On a July day in the kitchen at French Street, she was cramming all her clothes – two dresses, two pairs of outdoor shoes, her stage shoes and two pairs of drawers, one pair deplorably stained, with torn lace at the bottom and a rusty safety pin at the top to hold them up – into a large cardboard box on the kitchen floor. Then she threw in an old overcoat and, on top of that, a big jar of cold cream, a pot of rouge, a comb and some greasepaint. She turned and took down a picture attached by a nail to the wall behind her bed. It was a photograph showing the music-hall star Marie Lloyd in a big hat. She folded it up and tucked it under the overcoat.
Meanwhile, her mother shouted, Rose stood by the kitchen door, watching, and her brothers sat at the kitchen table, their blond heads together, puzzling out a story in an old copy of the Police Gazette.
‘I don’t know what your father will say,’ cried Queenie. ‘You’re only fourteen years old.’
After her success at the Cambridge, more engagements had followed – Hoxton, Fulham, Brixton – until Lily was working several nights a week. Her mother usually had to go with her. Queenie began to grumble about the late hours and the long journeys on trams and buses this involved. She was forced to sit in uncomfortable dressing rooms while Lily, flushed with excitement, ran on and off stage, and to endure Lily’s monologues on the way back, about the show, the other artistes, how she had fared with the audience, how she could improve her performance, how the orchestra had helped or hindered.
In addition, Lily did not have work all the time and even when she was working, she was at home all day. The prolonged contact with Queenie led to rows. Lily spent much of her time at Maggie Sullivan’s, often helping out behind the counter of the bakery, but it didn’t keep her and her mother apart for long enough to bring peace to the crowded household.
So Lily was moving out.
‘You wicked, ungrateful girl,’ Queenie cried.
‘The unfortunate woman,’ Dan read out slowly, ‘was found strangled in an alley in a not – not – well, a something area of London’s East End. Her killer appeared to have fled after…’
‘Will you two be quiet,’ shouted Queenie. ‘Lily, if you leave this house with that box, don’t bother to come home ever again.’
Lily picked up the box, and a shawl into which she’d rolled other items of property, and walked to the door. She said, ‘I’ll see you next Sunday, Ma. Rose, come round one afternoon in the week after work. I’ll give you a slap-up tea.’ And she stepped out into the street.
She carried her box up the road and crossed the High Street, attracting attention as she went. ‘Saw you last night at the Empire, Lily,’ called a lad selling vegetables from a stall. ‘I’ve written a song. D’you want to hear it?’
‘No hurry,’ Lily called back, moving on with the box. A man in a light tweed suit removed his hat and said with mock courtesy, ‘Can I help you with your box, Miss Strugnell? I see you are removing.’
‘Why, thank you very much, Mr Nadel,’ Lily responded equally formally. ‘My new apartments, are but a step from here.’
He took the box. Lily led him into a side street with small houses on either side. ‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘Number seven, Macready Street.’
A curly head came out of an upstairs window. ‘I’ll throw the key down,’ called the girl, who was about nineteen and had big blue eyes.
Lily opened the door with the key and walked upstairs ahead of Mr Nadel to a narrow landing. There were two doors here, one of which was opened quickly by Lily’s fellow tenant. Inside the room was an old sofa, an old, unmatched armchair, and a small table by the window with a cane chair beside it. The wallpaper was dark green and covered with huge purple flowers. A trunk on the floor overflowed with clothes. Lily turned to the other girl. ‘May I present Mr Nadel, the well-known local bookmaker. And Mr Nadel – please meet Colleen O’Kelly, the Limerick Nightingale.’
‘My stage name,’ said the young woman, holding out her hand to Mr Nadel. ‘To my friends I’m Francine Haughey. Pleased to meet you.’
‘You don’t sound Irish, if I may say so,’ Mr Nadel remarked.
‘My mother and father are, but I’ve never been nearer to Ireland than Bethnal Green Road,’ she said frankly.
‘The Limerick Nightingale,’ Mr Nadel pronounced with relish. ‘I shall be watching the theatrical bills with anticipation and shall make a particular point of attending your next performance.’
‘Brixton Empire, on the fourth,’ Francine said.
Mr Nadel made his farewells to Lily and Francine, then walked to the door, turned and said, ‘Goodbye again, ladies, and remember, if there are any further services I can ever render, call on me’
‘My God, Lily,’ Francine said when he’d gone, throwing herself into a chair, ‘where did you find that specimen?’
I’ve known him for years,’ Lily said. ‘He runs my dad’s bets to the bookie’s office on the corner of Frampton Street. He offered to help with my traps.’ She laughed. ‘He likes you, Francine.’
Francine Haughey, in spite of appearing at second- and third-rank music halls all over London doing an Irish jig, wearing a roguish smile and with her skirt pulled up over her knees, was a most respectable young woman, planning marriage to a greengrocer and saving to that end. She hoped that sharing lodgings with Lily Strugnell would work out. Her own parents had taken over a pub in Essex, which meant that she could not live with them any more. To move in with a fellow artiste made economic sense, but Lily was only fourteen, and Francine hoped she would be sensible. She looked with some apprehension at Lily’s cardboard box.
Francine and Lily had met when they were both bottom of the bill in Camberwell. They’d bumped into each other at a nearby café where they’d gone separately to refresh themselves between the first and second houses. Francine had demanded a couple of slices of beef with potatoes. Lily had been having only coffee. ‘I’m too nervous to eat till it’s over,’ she’d confessed. Francine, who had watched her act earlier, said, ‘Well. You put a lot into it.’
She had watched Lily trembling in the wings in her little-girl costume, a sprigged dress, white openwork tights and little white shoes; had seen her force herself on stage like a soldier ordered to charge, then witnessed the transformation as the audience roared approval of the small figure with fair hair hanging down her back, ending in a big blue bow, holding a little bouquet of flowers in her hand. Standing there on the stage Lily was apparently shy, at once a child and the mockery of a child. Then, somehow strengthened and reinforced by the audience, the girl in white had launched herself into ‘Her Golden Hair Was Hanging Down Her Back’, the tale of an innocent girl coming to London and full of oblique references to her fall from grace, imparted by nods and glances and a saucy flirt of the hips. The audience roared again. Then followed a sad number, and Lily came off stage limp as a lettuce, to more roars of applause.
Francine chewed on her beef and said, ‘You ought to eat, Lily. You need to keep your strength up between houses. Next thing, you start taking a little port to keep you up – and you know where that leads you.’ Lily did. It was bad enough doing two, three houses a night at the same theatre. But popular artists might do two or three performances a night at different places, galloping in cabs from Hackney to Brixton and then to Leicester Square all on one night, often reinforcing themselves with tots of whisky, brandy or gin as they went. Lily told Francine, ‘I’m young. I can do it.’
‘I’m not saying you can’t now – but later…’ Francine cautioned.
‘Now is what I’m interested in,’ Lily told her. ‘Later is later. Later takes care of itself.’
Francine shook her head.
‘No,’ Lily went on. ‘What galls me is that after the last house I’m famished. If I go off with the others we end in the pub. If I go somewhere for some grub, half the time I get pestered. If I go home, I get nothing anyway.’
‘Couldn’t your mother leave something out for you?’ suggested Francine.
‘What?’ Lily crie
d. ‘With my sister sleeping in the kitchen? If Ma did leave me something, which she wouldn’t, Rose’d finish it before I got in.’
‘Where do you sleep?’ asked Francine.
‘In the kitchen with Rose,’ responded Lily.
Francine was puzzled. ‘You must be earning good money. Couldn’t you all move somewhere bigger?’ she suggested.
This idea had apparently never occurred to Lily, and she did not like it. ‘What, me,’ she said, ‘pay the rent for that lot?’
Francine was shocked that Lily did not feel a duty to share her good fortune with her own family.
Lily gave her reasons. ‘I hand enough out to them as it is. It’s: Lily, the rent’s due; Lily, the lads’ boots are all wore through; Lily this and Lily that all the bloody time. Once I took on the rent of a house, I’d sink under the weight of them.’
‘I’m looking for a place,’ volunteered Francine. ‘My parents are moving away, but they’re worried about me living on my own—’
‘You’re on,’ Lily said promptly.
‘Nothing fancy – I’m saving up,’ Francine warned.
‘Fancy? I don’t know the meaning of the word,’ Lily retorted quickly. ‘Not with six Strugnells in two rooms.’
So they took the two top rooms in Macready Street and paid the landlady, a widow who lived downstairs, ten shillings and sixpence, the first week’s rent in advance.
But Francine was already becoming doubtful about Lily. The convenience of the arrangement had been uppermost in her mind when she made it. She and Lily were in the same profession and kept the same hours, and if they were working the same theatre at night they could share cabs home and split the fare. But as Francine unpacked a teapot and some cups from her trunk and popped down to borrow a little milk from the landlady, she began to have reservations. Lily, her unpresentable luggage still lying on the floor, had flung herself into an armchair with her feet up, her eyes fixed in admiration on some new purple leather boots she was wearing. She seemed to feel no need to unpack, discuss their new living arrangements, or help out with the tea things. Francine began to wonder if the disadvantages of Lily might not outweigh the economies she made by sharing with her.
Francine, while borrowing milk, invited the landlady up for a cup of tea. She and Francine began to talk. ‘I always think this is such a nice room. You get a lot of sun,’ the landlady said. ‘I expect you’ll be putting a few of your own little things around when you’re settled. Be a nice room to entertain friends.’ As she spoke she glanced round the room at Francine’s trunk and Lily’s box.
‘That’s what I was thinking, Mrs Biggs, said Francine. ‘I must introduce you to my fiancé, Raymond. We’re planning to get married in April. Of course, he’ll only be here at suitable times.’ She took a blue glass vase from her trunk and put it on the table.
‘Nice,’ admired Mrs Biggs. ‘Well, naturally, I wouldn’t like your intended here at all hours. Things like that, however innocent, can give the house a bad name.’
Lily, who had accepted a cup of tea but had stayed motionless in her chair, staring into space, now intervened. ‘Not much chance of him hanging around in here at night anyway, seeing as I’ll be sleeping here. Of course, I can’t answer for what goes on in the bedroom.’
This remark caused some consternation. Francine said, ‘I thought we’d share the bedroom.’
‘Only one bed,’ Lily pointed out.
Mrs Biggs said quickly, ‘There’s no room for another.’
Francine said, ‘The bed’s wide.’
‘I didn’t move in here to share a bed,’ announced Lily. ‘Nor a bedroom neither. I’ve had enough of that. I’ll sleep here. You can take the bedroom, Francine.’
Francine’s vision of the little sitting room where she’d thought to entertain her fiancé was threatened. She pursed her lips. Mrs Biggs said, uncomfortably, ‘I’d have thought you’d find it more convenient to share the bed, like my last lodgers did. Nice girls, worked at the London Hospital. That way you’ve got a tidy room to sit in. Still, theatricals are different, I suppose. Got their own ideas.’
Lily, having stated her position, had fallen silent again. Then she stood up. ‘I think I’ll go out and buy a couple of hooks to hang my clothes on,’ she announced. ‘They’ll go on that cupboard door over there.’ She pointed to the corner, where there was a long cupboard, built into an alcove. Mrs Biggs thought of protesting but did not.
Francine said, ‘Couldn’t you put your clothes in the bedroom? It would look tidier.’
‘No,’ said Lily. ‘I want my things in my room the way I like them. I’m sick and tired of sharing.’ She went out. There was the sound of her feet on the stairs and the door banging.
The landlady turned to Francine. ‘She’s got a very decided way with her, your friend,’ she observed. ‘Are you sure you two are going to get along?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Francine glumly.
‘Well, it’s not my business, as long as you pay the rent,’ Mrs Biggs observed, in a voice containing some warning. ‘Let me know if you want anything.’ And she left, reflecting that from what she knew of life, her new lodgers would not remain long together. The younger one, Lily, seemed to be a slum child, with no decent standards at all, and only about fourteen years old by the looks of her. Her parents could be no better than she was, letting her set up house on her own at that age. Perhaps they couldn’t stop her. Judging by first impressions, Mrs Biggs reflected, Lily Strugnell was a thoroughly dreadful girl.
The first house on Tuesday at the Victoria Theatre, a small south London music hall, was seldom well attended. However, on this Tuesday the theatre was nearly full. The stalls were crowded, the balcony crammed to capacity. The manager had been astonished as the place filled up. Now he was furious. The curtain was late going up. There was restiveness in the stalls, and shouts came from the balcony. The shouts at least told the manager, Harry Hyams, why the house was so full. ‘Come on, Lily, what’s keeping yer, gel?’, ‘Come out here, gel, and give us a song,’ the audience was crying out, amid boos and catcalls.
‘For the love of God, Miss Strugnell,’ said the manager, rushing on stage, sweating. ‘For the love of God, get rid of this man. This is most unprofessional.’
Lily, smiling even more broadly as she heard the cries from beyond the curtain, took no notice. She was poised against a backcloth depicting a park with two girls on swings. She wore a white frock showing her ankles. A straw hat with a few violets tucked in the hatband was perched on one side of her head. She was leaning on a white parasol, her behind slightly stuck out, looking over her shoulder with a cheeky smile on her face. The photographer, under his cloth, pressed the button, and the camera whirred. Lily straightened as the photographer rapidly took out his slide, packed it away, and started to remove the camera from the tripod.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Hyams,’ Lily said unrepentantly. She skipped to the side of the stage. Liza Mae, in lights with her two performing dogs, rushed on stage. As she passed Lily, she hissed in a penetrating whisper, ‘I see your family’s in tonight.’ And she swung a quick kick at Lily’s leg, which missed. The curtain rose.
‘You seem to be very popular, Miss Strugnell,’ the manager hissed into Lily’s face, ‘but if you ever, ever again stop the curtain from being raised at the proper time, I shall make sure you don’t appear on any stage in London for a year.’
‘If you ever, ever put me next to the bottom of the bill again, you’ll get the sack from this one,’ retorted Lily, and swung along the corridor to the small dressing room all the artistes shared. There, Dunedin’s Ballet Girls, a troupe of fine, buxom women who performed slow ballet steps to the strains of Les Sylphides, wearing short ballet skirts and tights, were getting dressed and made up. They were not very good dancers – the display of leg was the main point of their performance. Two of them sat on an old sofa, one mending her ballet shoes, the other feeding her baby. Another woman was undressing down to her corsets. The remaining two were sharing a glass of al
e by the dressing room’s one mirror. A boy dashed in, shouting, ‘Ready, Miss Strugnell.’
‘What’s happened to Liza Mae and her Amazing Canine Helpers?’ Lily asked.
‘Going down very badly. They keep on a-shouting for yer. Manager says get on and get it over.’ He confided, ‘Next house, you’re higher up the bill.’
Lily knew when to pay for loyalty. She pulled up her skirt, produced sixpence from her stocking top and handed it to him. He handled the warm coin, said ‘Ooh’ appreciatively, and disappeared.
‘His eyes were out on stalks,’ observed the baby-feeding ballet girl
‘How old are you?’ challenged the shoe-mender, nipping off a thread with her teeth.
‘Fourteen,’ Lily replied.
‘My Gawd. You’re growing up fast,’ said the dancer.
‘My advice,’ said the mother, ‘is, if you want to get to the top and stay there, keep your drawers on and don’t start drinking. Success can go to your head, you know. And there’s plenty out there who’ll take advantage.’
‘As you should know,’ another dancer remarked, eyeing the baby at her breast.
‘Thanks for the tip,’ said Lily, and ran on stage to a roar. As she sang and pranced she could feel the complete attention of the audience, feeding her and giving her energy. The manager stood in the wings, eyes narrowed, a speculative look on his face. He sensed that triumphant feeling from the audience to the performer, and from the performer back to the audience, which meant that nothing could go wrong.
At the end of her comic song, Lily flung her head back, looked to the gallery and launched, in her high, true voice, into ‘The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery’. The audience paused, almost in mid-laugh, and listened to the song. The words were modern, about love and loss; the tune like that of a folk song. The men and women of the small, crowded streets of south London, labourers, tradesmen, clerks and typists, still remembered the countryside they or their parents had come from. Lily recalled for them, no one could tell how, the Sussex hayfields, the Kent orchards, the Surrey hills. As she sang, she was a country girl in love, singing on a hill somewhere, with larks overhead. She had moved the audience from laughter to seriousness in two bars of music, and not lost her grip on them for an instant.
Elizabeth and Lily Page 17
