Family Chorus

by Claire Rayner

  Considering the fact they were all patients deemed too ill to leave the hospital to go into Keighley to celebrate Armistice Night in whatever fashion that dour Yorkshire town thought fit, they were generous. As Lexie moved from bathchair to bathchair, her eyes wide and her mouth pouting a little, a look that encouraged them to believe she was only twelve, she felt the silver weigh down her bag more and more heavily and knew Madame G. would be cheerful tonight. There’d be a good supper for them all, and maybe, this time, I’ll be able to get some money out of her, mean bitch.

  The old B, she thought suddenly, and remembered Ambrose, who’d named her that in the first place. No one ever called Madame G. the old B any more, not since he’d left the show. I wonder how he is? she thought now, and then, dodging with a skilful sideways slip of her hips as she passed the bed of a man who clearly didn’t care whether she was twelve or twenty, so long as he got his hands on her, pushed the memory of Ambrose away. Probably in the army now. Probably dead like so many others, after this past four years —

  Later, lying in bed in the attic the hospital had set aside for the use of the travelling shows that came to entertain the patients, she thought of him again, wondering why she should have thought about Ambrose after all this time, and then remembered the man in the bathchair set in the shadows, the one with the bandage over his face, who had held a shilling out towards her, his head lifted as he tried to see her through the small aperture left in his bandage over his right eye. He’d had the same dark red hair above the bandage that Ambrose had, that was it. And I’m tired and it’s been a funny day, what with the war being over and all —

  She rolled over on her belly and pushed her face into her pillow, trying to make sleep come by staring deep into the blackness behind her closed lids. She often did that, making great circles of light appear as she stared, followed by glittering dancing kaleidoscopes of colour, but tonight it wouldn’t happen. Tonight she couldn’t sleep as easily as that, and after a while she rolled over again and sat up and stared round the attic.

  There in the corner she could just see the curtain that Madame G. had rigged up for herself, as she always did when she had to share a room with the girls of the company — which was depressingly often — and around her the four humped shapes that were the other girls. Stupid creatures, every one of them country lumps, not like the lively London girls who had been part of the show when it had first become Babies on Parade, the khaki equivalent of the show that had toured the country all through early 1914. These had been recruited wherever Madame G. could find them after the others had gone rushing back to London when the news had come that August day that there was a war on. Bessie had written frantically, trying to make Lexie go back too, but she’d decided not to. What would there be to do in London if she did go back? she’d asked herself. There wouldn’t be another show, and there wouldn’t be anywhere worthwhile to work. Even a lousy show like this one, with country bumpkins who could barely hop, let alone dance, would be better than sweating it out in London.

  So, in spite of Bessie’s entreaties, she’d stayed on the road, constantly writing to Bessie that she was too busy to make visits to London, too tired to get there, too involved in her war work, everything except that she couldn’t afford it, for Bessie, she knew, would have sent her the fare money. It was all she could do in her letters to keep Bessie from visiting her, she’d written vaguely of mixed-up dates, of not knowing where Babies on Parade was going next, of not being able to ensure Bessie would have somewhere to sleep — anything to keep her at arm’s length. Why she had to do that, Lexie was never quite sure — she just knew it was important to her to be detached, to keep contacts with her young years and her young life — and therefore Bessie — as remote as she could. It was as though she was only a real person, her own person, away from the East End and from Bessie.

  So, she stayed on the road, helping Madame G. teach the newcomers, helping run the whole thing, and getting more and more involved with it all as she became less and less involved with home.

  But not involved enough to get any money out of it. Sitting now, leaning against the attic window, staring out at the hoarfrost-shrouded countryside which looked for all the world like a newspaper photograph in its stark monochrome, she brooded on that. She, Lexie, had been the one to think of the idea of sending the cast put among the audience to take a silver collection after the performances, instead of trying to get themselves paid by the organizers at the hospitals and theatres where they played. She’d been the one who’d devised the way they’d get round quickly to get all they could out of the audience while it was still excited and elevated by the show, and yet Madame G. had managed to hold on to the lot.

  She paid for their food and shelter, she’d told Lexie grandly, sorted out the costumes, arranged the transport — of course the money was used wisely, and for the company! But sometimes Lexie would see her with Lenny, whispering with their heads together, and she knew with a bitter certainty that it was about money, that they were making a profit, that they were feeding their own pockets, that there should be more for the company, and most especially for Lexie, than they admitted. Even Lenny Ganz tightened up and refused to speak of the matter when she confronted him. Even threatening to tell Madame G. of what had happened that rainy afternoon four years ago didn’t have any effect on him.

  ‘Tell her,’ he’d said. ‘After all this time you think she’d believe you? It’s not as though you’ve ever let me get within a bloody six foot of you ever since. If you had, maybe you’d have something to complain about, but as it is, ducky, you ain’t got nothing on me. Go tell her what you bleedin’ well like. It won’t get you nothing.’

  Silly, I was, she thought now, staring dreamily out at the silver and black and grey beyond the steamed windows, and thinking of Lenny Ganz asleep now in the adjoining attic, with the boys. If I’d known then what I know now I would have —

  What? jeered a little voice inside her head. What would you have done? What could you have done? Made rows over him? Not worth it, stupid little geezer — and anyway, it would have upset Madame G. —

  She thought a while about Madame G. Over ten years it had been now that she’d been dancing for her. Over ten years — for ever really. She’d not liked her much, not from the start, but there was something about her that made her feel — what? Impatient yet concerned. Irritated but protective. That’s it. She didn’t like her, thought her stupid with her special voices for special situations and airs and graces, but all the same there was something about her that demanded Lexie’s care. So she gave it, and that was why she’d never told her about Lenny’s ‘game’ with her all that time ago.

  And she grinned now in the half light of the frostlit Yorkshire night at how naïve she’d been. She’d known when it had happened it was something that shouldn’t have happened, that Lenny wouldn’t want his wife to know about it, but not really known why. That knowledge had come slowly, during the touring years, listening to stage hands guffawing and gossiping with each other, listening to the girls in the company who were older than she was, sharing confidences. Then she’d found out what it was all about.

  And hated it. She’d stood in front of a mirror in a scruffy little hotel somewhere north of Birmingham, and looked at her own body, strong and springy and as full of movement as a newly wound clock, and had turned and twisted, staring at her narrow hips and flat belly and the small breasts that perched on her chest front so absurdly, and hated the idea of anyone else ever having any share of it. It’s my body, she had thought, gazing at herself and liking what she saw. My body, my bones, my muscles, my dancing. No one else shall ever do to it the things men do to women’s bodies. It’s mine and I shall keep it —

  And then she had thought of Bessie, alone and lonely in London, writing those reams of letters to her, following her around the country with great fat envelopes, never offering a word of complaint about the scrappiness of Lexie’s own answers, and her sometimes transparent excuses for keeping herself apart,
but somehow managing to plead in every line for more from her, and she had shivered. Is that what happened to people who didn’t do with their bodies what the girls talked and giggled about, what the men guffawed about? And she had been filled with a huge and sudden anger at the accident that had made her a girl instead of a boy. If she’d been a boy she’d have been able to dance harder, leap higher, twirl on her points longer —

  I’ll be all right, whatever I am, because I’m me, she thought now, and shivered as the chill of the night bit more deeply through her thin nightdress. I’ll do fine. I’ve got to get out of this lousy show and back to London and find a proper shop. She ran back across the bare boards to burrow under the thin blankets, and curled up as small as she could to conserve her body heat. I’ll find a London show to get a shop in. Chorus if I must, but with all my experience I ought to be able to do better than that. A speciality spot, maybe, a featured performer, that’s what I’ll be — almost a star —

  Sleep began to creep towards her and she curled up even more tightly and let her mind wander, let it choose its own images for her to live instead of directing it as she usually did. And as drowsiness slid even closer she saw herself, a small figure in the middle of a dark stage, dancing and leaping and drifting bubble-light, and she heard the roar of an excited audience. It was a sound she’d heard in reality often enough, but never as loudly or as enthusiastically as she heard it now in her mind, and she knew that this was because it was a West End audience that was watching her, admiring her, truly appreciating her for the artist she was, not a lot of glittery-eyed men watching her and not caring about dancing at all —

  The images shifted, shimmered, split and doubled, and there she was, not dancing alone as she had been, but with a partner, a tall partner with dark red hair, and, half asleep though she was, she frowned and didn’t like it. A star on my own, that’s what I’ll be. On my own. I don’t want anyone sharing it. No one at all. And she concentrated and made the image of the tall boy disappear. It was a good thing to manage to do, that, and she fell further towards sleep, enjoying her own power.

  Tomorrow, back to London, she told herself as the last vestiges of consciousness shredded and disappeared. Tomorrow I’m going back to London — Madame G. can do what she likes with her show. I’m going home to Bessie. I can do better than this, if Bessie’ll help me. And she will, even though I’ve been away all these years.

  She will.

  12

  ‘So, when are we going to have a simcha, Lexie, hmm? When? A big girl like you — eighteen already, time you were thinking of it —’

  Lexie stared at her, her face blank, hiding her confusion and the undertow of irritation as best she could. She had known that Bessie had made up the family rift at the beginning of the war; she’d written and told her so, page after page of gossip about how Auntie Fanny was doing this and that and how much money she and Uncle Dave were making and how the boys had managed to get themselves into reserved jobs so that they didn’t have to join the army and how well Monty was getting on at college learning to be an accountant, but she hadn’t expected to find them all there as a welcoming committee on the day she got home for the first time after being away so long.

  But there they all were: Fanny, somewhat stouter than Lexie remembered her, but dressed exceedingly fashionably in a green silk chemise dress daringly midcalf in length and with her hair bobbed as short as Lexie’s own, and Dave stouter still, but otherwise unchanged, and Benny as quiet as he had always been, and Monty grown into unrecognizable adulthood, all staring at her with a curiosity that made her want to scream at them with anger.

  The only one she might have been pleased to see, her once much loved brother Joe, was the only absentee, and she was too put out at the mass descent by them all on the Victoria Park Road flat to show any interest by asking after him, and no one offered an explanation. She could only look at them all from behind the barrier of her expressionless face and feel anger; they had no right to be there getting in the way when she wanted to talk to Bessie, had plans to make, things to sort out — she caught Bessie’s eye on the other side of the room, and tried to contain her irritation even more firmly. Bessie was so patently excited to have her home, so pleased and happy, that Lexie had been startled.

  For her own part, coming back to London had meant the hope of a new job with a better company, meant being rid of the Gansella show, rid of Lenny, Sid and the country bumpkin dancers, and being with Bessie again had not figured large in her anticipation; she hadn’t thought of what it might mean to Bessie, and it had been disconcerting to be greeted so lovingly and with such towering excitement. Disconcerting, but a little agreeable too. She had remembered Bessie’s care as being cloying, too controlling, boring, and that was why she had needed to stay away, but now it felt like a warm blanket and she rather relished it.

  Or did until she had realized that Bessie needed to share her excitement and had asked the whole family to come and visit, on her very first day home, and now she sat in the crowded living room of the familiar old flat with all of them sitting round the table and staring at her over the coffee cups.

  ‘Simcha?’ she said now, lifting her chin. ‘What do you mean, Fanny?’ That was the first thing that was to change, she told herself. No more of that childish Auntie and Uncle stuff.

  Fanny shook her head in mock roguishness. ‘Oy, oy, don’t tell me you’ve spent so much time shlapping around with the goyim that you’ve forgotten all about who you are! A simcha! A wedding, my dear. To stand under the chuppah, to be a kallah, a bride — it’s a great mitzvah. The Talmud says it, you know. Eighteen. It’s the time for marriage —’

  ‘She’s been doing war work, Fanny,’ Bessie said, and Lexie could hear the anxiety in her voice. ‘You can’t expect her to have as much Yiddishkeit as if she’d stayed at home here with me —’

  Fanny shook her head. ‘War work? So, do me a favour, Bessie! This dancing around with a cheap show is by you war work? War work is doing something for the war, like me and Dave! We’ve been making uniforms for soldiers since it started. By me this is war work.’

  ‘And by me it’s making a good living,’ Dave said, relighting his cigar which had gone out for the fifth time in a quarter of an hour. ‘Which God ’elp us is likely to change now the Armistice is here. Still, there’ll be other things to do — so lay off already, Fanny. The kid’s been home five minutes, you’re nagging already —’

  ‘Well, you know how I feel! She shouldn’t have gone on such a mishaguss! My mother, rest her dear soul in peace, must be whirling in her grave like a dervish. She was always so careful of us all, so anxious we should be good well-behaved Jewish girls —’

  ‘Lexie’s a very good —’ Bessie began, but Lexie’s voice cut across crisply.

  ‘I’ve no intention of getting married, Fanny. I’ve got much better things to do,’ and she reached for the coffee pot and poured another cup for herself and for Bessie, pointedly ignoring everyone else. ‘Since you ask, though, I don’t see it’s any business of yours.’

  ‘Hoity toity!’ Fanny said and laughed, but she shot a sharp glance at Dave all the same, almost daring him to let Lexie get away with her rudeness, but he ignored her.

  ‘Sure you have, doll,’ he said, and wheezed a little as his cigar went out yet again and he had to lean back to reach for his matches from his pocket, hard to get into as his clothes strained over his broad buttocks. ‘You’ve grown up lovely, lovely. Not exactly grown up, mind you. I swear you’re still as big as a ha’penny — but grown up, you know what I mean? Very nice, very nice indeed. These soldiers you been dancing for, they must have just eaten you up —’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Lexie said composedly. ‘I’m very good.’

  Fanny lifted her eyebrows. ‘Self-praise is a poor recommendation,’ she said tardy. ‘If you’re so good what are you doing shlapping round with such a lousy little show like that? I remember your Madame Gansella — Poppy Ganz like I remember her, mind you, not this goyisha Gansella stuff
— I used to see some of her things, charity evenings, you know? Went to a couple, I remember, 1911 — or was it 1912? Anyway, I remember I bought the best seats and gave double the price, it was such a good cause, the Jewish Hospital appeal — and it was a lousy show, lousy.’

  ‘Oh, I agree,’ Lexie said calmly, sipping her coffee and staring very coolly over the rim of her cup at Fanny. ‘A lousy show. But I’m very good. You’ll find out, one of these days. If you’re lucky enough to get to see me work on stage, that is.’

  ‘Oh,’ Fanny said, nonplussed, and blinked at her, and across the room Bessie grinned suddenly and caught Lexie’s eye and she smiled too, and for a moment a bubble of understanding hung in the air between them.

  ‘And now, if you’ll forgive me, I’ve got a lot to do. Unpacking, you know. I’m sure you’ll excuse me. Give my best to Joe, Benny. I dare say he had better things to do than come running round here, hmm? Yes. Well, so long, everyone —’ And calmly she walked to the door and went out, leaving them staring after her.

  ‘Well!’ Fanny exploded after a moment. ‘Such rudeness! Such chutspah to talk to us like that! I told you, Bessie, letting her go away like that — it was the ruin of her. Didn’t I tell you? I knew as soon as I heard what she was doing it was going to ruin her! Oy, what Momma would say!’

  ‘She’d be pleased she’s happy,’ Bessie said, and got to her feet and began to collect the coffee cups. ‘Because she is — and it’s true. She’s very good. You’ll see. As for rude — times have changed, Fanny! The young ones, they don’t kowtow no more, not like we used to. I was scared to say boo to a goose, I was — never let anyone know what I felt or what I wanted — and much good did it do me to be so quiet! Better to be like Lexie, stand up for yourself — eh, Benny?’