Family Chorus
Page 36
When she had joined her first travelling ENSA group, just after Molly and Barbara had left London for Winchester and the start of their Here’s London! tour, all she had wanted was that sort of unremitting grind. If I’m working all the time I can’t be worrying, she’d told herself, and recklessly had accepted everything they threw at her; tours of north-east England factories where they did four shows a day, for each of the shifts of whey-faced munitions workers, then of the Welsh coalfields where boys who looked barely old enough to be out of school came climbing black-faced and weary out of the pits to sit sleepily in their canteens watching Lexie dancing and singing, and Dave Calleff, the comic, cavorting and miming at them. But she had discovered very early on that it was possible to work herself to a state of numb exhaustion and yet still worry.
The image of Molly never left her: when she was herself struggling into her costumes in icy cold odorous lavatories, for want of any other dressing room, and trying to paint her face to some semblance of glamour in speckled broken mirrors, she could see Molly doing the same; when she sat slumped in corners of cold trains as they waited forlornly in sidings for the chance to get out on to the main line amid all the troop trains, she felt the misery that Molly must be feeling in the same situation, and the hopelessness of it all built up in her until she was almost at breaking point.
She hadn’t broken, of course, but when her Welsh tour was over and the few letters from Molly and Barbara made it clear that they had no intention of giving up their mad progress — for that was how Lexie now saw it — she had almost in despair agreed to take the North African job. It would be a small company, they had told her: the accompanist and the comic, if they could persuade them to go, but mostly herself. No, she couldn’t have a dance partner; she’d have to devise a show that the boys would enjoy, that would bring some agreeable excitement and the memory of home, but all on her own. With the minimum of costumes and props. There was no way they could travel great skips for her. She had to be able to carry her kit herself wherever she went. Furthermore, they said, it would have to be an open-ended contract; they couldn’t spare transport space to bring them home to England on leave. Whatever time there was for leave would have to be spent in Africa, so it could mean being away for a long time.
She had nodded dumbly and signed the contract, flying out of Brize Norton aerodrome one bitter December night in 1941, hunched in the back of a cold Dakota with Dave Calleff grumbling in a constant monotone on one side of her and Larry Peters, their lugubrious accompanist, slumped silently on the other. There seemed no reason to stay in England any more; there were managements who were casting shows again for the West End, in spite of the ever-increasing raids that were pummelling London so mercilessly, optimistic that the Luftwaffe would give up eventually, that life would get back to normal, but she hadn’t wanted to stay for that. To be in England, to know that Molly was somewhere within reach and yet not able to see her — that would be hell, and the thought of going out to work with the soldiers in what she thought of as the front line — even though she knew this war wasn’t in any way like the last one, with its trenches and lines and fall-back areas — was less painful than staying at home.
Lying now on her back on the springy turf with the scent of rosemary and basil hot in her nostrils, she tried to remember how she had been that night she had left England, more than two years ago — it didn’t seem possible in some ways that she had been away so long, and yet in others it seemed like a century.
She had not received a letter from Molly for two weeks, and on the last night she had begged permission from the station commander at Brize Norton to use the telephone. Grudgingly he had agreed, and she had sat there in his cramped, stuffy little office struggling to persuade the operator to find a route that would connect her with Molly. She had known she was somewhere in Gloucestershire, because the last letters she had received had said they were covering that county for three weeks, and when she’d gone to ask him Alex Lazar had emerged from the maelstrom of activity that was his home at Drury Lane Theatre to tell her that according to his schedules — and the English school tours were in his bailiwick — that was where they’d be.
‘But there’s no need to worry over them,’ he’d said, patting her on the back in his avuncular fashion. ‘If my Hannah had been there I’d have had more peace of mind, I tell you. As it is —’ And he had grimaced and shaken his head and she had said nothing, knowing how hard the war had hit his precious niece, and had taken gratefully the list of addresses he had given her for the Here’s London! company.
‘No promises, mind!’ he had warned her. ‘These bloody schedules change like they’re made of candle grease, but as far as I know that’s where they’re supposed to be the next couple of months. Don’t worry, doll. I’ll keep an eye on ’em while you’re gone, just like I will on Bessie. Though, thank God, she’s keepin’ an eye on my affairs. Without her the whole lot of the tea shops’d be down the drain. She’s a marvel, bless her —’ She had nodded and folded away the list, and then, later, at Brize Norton, had used it to try to reach Molly.
At first she had intended just to go quietly to North Africa, to make no attempt to say goodbye, to be as unfussing and unfussed as it was possible to be, but she had found that beyond her. She had to say goodbye properly, had to hear Molly’s voice say it too. It became the most important thing in the world — more important than the long hazardous flight to North Africa that lay ahead of her, more important than the risks she was taking going to work in a battle area, certainly more important than her immediate physical discomfort.
At last she had managed it. As Dave Calleff had hovered outside the office door and hissed urgently at her that they were loading the plane, that they were calling for her, she had got through and had sat there with the phone pushed so hard against her ear that it hurt and shouted in her anxiety, ‘Barbara? Oh. Thank God, I’ve found you — Barbara, is she all right? Where is she? Can I talk to her?’
‘She’s fine, Lexie, believe me, she’s great. She’s so good in the show, they all love her, the other dancers and all. Everyone likes her, and in her solo, the one about Christmas trees, you know, she’s really —’
‘Where is she, Barbara? Let me speak to her — put her on the phone, Barbara, please — quickly — I’ve got to go and I must talk to her —’
‘Oh, Lexie, I can’t — she’s not here right now — she’s gone out — the show finished early tonight and — it was lucky I was still here when the phone rang. I was just going back to the billet and — she’s out, Lexie —’
‘Out? Where out? Where can a kid go in a dead and alive hole like that this time of night?’
‘Local fish and chip shop! They’ve got one here that still gets some stuff in — it’s not so dead and alive, really. It’s a nice town, Cirencester, you’d like it — the stage director took her there — one or two of the other kids, too — he’s giving them a special supper. Oh, Lexie, are you all right? Where are you? Where are you going?’
‘Africa,’ Lexie had said and shook her head savagely at Dave who had now pushed the door open and was gesticulating furiously at her through the crack. ‘I’m going to Africa. Tell Molly — make her write to me, Barbara. I miss her so, make her write —’ The line had crackled and gone dead, and she had had to follow Dave out across the frosted tarmac to the looming hulk of the plane, wanting to cry but not able to. She had never felt so desolate and miserable as she had that night.
Even remembering it now, lying under a hot Mediterranean sun over two years later, she felt the dull ache of misery in her, and she opened her eyes again to squint up at the sky. I’ll be able to sleep here, be able to rest. It’s not like work at all, here. It’s all right. And Molly’s fine, and soon, surely there’ll be letters, and a long one from her? There must be. It’s been almost six weeks and I haven’t heard a word and until I do I won’t sleep, even here where there are no guns and no low-flying planes and no urgent shouts in the night, night after dreary night.
The world had gone mad. She had seen bombs that gouged great holes out of the desert to send a shower of shattered cars and men and tents over vast areas. She had seen men lying in hospital beds, so drugged to relieve the pain of their injuries that they seemed unaware of the fact that a real person was standing in the middle of their ward singing to them. She had seen planes fall out of the sky in great waves of smoke and flame — but all the time there had been this place, this patch of green and broken stones and butterflies and goats, high above the sea on Cyprus. Apollo’s Temple is here and always has been, yet we shoot each other and fight and scream, and my child is so far away from me I can’t really believe she exists any more.
She got to her feet then, brushing down her khaki slacks to get rid of the shreds of grass before setting off at a swinging march down the hill, back towards the base. It was getting hotter now, and anyway there was a show this afternoon. This place might feel like a rest cure after the hell of Tobruk, but it was still a naval base, and there was work for her to do. A show this afternoon for the ratings, then one tonight for the officers, and another tomorrow for the townspeople who would come pouring out of Limassol and the villages into the base to sit and chatter and breathe garlic at each other and watch her dance. She laughed at the thought. What did they care for the tango and the tap-dancing routines and the romantic dreamy numbers that made up the act now? They had been devised to please men far from home lost in a nostalgic yearning for suburban streets and cinemas and Ginger Rogers. Could they offer anything to people who had Apollo’s Temple on their doorsteps and who lived under this burning blue sky? Again she laughed, a little grimly this time, and told herself not to be so stupid. She had work to do, and to hell with the audiences for which she did it.
Dave Calleff was sitting on a wooden chair against a whitewashed wall, his head thrown back and his face wreathed in a beatific grin as he lifted it to the sun. He opened his eyes into a squint as she came up to the door of the billet and grinned.
‘Nice turn up for the book this one, eh, ducks? Beats bleedin’ Sidi Barrani, and no error. Not a bloody gun for miles, as far as I can tell. A right cushy number, and I’m told they’ve got a bleedin’ banquet for us tonight after the show. The officers here don’t do bad, I’ll tell you. Roast lamb they’re givin’ us, a whole bleedin’ roast lamb, done over a bonfire. Bos’n of the Predator told me, and reckons we’re in for a great night. Officers here really are officers — none of your palsy-walsy stuff like the Eighth Army —’
‘Lovely,’ she said. ‘I’ll look forward to it. Have you been to see if there’s any post?’
‘Tonight, lovey.’ Dave closed his eyes again. ‘Went down this morning, I did. There’s a supplies plane due in while we’re working. They’ll bring anything coming to us down to the nosh up.’ He grinned, still keeping his eyes closed. ‘Got a birthday, lovey? That’s what it is, is it? Waiting for your pretty cards?’
Dave never had any real mail: he had a wife long since abandoned somewhere on the road during one of his pre-war tours, and grown-up children who had hardly known him and now cared too little for him to write letters. The most he ever got was a scribbled postcard from an old pro, and when he did he would sit and natter for as long as anyone would listen to him of the old days at the Leeds Empire and the Met down Edgware Road when old Stubby and Joe the seal trainer had tied on a big one. Lexie, recognizing the desperation of loneliness when she met it, would listen and say nothing when he jeered at her for her anxiety over her own mail. When you have no one to worry about, she told herself, people who do become enviable.
Yet hers wasn’t an enviable position to be in. She ached for Molly, yearned for her in a way that she found startling. The scrappiest of letters from her would be enough to illuminate a week or more. She would carry the letters in her shirt pocket or tucked down her brassiere under her spangled costumes and they warmed her as though they had been actual burning coals, even the most meagre of them. She often thought of Bessie when she read the letters, remembering the sort she used to write to Bessie during the first war, and how long and chatty Bessie’s had been in reply. Like mine are now, she told herself, and felt the stab of her own young cruelty as keenly as if she had been Bessie herself.
She did all she could to make up to Bessie now, writing her letters as long and as amusing as she could make them, and greatly valuing the long screeds Bessie sent back — when they arrived, that was — but still, it didn’t make up for the pain she now felt as Molly’s thin missives came fluttering out of Barbara’s envelopes. Thank God for Barbara, at least, who told her in faithful detail of all Molly’s doings. Lexie was grateful to her, even when the news she gave, written so artlessly and honestly that it was clear Barbara had no idea what she was telling Lexie about her daughter, was so alarming.
And it often was. Molly, moving through her teens, now almost sixteen, spending so much time with the stage director, a man of thirty with a taste for Gin and It in any quantity he could get. Molly being sent flowers and even, amazingly, in these days of desperate shortages, chocolates by men in the audience who followed her about from performance to performance. Molly going to parties at local army camps and aerodromes and being escorted back to her billet by good-looking young men. Barbara’s letters prattled on about it all, and Lexie felt her chest constrict as she read it. Please, she thought now, as she made her way to the tarpaulin-covered space which was their makeshift stage, please, when the post comes tonight, let there be a letter, and let it tell me that Molly’s all right. That she’s still a child and not — that she’s a child, my Molly, still a child.
The afternoon performance was fun and she enjoyed it, to her own amazement. For a long time now dancing had been a chore, singing an effort. The old days when work had been all that mattered, when giving a better show, getting on, being a star, had been so essential, seemed an eternity away. She had forgotten the marvellous excitement of having a happy audience that concentrated entirely on her instead of listening with one ear cocked for enemy planes or guns. She had forgotten it was possible for an audience to be relaxed and happy, to applaud wholeheartedly, to enjoy a performance for its own sake rather than for what it reminded them about. The sailors stationed here in this quiet backwater of the war were a cheerful lot, well aware of their good fortune in being here, and dancing for them was actually a delight.
It was a delight that lasted, too. After the show she went back to her billet, slept dreamlessly for three hours and woke refreshed and actually eager for the performance that was to come. She hadn’t felt like that for ages — she couldn’t remember how long it had been — and some of her old ambitions lifted in her unexpectedly. I’m going home. It’s time I went home. I won’t sign on for another overseas stint. I’ll go into a West End show. I’ve earned it. The raids have eased up, they say. London’s all right again, or nearly all right. Certainly it’s not as bad as North Africa has been. I’ll go home again, see Cocky.
She found time to press her costumes, which had become rather more than a little bedraggled, put on her make-up with real care rather than the usual slapdash haste, and knowing she looked good made her give a better performance than she had for many months. She knew just how good she was as she drifted a
cross the expanse of the makeshift stage with Larry’s thumping piano accompaniment doing its best for her, knew the effect she was having on the rows of attentive officers sitting there in the glimmering darkness under a sky so heavily dusted with stars that it looked as though it had been frosted, for the waves of approval, even love, that came to her from them washed over her and made her lighter than ever. She danced and sang and then danced again, and when at the end the men got to their feet to shout and whoop and stamp for her she knew she had given a performance that deserved their ovation. She stood very still in her pool of light, thrown by a lorry parked alongside the stage, with her head up, as Larry thumped away cheerfully at the piano and the men in the darkness there before her poured their adoration at her feet, and she knew her ambition had not completely died. This was what she had always wanted. This was what living was for.
Somewhere behind her she could hear a muffled conversation, even though the noise from out front was so tremendous, and she turned her head to look, peering into the wings made by the folds of tarpaulin. There was a young officer standing there, his head bent over some notes. Then, as he caught her eye, he came out on to the stage a little awkwardly and held up his hands to the audience.
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, please! A moment, please!’ Slowly the applause slackened and the noise level dropped. The young lieutenant grinned at her, his face sweating under the lights, and then lifted his chin and spoke again to the audience.
‘Listen, you chaps, give a man a chance! I’ve got to introduce the skipper, so that he can do the honourable! Do shut up!’
Lexie laughed as there were a few more whoops and shouts, then at last the audience was captured and the sweating young man began to read from his prepared notes. He talked of how delighted he and the lower-deck chaps had been to be given such a wizard show by such a lovely star as Miss Asher, of how lucky they’d all been to have a special performance, and how much the senior officers wanted to thank her too — and went on to introduce the representative of the ‘chaps with all the scrambled egg on their sleeves’ to offer his thanks too.