by Derek Beaven
Since he’d last seen Clarice, my father was not at all ruined in features. At first glance, his looks appeared quite dashing. Some negative quality, however, had certainly leaked into the rest of his appearance, and sitting with Tony Rice and Frances, the girl, he looked badly out of place. His grey flannel jacket was disreputable, his tie was skewed, and his shirt collar had too obviously been turned.
On closer inspection the face, which was thinnish with slightly Slavic lines, revealed a brow contracted and a mouth tightened. He wore his brown hair slicked away from his face, so that his dark moustache gave him a worn and dangerous cast. It belied his earnest eyes – and his twenty-six years.
He had good reason to look grim. The feeling all along that he’d been playing for the very highest stakes seemed entirely borne out. Having done his best with Phyllis, he was sure she was trying to destroy him. In fact, it could have been the circle of his own death that glittered back at him from the stage. He, like Dr Pike, felt mightily scared. As he touched his drink to his lips he tried to convince himself he was being irrational.
The club was full. In one of Covent Garden’s least promising streets, the Coal Hole was something of a find for a certain set. Or it was stumbled upon by theatre-goers after a meal at Monty’s or L’Escargot, who told their friends. From a narrow, sandbagged door in the face of an old tobacco warehouse, a staircase led down to the cellars, where there was not only late-night alcohol but a resident dance band of four black jazzmen. If it hadn’t been for the war, people said, the Coal Hole would have been set to ‘take off’. In the absence, so far, of bombing or gas attacks, it was still open, still defiantly humming. For once, thank God, the idiotic situation across the Channel could be shoved firmly to the back of the mind – so long as the band proved authentically rhythmic, the singer sufficiently charming.
At the Coal Hole it wasn’t a requirement to be dressed to the nines. Ordinary suits mingled with evening wear; there might be artists, addicts, a boxer or two, even an obstinate Blackshirt. There were types of unescorted girl. The Saturday-night clientele was unpredictable, and a frisson of intermixture ran in the smoke-filled air. The only real entrance qualification was a little spare cash, a commodity Vic clearly lacked. It was Tony Rice who’d brought him and Phyllis along, and it was Tony Rice, the perplexing, charmed and upwardly mobile gang boy, whose hand lay over Phyllis’s career.
Yet it wasn’t Tony of whom my father was afraid – it wasn’t a physical fear at all. His desperation lay deeper. He was permanently wrought up, on edge.
He picked his wife out as she emerged from a side door. Her slim figure made its way towards the light. The stage was a shallow pedestal, no more than a foot high, and he watched her pause in front of it as her long dress threatened to trip her. Clutching the slink out of harm’s way, she stepped up. The gown’s plunge back exposed nearly the whole of her spine.
All week she’d been crippled with nerves. She despised her looks. She believed she was disfigured by a shame no amount of make-up, no glittery evening get-up could conceal. Her vocal cords, if she could force them open, would only humiliate her. All week he’d coaxed her through it, reassuring her that it was the actions of others that had left her so insecure; privately reminding himself that he’d put aside his feelings for Clarice in order to do what was right. Now he willed himself to believe that for once Phyllis could be straight with him.
When eventually she faced her audience he knew he’d been outwitted. She was completely at home, and the long wait seemed calculated. Her eyes glittered wide under plucked and pencilled brows, the cheeks were a rouged mask, the mouth a bait. For her sheer knowingness he was unprepared. She looked sly. When she let her head droop, he held his breath.
Light fell on her close-waved dark hair, the silver threads glinted in her gown, and the few bars of introduction poised on the arpeggio of a suspended chord. Chatter from the tables subsided. She lifted her eyes, childlike; and then the voice launched itself high, virginal, and with a fashionable flutter.
Think of what you’re losing
By constantly refusing
To dance with me
From behind her a saxophone and muted trumpet picked up the phrase, and the bass threw a squib of rhythm. It was a safe number. After the success of the Branksome Revue, everyone was singing it again. The lover needed encouragement; she delivered it. With her one gloved hand on the edge of the piano, she seduced.
Then she played the man’s role. Setting her head at just the coy angle, she scolded the audience with an artful smile.
Not this season
There’s a reason.
They held up with her, and she hit the refrain:
I won’t dance! Don’t ask me;
I won’t dance! Don’t ask me;
I won’t dance, madame, with you.
The brash denial swelled out. The band swung, the bass player’s free fingers vaulted the board to the springy dub-dub of the beat, and couples got up to dance. From the tables all around rose that buzz of relief which comes when the entertainment will do. Parties returned safely to their concerns: cigars were lit, and corks were popped. Aproned staff holding their trays high slid once again between casual encounters and established liaisons.
Where Vic sat a waiter hovered.
‘No more, thanks.’
‘I said I’ll get them, Victor. We’ll need three more of these, mate.’ Tony indicated the cocktail glasses in front of them. ‘No, make it four. Have one ready for Phylly when she comes back. Should really.’
Tony Rice was clean shaven, fleshy. He had the street looks of certain cruel young men and sported black silk lapels and neat white bow with all the sharpness Vic lacked. ‘A winner, isn’t she? You think so, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’ My father glanced at his wrist-watch again: half an hour after midnight. Every passing minute ticked up feelings he couldn’t cope with, costs he couldn’t cover. ‘She’s divine,’ he said. ‘It’s turned out a success. But I think we’d better leave as soon as she comes off. If you don’t mind, Tony. Thanks so much and a bad show to break up the party, but …’ He looked up at the waiter. ‘I’d like the bill, please, actually.’
Tony cancelled him and signed the man to leave with his order.
‘But our boy,’ said Vic. ‘Jack’s on his own. We really must go.’
‘Don’t throw it back in my face, Vic.’ There was an edge to Tony’s voice, a hint of the dockside razor. He held Vic’s gaze with narrowed eyes, then backed off. ‘It’s Phyllis’s night and she deserves a break. Doesn’t she, mate?’
Vic lit a cigarette, and looked over to where Phyllis was beginning her next number. Her body, such a battlefield in their marriage, seemed at ease. There, on the miniature stage, she was the idea of enchantment. There was no denying it – she was a good performer.
So he was being churlish; he was turning everything into melodrama. Tony was right, she deserved her break. Her pretty mouth, the nakedness of her neckline and arms … While she sang, while the music flowed, he could see her as if in a movie, briefly disentangled.
‘That’s more like it, Vic.’
FEMININITY FLICKERED EVERYWHERE in the smoky club. Vic’s gaze wandered. There were more attractive women than he’d ever seen, wearing less. Out of his element, at home neither with his own class nor the posh one, he was wretchedly alert to them. The flash of one braceleted wrist caught him like a blow. Voices, laughing or languid, tempted at his ear; they underscored the chirruping of his wife. Everywhere he looked he mustn’t look, at the eyes he mustn’t meet. The place scandalised and fascinated him.
‘You’re a lucky bloke, Vic. You’ll want to hang on to a skirt like her. I should like to have one, just the same as that.’ Tony chanted softly as if all Phyllis’s melody wanted was a secret fight. ‘Where’er I go they’ll shout hallo where did you get that … tart.’ He grinned. Vic saw his hand under the table squeeze the thigh of the girl; he also saw the wince that crossed her face. He was momentarily excited. ‘She de
serves better, Phyllis does,’ Tony said.
Vic tried to smile. ‘Better than what? Better than the Coal Hole? Or better than I can give her? That what you mean?’
‘I don’t know what you’re playing at, Rabbit Warren, keeping a woman like that in the manner you do.’
‘Thanks.’
But Tony compelled him, turning to his female companion. ‘Eh, Frankie? The boffin and the songbird. What do you think of that?’ The voice was level, the grin emotionless.
Frances opened her mouth disbelievingly at Vic. The drinks arrived. She took hers and held it in front of her with her little finger raised. He looked back. Thickly made up, she might be about twenty, the same age as Clarice Pike when they’d met, and fallen in love. …‘Are you, though? A boffin?’ Frankie giggled.
‘So I heard.’ Tony’s grin became a sneer.
‘Evening classes,’ said Vic. She even looked a little like her, like Clarice, he thought.
‘Can’t you just see him, duckie, with his chemistry bottles and tubes?’
‘Marine engineering. I used to go up to Imperial College. On the bus. Three times a week after work. Trying to cram my physics,’ Vic said again, quietly. ‘It’s over now. It was daft anyway.’
‘Oh, physics, Frank. Only joking, Vic.’
Frances looked blank for a second; and then she giggled again nervously. ‘I wouldn’t know what that was.’
‘The science of bodies,’ said Vic.
‘Really?’ She looked him full in the eye. ‘So what do you do now, then?’
‘Nothing. Can’t you tell?’
The girl stared one moment longer. Then she complained that Tony hadn’t asked her up to dance.
At the completion of her spot Phyllis made her way through the applause. Vic stood up to greet her just as Tony and Frankie arrived back from the floor. She was breathless, on the verge of tears. ‘Was it all right? Tell me honestly! I was terrible, wasn’t I?’
‘Knocked ’em cold,’ said Tony.
‘No, I was awful. I’ve spoilt everything. They’ll never ask me back. Vic?’
He reassured her. ‘It was terrific, darling. You were superb.’ As he kissed the proffered cheek he heard Tony mimicking ‘darling’ to Frankie.
But Phyllis hardened. ‘You’re lying,’ she said. Her ice-cold look was close up and intent.
‘Honestly,’ Vic said. ‘Look around. They’re still clapping. They loved you.’ He licked his lips.
‘I can’t look.’ Phyllis clenched her fists. ‘I was so nervous.’ She snatched her handbag from the table and sat down at the vacant seat, her back to the scene of her triumph. ‘So bloody nervous. Is that one for me?’
‘You deserve it,’ said Tony. The party resumed their places. ‘Doesn’t she, Vic?’
‘Was I really any good?’ Phyllis looked from one to the other, her garish eyes again childlike over the glass, the flutter of lashes too naïve. But she allowed herself to be persuaded. ‘Truly? I get positively sick. It is all right, isn’t it, Vic? You don’t mind?’
‘You were marvellous.’ Vic made himself smile. ‘Completely bowled me over. I’d no idea. And the voice. I mean, I hear it at home, but …’
‘My voice. I thought it was going to die on me. Did you hear that note in “Mexico Way”? I right muffed it, didn’t I?’
‘Never heard any such thing. It all sounded perfect.’
‘Really, Vic?’ She seemed winsome.
He smiled more genuinely, relieved, off guard. ‘Perfectly perfect.’
‘You hear what the engineer says. Another round, then, shall we?’ Tony clicked his fingers at a waiter.
Vic tried to insist. ‘Darling. I know this is boring of me …’
The atmosphere changed again in an instant. She was fierce. ‘Vic, I told you. My sister said she’d look in on him.’
‘It’s incredibly late.’
‘This is my night, my chance. For Christ’s sake. This is my kind of place, for once. Jack’ll be fast asleep. He’s not a baby any more, you know.’ Crossly she took out her compact and opened it. ‘Oh, my God. Just look at me. Frankie, you’ll come with me if I go and put things right?’
‘All the same, if Tony wouldn’t mind I do think we really should …’
Phyllis hit the table with her fist. ‘No!’ She shook her head, petulantly. ‘No! No! No!’
‘Darling, I …’
Tony was decisive. ‘You spoil that kid. Come on. Drink up. You’re a smart girl, Phylly, and if you weren’t married to drearyface here …’
‘Tony, really!’ Once more Phyllis appeared the innocent. ‘Whatever will you think of saying next?’ Colour spread from her cheekbones and up across her forehead – the streaked powder could do nothing to contain it. Where the shaken wave of hair had worked loose from its kirby-grip, a bright little gash on her temple was visible. Her hand sprang up to touch it. Newly glazed, it reopened. A spot of blood appeared like a red pearl and fell to the table. And another. ‘Christ!’ It was on her fingers.
Tony cooed in mock concern. ‘Now that’s a nasty one, isn’t it. How did you come by that, Phyllis?’
Her eyes flashed and she fumbled in her bag for a handkerchief, holding it up to the cut. ‘This? Walked into a door, didn’t I.’ A stain spread under her varnished nails and into the cloth.
‘A door, was it?’
‘Yes. A door. This evening, as I was changing. Just now, in the ladies’ room. Before I went on. I’ll have to …’
Tony leant across and touched her hair. ‘You’ll have to be more careful, won’t you, girl?’
She stood up and held out her other hand for Frances. ‘Coming, Frank? Quickly!’ Together they made their way off between the tables.
AT THE SIGHT of the wound he’d said nothing, done nothing. His fingers shaking, Vic lit another cigarette. The band thumped out a Latin number and the couples on the dance floor stalked each other.
Close to Phyllis there was always deceit, always pain, and he wore her chaos almost closer than his own skin; but the detail of the cut was more than anything he’d expected. Its implications stole over him like a dead faint. Tony had hit her, and she was protecting him.
The regular singer, a slight young man, was dapper in his white dinner jacket with a rose in his buttonhole; he sermonised from the stage, pinned by a searchlight:
Keep young and beautiful, it’s your duty to be beautiful,
Keep young and beautiful, if you want to be loved.
Tony got up for the gents. ‘Might as well go for a drain-off myself. Don’t go away, will you.’
Vic dragged at his smoke. Despite her blushes, Phyllis wore the shiny little injury as an adornment. They were already lovers. She’d given this pimp what she always contrived to deny her husband, and Tony had taunted her with it, barefaced. They’d been carrying on here, right in front of him, knowing he was too simple to see – that even when he saw, he’d do nothing, nothing. He stubbed out his cigarette. His mouth was parched. He drank the glass in front of him too quickly. It tasted trite, bitter.
Then the others returned. The girls were quite natural, and they laughed, comparing make-up and quipping one to the other. Tony, seating himself once more, was bluff. ‘There, Vic. Told you not to go away.’ His eyes were clear, the sculpted lips a design on the fine skin.
A table next to them erupted with laughter. Someone was standing up on his chair, holding a champagne glass in his teeth to roars of encouragement. Phyllis turned round, clapping, and then smiled in Vic’s direction. ‘All right, Vic?’
He smiled back. ‘Fine.’
Another crackle of laughter went up. Through the din she mimed the words ‘Thanks’ and ‘Sorry’.
Soothed, he smiled again.
Tony set the next round up, and the next. Then Vic drank wilfully. He told himself he needed to lighten up. You’re a lucky bloke, Vic. You’ll want to hang on to a skirt like her. He was confused. He wanted to dissolve the fierce nag of not knowing, never quite seeing, and to drown all the other i
ssues, the kid, the money, the war, the awful round of his futureless days. A man at a further table held a woman’s hand to his lips, nibbling the fingers; he thought of Clarice.
The club became a whirl of sensations. Noise and laughter from the tables reverberated almost visibly in the low vaults, like strips of newspaper hung out; and on the spotlit floor, bright couples wove in amongst each other. Bodies swayed, clasped, parted. A woman’s naked spine was crossed by a man’s hand and the crowd at the next table was trying to form itself into a conga dance. People were crying out, ‘Come on, then! Are you with us?’ To the frugg of the band they were a counter-chorus. Cut-glass accents aped in cockney a popular song:
Oh we ain’t got a barrel of money,
Maybe we’re ragged and funny …
Jack would be fine, probably.
‘Vic!’ Phyllis was speaking to him.
Tony was insisting on something to her. He was shouting above the swirl of noise. ‘Vic here wants to make some money, Phyll. He told me.’
‘You’re not kidding me he does. It’s only my earnings keeping us, to tell the honest truth. If he won’t do it, I have to. Don’t I?’
‘Eh?’ Vic fought to concentrate. Frankie’s young eyes were contacting his. She really did have the look of Clarice Pike, the shape of the nose, something in the line of the chin. Tony and Phyllis were linked together. There was something between them, but who was he to police her friendships? In the marriage he’d been too rigid, even a little inhuman, unfaithful at the heart, and that was why Phyllis … He could see now. She was right. Of course she was right. No one’s life was really at stake. Truly he should try to be less of a bloody Nazi.
There was a twenty-pound note on the table.
IT WAS LONDON cobblestones banging under the wheels, and the car was racing east through the starlit port. Phyllis was in the front beside Tony, her mother’s fox fur draped around her shoulders. The fur cast a shadow on her hair so that there was only the clouded trace of her white neck. She was resisting sleep – her head nodded and jerked as if an outside force had it in mind to break her.
