The Golden Lion

by Pamela Haines

  She watched the set of his shoulders in the too wide, slightly garish sports jacket. Desire leaped in her, at first feebly, then when he didn’t speak or move – he’s going away again, she thought.

  ‘Come upstairs,’ she said. (Oh, come on, come in – oh, Eddie.)

  ‘Some fellows make a winnin’ sometime, I never even make a gain.’

  Nine months together again. (The time of a gestation. The exact time to grow the never-to-be baby. Herself, Maria, doomed for ever to making these comparisons.) He had left Australia two months before the war in Europe ended, but once arrived had had to go to the Isle of Man until June.

  Then at last – freedom. An over-excited Eddie, full of plans and hopes, unfulfilled longings. And desire. She had rented, not without difficulty, a small mews cottage in South Kensington. Not too far from Dulcie who was living in Montpelier Square, and enjoying a well-earned rest (though shattered by the news of Jenny’s son Jim, shot down in March, only six weeks after leaving Canada). Helen was to join them in July when her convent broke up, and in August they would all go up to Thackton for the remainder of the school holidays. Eddie, rested, would take up his career again in the autumn.

  She hoped there would be a career to take up. Either as a result of the internment or just as part of the gradual falling off, (never the same since America), his name and fame had suffered. His records were seldom heard. A generation had grown up to whom his name meant nothing – or nothing they wanted to hear. But perhaps when he appeared in person, it would all be different.

  His five years in camp had been in their own way tough. So perhaps she should have been warned. Excitement, happiness, giving him an appearance of wellbeing – if she was deceived so were others. (Women too? Of the missing half decade, she wanted to know nothing – all she’d wanted was to have Eddie in her arms, for Eddie to be inside her again.)

  June 1945, in a London almost free of war. They knew no one fighting in the Far East. She had begun to make contacts in the rag trade, to think again. Coupons, rationing, would not be for ever. Uniforms, seen everywhere, had suddenly a temporary look.

  And there he was. Fit as a fiddle and ready for love. Eddie of the flicking tongue, warm hands, agile fingers. Strong, gentle, certain. The scent of Eddie’s skin, unchanged.

  Their first night together again. Such energy, such loving. A man not in his forties but his twenties. ‘It was always you, Maria … if you knew how often I’d dreamed … I’d wake up crying. I was inside you, Maria, and then I’d wake. It was always you…’ Well, yes, perhaps. But how much she’d wanted and needed it to be true, that night of such happiness. At dawn he wept unrestrainedly in her arms.

  She might have taken heed then, been warned perhaps. He was so happy. Too happy. But because she was happy too … He wanted to go everywhere, be everywhere. Theatres, cinemas. He went to Perchance to Dream three times in two weeks, Gay Rosalinda four times. He told Maria: ‘I could do the lead. I could sing that part …’

  She’d hired a piano for him. He spent much of the time that he was at home, sitting at it, playing old numbers, trying out new ones.

  ‘Hey, Maria – remember this? There’s a small hotel, with a wishing-well…’

  Often he got up very early, and stayed up late as well. He always stayed up late. He bought in, with Maria’s money, piles of new records, stacks of sheet music. He no longer had his collection of his own records. He’d been careless with them at the time, then put into store after his internment, they’d been lost in the bombing. He tried to buy more.

  ‘Couldn’t you get them?’ Maria asked, when he came back empty-handed.

  ‘Not right now. But they’re on order. Decca are just about to do a really large pressing of all the ’33–’34 ones.’

  Another day he said, ‘Lilliput and Picture Post are going to do a feature … They’ll want to come and photograph me at home. I’ll give you warning.’

  He was out now often all day. ‘I’ve got to look everyone up. Tell them I’m back.’ In the evenings he would be so excited that once she accused him of being drunk. He smelled of it.

  ‘Flamin’ Mamie. One little goddam whisky with old pals. Of course it smells.’ But his irritation evaporated as fast as it had come.

  ‘Ambrose is taking me on,’ he announced the next evening. ‘That’s wonderful, Eddie.’ But when she pressed for details he drowned her questions with his new record of Guy Lombardo.

  ‘You, you’re driving me crazy,’ he said.

  He bought records, then criticized them. Men, women, alike. He ran down most of them. ‘Frank Sinatra – yes, well, too skinny – he’s just a craze. Vera Lynn, it’s not the real thing, that catch in the voice. Where are the real singers? Anne Shelton’s good … But lots of them, they belong to the war. That’s over …’ If the voice was all right, then the interpretation wasn’t.

  He was to sing with the Rainbow Club band, for the US troops. ‘When you think … I guess a lot of people around there remember me from ‘35 … I’ll broadcast probably with the AEF Band before they fold up.’

  Another day: ‘I’ve got this terrific contract offer with HMV –’

  ‘Before you sign – you are being careful about terms, aren’t you? You don’t want me to come with you?’

  ‘No, no, not that sort of come. Come to bed. Come to bed now, Mariannina.’

  She had been his manager so successfully only six years ago. He’d been used to rely on her. Why not now? She wished she’d made preliminary contact around before his return. Now she was too proud, too nervous, to interfere. She was all the same surprised when nobody, no one at all from that world, contacted her. For the sake of Eddie’s pride, and at his request (‘I don’t want you interfering,’) she kept quiet.

  Two days later: ‘Geraldo wants me,’ he said in an excited voice. ‘We’ll go out and celebrate.’

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Geraldo, Lew Stone, Ambrose, you can’t sing for them all.’

  ‘Why not?’ he asked belligerently. ‘Why not? Tell me why not? Why shouldn’t I sing for all the big names? I’m a big name … Flamin’ Mamie, isn’t it just a matter of establishing myself again? Letting people know I’m back. Once these interviews are out, some broadcasts, new records – they’ll be queueing from here to Eros. Autographs, the lot.’

  ‘Bloody Government,’ he said another time, ‘interning me. But I was singing all the time in Australia. Working hard, organizing concerts. All that practice, it’s like exercise. The muscle. I’m in great singing form.’ He told her:

  ‘Al Coleman’s expecting a spot at the Park Lane. He’ll be asking me, for certain – “No one can put a number across the way you do, Eddie.” If I’ve heard that once since I was back …’

  She asked again if she couldn’t come with him, talk to a few of their old contacts. She was known to them all … It was only the war had disrupted everything.

  ‘I can get work by myself, thanks. Since when did I need interference? What’s wrong with the Sabrini charm? I don’t need your Sicilian smiles, and winks, and simpers …’

  She never thought he might be straying, that he was up to his old tricks again. In spite of his childish tantrums, his irritability, he seemed to have great need of her.

  So when in the end everything went spectacularly wrong, the shock was all the greater.

  ‘A movie,’ he said, coming home one evening, sheet music piled on a box of records. ‘Top secret, though. Korda’s behind it. It’s a remake of Showboat. In Technicolor … I can’t talk about it. I promised – not a word.’

  He wouldn’t eat any supper. She had bought him some early raspberries. ‘I haven’t time,’ he said.

  ‘You never have time to eat now –’

  ‘I lost my appetite down under. The food was foul.’

  ‘You haven’t lost your appetite for me.’ She came up behind him, arms round his neck. ‘Come up to bed early, then. I’ll stay awake for you.’

  He murmured something, then, food left untouched, went into the sit
ting-room where the hired piano was. The wireless was there too but his presence meant she couldn’t listen. She sat in the small dining-room and sewed a sun top for Helen. She would be with them in three days.

  ‘Over my shoulder goes one care, over my shoulder goes two…’ The same number again and again.

  Around half past ten she put her head round the door, ‘I’m going up.’ He ignored her. She stood there a moment but could sense him willing her out.

  ‘And over my shoulder goes them all…’

  She lay awake. Eleven, twelve, one. It was one-thirty in the morning and there’d been hardly a break. She had expected a ‘phone call or a knock at the door from their neighbours – a retired admiral and his invalid wife.

  ‘Five minutes more, give me five minutes more. Only five minutes more in your arms …’

  She went down. ‘Come on up, darling. You’re keeping them all awake –’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I have to get it right. I’ve only a few hours to get it right … And it’s good, don’t I sound good?’

  ‘Give me land, lots of land under starry skies above, don’t fence me in …’

  By four o’clock she felt desperate. She went down again. He was still at the piano. Sweat poured down his face.

  ‘Eddie, you have to stop –’

  ‘Can’t we talk it over, before it’s over, before you tell me we’re through …’

  Wild of eye, white-faced. She noticed suddenly how thin in a few short weeks he had become.

  The doctor they had had in London before the war was gone, she had no idea where. She had seen a doctor’s plate in Ennismore Gardens, round the corner from them. First thing in the morning, she called him out.

  By lunch-time Eddie was in hospital. It seemed to her afterwards all a nightmare. Why had she not realized? This excited, now incoherent Eddie, who had wept in her arms.

  A manic episode. The shock of returning to his previous life – something he had looked forward to too much. The weight of expectations, and excitement. At the hospital they explained to her that they would use the same treatment as for battle exhaustion. Soldiers who had cracked up under strain.

  He was drugged for forty-eight hours, so that he slept almost continuously. Then he was given insulin injections. These made him voraciously hungry. He who had barely eaten for weeks put on a white, puffy fat.

  She discovered now that he had told everyone in the dance band world that she was in Canada for two years, that she had got a passage there for war work to do with her place on the foundry board. Probably there were other fantasies, but she did not learn of them.

  Helen arrived, wanted to meet him, but was not allowed. VJ came and went. Maria did not celebrate. When Helen started day school in September, she was sent to Dulcie’s for a fortnight, while Maria took Eddie to the seaside at Torquay. A half-hearted Eddie, excitement replaced by depression. She wondered if perhaps he’d been sedated for life.

  He returned slowly, so slowly it was at first scarcely noticeable. At Christmas she took him up to Moorgarth for a month. And then again now, Easter 1946. He was bored, restless, irritable. She persisted in thinking that the fresh air and good food were some kind of healing.

  Then she had the idea that he might teach Helen to croon. She’d often heard her funny little voice singing along to the wireless when she thought no one was listening. And this seemed to amuse him. In other respects they returned to their usual bickering selves.

  This is the secret journal of Helen Connors of Moorgarth, Thackton-le-Moors, Nr Whitby, North Riding etc., etc. I received this book for a Christmas present and it has taken me till Easter to write one word in it! It’s easier when you have a diary with dates, this just has blank pages so you can start any day, so you don’t start at all. The best thing is it has a lock and key, (Maria’s idea!) so I can write my secret thoughts.

  What are my secret thoughts? It’s funny how when you have the fountain pen all filled up and the book open, they all fly away!

  This holiday I’m quite busy because we’ve got School Cert. next term and I’ll be doing Matric. I’m the youngest in the class and it’s jolly hard work in all the subjects except Maths which is easy-peasy. Botany is BORING!! I like my London school and I like being a day girl, though I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer to live in Thackton all the time again, I can’t make up my mind about that. I still miss Uncle Eric terribly.

  We are up here mainly because of Eddie who was very ill last summer. It was very tragic after all the time he’d been away, Maria said his brain got quite exhausted, he didn’t ever really get over the shock of being arrested and taken so far away when he hadn’t been on Mussolini’s side anyway.

  He’s very funny (peculiar not ha-ha), but when he’s in a good mood he’s super. Because they haven’t any children I’m a daughter for him as well as for Maria. The only thing is I don’t get treated as grown up enough, after all fourteen is quite old these days. Maria doesn’t let me wear make-up but Veronica’s mother let’s her. Veronica is my best friend since I’ve been in London. She lives in Baron’s Court and her mother is an illustrator, her father was killed at Bir Hakeim. She is fifteen and a half with chestnut hair in a page-boy AND a big bosom (she wears Kestos 38!) She’s tall and looks wizard in wedges (that’s Alliteration, by the way, Credit in Eng. Lang. coming up next!!) We try on make-up at her house and sometimes her mother helps. Mascara really makes a difference to my eyes, and that’s the trouble because Maria notices at once, especially the time when I used shoe polish which was JOLLY GOOD.

  I don’t think I’m very pretty, in fact I know I’m not, I even thought of pasting a photo on one of these pages so I won’t forget! Maria says I can be elegant later which is better and that I’m jolie laide (Pass in School Cert. French coming up?!) but I must be careful with my skin and not ruin it with Pancake. The trouble is Pancake looks smart and I’m sure I’d FEEL prettier if I could wear it. Anyway what with being small and rather skinny without a proper bosom (Kestos 32 but it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t), and blonde hair which is wiry really and a funny straw colour, it’s all rather difficult. I’d like to wear high heels, but there goes Maria again, ‘You’ll spoil your insides for having babies if you wear them when you’re still growing.’ (I wish I was!)

  Eddie’s really funny. He says things like, when other people say Never Mind, he says, ‘Life is just a bowl of cherries, don’t make it serious –’ or, ‘You can’t take it with you when you go go go –’ He’s funny too about teaching me singing, I think he really enjoys it and of course I love it – He even promised that one day, PERHAPS, I could sing with him once in public or even on a record!! Veronica was awfully jealous about that. Her mother used to think Eddie was wonderful so I told her he still is really.

  I wish he and Maria didn’t fight, it’s awful when they do, he gets so angry and sometimes she shouts – I stop my ears up because I never never never want to hear anything like that. I know it was silly when I used to think Maria was Our Lady but it’s as if a bit of me still thinks she is so I don’t want to know about her and Eddie saying bad things to each other.

  Whew! No wonder my arm is aching, just look at all I’ve written, it nearly makes up for all the months not writing anything. PS. I’ve just been back to the beginning and it says Secret Thoughts, I don’t feel I’ve written any of those somehow. (What about the terrible time when I was a vacky – but I could never write about that. Secret: Sometimes I wish so much I had Mam back, though she might not even recognize me, I’ve changed such a lot and talk posh of course (horrible elocution lessons!)

  I nearly forgot! Good news, a long letter from Billy, typed out by Cousin Fred I think, but he really loves New Zealand and goes swimming every day, and one time I’m to be asked out there.

  And so, until another day. Quite a long time I expect, knowing me! Unless a Secret comes along soon of course.

  Signed, Helen Marie Connors, Junior Prefect.

  The front doorbell of the mews cottage rang, then before Ma
ria was more than half way down, it rang again. Eddie, she thought: that sort of impatience that meant he’d forgotten his keys. But when she opened the door:

  ‘Look who’s here,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Oh but – whatever? Jenny darling!’

  Jenny, standing on the doorstep. Smiling, a little uncertain.

  ‘Darling Jenny, come in at once.’ Once inside, she was laughing and excited. Nervous. Jenny, twenty-three years older. Neat, white-faced woman in her early forties. The slanting eyes she remembered so well, lightly mascarared now. Practical hands with colourless varnish. Well-cut grey wool suit, a red pillbox hat.

  ‘Tell me, tell me what you’re doing here. Is it a holiday, and for how long? Where are you staying? When did you arrive?’

  They stood in the little kitchen. Maria putting the kettle on to boil, getting out the china, boiling the kettle, laying out biscuits.

  ‘Last question first. When is yesterday. Courtesy of White Star. And I’m staying – no prizes for guessing – I’m in Montpelier Square. For how long? I’m here for good, Maria.’

  ‘But, that’s wonderful. Archie’s got something over here?’

  ‘No. Over there.’ Her voice had an edge of tears now. ‘I’ve left him, Maria.’

  The cups rattled on the tray. She sat down at the kitchen table. She said in a high little voice. ‘So English – sitting down to a cup of tea. After dropping that bombshell.’

  Maria brought the teapot over. ‘Are you going to tell me about it?’

  ‘There’s not much to tell. No story really. It’s all non-things. Or non-sense, as Archie said when I tried to explain. Anyone could have seen it coming, though. We hardly saw each other, and never alone. Separate bedrooms, polite public face, grown up sons …’

  Her voice grew fevered. ‘It could be any couple’s tale. Or non-tale … I thought: Well, it’s not going to be mine.’

  ‘So you walked out? How was it taken?’

  ‘Badly. But I’d already managed to book my passage – even though berths are in pretty short supply … He wanted to fight with me over every point … I said to him, “Jim’s gone where he doesn’t need us, Gordon’s in medical school. And you – you only need me to sit beside you at Rotary Club dinners … I came from England – and now I want to go back.” “Take a long vacation,” he said. “Get around Europe. Go see Eire and Switzerland where they haven’t had a war.” He said he’d get me journalistic assignments to cover wherever I wanted to go … It took him a while for it to sink in. I think it was still sinking in when I left.’