An East End Girl

by Maggie Ford

  She chose a short aria from La Bohème, but with no accompaniment it lacked magic, at least to her ears. When she had finished, he nodded as though to himself.

  ‘Signorine, you have a nice voice. Attractive. Very pretty…’

  He broke off to regard her as she stared at him, slowly beginning to comprehend what he was trying to say, the benevolent, almost sad smile he gave her already speaking for him.

  ‘I am sorry. It is only…a pretty voice. Very attractive. But…’

  The heavy shoulders shrugged as only an Italian’s can – even for a man so ample – full of expression that Daisy now clearly read.

  ‘For opera, a voice must have…more – much more! I must tell you, signorine, that I can detect nothing to reassure myself that this voice will ever reach the exactitudes required of an opera singer – not even for chorus. Under rigors as it will have to face, it breaks. There is a weakness. Your tutor was misguided. Your voice, sadly, with all the training, all the coaching it can be given, has no future in opera. I do not say you cannot sing – but in the Royal Opera House? Is not the place. Teatro alla Scala, Weiner Straatsoper, New York Metropolitan Opera House – none of these, my dear signorine, I regret. Your voice, it is not for the great opera houses of the world if that is what you had hoped for. Maybe…something less demanding?’

  Again he shrugged, his expression sorrowful. He obviously felt he was tearing the heart out of an aspiring singer, sounding her death knell. If only he knew. Even though what he’d said fell like a dull thud on her ears with the aspect of a vague insult, it was what she had half wanted to hear. Madam Noreah had been merely carried away.

  ‘Will I be any good, anywhere?’ she asked, her expression sombre. She saw his face brighten with relief.

  ‘In something lighter – why not? It is a pleasing voice.’

  Getting back into her coat, she gave him a brave smile, taking the thick hand he offered. ‘Thank you for telling me the truth.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ he said as he followed her to the door and opened it for her, and she was sure she saw the bulbous brown eyes moisten.

  Even so, she guessed he had most likely forgotten her by the time she re-entered Covent Garden tube station. But by the time she emerged at Tottenham Court Road, she had definitely forgotten him; in her hand a copy of the theatre guide she had picked up at a kiosk in which, by chance, she had noticed that Rose Marie showing at Drury Lane Theatre was still open for some auditions for the chorus.

  By the time she came out of the stage door several hours later, her excitement almost choked her. Hat and coat off, she’d sung those songs they’d asked for, surprised by the quality of her own voice, as well as by her lack of nerves. She supposed they had all been got rid of while facing the redoubtable Signor Citti. Moreover, she hadn’t even dared believe they would want her; had gone in merely on a whim to see what it was like. And now she came out, part of the chorus in a new West End musical! It was hard to believe. But then, had she not been heard by a one-time opera singer who, in his own way, had praised her voice? Praise enough to give her confidence. In time there’d be bigger, more important parts.

  Daisy’s brown eyes glowed, already seeing her name in lights. From there, who knows? Foreign travel? Might even end up in Paris, where Cissy had said she was going. That would make Cissy Farmer look sick, finding her there after running off to France as though she were the only one to do it. Well, she would find out that she wasn’t the only one to take that big step into the unknown.

  Cissy’s first sight of Paris had her completely bowled over. She, who had seen no other city but London, who’d hardly travelled beyond its boundaries apart from odd day trips to Southend or a week in Margate or Ramsgate, now found herself staring at her first ever foreign capital as, with their cases trundled to waiting taxis by a facteur (as Langley called the railway porter), she and the others surged from Gare St Lazare railway station, Langley with his arm about her.

  The first sound to escape her lips was a sigh, ‘Oh-h-h…’ in her amazement only just avoiding a natural reversion to that old expletive ‘Cor!’, used before her tutor Madam Noreah had ever got to her.

  Langley gave her a smile, rather as though he and not Napoleon had been responsible for the layout of Paris, and his arm tightened about her in a possessive grip. ‘I take it you approve, darling.’

  ‘I’ve never seen anything quite like…’ Words failed her as her gaze came to rest on a stall directly outside the station, heaped with such banks of flowers. An elderly aproned woman stood bunching a huge mass of them together for a male customer. In London, men on their own would never dream of buying flowers in the street. In the West End of course, but there was always some woman on their arm.

  Nearby a policeman in a smart navy blue uniform and pillbox hat, was consulting a notebook, his manner one of calm nonchalance. English bobbies were calm, Cissy reflected, but certainly not nonchalant. It was all so different to England.

  But it was the hubbub that struck her the most, swarms of open taxi cabs, honking horns filling the air with continuous noise, yet still failing to drown the sounds of music floating from somewhere. It wasn’t barrel organ music as in London or the kerbside drum and cornet blare of ex-servicemen looking for pennies, but a lively accordion which its owner played as though for the sheer joy of it rather than money.

  Cissy took a deep breath. Here were those same aromas she’d first noticed on setting foot in France; newly baked bread, freshly ground coffee, flowers. The same hot sunlight poured down from a pearly blue sky to glow upon the grey stone of every building. And what buildings! Every single window had its wrought-iron balcony, not enough to stand on but enough for pots of scarlet geraniums. Even with walls of ageing plaster each building managed to convey a sense of romance.

  ‘It all looks so…’ Unable to find words, she shook her head in disbelief. Langley laughed.

  ‘Paris will take your breath away, Cissy. She will capture your heart, darling, and you’ll never want to leave. That’s Paris.’

  Seven young people were squashing into one taxi, Miles, fatter than the others, was left to go with the baggage in a second one. Cissy, her blue-grey eyes like saucers at everything she saw from her perch on Langley’s lap, marvelled at how they managed not to crash into the hundreds of other cabs in the process.

  ‘Where are we staying?’ she managed to ask, without Effie beside her putting her spoke in.

  ‘Montparnasse,’ Langley said.

  ‘Where’s that?’

  He chuckled, vaguely patronisingly. ‘We’ll be there soon, darling. Meanwhile you just enjoy the sights. We’re turning into Boulevard Haussman. This is where I’ll take you shopping, here and Rue de Rivoli and Rue Royale. There’s the Opera.’ He gave a flourish towards its domed grandeur as they circled round it into what he said was Avenue de L’Opera, from there pointing out one impressive building after another like a paid tour guide.

  How well he pronounced those French names, Cissy thought, drinking in every one and wondering if she’d ever learn French enough to make him proud of her.

  ‘They call the area where we will be living the Quarter,’ he explained. ‘Loads of Americans go there. Artists live there. Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway. You’ll see them all.’

  She had heard of the first two – vaguely. Writers, poets, something like that. The third name didn’t ring familiar.

  ‘Who’s Ernest Hemingway?’ she asked.

  ‘My God!’ Effie beside her burst out, as if to say doesn’t she know anything? Her painted eyes raised heavenward.

  ‘A new writer,’ Langley said quickly, leaning forward a fraction to give Effie a straight glance. The movement made Cissy feel suddenly, wonderfully, protected. ‘Talented, though. He’ll be famous one day, but lots of people have probably not yet heard that much of him. Don’t you agree, Effie, darling?’ he added pointedly.

  Effie’s red lips opened to retort, but there came a piercing yell from Faith, scrunched against Miles.
/>
  ‘Oh! Oh! Oh, I have cramp in my foot!’ The moment of tension was broken. ‘Dickie – get off it!’

  ‘I’m not on your silly foot,’ protested Dickie. ‘Your shoes are too tight. You’re always getting cramp because you wear them too tight.’

  ‘You had your foot on it.’ Faith had her foot in the air, shoeless, and was rubbing it desperately. ‘Oh, oh,’ she sighed, the pain fading.

  ‘My foot wasn’t anywhere near yours.’

  ‘It was!’ Ths small round face, beautifully made-up, was filled with pique. ‘It’s a good job you moved when you did, or I’d have had to throw myself out of this cab with the pain. I’d have landed in the road and most probably been run over! All because you weren’t caring how much room you were taking. How would you have felt then?’

  ‘Simply ghastly, darling!’

  ‘So I should think.’

  Cissy smiled at the disruption, already dissipating. Wonderful to be part of it all: the brief squabbles, the sharp little disputes; the shrill laughter, the excitement of silly capers; the contentment of lolling at the end of the day, the apparently profound observations idly murmured, no one truly listening; finally going wearily off to bed in whatever hotel they’d stayed – four rooms, four couples.

  She had been so nervous as Langley closed their door on the others. There had been a large four-poster bed towards which he had taken her, sitting her down gently. Standing in front of her he had removed his bow tie and slipped out of his jacket, leisurely, easily, all the time smiling reassurance at her as though none of this was new to him. But it had been new to her.

  Not trusting herself to speak, aware that what was happening was what had been expected of her all along and that she had known all along what to expect, her heart thumping heavily, she’d had no idea how she was meant to conduct herself. The most vivid thing she now recalled was herself praying that he wouldn’t see just how uncertain she’d been on how to conduct herself.

  He had bent, kissed her lightly on the lips. His, just a little cool, had sent something almost like an electric shock through her, making her draw in her breath sharply. As his hands began easing her loose-fitting summer dress over her head, she’d even been prompted to automatically shift her weight from the bed to let it slide upward. His hands around her back had slipped the hooks of her brassiere, and released of their fashionable flattening restriction, her small tight breasts had leapt at him in such a way that her first instinct had been to hide them with her hands. But he had gently laid her back onto the counterpane, his body on hers, his lips growing firm. Camiknicks slipped down over her ankles, she’d lain beneath him, oddly surprised that she was naked.

  Her first time – it would never be forgotten. Fear – that would never be forgotten either. But then came such a feeling, apprehension smoothed away by such a sensation she could never have described.

  There had been a moment when her mind had cried, what if I get pregnant? But in the midst of arousing her to a pitch when all thought of such things had been swept aside, he’d turned sharply away leaving her momentarily bewildered as he appeared occupied by something she couldn’t see. When he had turned back to her, it was as though the small interruption had never been, but she knew immediately the reason of his turning away from her. Knowing herself protected, loving him for his care of her, the rest had been wonderful. Afterwards, she had slept in his arms, slept soundly, and the following morning with the sunshine streaming through lacy curtains to light the whole room with misty glitter, he’d made love to her again.

  On the train to Paris, they had all had separate sleeping berths, but she was now established in everyone’s eyes as Langley’s partner, as Effie was Dickie Verhoevan’s, Pamela was Ginger’s, and Faith was Miles’s.

  And now they were rattling along boulevards and across the wide Pont Neuf with its views of the Notre Dame on her left, through narrow cobbled streets of romantic, flaking-walled houses, even here every window had its low wrought-iron railing and glowing geraniums, soon to be tumbling out of the taxi at whatever address she was being taken to, there to share Langley’s bed, she hoped, for ever.

  Chapter Twelve

  Eddie stood on the tug London Enterprise as she rocked gently on a slack tide. The tug, Clyde-built, a bit battered from her fifteen years service, and a bit on the light side too at 95 tons, was going to take more of a bite out of his inheritance than he’d have liked. All he hoped was that he’d be able to recoup some of his outlay with work before the craft began eating into the remainder of his money with maintenance and other expenses.

  He’d been over her with a fine-tooth comb, taken her for a run up the river, but could find nothing radically wrong with her, apart from a certain amount of rust and a boiler that needed a bit of going over in the not too distant future, but hopefully not a refit which would make this less of a good deal than it first seemed.

  The owner who had had her for some ten years, had perhaps not been as gentle with her as he might, by the look of her, but on the whole she appeared moderately sound if Eddie had read between the lines of the marine survey report, all survey reports by tradition making a craft look worse than she was.

  Standing on deck with her owner, a Mr Glover, an old salt on the brink of retiring, Eddie knew by now that this unpretentious-looking tug was as much as he could afford if he wanted to start up business with a bit of capital left for hidden expenditure. He was beginning to feel excited, but he kept his face expressionless. The owner, on the other hand, was certainly no poker player, his need to sell showing plainly, causing Eddie to wonder what the man knew that he didn’t.

  ‘Twelve ’undred,’ the man said. ‘Can’t let ’er go fer less.’

  He had already come down from fifteen – a somewhat ambitious price, Eddie thought, considering her condition. Eddie had shaken his head, his first offer of nine hundred pounds being all he felt he dared afford, which was still a lot of money to him. He now let his gaze sweep the deck from stem to stern, pursing his lips dubiously in a time-honoured manner. One part of him wanted the owner to drop his price to that first offer, but if truth be known, the other part of him didn’t. If the man stood his ground, then he’d feel much more certain of the tug’s worth. If the man dropped his price too readily, then would come the nagging question, what was wrong with the thing? Yet he couldn’t come anywhere near meeting that first asking price. He tried one more time.

  ‘Cash,’ he reminded. ‘No hanging around for loans to be granted – that sort of thing. But I can’t go much beyond my first offer.’

  The man’s lips tightened, even though his eyes, sharpened by years of gazing at horizons, glittered, Eddie interpreted, with fear of standing his ground too firmly and maybe losing a potential buyer. Seeing it, Eddie was beset by another doubt. Had other buyers turned the craft down, seeing faults he was missing and was he the idiot the man had seen coming?

  His expression impassive, he watched the other’s begin to register obstinacy, and felt more heartened – even more heartened as the man’s tone, for all his obduracy, began to betray a hint of pleading.

  ‘An’ I can’t come down any more neither, Mr Bennett. As I told yer, I ’ave ter retire. I don’t wan’ter, but I ’ave ter. Me ’ealth, y’see. But I can’t let ’er go fer nuffink. I’ve got ter live.’

  Eddie nodded. An old waterman, age nudging him off the river that had been his life. It was sad in its way. It came to them all in time. Even so, the stubborn effort to bargain convinced him that he was on to a good thing after all, but it was worth standing his ground.

  ‘I suppose I could go to a thousand. But that ’as to be my very last offer, Mr Glover. And as I said, cash on the nail.’

  The man’s features contorted as he gnawed his lips for so long that Eddie had the feeling he was trying to eat through them. The crinkled brow finally folded into even deeper creases of defeat.

  ‘All right, then. I’ll ’ave ter take it. Done!’

  The leathery, wrinkled features retained their d
ejected expression as the man spat on his hand and held it out. Eddie likewise spat on his and clasped the offered paw, wishing now that he had gone up to only nine hundred and fifty instead of the thousand.

  All that remained was the signing over of the papers over a pint in the nearest pub. It had been a good deal, he was sure of it. The owner of a tug, and barring a quick overhaul and a slap of paint, he was in business. A one- man band of a business, he’d be competing with the big companies for work. It was a risk he was prepared for, risk his only panacea to the nagging constant of Cissy.

  Elation managed to stay with him as he drank down the pint he had bought, but the moment they parted company to go their separate ways, it faded like the sun going behind a cloud; in its place, the despondency that had hardly left him these four months.

  It was his dad’s badgering that had finally made him put to use the money left him. For months there had seemed no point bothering now Cissy wasn’t here. At night his chest would feel as though it had a ton of bricks on it. He would awake each dark autumn morning with such a depth of despair that his first word of the day was ‘Shit…’ spoken aloud and venomously, a cry for relief but more like a death wail. His first thought each morning, and his last one at night was of her. And if sleep did obliterate her image for a while, it only needed him to wake up to have her dancing there in his head again. In the empty life Cissy had left him, buying the tug had been the only bit of relief, but now the business settled, the old void returned worse than ever. Yet he had to push himself onward in the hope, always the hope, that she would return some day. He had to have something to offer her when that day came. He’d never lose sight of that.

  He renamed the tug Cicely, after Cissy. His father said he was a bloody fool doing that, childish; told him to pull himself together.

  ‘Time goes on,’ he comforted, which to Eddie wasn’t that greatly comforting. ‘You’ll forget all about ’er after a while. After a while, son, you’ll meet someone else just as good as ’er, an’ get married.’