After her success the previous night, he was not altogether surprised to see Lily, pale and diminutive, only five feet tall and with a still-childish figure.
Lily knew instinctively that she must act to rescue herself. She had to escape what lay ahead – life at home with Queenie, another job in a sweatshop like Warren’s until she married a man like her father. And she would be lucky to marry a man like Charlie, for she knew that many men were less patient with their wives and children. And so it would go on to child-bearing, child-rearing, poverty and the strong possibility of domestic woe.
‘Will you give me a proper job, Mr Cunningham? You know I can sing. I need it – please,’ she blurted.
Jack Cunningham looked down at her. She was still dressed for factory work. Her pale hair, uncombed, hung down her back like a child’s. She wore a faded print dress, rather short, and her bare legs ended in black boots. She said quickly, ‘I can get a stage dress and curl my hair – promise. I won’t come looking like this.’
He got down from the chair and gazed at her. Lily’s heart pounded. Finally he said, ‘All right, Lily. You did all right at your debut. First on the bill. Seven-thirty sharp. I can only pay you a couple of bob because I’m just giving you the chance. It ought to be nothing, by rights, but I like to pay my performers.’
Lily was delighted, though not, perhaps, as much as she should have been. For she knew she could do it. She knew she could sing. She would succeed and needed only the opportunity to show it. Thanking Cunningham, she ran from the music rooms of the Rose and Crown before he could change his mind.
At the end of the street was the bustle of Commercial Road. Laden wagons from the docks, buses, trams and other vehicles jammed the crowded thoroughfare. Lily paused. She had claimed she could manage an attractive appearance on stage by half past seven. But it was already five, and she had no clothes, no curling irons for her hair, not even a comb. If she went home she would get no help, only rows. As she stood on the street corner, she felt baffled and depressed. A man in a flat cap, labouring along with a wicker basket of bananas over which he could barely see, barged into her and said, ‘Mind where you’re going.’
‘Clumsy idiot,’ Lily called after him. Then she spotted at her feet a bunch of five bananas which had fallen from the top of the basket as he cannoned into her. She picked them up and thoughtfully ate one. She sighed, wondering if her friend Maggie Sullivan’s mother would lend her Maggie’s first communion dress, a wonderful lawn and lace concoction, and decided she probably wouldn’t, and that it might not fit anyway. In the unlikely event that she secured the dress, and that it fitted, Mrs Sullivan might not be prepared to allow her to stand about curling her hair for the show. She was desperately busy at the bakery. Maggie’s father had died six months before, and she was keeping their little shop, with its bakery at the back, going by herself, with only Maggie to help. Even Lily could see that appealing to the Sullivans was a bad idea.
Martha, she thought, next door in French Street – Auntie Martha might help. Her own father wouldn’t support her – he didn’t want her to sing in public, which he regarded as the first step on the slippery slope to the streets. Even if she could persuade him, he wouldn’t dare go against Queenie. But Martha was different. The only problem was, she would have to go back to French Street, where Queenie or Charlie might catch her, or someone else report on her presence. But, Lily decided, she had to risk it, so, refraining from eating the other bananas, she sped the half-mile back to French Street, still holding the fruit. At the end of the road, she pressed up against a building, peered down the row of houses for signs of life, saw nothing moving but a boy on a bicycle and an old lady with a cabbage in a string bag, so raced up the street and pushed open the front door of the house where the Barringtons’ rooms were. Once inside, where she could not be seen, she breathed a sigh of relief. As she banged on the flat door, calling, ‘Auntie Martha. It’s me, Lily. Can I come in?’, she reflected that it would be just her luck to find Queenie here, sitting at Martha’s kitchen table, drinking tea and complaining about her wayward daughter. But Queenie was not here. Martha opened the door and said, ‘Well, Lily. Nice to see you.’ She was alone in the three-room flat. The twins, John and James, were now at work, one a teller at the docks, the other an assistant at a gentleman’s outfitters in the West End. Martha was rolling pastry for a pie at the kitchen table.
‘I’ve brought you some bananas, Auntie Martha,’ Lily said, holding them out. Martha was not deceived. She knew there had been a row between Lily and her mother. She had heard the raised voices through the wall. Lily needed a strong cup of hot, sweet tea.
Martha had been there at Goy Street when little Eddie Strugnell had died, thanked heaven that both her own boys had survived childhood – and knew that no woman could count on safety in this world. She knew, too, perhaps better than anyone, what the death of her boy had done to Queenie. She did not take sides as Lily blurted out her problem. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘We can do your hair, but as to the other finery you’ll need – this is a house of men, and I’m not a flashy dresser, goodness knows.’
It was true. There was hardly anything in Martha’s wardrobe but two sober cotton dresses for summer, and a blue serge skirt for winter. Lily was downcast. ‘There’s ‘er upstairs, of course,’ Martha said, with mingled optimism and disapproval.
‘What – Annie Boon?’ Lily asked.
‘Well, she’s got the clothes, ain’t she?’ Martha said.
Lily looked at Martha very doubtfully. Annie Boon was a milliner, or so she claimed. Officially, she worked on making elaborate hats, which were given her as outwork by a fashionable West End store. It was true that she could sometimes be found trimming concoctions of flowers or feathers on a hot block. But Annie had a dubious man friend, and it was held, though never specifically stated, that he operated partly as her pimp, and that she, on an irregular basis, picked up men and took them somewhere for money. At all events, she wore rouge and lipstick and came back very late at night sometimes. To the respectable folk of French Street, this said everything. In a neighbourhood this poor, the doorway to vice and crime was wide and gaping and, when times were hard, not altogether uninviting. Respectability was not easy to maintain and was therefore clung to.
Lily saw straight away that borrowing the dubiously acquired finery of Annie Boon – and there was little doubt that good-natured Annie, if she was in, would lend it – in order to appear on stage at Cunningham’s without her parents’ knowledge would get her into worse trouble at home than she had ever experienced in her entire short life. She was surprised Martha even suggested it.
Martha looked at Lily and told her something she could hardly have appreciated for herself. ‘If you get anywhere in the theatre, Lily, you’ll be mixing with all sorts, and Charlie and Queenie aren’t going to like it anyway. If you want the clothes for tonight, we’ll borrow them from Annie and not say anything. You tell them what you like at home. If Queenie asks me straight out about it I won’t lie. But with any luck, she won’t ask. I know Annie’s in. I’ll go up and see her. You get a good wash at the sink before the menfolk come in.’
Lily gazed at her, wide-eyed.
‘I’m helping you,’ said Martha sombrely, ‘and it may be to my cost, but if you’ve got the chance, only one chance, to get out of the East End, you take it, gel. Just you take it.’ And she was gone.
Not long after, she was back with her arms full of clothing. The male Barringtons came back one by one to a home where meat pie and two veg seemed very low on Martha’s agenda. The kitchen and back bedroom had been commandeered as changing rooms. Lily was in and out, trying on dresses. The kettle was steaming on the stove and Martha was heating a pair of curling tongs on one of the gas jets. When James asked what was for tea, Martha simply said, ‘If you can’t wait, go and get some fish and chips.’
‘Ma!’ came the horrified appeal. Henry Barrington said only, ‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Martha.’
‘I think it wou
ld be more suitable,’ said Martha, ‘if somebody escorted Lily to the Rose and Crown and back. She ought not to be going through the streets on her own looking like this.’ By this time, Lily was seated on a kitchen chair, wearing one of Annie Boon’s more conservative dresses. Martha, having fought off her attempts to wear a red satin blouse and purple skirt with ruffles at the hem, had selected a simple white lawn dress. The bodice was low, so Martha decorously draped a white chiffon scarf over Lily’s shoulders, making an attractive knot in front. With this, Lily wore white silk stockings and a pair of Annie’s white shoes, the toes of which, as they were a size too big, Martha had stuffed with newspaper. Her husband and sons were astonished by her talent as a theatrical dresser.
‘I was young once, Henry,’ Martha firmly told her husband. ‘I expect you’ve forgotten.’ She said to Lily, ‘Women in the East End are like butterflies. You get a few short days being young and lovely. Then you die and come back as a plain old worker bee – nobody remembers your days of glory.’
She completed the curling of Lily’s hair, and refused to let her wear one of Annie’s spectacular hats, saying, ‘You’re a young girl and you must look like one.’ Then Lily was smuggled from the door of French Street between James and John and hurried off down the road to Cunningham’s Music Rooms.
After they had gone, Martha sat down on the kitchen chair with a puff, and Henry made a cup of tea. He shook his head. ‘God alone knows what Queenie and Charlie will say to us when they find you’ve aided and abetted that girl on to a stage at the back of a boozer – and wearing that woman’s clothes too. You’ll start a quarrel with the Strugnells that’ll never end. Charlie’s a good pal. What am I going to say to him?’
‘Say I’m on the change and that’s when women do peculiar things,’ said Martha stoutly. ‘Anyway, it’s all down to luck now, isn’t it? And how Lily manages tonight. Because if she does well, and Queenie sees money coming in, it’ll be all right, believe me. Otherwise the poor girl’s going to be black and blue for weeks.’
Lily, James and John made their way to the back gate of Cunningham’s erstwhile yard, where a roughly painted notice read ‘ARTISTES’. They climbed some wooden stairs and found themselves in the narrow wings of the stage. One artiste had arrived, a man in a straw boater and a blazer who, questioned by James, announced that he sang comic songs, then sank into melancholy silence. This was broken by the arrival through the artistes’ gate of a woman in a low-cut purple dress, accompanied by two terriers, which she proceeded, down in the yard, to dress in little purple coats. The dogs barked; she issued orders to them. Lily trembled. James, the taller of the twins, said, ‘I didn’t think it’d be like this.’
John said loyally, ‘Lily’s got to start somewhere,’
Tommy Cunningham, tall and skinny, with his father’s black hair, then came out with a lantern, which he hung on a hook from the tin roof of the wings. A piano started playing inside, beyond the curtains. ‘Dad says five minutes, Lily. Don’t forget, tonight’s more formal than last night – and there’s a big crowd. The pianist says can you sing “Just Like the Ivy”? He’s been working on it. Otherwise, where’s your music?’
‘Music? What music?’ asked Lily. ‘I didn’t have any yesterday.’
‘Christ, Lily. You don’t mean to say you’ve brought no music?’
There was an appalled silence, broken only by the barking of the dogs. Lily’s heart pounded. Why hadn’t she thought, or known, or asked? Would she have to go home again? Tommy’s voice broke into her racing thoughts. ‘It’s too late now. I’ll tell him to mug it. You’ll have to do the best you can. Do you know the words?’ She nodded. ‘That’s something.’ He added, even more discouragingly, ‘Lily – if they don’t like you, just get straight off the stage.’
Then she saw Jack Cunningham mounting the stage and pushing aside the curtains. His son pulled on a rope, and the curtains parted. In the area where the audience sat were some thirty people, seated at tables. Jack Cunningham said, ‘Tonight we have the pleasure of presenting you with Mr Arthur Rogers, the esteemed teller of many an amusing song, funny without being vulgar; Miss Delia Roberts and her entertaining canines – trick dogs to most of you; and later in the evening, Mrs Bluebell Ducoste, the famous contralto, who will be comingfrom another engagement to sing for you some of her popular operatic arias. But tonight, to begin our amusements, we have the pleasure and privilege of welcoming, in virtually her début performance, a local girl, loved by all, little – Lily Strugnell’ The pianist struck up, for some reason, the opening chords of a Chopin Polonaise, and Lily ran on to the stage. There was some sporadic clapping. And a true performer’s instinct rose surely in Lily, that combination of fear, the desire to please and the urge to sway, even dominate, an audience. She began to sing, ‘Just like the ivy, On the old garden wall…’ The pianist began in the wrong key, then corrected. Lily caught her audience, as she always would. Then she struck up ‘Oh Mr Porter’, surprising the pianist. Gaining confidence, she started to use her body, swaying, doing a little dance step and smiling broadly from pure pleasure, the sheer joy of what she was doing. The friendly audience clapped and shouted, ‘Encore!’ She almost sang again, but Tommy was in the wings, hissing, ‘Dad says come off.’ So she did. John and James were grinning, and Cunningham gave her a peck on the cheek. ‘I knew you had it in you, Lily, even when you were singing for pennies outside the pub. I’ll never forget Charlie’s face. You two can have one drink,’ he told James and John, ‘then you’ve got to take Lily home. Here’s half a crown, Lily. Come back Wednesday. Same terms.’
John and James saw her home. When she got in, Queenie was out.
‘I’m to go back Wednesday and I’ll get another half-crown,’ she told her father. ‘Please talk to Mum. Please.’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘But next week, you get a proper job.’
Queenie sulked but took the money. She gave Lily sixpence. Lily lied shamelessly and claimed to have appeared in Maggie Sullivan’s confirmation dress. The following week, of course, she was back at the Rose and Crown in Annie’s clothes. It came out years later that Lily Strugnell’s first serious stage appearance had been made in finery borrowed from a woman some called a prostitute.
Chapter Twelve
Lily was on her way up. Within weeks she’d become a favourite at Cunningham’s Music Rooms. People were coming to the Rose and Crown specially to see her. Of course, it was not a good engagement. All the music rooms were relics of the past; at Cunningham’s the patrons paid only coppers to occupy the tables, and the profits came not from the entrance money but from sales of beer, wine and spirits. Nevertheless, standards were observed. Single women were not allowed in; even parties of girls were sometimes refused entry, in the interests of propriety. The law was ever-vigilant about music halls, from places like Cunningham’s right up to the palatial theatres of the West End. The London County Council employed officials to visit these places of entertainment, as ordinary customers, and to report back if they saw any evidence of prostitution. At Cunningham’s, men were not allowed in without collars and ties, and rowdy behaviour was banned. However, in spite of all the rules, the crowd was noisy and sometimes drunk, and it was not unheard of for ladies in the audience to leave with gentlemen they had not previously met.
Six weeks after her first appearance, Lily was getting a pound a week for appearing twice-nightly six evenings a week. Some of this money she insisted on spending on a dress, a short, white, flounced affair, coming to mid-calf, and a little white parasol. Some she spent on theatre trips with Charlie, who brought her home each night from the Rooms. They went to any music hall Lily could reach between her own two performances. She saw Vesta Tilly, the male impersonator; Marie Lloyd, Eugene Stratton; all the greats. She learned their songs and sang them. Charlie began to say that all this going to and fro was wearing him out, though secretly he enjoyed it. After a week or two of Lily’s new life, Queenie began to relax. Even if Lily was reclaiming five shillings of her weekly wage for
herself, the remaining three-quarters was more than she would have been paid at Warren’s. And her prospects were infinitely brighter. Everyone knew about the fabulous salaries really famous artistes could command – hundreds of pounds a week, paid in gold sovereigns.
Cunningham’s profits increased. On Saturday nights there were people standing at the Music Rooms to see Lily flirting with her parasol, dancing, shouting, turning her back to the audience and looking over her shoulder, singing, ‘Ta Ra Ra Boom De-ay’. Sometimes the room was so full that Jack Cunningham had to refuse entry to late-comers.
One evening in late September, sharing a pint with Charlie after the show had closed, Jack said confidentially, ‘It goes against the grain to say this, Charlie, because your Lily’s bringing in the customers, but you ought to get the girl some smarter engagements than this. I don’t want her to stop performing here, but she could go further, that’s what I think.’
‘She’s only just thirteen,’ Charlie said.
Cunningham shrugged. ‘There’s children of six – younger – on stage. You know that. And Lily’s a good little performer. She’s a draw, but she needs experience she can’t get here.’
‘I know,’ Charlie said.
‘With any business, you’re either expanding or contracting. You can’t stay still.’
‘My Lily’s not a business,’ Charlie answered.
‘No – to you she’s your little girl, and this is as if she’s singing and dancing in the kitchen. But you’ve got to think ahead.’
‘What’s the next step then?’ asked Charlie.
‘Sometimes you ask agents and managers to see a performance,’ Cunningham said. Then, as Lily came in in her street clothes, ready to go – Mrs Cunningham had been persuaded to lend her her front room, above the pub, to change in every night – he broke off and said, ‘Right, Lily, all ready for your beauty sleep?’
Elizabeth and Lily Page 12
