That could never happen now. Martin must despise her as much as everybody else did, and probably more. Charlie had ruined her, ruined her reputation, destroyed her baby; he had ruined everything. She sighed grievously as she remembered the day her father had called him a whoremaster, and wondered if there was any point in leaving him now that everybody she cared about knew she was his whore. ‘Yes,’ she whispered to herself, ‘there is; because he’ll want me again soon, and when he starts on me I’ll want him, and soon I’ll be with child again. The only way to avoid that is to avoid Charlie.’
She pulled out the plug and stepped out of the bath to dry herself. Once dressed, she retrieved her nightdress case and Maria’s shoes. She put them in a bag with a few other items of clothing, put her two sovereigns and her postal order in her pocket, went downstairs and walked unnoticed out of the front door. She didn’t stop walking until she reached the songwriter’s house, then deliberately not allowing herself time for second thoughts she lifted the heavy brass knocker and rapped loudly. When his wife answered, she said, ‘Will you help me? I’m ringing the curtain down on Charlie Parkinson, and I’ve nowhere else to go.’
Chapter 18
‘I mean I’ve left you, Charlie,’ she said, stepping on to the thick blue carpet of his hallway. ‘I’ve come to get the rest of my clothes and to ask you where you’ve got me booked for the week after next.’
‘An end to this nonsense, my hinny,’ he said, face grim. ‘Now take off your hat and coat and tell me where you’ve been.’
‘I’ve been at Mr and Mrs Burn’s. I can tell you that without taking my things off. He’s waiting in the cab for me. He’ll fetch a constable if I’m not outside again in five minutes.’
‘The devil he will! The impudence of the fellow! How dare he make my private affairs his business?’ Charlie exclaimed, but she caught a wariness in those calculating blue eyes.
‘It’s my private affairs he’s making his business, because I asked him to. Can I get my things, please?’ she asked, her confidence increasing as she saw his diminish.
‘You may. By all means.’ He waved her on. She doubted he would have done that had she been alone. Dreading his following her, she ran upstairs to tear all her things out of the wardrobes and throw them into bags as hastily as she could. When she turned to heave them downstairs, he was behind her. She cried out in alarm as he took the bags from her and held her in his arms.
‘No, no, hinny, this won’t do. You mustn’t leave,’ he murmured, kissing her ear. ‘You need me, and I can’t do without you. You know that as well as I do.’
She wrenched herself free. ‘I’m going. I felt tied to you because you’re my first and you’ll probably be my only one now. I’m ashamed to admit it, but you were right. I couldn’t help liking what you did with me. But you’re cruel, Charlie, and I would rather join a nunnery than spend another five minutes with you. If I never get another man as long as I live, I never want to be with you again. You’ve nearly driven me mad and I don’t love you. You were right about that an’ all, I never did. I’ll end up in an asylum if I stay with you any longer.’
‘Calm yourself, and think of the practicalities, Ginny. How long will it be before they tire of your intrusion into their household? What will you do then? And who’s to look after your affairs, get your bookings, manage your accounts, pay your tax, and all the hundred other little services I’ve performed for you? I doubt if George is capable of it, even if he had the will.’
‘I’m going, Charlie.’
‘Go then, and be damned.’ He shrugged, and rapidly preceded her downstairs to open the front door with a flourish. He watched her struggle down with her bags and gave her a contemptuous bow as she half dragged and half carried them out. But when he saw George sitting in the cab outside looking towards the house, Charlie’s manner changed.
‘Where’ve you got me booked?’ she asked, as they stepped outside.
He hesitated for a moment, looking briefly towards George, then said, ‘That information, my sweet hinny, will cost you a kiss.’
She gave him a look of contempt. ‘Yes,’ he persisted, ‘one of your very best, longest, most loving little hinny kisses and I’ll tell you where.’
The pantomime, she knew, was for George’s benefit, but to save further argument she did as he asked.
‘No,’ Charlie murmured, ‘that wasn’t one of your best, but I understand what’s wrong. You’re still suffering the loss of our baby, but that will pass and then I shall claim a real kiss. Your engagements are at the Delphic and at Villiers. I’ll see you there, but I hope you’ll be home before then and I truly expect you back within the fortnight. I want you more than ever, so you see, I’m much kinder to you than you are to me. I’ve forgiven you already, Ginny, and I promise I won’t be cross with you when you come home.’
‘Can I have some of the money I earned, Charlie?’
His face assumed an expression of regret. ‘I fear it’s been spent on your expenses, little hinny. I’d lend you some of mine, but I’m rather short myself at the moment. I fail to see how you’ll manage everything without a great deal of help, so I’ll oblige you by continuing as your manager, if not your lover. Kiss me again.’
She refused. When George came forward to carry her bags and help her into the cab, Charlie pecked her on the cheek and said, ‘Au revoir, my hinny. Come home very soon.’
There followed the saddest and lowest period in Ginny’s life, and she afterwards wondered at the Burns’ tolerance and friendship in seeing her through it. She was depressed, often vacant. They would sometimes speak to her, and realize she was too far withdrawn into a world of her own to hear them. She became even fonder of drink. The gusto with which she had once performed her sauciest songs was gone.
‘I don’t know what it is,’ she told them, with her own baby and Jubilee in her mind, ‘I can’t seem to laugh at it all any more. I think I’ve seen too much of the other side of the coin, and the innocent children who get hurt. I could cry at it sooner than laugh.’
When George presented her with a new number entitled. ‘The Wrong Chap’, she read it through, then to his dismay she burst into tears and ran from the room.
There were practicalities to deal with as Charlie had warned, but they were her salvation. She wanted to be completely rid of him, wanted him to take no further interest in her or her stage career. With the help of the Burns, she hired an agent and an accountant, then discovered that Charlie had never paid any tax for her and there were over two years of arrears to be settled. She commissioned new stage clothes, tipped musicians and callboys well, and kept the goodwill of everyone she relied on. When all her expenses had been paid, the Burns took the remainder of her salary and after deducting what was reasonable for her maintenance, they banked it for her. They thought that with enough judicious saving she would soon have enough to buy a house of her own. She began to feel safe.
She appeared in pantomime over the Christmas season, steady, local work. The pantomime season ended and she was back in music hall. She sometimes saw Charlie in the audience with other pretty young women, and felt nothing but relief at having escaped him. She said as much to the Burns one Sunday.
‘He’s a slippery customer,’ said George, ‘I’m surprised he’s given up so easily. But you never told us how you got involved with him in the first place.’
‘I was a housemaid at his sister’s. He took me to the races on Boxing Day a couple of years ago. He won, and won, and won. He put a bet on for me, and I won, and all. I thought I’d never met anybody so lucky. I thought some of it might rub off on me.’
‘Mm,’ mused George. ‘Boxing Day races, always over the sticks. Three jockeys can throw a race – two hemming in the rest and holding them back while the third gets on to win. If the wrong one looks as if he’ll win, he can contrive to fall off. They know what they’re doing and some of them are willing to risk a couple of broken ribs if somebody makes it worth their while. Mr Parkinson’s well known at local race meetings,
but not known in the North, I think.’
Ginny’s eyebrows shot up in astonishment. ‘That’s exactly what happened. The leading rider fell off his horse at the last minute, and we won a fortune.’
‘Of course, I don’t know that that particular instance was a cheat, but such cheats are sometimes practised.’
‘And I bet that was one of them, knowing Charlie.’
‘Some people are very good at making their own luck,’ George laughed, ‘often at the expense of others.’
‘You can’t beat the bookies, but if you’re clever enough, and dishonest enough, you can cheat the bookies,’ Ginny said.
Spring came again and as the days lengthened her mood began to lift. Little by little, she felt happier and more secure. By Easter she’d bought her own small house, its little garden brightened by spring flowers. Her quilted nightdress case, the only thing she had to remind her of her mother, she put on her pillow, and Maria’s shoes rested in plain view on the dressing table. She engaged a housekeeper, but, with her health and vigour returned, she often took pleasure in pinning on an apron and doing a thorough cleaning herself. She bought a hipbath, and occasionally soaked herself before the fire thinking bittersweet thoughts of home. She went for long walks in the clear fresh air, and in spite of her griefs the sheer joy of being alive, healthy and young began to stir within her.
When George got her to read over and rehearse another song he’d written for her, the ending was so wickedly clever that a peal of genuine laughter burst from her at the end of it.
‘That’s better, girl. That’s more like the old Ginny,’ George approved. ‘You’ve got your sense of fun back, and you put the song over beautifully. Here’s to success.’
‘But don’t you think it a bit too, um—’
‘Nothing of the sort,’ said George with a sly smile. ‘We can’t help people’s minds, Ginny. If some people insist on putting the worst interpretation on things, we can’t help it. It’s only the naughty people who’ll find a naughty meaning in it.’
She began to see more of Charlie than she’d seen when she lived with him. He was at many of her performances, either with the young rakes of the town or with a lady-friend. She took care to avoid him, and engaged a stolid, middle-aged maid to be her constant companion and chaperone. She felt less compulsion to drink, and George persuaded her to limit herself to half a glass of champagne before a performance, and to avoid spirits altogether. The champagne began to taste odd after a while, and she discovered that George had persuaded her maid to add ever-increasing amounts of soda water to it. She smiled, and took it as the kindness it was intended to be. She began to command a higher salary than ever, and found she could pay all the expenses Charlie complained of plus agent’s and accountant’s fees, and arrears of tax and still have money to save. She felt safer, if not entirely safe, and much happier, though not entirely happy.
In summer, when quite restored to health, she performed her new song with zest and gaiety and found that well-being had brought with it stirrings of the old desires. She glimpsed Charlie standing alone in the wings, looking at her with importuning eyes. When she returned to her dressing room he was waiting for her with flowers and champagne, asking her to sup with him.
‘The way I feel now, I could,’ she said, the presence of her maid giving her enough confidence to make the admission. ‘And I liked to be with you sometimes because you’re entertaining and you’re witty and full of fun, but I’ve seen what you’re like underneath all that. You’re cruel and selfish. You’re evil, Charlie. I’ve heard about you and your sham domestic servants’ agency that draws poor girls into misery. Mam Smith was right, lambs to the slaughter, and you’re the Judas goat that leads them there. So go away, Charlie, I don’t want to know you any more.’
He looked pained. ‘Ginny, who told you this?’
‘George did.’
‘And has he said he knows it for a fact?’ She shook her head.
‘How clever of him. I should have him up for slander if he had. Let any man have a little good fortune in life, and he’s sure to find himself blackguarded by the envious. My income comes from no such venture. I have some inherited money and some shares in the mines around Annsdale, which pay me well enough. I’m sometimes lucky at cards and at the racetrack. Your friend wrongs me, and so do you.’
He had such a look of injured innocence that she wavered, uncertain what to believe. He pulled her towards him and kissed her neck, murmuring, ‘Haven’t you missed me at all? I had hoped you would let bygones be bygones and come back to me. Surely we had some good times together? I did work hard on your account, grant me that at least.’
‘I do. But you said you were paying my taxes as well, you liar.’
‘I fully intended to, but you left before I had the opportunity. I miss you so much, Ginny,’ he whispered, ‘I miss my lusty little sinner – no other woman compares, and I know you’ve had no other man. I miss your soft, luscious little body, those funny little whimpering noises you make in the back of your throat when . . .’
‘Oh, don’t, Charlie, don’t!’
‘. . . when you’ve abandoned yourself to me. The way you move your haunches so delightfully, so sensuously when I’m deep inside you . . .’
‘Oh, shush, shush!’
‘The way you cry, “Oh Charlie, I love you, I love you,” when I bring you to the melting point . . .’
He stopped her protests with a kiss that she returned.
‘You’ve owed me that since the morning you left me, my sweet, cruel little hinny, and I told you then I’d come to claim it.’
The maid was watching them uncertainly throughout this interlude, waiting for instructions. Finally she moved towards the door and opened it, and then Ginny called sharply after her, ‘Oh, don’t leave me, don’t leave me!’
She closed the door, took up a position beside Ginny and looked squarely at Charlie. With every nerve agitated and the effort costing her all her strength Ginny said, ‘Oh, go, Charlie, please, please go. I’m not your little sinner any more.’
He left the flowers and champagne, and after kissing her cheek he went, with expressions of regret but no other protest. The incident unsettled her completely. The thought of him, of the things he did with her, of his touch, of his murmured approval when she did the things that pleased him, all those thoughts inflamed her, made her want to run through the streets after him to beg him to slake the fire inside her. She slept badly, racked by lust, missing intercourse with him, missing the relief it gave. Charlie had spoken the truth when he told her that it was her necessity. ‘You’re a natural gay lady,’ he’d said. She thought of Charlotte and shivered, glad to be on the halls and not on the streets.
Agnes Burns knew what was wrong with her. ‘Any woman used to regular attentions misses them, I know that from experience. I was a window when I met George, you know. It’s quite natural. Could you not marry, dear?’
She was courted by many men and would laugh and joke and return their glad eyes in public, but she was careful to keep her maid by her and never allowed herself to be alone with any of them. She felt sorely tempted to take a lover and knew that many in the profession would not have blamed her, but she feared pregnancy, disease and notoriety and dared trust none. She had offers of marriage but from no one she wanted to marry. So she resolved on a solitary life unless she met somebody like Martin, a man who was capable of loving as well as being loved. She might wait alone in perpetuity for such a one, for there was no one like Martin.
Except Martin.
Young and radiant, with that bright-eyed, glossy-haired and glowing beauty that only perfect health can bestow, full of vigour and in love with active life, she had no other outlet for her energies than her act. She threw herself wholeheartedly into it, built up a huge repertoire of songs and rehearsed them to perfection. But in spite of her enormous appetite for work she was restless. She became meticulous about her appearance, her hair and clothes. She had her maid always with her on weekdays, and on Su
ndays she kept company with the Burns, who treated her like a substitute daughter, and would take her out boating, or to race meetings, or any other social activity that promised enjoyment. Under their tutelage she became more and more refined until she was quite the lady. George and his wife began to hold intimate little soirées on Sunday evenings, and often happened to have some eligible bachelor among the company. Ginny was polite and sociable, but uninterested.
‘Don’t you like him? He’s quite taken with you,’ Agnes might say to her of some gentleman or another.
‘Yes, he’s very nice,’ Ginny would reply, without enthusiasm.
‘You know what I mean, more than like. Really, I don’t know what you want in a man,’ would be the exasperated rejoinder.
‘No more do I,’ Ginny would lie, thinking only of Martin, a real man, who was acknowledged a man by the whole of Annsdale, and Annsdale was no lenient judge. All other men appeared to her untrustworthy, flabby, self-indulgent creatures by comparison. But she made no attempt to explain to Agnes and George that she prized a self-educated pitman over any fine gentleman they could produce because she knew that they could never have understood it.
She did another exhausting tour of the provinces in the autumn and returned to London to learn that John had been asking round the theatres for her and had tracked her down to the Burns’. She was upset at missing him, but glad to hear that he was well, and rejoiced that he knew she had broken with Charlie and was living a decent life.
November came, and she was haunted by memories of her baby and of Maria. Homesick, she wrote to Emma, asking her to come to stay with her in her new house over Christmas, or at least to write back with news of everybody. Although she’d had no great hopes of a reply, she was bitterly disappointed when none arrived. She sent gifts home and felt broken when they were returned. The pantomime season did something to distract her and to direct her thoughts along more cheerful channels, but when it ended, she heard that Daisy May was dead, the rumour was of drink. She knew the same fate would have awaited her had she stayed with Charlie.
A Sovereign for a Song Page 18
