Family Chorus

by Claire Rayner

  ‘All right. You could be on to something at that, I suppose. And I’ve been getting a bit bored —’

  ‘Oh?’ She lifted her eyebrows at that. ‘Young Alan gone off you, has he? Found himself a new playmate?’

  He went scarlet. ‘For Christ sake, I told you — lay off that! D’you want to get me hung? I only said I’d see you today because you promised you wouldn’t say anything about that —’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind. I don’t see why I shouldn’t talk about anything I like. And I will.’ She had sat down again and was leaning back in her chair, staring at him over the rim of her cocktail glass. ‘And talking about you and your jolly little pals can be a useful thing to do. Stops you making a nuisance of yourself, doesn’t it?’

  He looked at her, nonplussed, and then shrugged. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Yes you do. I’m telling you that unless you behave sensibly and do as you’re told, then I chatter in all the wrong places. People who do what you and your Alan do can get into nasty trouble. Can’t they?’

  ‘My God, but you can be a bitch,’ he said, and it was almost admiring. ‘You really don’t care what you do to get your own way, do you?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t care.’ I do, I do, the little voice inside her head whispered. I care about you. And I’ll change you, I will, but we’ve got to be together for me to change you, and this is the only way.

  ‘The routines’ll have to be good,’ he said.

  ‘Of course they will. The best there are. I’ve got Madame G. to play for me for rehearsal and —’

  ‘Her? The old B?’ He laughed then, his amber eyes crinkling. ‘The old B and the young one. I like it. It’s got class.’

  ‘Yes. A lot of class.’ She laughed too. ‘But it’ll be different now. I’m in charge. I call the tune. It’s my money backing me, and what I say goes. She’ll be a different old B to the one she was when we were kids, I promise you.’

  ‘How come you’ve got this sort of money you’re talking about? If you’re going to pay me four quid a week and pay her and buy costumes and songs and all the rest of it and keep yourself till we start — it can’t be tuppence ha’penny.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ she said. ‘And it’s my business where it comes from.’

  He grinned. ‘Boyfriend?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘That’s better. It’ll keep you out of my pants.’

  ‘You’re vulgar, you know that? You talk like a street arab. If you’re going to work with me you’ll have to learn how to do better than that.’ Ambrose held his hands up in mock alarm, but there was a hint of real anxiety behind his gesture.

  ‘All right, all right. I meant no harm! I’m just making a point. I’m not interested in hanky panky and soppy games, that’s the thing. I’m a serious dancer and I want to work. That’s all. And if you’ve got the money to launch a good act and you want me, it makes sense. You’re not marvellous as a dancer, but you’ve got a lot of —’

  ‘Yes, I know. A lot of style. Anyway, you don’t have to be Pavlova to make it now. You’ll see — the next ten years it’s all going to change. What with films and all — it’s different styles they’ll want. They’ll want mine. You’ll see —’

  ‘Yes,’ he said and beckoned to the waiter across the big restaurant. ‘Yes, I rather think I will. Well here’s to us, hmm? What are we calling ourselves?’

  ‘Ourselves?’ she said. ‘There’s no ourselves about it. There’s just me and my company. The billing’ll be Alexandra Asher. That’s all. Just Alexandra Asher. A new act, a new spelling — a modern one. It’s my act, and everyone’s going to know it.’

  With Ambrose finally settled, she felt she could breathe again. It had been a difficult and yet exciting time of bustle and planning and more bustle, and it had taken a good deal of concentrated effort, not least because of the need to be so circumspect and put on a show of normality while going so determinedly about her own affairs. No one must know what she was doing until she was ready to do it, especially not Bessie who would fuss and get very anxious if she were told that Lexie was to leave the Vaudeville Theatre. Much of the work she did by leaving Victoria Park Road early after Bessie had gone to work, instead of sleeping late as she usually did, and going to Dave’s office in his cluttered building at the corner of Petticoat Lane to use his telephone and sort out money with him.

  He had tried at first to pull away from the plan, not so much because he wanted to save his money but because of his fear and shame about what had happened between them, but she wouldn’t have that. The following day she had gone to the theatre as usual and danced as usual, even though she could feel the ghost of his invasion of her body still lingering as a disagreeable aching, and that evening had tried to call him on the telephone from the theatre. But Fanny had answered it and Lexie had hung up without speaking. She had no intention of talking to Fanny any more than she had to, so she told herself she would just have to call again and hope to get him when Fanny was out. She did, eventually, but it took a week of persistence.

  She’d told him she wanted to talk to him at once, and though he’d hedged and humphed into the mouthpiece she’d been coolly persistent and at last he told her to come to his office the next lunchtime.

  ‘I’ll give you a bit o’ lunch, we can sort it out then,’ he’d grunted and she’d said demurely, ‘Thank you Dave,’ and gone to meet him wearing the simplest clothes she could find in her wardrobe. In a little sailor suit with black stockings and shoes and a round boater hat of the sort that schoolchildren wore she looked a good deal younger than her eighteen years, and that was how she wanted to look.

  By the time that lunch was over she had him precisely where she wanted him: almost reassured that he could trust her to say nothing about what happened, almost sure that it could happen again if he really wanted it to, definitely sure that he wanted to spend the money she needed on her new act. She sat there across the restaurant table from him, as sweet and as biddable as any ten-year-old, smiling and nodding at everything he said as she ate salt beef and potato latkes, and he relaxed before her eyes, seemed to blossom into a new Dave, one who regarded himself as a bit of a dog, a lively chap, and one well able to keep even a wife as redoubtable as Fanny in her place — which was to be totally unaware of this situation.

  By the time lunch was over she had a neat wad of five-pound notes tucked into her handbag, and the address of his bank where she would be able to draw up to five hundred pounds. A princely sum, she told herself gleefully, as with a childlike innocence she bent over and kissed his cheek — which made him smirk at the other customers in the restaurant — and more than enough to get it right.

  It had to be right, and it had taken considerable effort to ensure the Tightness of her backstage arrangements. For all Madame G.’s lack of spectacular success as a producer of shows she had, as Lexie well knew, a great deal of organizational ability and Lexie wanted her as dresser and general manager. She knew better than most just how much time and effort went into making certain the right clothes were in the right place at the right time, and since she already had the germ of an idea for her act, an idea that involved several quick changes of costume, Madame G. was a must. Lexie didn’t consider the possibility that she wanted the older woman because she had been her first introduction to the theatre, that she needed the security of a familiar face and familiar ways to shore up her shaky young self-confidence, because she didn’t want to consider it. But somewhere deep inside she knew that was a part of it.

  Tracking down Madame G. had not been difficult, for Lexie knew she had come back to London when her show had folded and had wearily set about starting all over again. When Lexie came to see her at her old house in Cephas Street she was teaching a class of rather lumpy ten-year-olds the basic time steps, and when Lexie had walked into the familiar dusty room, wearing the best of her new Spanish-style outfits with the heavy fringed shawl over it and a dashing tricorne hat, Madame G. had jumped to her feet, kn
ocking over the piano stool in her excitement, and wrapped her in great hugs of delight. She had apparently forgotten that Lexie had ruined her show by calmly walking out of it the day after the Armistice.

  At first she had demurred, putting on a great show of being unable to accept Lexie’s offer of work and saying that her pupils — her classes — her responsibilities — were too onerous, but that soon crumbled. She was struggling to make a living, and it was obvious that it was getting harder, not easier.

  ‘He’s left, you know,’ she said to Lexie, her eyes bright and challenging. ‘Said there was nothing to come back for when the show died. Went off with that Elsie Shorter — the tall fair one, you remember? I thought there was something going on with those two, and I wasn’t wrong.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lexie had said, and just for a moment wanted to tell her of her own experiences with Lenny Ganz. But she just leaned forward and patted her hand. ‘So you’ll join me? Take the risk?’

  Madame G. had nodded and hugged her, wiped her eyes, blown her nose and begun to talk rather grandly, in her best stage voice, of what she could and would do for the new act that was taking shape. Lexie had listened and smiled to herself and walked away from Cephas Street with a jaunty little swagger, feeling more exhilarated than she would have thought possible. That imposing figure of a woman who had once been so alarming, that woman who had run her life for so many years, now to be her employee! Oh, it was marvellous, wonderful, exactly as it should be, and she marched into Mile End Road in a state of such high glittering excitement that passers by actually turned to stare after her as she went hurrying to the bus stop.

  Then there had been the business of trailing along Archer Street round the agents’ offices, listening to music at the publishers’ in Charing Cross Road and at last finding a handful of songs she could use — a couple of plaintive ones and a couple of little bouncy tunes that made small demands on her voice but which she could deliver with style and vivacity in her odd husky tones; and then the blissful hours spent at the costume designers in Newman Street — weeks and weeks of sheer delight. It had made the evenings of dancing at the Vaudeville and the grim silence from the rest of the chorus bearable, and she went round always with a faint smile on her lips that infuriated them all hugely.

  Not that she cared. She had better things to look forward to than dancing in the back row of this stupid little revue, she told herself happily, and the rest of the company were puzzled by her and not a little repelled. There was something very odd indeed, they told each other, about someone as quiet and composed and long-distance as Alexandra Asher was. Very odd. ‘Still waters run deep,’ they said to each other darkly. ‘More to this one than meets the eye — you’ll see —’

  Bessie too noticed and worried and watched and worried again, but she couldn’t find out what had happened to change Lexie. That she had changed was undoubted, and that she was up to some business of her own even more certain. She came home at night at her usual time — Bessie knew that because she was there; but she also knew that she left much earlier than she needed to every morning. Mrs Bernstein downstairs, the eyes and ears of the whole road, let alone the house, had told her that. Bessie had tried asking Lexie where she was going, but Lexie had at once closed up like a trap, her eyes developing that opaque look that Bessie so hated and which Lexie always displayed when she felt she was being pushed in any way. So Bessie had had to bite her tongue and just watch and wonder and worry.

  It must be something good, Bessie had told herself, as she sat at her desk at Alex Lazar’s office. It has to be. She looks so beautiful, so blooming, so healthy and excited. It has to be something good. Maybe she’s in love? Maybe she’s meeting a man somewhere and —

  But Bessie didn’t want to think about that. It would be natural enough, heaven knew, but to Bessie that would be a disaster. Lexie in love would mean Lexie going away to someone else, and she had little enough of her as it was. No, it couldn’t be. love, it mustn’t be love. What could it be? Bessie continued to do her book-keeping as punctiliously as ever, watched the waitresses with her usual eagle-eyed thoroughness, put in the orders for supplies, checked the tills for the tea shops, reported back to Alex as usual and watched and wondered and fretted.

  Lexie had known that, of course. She was as aware of Bessie’s reactions, fears and hopes as Bessie was aware of hers. That was one of the things that made life so complicated, and one of the reasons she was so anxious to get this act right. If it was right, and she got the bookings, she could then look for her own flat. A small one, with a bathroom she could have all to herself, instead of sharing it with Bessie and Mrs Bernstein downstairs, and a bedroom that would be big and quiet and very, very elegant, not filled with the frippery bits and pieces Bessie kept putting in hers, the pink satin cushions, the lacy counterpane and the heavily draped windows — all that ferocious daintiness that irritated her almost as much as Bessie did. She yearned for a room that would be spare and severe and darkly coloured with black satin sheets — and Lexie would scheme and plan and scurry about her preparations, keeping her own counsel well hidden behind that triangular smile that hovered over her lips most of the time these days.

  Now at last it was all ready. Ambrose, after a good deal of goading, had agreed to listen to her. She had known from the start that he was the partner she needed. He could dance, really dance, much better than she could, and she needed his skill to show off her own abilities.

  She had no illusions about her dancing; she knew it to be little more than competent, but she also knew what she did have. Her gift was a personality and a style that was unique. No one else had her odd looks, with her square bobbed hair and slanted eyes and small physique. No one else could sing as she did in that strange little voice that was both husky and childlike. No one else could contain the ambition to succeed that filled her, and that would make her act the best of its kind ever seen.

  But someone else could provide the best frame for the picture she wanted to show, and that someone else had to be Ambrose. He had made it clear to her in the most painful way possible that he preferred other company to her, but that his private tastes had to be his own — though she did hope in the deeper recess of her soul, where all her most important thoughts were stored, that in time she could get him to reverse that choice — and she knew she had to accept that at present. But it wasn’t Ambrose as a person she wanted, she told herself firmly. It was Ambrose as a dancer, as a foil for herself, as the best accessory she could possibly have for her costumes and her style.

  And now she had him. She sat there opposite him in Romano’s restaurant drinking gin and wanting to shout her success at everyone who would listen. She was on her way. She, Alexandra Asher, really was on her way. Her own act, her own choreography, her own partner, her own everything. She was about to burst on the London scene with a glitter that would leave them all dazzled and breathless with the glory of her. It was going to be the best thing that ever happened to anyone, all that was going to happen to Lexie. The year 1919 was dissolving into autumn and the new and wonderful world of 1920 was on the horizon. It was hers and no one else’s. She raised her glass to Ambrose and grinned at him. Taken aback at her sudden change of mood he grinned too, and for a moment they were locked together in a bubble of memory, children again, learning to dance.

  16

  ‘I hear they really are desperately in love,’ the woman at the table behind said in a piercing whisper, as Ambrose went into the whirling section of the ‘Princess in the Park’ number, twisting Lexie round his head apparently as effortlessly as though she were a swansdown powder puff, though his muscles bulged beneath the silk of his jacket. ‘So sweetly pretty and dainty — I’m going on to the party at Grosvenor Square afterwards, you know — Margery swears to me they’ll be there — too divine —’

  Bessie let a smile curl her lips and looked sideways at Alex, but he was unaware of anything but the small square of glass floor in the centre of the darkened restaurant with its softly glowing sub
merged lighting throwing the dancers into high relief, and she smiled even more widely. He liked the act, he liked it; and though she had been certain he would, it was still wonderful to see him sitting beside her so entranced by them. She could have hugged herself with pleasure. To see Lexie looking so wonderful, and to see Alex so pleased with her — there was little more that Bessie could ask for from an evening.

  The act had moved on now, and Lexie was sitting on the white grand piano at the edge of the stage, her slender silken legs crossed to show her knees, her head thrown back to display her long throat and the exceedingly low-cut bodice of her cream silk frock. For a moment Bessie frowned to see her looking so wanton and then made herself relax. It was just a costume, just a stage costume and didn’t mean anything, she told herself firmly. Just a costume —

  Lexie had begun to sing, a silly lilting song about a girl picking cherries in someone else’s garden, and at once Bessie forgot what she was wearing, entranced as ever by that hoarse little voice with the plaintive note in it that was so much Lexie’s trademark.

  The audience loved it too, some of them humming along with her, and even the waiters were standing still and listening, which was rare at the Café de Paris. They saw the best acts that came into town, because this was the place every cabaret artiste wanted to play; they clamoured for a booking as much as would-be diners clamoured for a reservation, and it took a very special act indeed to impress the cynical sophisticates who served at tables here. But this was a special act, and again Bessie swelled with pride as she listened to the applause that greeted her Lexie, now standing in the centre of the small stage, very still and straight, not bowing but accepting her ovation as her just due. She was wonderful, the best act there could be, and she, Bessie, was part of it. Because wasn’t she Lexie’s own sister, the person who had brought her up and loved her and looked after her?