After the Cabaret (5 page)

‘You'll do,' said Cora. ‘Don't worry, I won't let in anyone I don't like. Hand your uniform to Mr Bates. It'll be ten shillings for cleaning and repairs. I'll have the money now.'

Sally handed it over. Cora put it in her pocket. She said, ‘There's another artist, a singer who plays the piano. She'll double as manageress so you'll have to take your orders from her. I'm sorry about that but quite honestly, Miss Bowles, I couldn't put you in charge of a rice pudding, and Vi Simcox, who sings under the name of Lola Laine, is a thoroughly competent young woman. She's not exactly out of the top drawer but you'll have to make the best of that'

Sally went upstairs to her narrow bedroom under the eaves, penniless now and homeless. She stripped off the uniform and, no longer a maid but an artiste again, lay down for a long, daytime sleep.

She was woken by a voice saying, ‘Whoops! Sorry.' She opened her eyes. The door was closing. ‘It's all right,' she called. ‘I'm getting up.' The door reopened promptly. A small woman in her twenties with very blonde hair, very red lipstick and very high heels stood there. She wore a smart little burgundy hat on one side of her head. ‘I didn't mean to wake you up,' she said. ‘Bates told me you were here so I came up to introduce myself – Lola Laine, chanteuse, otherwise Vi Simcox. Pleased to meet you.' She advanced, holding out her hand. Sally sat up and shook it. Then she got out of bed, picked up the skirt of the pink suit and put it on. Vi looked at it. ‘That's a damn good skirt,' she observed. ‘But it could do with a good sponge and a press.'

‘It's all I've got for the moment.'

Vi looked at her impassively. ‘Let's go down and have lunch,' she suggested.

‘Will that be all right?' Sally asked. She was terrified of Cora Blow.

‘I'll square it with Bates,' Vi assured her.

Sally put on her pink jacket and followed her down the linoleum-covered stairs, which led from the staff bedrooms in the attics to the red-carpeted sweep of stairs that went down three further flights to the hotel foyer.

‘Many in for lunch, Bates?' asked Vi.

‘An air vice-marshal, two counts and the exiled King of somewhere. I regret I can't allow you to lunch in the dining room.' And he looked calmly at Sally's stained suit.

It was at this point that Adrian Pym entered with a man carrying a bowler hat and a younger one in work-stained corduroys, who gazed uneasily around him at the faded grandeur of the Bessemer.

‘Well, Sally,' said Pym.

‘Loomie, darling, lend me a pound,' she responded.

‘What will you do for me?'

‘Anything you want.'

He produced a large bundle of notes from his pocket and peeled one off. This he gave to Sally. As he turned to go into the dining room, she said, ‘Any news of Theo?'

He sighed, ‘Really, Sally …'

Sally and Vi got a bus to the Lyon's Corner House. It was full of women with shopping bags and parcels and men in uniform.

Vi said, ‘I'm gasping for a cup of tea. Cora said you'd had a baby girl and lost your husband. I'm ever so sorry. Was he in the forces?'

‘I'm not married,' said Sally, bluntly.

‘Oh – like that,' Vi said sympathetically.

‘It's a long story. I won't bore you with it.'

‘Up to you,' Vi responded, a little huffily.

‘You married, or anything?' asked Sally.

‘I look after my brothers. Ted's a docker, so he hasn't been called up. Jack's nine. After my dad died three years ago my mum went off. She met a feller who didn't want to take Jack on so off she went. Left a note saying she was sorry.' Vi looked down at her egg on toast. ‘It looks hard. I don't fancy it somehow. I'm fussy about my eggs.'

‘Have something else,' Sally suggested.

‘This took long enough to get here. I haven't got time to start all over again,' and she attacked it vigorously.

‘It must be hard to manage the house and your own career,' Sally said.

‘My gran helps out,' said Vi. ‘She used to be in the profession herself. She had quite a name on the music halls. Violet Lavengro. Bit too fond of the gin now. Well, she always was. So what kind of stuff do you do?'

‘I've worked mostly in cabaret,' Sally told her. ‘In Germany.'

Vi looked at her. ‘I've heard about those cabarets.'

Sally shrugged.

‘Did you take all your clothes off? Fellers in dresses, that kind of thing?'

‘Sometimes.'

‘We can't go in for anything like that, not in London. Nor you singing in German – not with a war on. Can you manage some of those little French songs, “La Vie en Rose”, that kind of thing?'

Sally nodded.

‘That'll do,' Vi said briskly. ‘It all hangs on the band
and God knows what they'll be like, with everybody in the forces. Cora's getting them in herself, which I
don't
like.' She leaned back and gazed at Sally from big blue black-fringed eyes. ‘What have you done since you left Germany? Had the baby, I suppose.'

‘We only got here ten days ago,' Sally said.

‘Ten days!' exclaimed Vi. The war had begun in September 1939 and now it was June 1940. A massive rescue force, including a flotilla of private boats, had just sailed out to rescue the British Expeditionary Force, trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk under heavy bombardment. Army doctors had drawn lots to decide who would remain in France to take care of the wounded.

Sally told her, ‘At first I was ahead of the Germans getting into France and then somehow I was behind. I came over in a fishing boat from Brittany. There were lots of men on board who were going to join up with the Free French over here.'

Vi was puzzled, veering towards suspicion. After all, Sally had confessed to nine months in Germany after the declaration of war. ‘The baby came with you?'

‘I was let down by a man,' Sally said.

Vi continued to scrutinise her.

Sally went on, ‘It sounds funny, I suppose. All that happened was that I got stuck in Germany with no money – and the baby. And suddenly we were at war. I ended up singing on the stage for the wives of German soldiers. They're all blacked out and rationed, you see – frightfully depressing – so they have a policy of trying to persuade the women to bear more children for the
Fatherland. They put girls in scanty costumes on the stage to encourage what they call “healthy eroticism” so they'll want to have more children, which people sometimes don't want to do, if there's a war on, they say. I couldn't get enough money to escape – and by that time I was an enemy alien. The winter was grim,' she recalled. ‘Very cold, dark, and I had someone else's papers, someone who's left Germany, and I was getting scared I'd be captured.'

‘So how did you get out?' asked Vi.

‘His wife paid,' Sally said.

‘If she wanted to get rid of you, why didn't she turn you in?'

‘She didn't want to go that far.'

‘My dad was in the last lot. He used to say the only good German's a dead German.'

‘People are people, wherever you go.'

This was when the Spaniard spat on Sally. He was coming past their table with another man, stopped, looked back at her, turned and took a pace back to where they were sitting, said two words to Sally in a vicious tone and spat in her face.

Then he rejoined the other man and they walked on and out of the restaurant.

‘Filthy pig!' exclaimed Vi. She opened her handbag and handed Sally a small bottle of cologne. ‘Use this,' she told Sally. ‘It'll freshen you up. Why did he do that? Do you know him?'

‘Oh, God – oh, God,' Sally said. ‘Is my makeup all over the place?'

‘You're looking a bit the worse for wear,' Vi said, and handed her a small mirror.

‘I'd better go to the ladies' and make running repairs.' She got up and left, with rapid steps. Apparently no one else had noticed the incident. When she returned she was freshly made-up. She sat down.

‘What did he say to you?' Vi asked.

‘Communist whore,' she replied. ‘He was Spanish. He must have recognised me from there. I don't know what his sort are doing here, now we're fighting Hitler who helped them so much.'

‘Everybody's here,' Vi said. ‘French, Norwegians, German spies, Czechs and Poles, Jewish refugees from all over. We'll sink, at this rate. So, you were in Spain. We're Catholics – not good ones, but that's what we are. But quite a lot of the blokes at the docks where Ted works went out there for the civil war to fight for the Reds. Well, I suppose at least that means you're not a German spy. You had me worried.'

‘I know, darling,' said Sally, with a laugh.

‘Politics, eh?' said Vi, dismissively.

Sally put a pound note on the plate with the bill on it.

‘Let me pay,' said Vi, ‘if that's all you've got.'

‘No, I insist, darling,' Sally said.

‘Split it,' said Vi, fishing out her purse. ‘The point is, Cora won't open up till September. It'll take all that time to get the place fixed up, what with the manpower shortage. She's begging and bribing all over the place, the carpenter's so old he must have worked on Noah's Ark and the bricklayer's an invalid from the Great War
and he's being helped by his son, and if that boy's eleven, that's all he is. And then there's the band – we'll end up with a one-armed pianist, that's my opinion. There'll be no pay, during this summer. But we ought to work out some numbers. Where can I get hold of you?'

‘I don't know where I'll be. Cora kicked me out of the Bessemer. I'll go and bang on some doors.'

‘Blimey – you
are
in trouble.'

Sally sighed. ‘I know. I can get a job, I suppose. There's plenty now they've called up all the men.'

Vi rummaged in her bag. ‘Here's my agent's card. Go and see if he can fix you up with something. Say I sent you and I'll leave messages for you there.'

‘What will you do for money?' asked Sally.

‘I used to do a summer season in Bournemouth but I don't know if that's still on, because of the war. At a pinch we'll all have to live on my brother's wages. Well,' she said, dabbing powder on her nose and scrutinising her face sceptically in a small mirror, ‘I'll love you and leave you.' She stood up, ‘'Bye, Sally, don't do anything I wouldn't do,' and she was off, her high heels clattering over the marble floor.

In Shaftesbury Avenue, Sally went to Victor Kane's office below which was a small shop selling umbrellas and walking sticks. She went into the tall building, climbed a flight of stairs and went through a door with a frosted-glass window on which was painted
Victor Kane, Theatrical Representative
.

A well made-up woman with dyed blonde hair in corrugated waves sat behind a desk knitting a jersey in a complicated Fair Isle pattern.

She glanced up at Sally, then the phone rang. She placed her knitting carefully on the desk and answered it. ‘No, sorry, Bobby. Nothing today. It's the war. Will you ring tomorrow, darling? Good, that's good. Toodle-oo.'

She looked at Sally again. Once more the phone rang. She picked it up. ‘Hello, Mrs Kane. Yes, Mrs Kane. I'm putting you through, Mrs Kane.'

Immediately there was a burst of speech from behind the door leading off from the office. The woman picked up her knitting.

‘Can you help me, darling—' Sally began.

The male voice beyond the office door grew louder and wilder. ‘Mrs Kane's got herself in a shocking state about the war,' the woman confided. ‘That's what it's about. Well, don't just stand there. Advance and state your case.'

‘I'm looking for a job,' said Sally. ‘Cabaret, revue, that sort of thing – Lola Laine sent me. We're opening in a club in September.'

‘I know,' said the woman. The man's voice went on and on. Then came an impatient shout and the door was flung open to reveal a portly figure in a green waistcoat, with an unlit cigar in his hand. Victor Kane looked shaken. ‘I'm volunteering! I'm joining up,' he declared. ‘You'll hold the fort for me while I'm gone, won't you, Yvonne?'

‘You don't want to do that, Victor,' she told him. ‘You'd make a rotten soldier.'

‘Well, I can't stand any more of this,' he said. ‘Will you do it – keep the business running?'

‘You'll have to draw up a document,' she told him. ‘I can't have Mrs Kane interfering all the time.'

‘What about pleading with me? “Don't go, Victor, don't go and get killed.'”

‘You'll survive,' she said, unsympathetically.

He went out.

‘Will he do it?' asked Sally.

‘I shouldn't think so. He'll stop off at the Café Royal on the way to join up and that'll be that for the day. Mind you, he's very wrought up. Mrs Kane's got relatives in Poland and she's saying they'll all be killed. Jewish,' Yvonne mouthed at Sally. ‘She's driving him mad.' She flipped open a card index, then copied something on to a piece of paper, which she handed to Sally. ‘You're in luck.
Pull Up Your Socks
has just lost a soubrette to the Army. If you get the job come back here and sign on with the agency. That okey-doke with you?' The phone was ringing again. She picked it up. ‘He just went out. I'm not sure where he's gone, Mrs Kane. No, I haven't seen the paper today.' She covered the receiver with her hand and said to Sally, ‘For God's sake, clean yourself up a bit before you go. You look as if you've just got out of bed.'

Sally did an audition on a dusty stage, to a piano accompaniment played by the theatre manager, who happened to be in the building at the time. She sang a song popularised by Gertrude Lawrence, ‘The Physician', lightening, as far as possible, a voice too low and husky for the music. ‘See your legs, dear?' came the weary request from the producer's nephew, who had been the only other person there, apart from the manager, when Sally arrived. She raised her skirt to reveal her last pair of silk stockings.