Searching for a Silver Lining

by Miranda Dickinson

  ‘I was! But you saw her – she wasn’t about to listen to a bleedin’ word I said. So I wasn’t going to grovel.’

  ‘Rubbish, Reenie. You went in there to goad her into a fight so you didn’t have to say sorry!’

  ‘Maybe this would be better back at the hotel?’

  Mattie ignored Gil’s quiet suggestion. Reenie needed to know the damage she’d done. ‘No. I want to say this now, while I’m angry enough not to care what she thinks,’ Mattie replied, her knuckles turning white as she gripped Rusty’s steering wheel. ‘You just ruined everything in there, Reenie, do you understand? Everything we’ve worked so hard to achieve; the reason we’re all on this tour; the gig; the next seven days of our lives – it all means nothing because you didn’t have the nerve to be the bigger person in that room.’

  Reenie’s brow shrouded her eyes, her voice like distant rolling thunder. ‘Drive the van, Mattie Bell. You don’t know the water that’s passed under the bridge between her and me. I doubt you’d understand even if you did. Now this is my tour, my gig, and I say we’re leaving.’

  The only time Mattie had experienced such dizzying anger before was during the final argument with her grandfather. Shamed by its memory – and fighting the urge to push Reenie out of her seat and drive away – Mattie started the engine. She told herself she could work out how to argue the case with Reenie on the journey back. But in truth all she wanted to do was run to her room and escape the old lady and Gil. She couldn’t fight back; instead she jammed her foot flat to the floor and Rusty veered forwards, sending showers of York stone gravel clattering across the drive as they sped away.

  How dare Reenie behave so badly and then try to blame her for it?

  ‘So, now that charade is over, who fancies a takeaway tonight?’ Reenie asked, her brightness scarily cold as Mattie fumed in the driver’s seat. ‘Been years since I ordered pizza. Might as well make hay while the cat’s away – or whatever that saying is.’

  Don’t talk to me, Mattie glowered. Don’t speak to me; don’t try to chivvy me into a banal conversation to absolve your conscience.

  She needed to think. Was it worth continuing, if this was Reenie’s idea of making amends? They should give up the idea as a bad one and head home. Then Reenie Silver could go back to her captive audience at Beauvale and Mattie could return to the task of rebuilding her life. They would never have to meet again and she could forget she’d ever put her faith in a former music star from Liverpool.

  A few times she thought she felt Gil’s gaze on her, but when she checked the mirror his eyes were trained away from hers to the wide, flat Cambridgeshire fields lining each side of the dual carriageway.

  It didn’t matter what anyone thought. Right now, all Mattie was concerned with was salvaging what hope she could from this disastrous trip. It had to be found somewhere, some kind of lesson learned to act as penance to Grandpa Joe.

  Later, after a long walk by herself and a hot bath, she considered the pieces of the past few days and tried to think rationally. She had to step back from the anger that had been her undoing in the past.

  If I let Reenie win, I’m right back to that moment I walked out on Grandpa Joe, she thought. How was that helpful to anyone? She’d accused Reenie of not taking the higher ground with June. If she remained angry and let all their plans fail, how was she any better?

  It was time to take a long, hard look at Mattie Bell – and dare to be different.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘I Wonder Why’ – Dion & the Belmonts

  Sunday, 15 April 1956

  Len introduced me to his sister last night at the Palm Grove. One thing’s for certain, they don’t make girls like that in Shropshire! Una is one in a million. Tall, leggy, raven-haired – she’s like Cyd Charisse in Singin’ in the Rain. I kept forgetting to breathe last night, which could be why my chest is sore today. Didn’t sleep much either. Uncle Charles pulled me up over it this morning. He put it down to studying too late. Oh, if only! My studies are falling behind – and it can only get worse the more I think about Una. Can’t remember lying awake thinking about a girl like that for years. She has summer-blue eyes that catch your attention and won’t let go.

  Look at me, talking flowery like a jazz poet! Next thing I’ll be buying a beret and quoting Proust. Let’s just say that looking at Len, you’d never believe his sister could look anything like that. He made it pretty clear she was off limits. But the way she spoke to me last night, I think she might have something to say about that.

  Meeting them both at the PG tonight. I shouldn’t because I’ve an exam in the morning. But I know enough to pass and I don’t intend to miss one minute of fun . . .

  Well, that was a surprise. In all the years Mattie had heard Grandpa Joe’s stories of his London ‘bachelor year’, he had never mentioned either Len or Una. It seemed, from what she was reading in the green leather 1956 diary, that most of the details of his year in London had been omitted. He’d mentioned he’d visited the Palm Grove, but the story had always been that a friend of his was a regular at the club and it was this friend who had bought tickets for The Silver Five’s concert. She had always assumed his ‘friend’ to be Bill Godfrey, the evacuee who had first fired up Joe Bell’s dreams of visiting London and with whom he’d spent time when he arrived in the city.

  She had spent the night lost in thought, trying to find anything positive she could salvage from their current predicament. It was no use: Reenie’s pride and June’s need for retribution had all but killed her hopes of what the reunion concert could be. The only way anything would change would be if either of them changed their minds – and having seen them in full combat mode today, Mattie knew this was the unlikeliest outcome of all.

  Before she knew it, she was taken back to another sleepless night, after a row that had broken her heart and shattered her world. For months she’d hoped against hope that Grandpa Joe would change his mind – because that was the only way the situation could ever be resolved. He’d held all the cards and was refusing to deal them, leaving Mattie helpless and at his mercy.

  The ultimatum had come out of nowhere, after an innocuous family dinner, when the Bell clan were settled with coffee in the farmhouse’s large sitting room. A bland TV drama had been playing to itself in the corner of the room while the usual family banter passed between the three generations. Joanna was refereeing a game of hide-and-seek with her children and Jack; Mattie’s mum was swapping age-old anecdotes with Uncle Reuben about growing up in Kings Sunbury, while Mattie’s father and Uncle Seth exchanged opinions on the latest Formula 1 team news. Mattie was sitting cross-legged on the floor fussing over Grandpa Joe’s ageing Labrador, Bertie, while she listened to his stories of early married life with Grandma.

  ‘We had nothing, of course. Couples rarely did in those days. But we made do. Decorated the house around us, buying furniture when money allowed and accepting kind donations from friends when we couldn’t. Not like today, where young people have houses all set up like show homes before they walk down the aisle. I tell you what, I’ll bet your grandma and I appreciated our home more than anyone today.’

  ‘I bet you did. As for me, I’ll be busy filling my home with old furniture and things that were made before I was born.’

  It was nothing, a throwaway comment on a well-fed Saturday afternoon, but apparently it was the last straw for her grandfather.

  ‘I won’t have it, Matilda.’

  His voice had been so sharp, so utterly out of character, that every member of the Bell family had turned as one to look at him.

  Mattie had laughed, thinking he was setting the room up for one of his jokes. But Grandpa Joe’s smile had gone, replaced with pure, unfettered fury.

  ‘You think Asher can give you what you need. But he can’t. No granddaughter of mine will ever be shackled to a man like that.’

  ‘Look, I know you’re not his biggest fan, but how can you say that? You don’t know him . . .’

  ‘I know enough about hi
s sort. All flowery promises and too-sincere smiles. He’ll break your heart, Matilda.’

  ‘Come on, Gramps, lighten up,’ Jack had said, but a dozen pairs of eyes had silenced him. Everyone knew what was happening. There could be no doubt. Grandpa Joe hadn’t raised his voice like that for years, but now he was shouting at the young woman everyone called his favourite. Maybe someone should have intervened, but right then the Bell family could only look on in shock. Later, they would offer their sympathies in private – and Mattie knew many had tried to change Grandpa Joe’s mind in the days and weeks that followed. But in that dreadful moment, Mattie was utterly alone.

  It was the worst day of her life. Worse even than when she’d heard he had died – or when she’d discovered Asher with his mistress. Because, in an instant, she lost the one thing she cared about most in the world: her grandfather’s love.

  Last night, Mattie had been assaulted again by the injustice of that moment. She had done nothing wrong, except for believing Asher loved her as much as he claimed to. Grandpa Joe had delivered the ultimatum in front of his gathered family – and Mattie had stood up for herself as he had always urged her to. And she had learned that the advice her grandfather had given her all her life didn’t apply when it was aimed back at him. The moment she’d stood up for what she wanted was also the moment Grandpa Joe stopped loving her. At least, that was how it felt.

  Now, with the possibility of fulfilling her promise slipping away, Mattie felt as if she’d lost him all over again. Her plan had failed – through no fault of her own. And she could do nothing to change the situation.

  She was still thinking about the diary’s revelations when she arrived in the hotel’s breakfast room to find Gil already there. He was hiding behind the generous pages of a broadsheet newspaper, an act heightened by the eerie silence of the breakfast room. The few other guests dotted around the room ate in silence, too. Mattie recalled the silence of the farmhouse sitting room on the day of her row with Grandpa Joe. She shivered.

  ‘Morning,’ she said, pushing the memory away.

  Gil lowered the paper, and Mattie could see faint traces of blue beneath his eyes. Had he not slept well either?

  ‘Hi. How did you sleep?’

  ‘About as well as you, by the looks of it.’

  ‘I couldn’t settle. Watching old ladies brute it out isn’t my idea of a relaxing afternoon, especially when I’m likely to lose money because of it.’

  Mattie sat at the table. ‘I’ve been trying to think of a way to change what’s happened, but I’m stumped. I think Reenie blew it yesterday.’

  Gil shrugged, a little more open towards her than he had been. ‘I reckon you’re right. Crazy old lady.’

  ‘But we all came on this tour because we believed in her,’ Mattie said. Smiling seemed to require a huge effort this morning, her face aching from the attempt. ‘So what does that make us?’

  ‘I dread to think. Coffee?’

  ‘Yes, please. Black with one sugar.’

  ‘Black? You’re as bad as me.’

  ‘I’m not usually. But I need to keep going today and decaf tea isn’t going to help me.’ She watched Gil take a stainless-steel cafetière and fill a mug for her. At least he was still here. After what had happened yesterday, she had half-expected to discover he had checked out and gone home. Mattie felt comforted by this, even if every other part of the plan was in question.

  ‘So, any idea what we do now?’

  Contingencies had occupied Mattie’s thoughts since the early hours. Even now, she wasn’t entirely sure what their next step should be. ‘I don’t think we abandon the attempt. We have Tommy and Reenie on board; Chuck and Alys may yet agree.’

  ‘And June?’

  ‘I think we have to accept that she won’t be part of this.’

  Gil blew resignedly across the top of his coffee. ‘I agree. I can’t say I’m thrilled about having a reduced line-up. But I think you’re right.’

  ‘I spent hours last night trying to work out if we should have done something differently.’

  ‘We could have not taken Reenie with us. That would have made the meeting far more civil.’ The mischief in Gil’s comment made Mattie laugh despite her brooding headache.

  ‘Yep, that might have done it.’

  ‘Hey,’ he said, reaching across the table but stopping just short of touching Mattie’s hand. ‘None of this is your fault.’

  ‘Maybe it was too much to ask. Sixty-year grudges aren’t likely to disappear overnight.’

  ‘Maybe not. But you believed Reenie could do it. Personally, I think that’s great – even if the rest of this trip is a disaster.’

  Mattie felt like hugging him, the vote of confidence more of a boost than the very strong black coffee. ‘Thank you. Whatever happens, we’ll have a gig next Thursday.’

  ‘You reckon the others will be up for it?’

  ‘We have to hope so. Reenie said it herself: she and June were always two steps away from all-out war, even when they were supposed to be friends. Expecting anything else after sixty years of bad feeling was unrealistic. I should have understood that from the outset. Reenie had certainly given me enough clues in her stories.’

  When Mattie once asked her about their song, ‘Always Where You Are’ – a particular favourite of her late grandma’s that featured a rare duet between the two singers – Reenie had been less than complimentary about June’s contribution.

  ‘It should never have been a duet,’ she’d stated as they’d walked slowly around Beauvale’s well-kept grounds. ‘And if I’d had my way, it would’ve been me singing the melody unhindered.’

  ‘But it’s such a lovely song about friendship,’ Mattie had begun, stopping abruptly when Reenie’s cheeks flushed to almost the same shade as the red dahlias in the border. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Shows what you and Joe Public know about the art of great lyrics, kid. Bert Friedrich, who wrote it, always intended the song to be a woman singing alone, waiting for her lover to return home. Not a cheesy “I’ll plait your bunches if you plait mine” song.’

  ‘Why was it changed? I thought you said Rico did what you asked him to in disputes.’

  ‘Well, usually he did – I had a way of persuading him. That’s how I kept the main line on “Because You Loved Me”. June was still sore about losing that one when “Always Where You Are” came up. But we’d been touring and only had a few hours in the studio to cut the track, so when Miss I-Should’ve-Been-Lead-Singer Knight got all uppity and stormed off, he had to find a compromise. He apologised, of course. He was all, “In my eyes you’re the star and the song would be best as yours alone, but we have the record company to think of . . . ”’ Reenie had rolled her eyes then, the irritation of years gone by still raw. ‘That was his Get Out of Jail Free card, every single time. “We need to think of the label . . . Our promoters are placing their trust in us and we can’t afford to lose it . . . Think of the exposure!” Pfft. Like he knew the foggiest thing about it!’

  ‘So June was given half the song?’

  ‘He thought he was being fair. I thought he was being an almighty pushover. He was scared of what June might do if he didn’t give in to her. Every time that woman decided to make an issue of something, she implied that she could damage Rico’s reputation. Nasty piece of work, June Knight. Plays the innocent “woe is me” role like a pro, but she’d stab you in the back as soon as look at yer.’

  There had been arguments and resentments, stormings-out and near mutinies right across Europe as The Silver Five had toured cities still picking up the pieces after the Second World War. According to Reenie, June had threatened to go to the papers with salacious details of Reenie and Rico’s affair, which at the time would have been catastrophic for the clean-cut image of the group.

  ‘We were just never designed to get along,’ Reenie had admitted another time, as they enjoyed afternoon tea in Stone Yardley on a trip out from Beauvale. ‘Chalk and cheese, you could say, although to be frank we were
more like paraffin and a naked flame. The others, I got on with pretty well. But June was an enemy from day one . . .’

  ‘It’s going to be a hard sell without all of them,’ Gil said, folding the newspaper and resting his chin on his hands. ‘I won’t lie. Colm’s dubious we can even half-fill the place, even if we discount tickets for late sales.’

  ‘They’ll come, all right.’

  Mattie and Gil turned to see a remarkably fresh-faced Reenie approaching.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  Reenie prodded Gil’s foot with her cane as she sat opposite him. ‘I know, kiddo, because I’m the star they’ll come to see. The Silver Five was four years of a sixty-year career for me. Most people will have forgotten my humble roots. I’m Reenie Silver, doyenne of Las Vegas, occasional TV star, legendary vocalist . . .’

  ‘Reenie, the whole point of this tour is—’ Gil began, but the old lady was having none of it.

  ‘The whole point of this tour, Gilbert Kendrick, is that I get the chance to say sorry to people I may have hurt in the past. Who appears with me at the gig is immaterial.’

  Gil glowered. ‘I beg to differ. And it’s just Gil. Not Gilbert.’

  ‘Oh?’ Reenie shot him a smile as sweet as arsenic. ‘My mistake.’

  As they ate breakfast, it was clear to Mattie that Reenie was more than just resigned to her failure to apologise to June; she was actually relieved. Before they’d set off, Mattie could remember Reenie making a remark about June’s apology being what she least wanted to do. She seemed pleased with herself this morning – or had Mattie imagined that? Could Reenie have planned to fight with June from the beginning? It would certainly mean a starry comeback gig without her biggest rival . . .

  No. Reenie couldn’t be that calculating, she decided. It was just her way of braving out a bad situation.

  ‘So, we crack on to Bath and Wales, then? Forget June and go for Chuck and Alys?’