After the Cabaret (6 page)

He called her down into the stalls. ‘Can you start tonight?
The conductor's got the music. You'll have to go over to Camden Town to get it from him. And don't expect the show to last, the way things are.'

‘I won't,' she promised him.

In Camden Town she stood on a doorstep looking down a dusty passageway, which contained an old pram. The conductor's wife, a harassed woman in a floral pinafore, gave her the music. Then she took another bus and headed across the river for Kennington, where her friends, Spanish exiles Ricardo and Antonia, agreed to put her up on the couch in their flat.

From then until July Sally, in an electric blue evening dress borrowed from Vi in exchange for Vi's use, when required, of the pink suit, did six shows a week, and a Wednesday matinèe, in
Pull Up Your Socks
– ‘witty, farouche, gossamer-light', read the notice outside the theatre. She sang two numbers, one bitter-sweet, ‘
It was forever, you told me on Monday, but eternity ended that day
' and one madly gay, ‘
Dance the tango through the night, Tango, fandango, till early light
' Then she got the last bus back to Kennington.

She spent her afternoons in the cramped South London flat on correspondence for the local Communist Party. On Saturdays she sold the
Daily Worker
outside Piccadilly Circus underground station.

When the show closed Sally borrowed ten shillings here and there in order to eat and help out with Ricardo and Antonia's rent until September.

There had never been any doubt in Cora's mind that, war or no war, La Vie en Rose – or the Pink Urinal as
it was cruelly christened by the Pontifex Street crowd – must open in September, and only in September, when the better sort of people returned to town. The date of the opening was fixed for the seventh.

Greg was impressed by his first sight of Bruno's shop on the bottom floor of a low house at the smarter end of Portobello Road. It stood on a corner, beside a cobbled mews at the end of which were two garages that must once have been stables. The shop had large windows on two sides, overlooking the street and the mews. The windows gleamed; the paint was trim; above the shop the name ‘Lowenthal' was painted in gold letters.

Inside stood small items of furniture, an early Victorian upholstered chair, a rosewood table. Old china and silver had been placed on various surfaces.

As Greg approached, a thick-set man and a tall, pale girl in jeans were unloading a kneehole desk from a van in the mews. Bruno stood nearby, watching. When he saw Greg he said, ‘Good. I've booked a table at a restaurant in Hyde Park, but first I must see this done.' The man and the girl carried the desk past them, into the shop. ‘Hurry up, Fiona,' Bruno said. ‘I want the van moved so I can
get my car out.' He and Greg watched as the pair, having disposed of the desk, returned to the van and started to unload a large tall-boy. They began to move it towards the shop. ‘No!' cried Bruno. ‘In the workshop! What did I tell you before?' They turned and carried the tall-boy to the end of the mews. ‘No one remembers what you say,' Bruno grumbled. Finally, they were finished, but before the van moved off Bruno said to the young woman, ‘I'm going to have lunch, Fiona. Be careful. No accidents, not like last time.'

‘Yes, Bruno,' she said meekly.

They walked to the garages at the back of the mews. One was obviously used as a workshop and storage area. Bruno opened the door to the other and revealed an antique more impressive to Greg than all the rest, a gleaming black Wolseley, all fresh paint and chrome, dating from some time in the 1950s.

‘Mr Lowenthal,' he said respectfully. ‘What a car!'

‘I used to dream of such a car,' Bruno said. He opened the door and got in. Greg followed suit on the passenger side. The interior was immaculate: the seats were polished leather; the walnut dashboard shone. As Bruno twisted the ignition key Greg heard the sound of a perfectly tuned and maintained engine. ‘Ah,' said Bruno, happily.

Greg thought that this must have been the car you wanted when few Europeans had cars. It spoke of wealth and authority. It was like the cars out of which men leaped in darkened streets to hammer on doors, drag people out—

The air was damp, grey clouds hung low. They sat by
the restaurant's window, looking over the misty composed vista of trees, grass, water.

‘I like your shop,' Greg said. ‘How do you acquire the things you sell?'

‘Sales, buying trips. Other dealers come to me, I go to them. There's a grapevine. I'm training the girl, Fiona, to go to sales for me. But she's not good. As you may have seen, I specialise in Regency and early Victorian objects. I like them very much – they are cosier than eighteenth-century things but not so ornate as furniture became later in the nineteenth century. In the nineteen fifties there was quite a lot about in houses and attics. It was not so much valued – you might find a card table in a greenhouse, with flower-pots on it, a chair, original upholstery, in a spare bedroom. It's not so easy now, but that was when I began to deal in it, and learn.

‘You see, Greg, once the war was over I became a junk-dealer in an area of junk-dealers, men with horses and carts going round buying old gas-cookers, baths, broken chairs. When I got a van I became an aristocrat. All London was dilapidated at that time. What was not broken was old and this neighbourhood was as bad as anywhere. One of my distinguished professional rivals – he had a shop not three hundred yards from where I am today – was a famous mass murderer. He had the bodies of six or seven women buried in his flat and his back yard. So, I dealt in old pots and pans, chipped plates, second-hand electric fires, cookers – not very nice. Then slowly I began to collect better things, quietly, and sell them. I haven't done so badly, eh?' he asked. ‘Not for a poor immigrant
boy, a refugee. You're an American. You understand such things.'

‘You left Pontifex Street?' Greg said.

Bruno shrugged. ‘After the war, Briggs dumped me. He found someone more attractive and that was it, goodbye, Bruno. I wasn't sad. I was fed up with him. Out of decency – and because I knew too much – they fixed me up with papers and Briggs gave me a little money to get started. Not much but, to be fair, all he had. He was not a wealthy man. What I minded, though, was that I never saw him again. I phoned once, then I wrote. Nothing. He was cold, Briggs.' He paused then told Greg, ‘They were all cold-Pym, Briggs, Julia Montrose – cold in a way I don't suppose you could imagine.'

They had ordered and the waiters brought their food. Bruno tucked into his veal with appetite. Then he looked up at Greg and asked, ‘Tell me about your book. How long have you to write it?'

‘There's no set deadline. But I hope to begin writing some time next year. I can't tell you how much it means to me to have you talk to me, sir.'

‘I told you to call me Bruno. These days I am too much “Sir” or Mr Lowenthal. That happens when you get old. Well, you want more information, you ambitious young man, in a hurry. Where were we?'

‘Sally had gone off to a party with Adrian Pym. But first, Bruno, can you tell me what happened to Sally? I can't find any record of her. Of course, women marry and change their names. Do you know how she finished up?'

‘She's dead, I suppose, like so many of us,' Bruno told
him. The thought appeared to give him no pain. ‘But here she is again,' he said briskly, ‘in spirit. That's enough. Turn on your little recorder and let's go on. You have your career to consider.'

Greg placed the recorder on the table and shot Bruno a quick, intense look, as if by catching the old man unawares he could work out who he was, and what approach he was taking. He knew – just knew – that there was more to Bruno Lowenthal than met his eye. His glance did not escape Bruno, who smiled knowingly, as if he had guessed what Greg was thinking. Sitting in the restaurant, with its view of the park, Bruno's cracked, precise voice went on: ‘This park used to be full of barrage balloons. The ropes securing them were all over the place – you'd fall over them in the dark. Sometimes the balloons were on the ground, huge and white. It was completely dark at night, of course, because of the blackout. The whole city was dark. We lived by looking up, I suppose, at the moon and the stars, the searchlights – and the aircraft overhead. Often, you would see the swastikas painted on their sides. People made love in the park, on the grass with the bombers going overhead.'

Greg smiled. ‘Did you?'

‘Sometimes,' the old man said. ‘When I thought Briggs wouldn't find out. You could meet anybody in the dark.' The old blue eyes took on a gleam. ‘Yes, well,' said Bruno, in a more practical tone, ‘it was a long time ago. Now, where were we? Ah, when the Blitz began …'

‘The battle of Britain was over then – all those dull little places with dull names, Ramsgate, Hastings, Bromley, Orpington, had been bombed. The people would look up and see the planes fighting just above the trees, lower sometimes. They called it hedgehopping. And the average life of a Spitfire pilot in those days was, they said, three weeks. The attack on the cities was still to come. But before that, and before La Vie en Rose was due to open, Sally arrived suddenly at Pontifex Street one evening with her luggage, an officer of the Free French Army and a mattress. There was an attic upstairs, just a room about twelve yards square with a sloping roof and a skylight and two very small windows, high up. You had to climb a ladder to get up to this room. And Sir Peveril Jones, who, you will remember, was our landlord, had told Sally she could have it. She was moving in.

‘When she arrived Briggs and Pym were there having a drink. I was cooking supper. Briggs fought back. “You
can't possibly stay. There's only one bathroom,” he said, and instantly phoned Sir Peveril at his secret War Office number. He was on the phone to Sir Peveril when Julia came in, making a fuss also. She didn't know Sally well, but I don't think she wanted to be associated with Sally in people's minds. It was a matter of her reputation. After all, Julia was having an affair with Sir Peveril, who had a wife and several young children tucked away in an old manor house on the Welsh borders. Sally, though, was open in what she did – she never had an ulterior motive. Julia believed that if Sally was about, people would connect them, call them both tarts – and Julia was being very careful for she wanted to marry Sir Peveril and be Lady Jones of the Elizabethan manor house.

‘But it was Briggs who made the most fuss. He raised his voice to Sir Peveril, which showed how angry he was because Sir Peveril was much senior to him at his office –
and
his landlord.

‘I only heard Briggs's end of the conversation, naturally, but it sounded as if Sir Peveril was determined. He told Briggs that Sally would be singing at La Vie en Rose and would need a base nearby, and that, as you could say, was that. I thought at the time that Sir Peveril must have some old connection with Cora Blow and that that was why he gave Sally permission to stay in the attic at Pontifex Street. Briggs went on arguing but then he had to stop. He was achieving nothing, except to annoy his landlord – a generous landlord, I might say. He charged little rent, paid readily for repairs and breakages and probably Mrs Thing's wages. He was not a man to upset.

‘While this was going on Sally and the French officer were humping her mattress upstairs and Pym was lying there in a chair with his shirt off and a glass in his hands, looking quite detached. He'd brought home some tough in the uniform of the Foreign Legion, a brute with no neck and frightening eyes who was sitting on the sofa drinking and looking round him like a murderer. Then Briggs had to end his call, because Sally came in with her Frenchman. The Legionnaire started telling the story of an incident in North Africa where the Legion had gone to punish a village for some act of defiance. It ended with torture and massacre. He was a dreadful man. Briggs listened with horror, Pym as if the man were telling a story about going to buy a newspaper. Then I seem to think we all drank some whisky and many people arrived – Charles Denham, who was a novelist, and a young Air Force officer, Ralph Hodd. And there was a man from SOE who had been at Eton with Briggs, and a cousin of Julia's and her friend, who were both WAAFs in uniform, and Geoffrey Forbes, whose name you may remember. He also became famous later, not in a good way. I had prepared dinner but I could see how the evening would end. I went upstairs and began to move things out of the attic, a broken chair and so forth, and sweep the floor.

‘When I came down the ladder Sally was coming out of the bathroom, wearing an evening dress I knew belonged to Julia. Well, that meant trouble. By the time she got back into the room Pym had said something to make one of the other girls cry – he could be very cruel. Julia, of course, began to complain about her dress. “But I'm going
dancing,” Sally was saying, “and you said you were staying in.” Julia was telling her that that was not the point, but I don't think Sally could see it that way. As this went on the French officer sat down at the piano, which was an impressive Steinway, and started to play Chopin. The Legionnaire got up, grabbed at the WAAF who wasn't crying and started to swing her round the room, holding her very close and bending over her as if they were in some working-class cabaret. I don't think she liked it. And so the evening went on, with people coming and going – a vase was broken when Charles Denham tried to rescue the WAAF from the Legionnaire without success, so Sally broke in between them and went on dancing with him while the young woman fled upstairs.

‘I can't tell you what that atmosphere was like, always, at Pontifex Street,' Bruno told Greg. ‘You would have had to have been there. We were young, young as you are, Greg, we were facing a war, we didn't know what would happen – we thought we would probably die. Our fathers had died in millions in the Great War, why should we do any better? And everybody, nearly everybody, was doing secret work.' Bruno shrugged. ‘You can't describe it. I've forgotten it myself. Just sometimes, when I pass a building, perhaps, or hear a certain piece of music, do I remember. Anyway … anyway …' His voice trailed off.