A Winter Love Song

by Rita Bradshaw

  Bonnie nodded. ‘That wouldn’t throw me.’

  ‘So, shall we give it a try? See if you suit?’

  He was offering her the job. Eagerly she said, ‘Yes. Oh, yes, please, Mr Mercer.’

  ‘I pay one pound fifteen a week but you’ll make a tidy bit in tips an’ whatever you get, it’s yours. Now I told your pal –’ Bonnie rightly assumed he was referring to Betty – ‘and I’m telling you, you play fair with me an’ I’ll play fair with you. I’m an easy-going fella on the whole, me missus’d tell you that, but cross me an’ I’m like old Jumbo, I never forget.’

  His eyes twinkled at her, and again Bonnie didn’t know if she was supposed to smile. She decided not. ‘My da used to say to deal with people as you’d like to be dealt with. He said spit into the wind and it’s likely to come back on you.’

  Ralph gave a guffaw of laughter. He liked this girl. Behind that pretty face she’d got some spirit and she’d need it on occasion, working behind the bar. But she’d do all right. ‘We open at two in the afternoon but I like my bar staff half an hour before that. And I expect you to stay an’ help clear up for as long as it takes after chucking-out time, all right? Tea-time you get a break out the back an’ you can help yourself to whatever my Mary’s brought in to sell. No charge. Perk of the job.’

  He went on to explain a few more things but Bonnie was barely listening. She had been offered a job and, by the sound of it, so had Betty and she just knew they’d get on like a house on fire. She liked Mr Mercer too. Certainly he was nothing like the foreman in the pickling factory.

  Things were changing at last. She felt it in her bones.

  Betty was waiting for her when she left the club, smoking a cigarette in a nearby doorway. She came straight over, grinning, as she said, ‘I can tell from your face he’s taken you on. So, we’ll be working together then, Betty and Bonnie, double trouble.’ And she laughed at her own joke.

  Bonnie giggled. There was something infectious about Betty’s vivacity. ‘Aye, I got it, thanks in part to you. He told me you said I really wanted the job, unlike that other girl.’

  ‘I couldn’t stand her.’ Betty was obviously a girl of snap decisions. ‘So, starting tomorrow same as me?’ When Bonnie nodded, Betty added, ‘Come on, let’s go and have a cup of tea and a cream bun to celebrate.’ She linked her arm through Bonnie’s. ‘We’re going to have some fun, you an’ me, Bonnie. You see if we don’t. And with your looks we’ll have the lads sniffing about and I’m quite happy to have the ones you don’t want.’

  Bonnie smiled but said nothing as they walked towards a café a few doors up from the club. She didn’t want a lad, any lad. She would never want one. Just the thought of what had happened with Franco occurring again made her feel sick. She intended to become a singer and make that her life and if she needed to have singing lessons and learn to read music to make that a reality, that’s exactly what she’d do. But lads, men . . . She shuddered inwardly. Never.

  Chapter Eight

  Over the next weeks as November turned into December and sleety icy rain became the order of the day, Bonnie found that Betty had been right. They did have fun. Her new friend had the happy gift of a sunny personality, and the knack of turning even the most frustrating situations into something to be laughed at. Life was never dull, and the mundane part of the job like washing up dirty glasses and crockery and clearing up last thing at night was enjoyable in Betty’s company. Betty might be rough and ready, and certainly her language could turn as blue as any sailor’s when she was provoked, but Bonnie didn’t think she’d met anyone she liked as much as Betty in a long time. She looked forward to going to work each day, and her initial shyness at dealing with customers soon evaporated as she watched how Betty handled folk and took her lead from her new friend.

  She introduced Selina to Betty the second Monday after beginning at the club. Monday was her and Betty’s day off, and they met Selina out of work. The three girls had a meal together before going to the cinema to see the film King Kong in which the central character, a giant gorilla, falls in love with a human. The latest in special-effects technology had been brought to the screen, and there were screams from several ladies in the audience when the huge animal first appeared. She hadn’t been sure how Selina and Betty would get on – they were certainly polar opposites, Selina being quiet and refined and very much a school-marm, and Betty . . . well, Betty was Betty, as Bonnie mused to herself. But the two hit it off immediately which was a relief. Suddenly Bonnie had two good friends, and for the first time since she had fled the north-east she felt happy.

  Apart from the occasional lapse, Bonnie didn’t allow herself to reflect on the life she’d left behind and more especially the circumstances of her departure. It was too raw, too painful. She told herself she was Bernice Cunningham now and that was that, but the past did surface now and again in sporadic nightmares that she could do nothing about. She would awake sweating and shaking, the feel of Franco’s hands as he held her down and the crushing weight of his body as real as if it was happening over again. She’d lie wide-eyed and trembling until she had the terror under control and drifted off eventually into an uneasy slumber, but come morning her secret would be firmly locked away in the back of her mind. It was the only way she could cope. Fortunately her days were so busy and full she didn’t have time to brood.

  Ralph Mercer turned out to be a genuinely nice individual but the girls weren’t so keen on Dennis Heath, his right-hand man. Betty said Dennis reminded her of a bad-tempered little cockerel, and Bonnie had to agree. He was always charm itself with the customers, standing on the stage on Saturday nights with his white gloves and patent pumps, clearly in his element calling out the names of the dances and cracking jokes, but he treated the two girls as skivvies and far beneath him. At times he was downright insulting.

  Concert evenings were even worse. The committee would sit at their table with the entertainments secretary and Dennis was constantly trying to impress them. He’d invariably introduce each act by doing impressions of performers like George Robey or Al Jolson, and they were always so bad that Bonnie and Betty cringed. But Dennis was Ralph Mercer’s brother-in-law and, as Betty remarked, blood’s thicker than water.

  As the days and weeks went by and Christmas approached, Bonnie learned that the working men’s clubs were part of a network of entertainment that had been going since the end of the nineteenth century, and that there were hundreds of such places all over the country. The more she absorbed how they functioned, the more she began to understand that they could be springboards to greater things for all kinds of artistes. And the committee could be a help or a hindrance to the performers. It was the committee, sitting drinking at their table in front of the stage, who gauged the mood of an audience and who decided, courtesy of the strength of the applause, whether an act was worth an encore or not. Apart from an encore earning the performer an extra shilling and sixpence, it meant said act was worth noting, and the entertainments secretary would make sure they were booked again.

  The entertainments secretary at Bonnie’s club was a robust little man called Enoch Stewart with a wide smile and shrewd eyes. Like all the secretaries he was the equivalent of an agent and someone to be respected, but unlike Dennis Heath he didn’t throw his weight about and the girls liked him. He was always visiting other clubs on the lookout for new acts, and once or twice Bonnie had thought of approaching him but always her courage had failed her. Enoch’s day job was working in a factory as a glass-blower, but although his work as entertainments secretary was unpaid it was his driving passion, and his day job was very much second fiddle.

  It was shortly before Christmas when she confided to Betty that she wanted to become a singer and it had been her main reason for coming to London. Betty was all agog, and immediately wanted to hear her. It was their day off and they were sitting in a little square of park eating a meat pie before they went to see Fred Astaire at the cinema. Bonnie looked around her, shaking her head. ‘I couldn’t, n
ot here.’

  ‘Course you can, there’s no one about, and if you want to do that sort of thing you can’t be shy,’ said the ever practical Betty. ‘Go on, Bonnie, sing us a song. I can’t believe you haven’t told me about this before.’

  Bonnie shrugged. ‘I tried for ages when I first came to London and got nowhere. I didn’t even get one audition. Perhaps I’m no good.’

  ‘How can you say that if no one even heard you?’

  That was true. Bonnie knew she’d gone red. ‘What shall I sing?’ she asked uncomfortably, wishing she hadn’t said anything.

  ‘Don’t mind. I know, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”. I love that one. Do you know the words?’

  It had been one of the hits of the year and Bonnie nodded. ‘I only have to hear a song once and I remember the words and the tune. My da was the same. He had a lovely voice.’ She had told Betty the same story she’d told everyone else since coming to the capital; that her mother had died when she was a baby and her father had brought her up, and it was his death that was the catalyst for making the move to London. Which was partly true.

  ‘Go on then,’ Betty said again. ‘Look, I’ll introduce you.’ She jumped up from the bench and lifted her arm in an extravagant gesture much as Dennis did. And in an imitation of his ringing tones, she announced, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, for your pleasure for one night only, the amazing, the beautiful, Miss Bernice Cunningham will sing “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”.’

  Grinning, she pulled Bonnie to her feet and then sat down expectantly, her face bright.

  Bonnie stood for a moment and then shut her eyes. Outside the small square London went about its business; the noise of traffic and people only slightly dampened by the trees and bushes surrounding the perimeter of the tiny oasis. When she had been living with the fair community after her father’s disappearance she had sung most nights – her grandma had seen to that – but even during the day when she’d been doing other things she would sing for the sheer enjoyment of it. Since coming to London there had been little opportunity to practise, though, and for a second or two she was suddenly frightened she might be too rusty. She had never had any difficulty in deciding how to sing a song and bring out the emotion in the words – it was part of the feeling she experienced that she was the song, that was the only way she could describe it to herself. Now, after the first line or two, that familiar feeling took over and she sang as she had always sung, with her soul laid bare.

  She didn’t open her eyes until she had finished the last word, and when she did it was to see Betty sitting with her hand to her mouth while the tears rolled down her cheeks.

  ‘I can’t believe it.’ Betty searched in her handbag for a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes as she said, ‘I flippin’ can’t believe it. That was . . .’ She waved her hand helplessly. ‘That was lovely. I mean, I never cry and here I am blubbing like a baby. You’re ten times better than the singers we get at the club. Honestly, I mean it.’

  Bonnie sat down beside her again. It was good to hear. She hadn’t realized just how much the last months had knocked her confidence. ‘You’re not just saying that because you’re my friend?’

  ‘Er, excuse me, look at the state of me, woman.’ Betty gave a watery grin. ‘I’m a mess, and believe me, I’m pretty hard-boiled as you know.’

  Bonnie did know. Betty had been brought up in the slums of the East End. Out of her nine siblings, three boys were in prison; two of her sisters, she’d frankly admitted to Bonnie, were on the game; and another sister was in effect a gangster’s moll. Her father worked for someone about whom the family never asked questions, and her mother was as tough as they come but had a heart of gold, like her daughter. Bonnie had gone round to Betty’s house for tea one day and hadn’t stopped laughing from when she’d entered to when she left. They were what her da would have described as salt of the earth, even though the law would have had quite a different depiction of the Preston tribe.

  Bonnie squeezed Betty’s arm. ‘Thanks. So you think I should follow my dreams then?’ It was a rhetorical question. For just a minute or two she had been in a different place, a different world, somewhere where the past and future didn’t matter and the present was magical. It was always like that when she sang and it was the only confirmation she needed that she had to press on. She had already decided to take singing lessons and learn how to read music, and seeing Betty’s reaction had made her think she would do it sooner rather than later.

  ‘No doubt about it. Your chance will come, Bonnie, and when it does you grab it with both hands, right? You’ll make it. With a voice like you’ve got, it’s only a matter of time. You just need a break, that’s all.’

  Bonnie nodded. Put like that, it sounded simple. She just hoped she recognized a break when it presented itself!

  Christmas Eve happened to be on a Sunday, and so the big Christmas concert at the club was being held the day before. Bonnie awoke that Saturday morning to a cold, overcast December day with the occasional desultory snowflake drifting aimlessly in the wind. She stood at her window for a while, looking out over the rooftops and thinking how different this Christmas would be to the year before and wondering if Ham had made provision for the fair community to get through the bad weather once again. Were little Ava’s parents still grieving so bitterly for the child they’d lost, and had Mrs Carlini made another tiny fur coat out of rabbit skins for Mimi the monkey after the previous one had gone missing in the spring? The small animal felt the cold badly.

  Mentally shaking herself, she turned from the window. She was so glad she had escaped, but she was no nearer to fulfilling the promise she had made herself on leaving the north-east. But she would succeed. She was only fifteen years old, even if everyone here thought she was eighteen. She had lots of time and she wouldn’t give up.

  There was an extra buzz in the air when she got to the club later on. The Christmas tree with its tinsel and glass baubles had gone up the week before, along with paper chains and big concertinaed balls for the ceiling, and even Dennis had been humming carols and was less snappy with the girls. The club would be closed until Wednesday as Ralph and Dennis and their wives were spending Christmas with family in Bath, but Bonnie’s three days off were already booked up. Christmas Eve she’d been invited to spend with Betty and her family; Christmas Day she and Selina and Hilda were having together – Verity and Larry had already gone to stay with Verity’s mother – and Boxing Day she’d agreed to accompany Selina on a visit to her elderly parents in Kensington.

  Bonnie frowned to herself as she tidied her hair in the club’s washroom. She was a little apprenhensive about Boxing Day. Selina seemed to have a strange relationship with her parents. She never talked about them, and was always quiet and withdrawn for a while when she had been to see them. Bonnie knew Selina was an only child and that her parents were well off but that was all. She’d been surprised at the invitation to go with her, and furthermore, she didn’t think she had imagined the look of relief on Selina’s face when she had agreed.

  Bonnie had talked the matter over with Betty who had her own ideas about what was what. ‘You can bet Selina’s folks are the type who expected Selina to live with them indefinitely and take care of them in their old age. You see it time and time again with daughters, especially if the poor devil is the only one. I mean, why else would Selina leave home and take a room somewhere else if not to get away from them? They’re probably funny about her having a career an’ all. You say she’s not the same when she sees them so I bet there’s plenty of argy-bargies. Perhaps she couldn’t face that at Christmas and thinks if you go with her they’ll behave themselves in front of a stranger.’

  And Betty might be right, Bonnie thought, leaving the washroom and entering the main part of the club where a few of the regulars had already begun to arrive. Everyone was looking forward to the show later on. Enoch had booked a male tap dancer who also sang and did clog dancing, a child vocalist, two comics, a magician, and – as Betty put it – the star turn, a sing
er called Jenny Cook. Jenny had entertained the troops during the Great War and was fondly thought of, especially by ex-servicemen and their families. Enoch had been as pleased as punch to get her, but the cynical Betty had remarked that poor Jenny was well past her prime and should have been put out to pasture after the war.

  ‘It’ll be “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” and “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kitbag” again, you wait and see.’ Betty had pulled a face. ‘She only ever sings war songs. I mean, that was all right then, but the war’s been over fifteen years, for goodness’ sake. What about some nice modern ones? Songs like “Love is the Sweetest Thing” or “Stormy Weather”?’

  ‘There’s still a lot of people who like war songs,’ Bonnie had protested, to which Betty had said, ‘And there’s a lot who are sick of them an’ all,’ and there the matter had been left.

  Now, as Betty caught sight of her, she came hurrying over, her face alight. ‘You’ll never guess. Jenny Cook collapsed on stage last night and is in hospital. A heart attack.’

  ‘That’s awful.’

  ‘For her, yes, but not for you. This is your chance, Bonnie. Enoch’s tearing his hair out because he can’t get anyone to stand in, not a singer anyway. An acrobat was free but he was so awful last time Enoch wouldn’t book him again if he could pay him in washers. Broke his leg on stage apparently. There was a right do. Anyway, go and see Enoch. Tell him you can sing. Once he hears you, he’ll love you.’