”
By the end of the day he was tired and excited. Business was a stimulant for Byron, giving him a high unmatched by any other drug. With the week’s work out of the way, he drove to Holland Park with the typed amendment to Shelley Lane’s contract.
The night was foggy, and Byron’s feet were cold despite the heater in the TR2. Shelley opened the front door with a sardonic smile. She was wearing a housecoat over her pyjamas, her feet in woolly slippers.
“You getting up or going to bed?”
“Neither… What do you want?”
“A signature on a contract amendment.”
“Business?”
“Strictly business.”
“Damn you.”
“Shelley, it’s cold out here. You mind if I come in?”
“Why I didn’t get up for two days.”
“What about yesterday’s singing lesson?”
“I don’t need them anymore.”
“Oh yes you do… I can’t get through the door when it’s six inches open.”
“That’s the idea. Why didn’t you phone me on Thursday?”
“I have been very busy.”
“She looked the busy type. Can’t say much for her dress sense.”
“You are sending a cold draught all through the house.”
“I’d love to slam this door in your face.”
“It wouldn’t help.”
Shelley swung the door wide and swept a hand for him to enter, making the housecoat fall open in the process. Byron winced.
“Please, Shelley, it doesn’t do any of us any good.”
“That’s the idea.”
“If we are going to argue, can we please do it in your apartment and not in the hall and inconvenience Mrs Page?”
“You didn’t bring any wine with you?”
“Shelley, this is business.”
The lady strode down the hall in front of him into her apartment, across the lounge and into the bedroom. Thick curtains were drawn across the French windows. The apartment was freezing cold. Without turning around Shelley dropped her housecoat on the floor and climbed back into bed, bringing the blankets up firmly under her chin.
“Haven’t you got a heater?” he said.
“I ran out of shillings for the water. If you are cold, you can get into bed.”
“You really are in a mood. Have you had any food?”
“No.”
“Then put on some clothes while I shiver in the lounge and we will go and find a restaurant.”
“Is this a date?”
“No it is not a date and we’ve been through all that before.”
“Byron, why can’t we be lovers?” Tears began pouring down her face. “I sang like all the world wanted me on Wednesday and I didn’t know you were going to be there and the only one I want doesn’t want me.”
“You’re my client.”
“Why can’t I be your bloody client and your bloody mistress?”
“You can’t see it, can you? We start going to bed and in six weeks it will all be over and then what happens to your precious career? It was one or the other… Maybe it doesn’t get all over in six weeks and you get famous and I get jealous. I’m not going to put myself in a position where I worry who you’re with. You’ll be touring the country, the world I hope, and I’m not going to pussyfoot behind you wondering who’s getting into your pants. We can run your career as a business or nothing else.”
“Then you do fancy me?”
“Of course I bloody fancy you but that doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference.”
“I won’t go out with anyone else.”
“Shelley, you’re talking to me, Byron, we’re exactly the same type, we don’t stay with one person. We are not the mortgage and three-kids type. We will break each other’s hearts and ruin your career in the process.”
“What about love?”
“We don’t love people, we use people. That’s
our price for success. Fame and fortune, but no love.”
“We can have both.”
“We can’t, don’t you see?”
“Then I want to start singing straight away.”
“I had a talk with your teacher. Not for another six months. Your breathing is still not right and you strain your voice. A year. That was the contract. Write songs. Lots of them. That’s what the amendment is about. Now, do you want to get up and have supper?… Shelley, please don’t cry. That’s one thing I can’t handle.”
“Why don’t you come and give me a hug?”
“Because it won’t end up as a hug.”
“Well damn you!”
“You’re going to be one of the great singers of your generation. You proved that on Wednesday. Find yourself a lover. That piano player has his eye on you. I’ll leave the amendment for you to read when you’ve stopped crying.”
“I’m never going to stop.”
“You will… I’ll let myself out. Shelley, believe me. The other way we’ll destroy each other… Find yourself a lover.”
“Oh, go to hell.”
Quietly shutting the bedroom door, Byron walked through the lounge and out of her apartment, tears stinging the back of his eyes.
“I probably will,” he said to himself, going out into the bitterly cold night. Just before closing the door he had a terrible desire to go back. “You can’t have your cake and eat it too, you bloody fool,” he said out loud.
Viciously, he slammed Mrs Page’s front door, sending a shock wave through the house. There was the whole of London waiting for him in the night and nowhere he wanted to go.
4
Will came home in the summer. The crate of ivory had been taken to Livingstone by road. With Will it travelled by train to Cape Town in South Africa where it was moved on board the Braemar Castle bound for the port of London.
The man that went ashore at Tilbury Docks would not have been recognised by the boy who had left the island four years earlier. Will Langton was a powerful man with the physique and look of a hunter. The ivory went into a bonded warehouse where it would stay while Will explored the market.
“Englishman, you take that blerry ivory to England and sell it yourself,” Hannes had explained. “Those robbers in Livingstone will give us nothing. Open yourself a bank account but bring me back my half. If the Central African Federation falls apart, I will fall with it but a young man like you needs a few pounds in a safe bank account.”