They got off the underground at Tottenham Court Road Station and walked hand in hand through side streets and alleyways behind Oxford Street; she had no idea where they were, but he pointed out certain landmarks and told her they were taking the short cuts to their destination, the building which housed the Blythe business and London accommodation.
‘This way,’ he kept saying as he pulled her by her hand down yet another alleyway.
It was a crisp day, and Maggie was wearing a camel coat with a tie belt which had belonged to her mother, over the same skirt and jumper and heels she’d worn when she’d made the demo disc, the outfit Andy had said he thought was cool. She just hoped that she wouldn’t look too young and unfashionable in front of Jack Blythe and that she wouldn’t make a fool of herself in front of Andy. She sensed it was as important to him that his father liked her as it was to her.
‘Here we are; this is it. The Blythe family business,’ Andy said proudly as he stopped by some steps and pointed his arm at the building. ‘The public office is on the ground floor, then there are other offices, bedsits and things, and we have the penthouse flat on the top floor.’ He pointed upwards. ‘That’s where I live during the week when I’m working. It’s fab being in the centre of London. There’s so much going on. Look around! Everything is here. You must have been to Oxford Street? It’s only a little way over there.’
Andy’s enthusiasm was catching, and Maggie looked around eagerly. The building they were outside was more ordinary than she had expected after the glamour of The Manor House in Melton. It was in the middle of a terrace of identical old properties which fronted a quiet cobbled side street, the majority of which had a shop or cafe on the ground floor and flats and offices above. The plaque on the wall alongside the door they were standing outside stated: Jack Blythe and Associates. Music and Theatre Agency.
‘Who are the associates? What does that mean?’ Maggie asked curiously. ‘Are you one of them?’
‘Not really, but I will be soon. At the moment I’m still learning.’ He smiled at her enthusiastically. ‘If you turn out to be a star, then Dad’ll have to make me one, and one day, when he retires, it’ll be Andy Blythe and Associates, and I’ll get to pick my own associates! Come on, let’s go in.’
They went up a few stone steps to the entrance, and Andy pulled the glass door and held it open for her to go in first. Several people waiting in the reception area looked up expectantly as he walked past them up to the desk, and then they looked down again at their magazines and newspapers.
‘Monica, this is Maggie Wheaton. She’s got an appointment with Dad?’
The receptionist smiled as Andy greeted her. ‘Oh yes, but you might have to kill an hour or so first, Andy. Mr Blythe has just this minute popped out.’
‘Oh, he didn’t tell me he was going out today. He knew Maggie was coming,’ Andy said, his disappointment obvious. ‘Where’s he gone?’
‘He said he had a meeting near Harley Street. He won’t be long, no doubt. Shall I ask Sally to make you a drink?’
‘Yes, please. We’ll be upstairs. Can you tell Dad when he gets back?’ He walked around the desk and opened what looked like a cupboard door in the corner. ‘This way, Maggie.’
He led her along a narrow unlit corridor to a wooden staircase which doubled back on itself up to the first floor. When they reached the first floor landing, Andy turned and led Maggie into a large and airy room with several high sash-windows and a large neglected fireplace. It was sparsely furnished with just four upright chairs, an old piano stacked high with music sheets, a record player on a wonky drop-leaf table and a microphone on a stand which was next to a battered old amplifier. As they walked across the room it echoed with emptiness.
Andy pointed to a mark on the floor near the microphone. ‘This is where you’ll stand to sing, and Dad will sit over there. He has the same routine with everyone. But sometimes I do the first interview … It’s mostly singers in here, but some comedians and even actors. Everyone wants Jack Blythe to represent them; sometimes it’s standing room only downstairs with people waiting to see him. Did you see them all downstairs? They all want to be taken on by Dad.’
‘Where’s your office?’ Maggie asked as she looked around and took in her surroundings, which didn’t fit in with the mental picture she’d had. The room looked as if it hadn’t been decorated in years. The walls and ceiling had the brown tinge of tobacco, and the bare floorboards were shabby and worn.
‘I don’t have an actual office of my own. I move around, and I’m often out. Dad trusts me to do a lot of stuff he doesn’t want the others to do. I go and see people and deliver urgent documents that mustn’t go by post.’
‘Andrew!’ a voice bellowed from behind.
Ruby and Andy turned and looked towards the door.
‘Dad!’ Andy said, his smile wide. ‘This is Maggie Wheaton. You said you wanted to meet her, so here she is.’
Maggie smiled and held her hand out. She stood straight and confident, but she had never felt so overawed in her life. Standing way over six feet tall, he was a charismatic giant of a man, whose athletic frame filled the doorway. He had a thatch of very dark hair which was flecked with grey and perfectly groomed, and as she looked at him she noticed his piercing blue eyes looking back at her curiously.
‘Ah, yes. Maggie. You’re the girl from the village. I’m sorry about your parents. Such a tragedy. We never know what fate has in store for us, do we?’
‘Thank you, Mr Blythe.’
‘I’ve got a couple of phone calls to make, but if you want to warm up, then be my guest. I’ll be back to hear you shortly.’ As quickly as he’d arrived he was gone, through another door on the opposite wall.
Maggie and Andy had been in the room alone for nearly an hour before he came back. Because Maggie had refused the chance to warm up, it had been an uncomfortable hour of stilted conversation interspersed with several long silences and thumb twiddling before the man appeared again.
‘Andy, there’s an envelope on my desk to be hand delivered. You do that while I talk to young Maggie here.’ His tone was dismissive as he pointed in the direction he had just come from.
‘But …’
‘No buts. You know that, son. Now, off you go, chop chop.’
Without another word, Andy scuttled through the door, and after a few moments he appeared with a large envelope in his hand. ‘I’ll be straight back,’ he said to Maggie. ‘Good luck.’
As Andy left the room, Jack Blythe unbuttoned his suit jacket, loosened his tie and sat down on one of the chairs. He leaned back so far that the front two legs of the chair were off the floor, and Maggie wondered for a moment if he was going to topple backwards. Still balancing, he crossed his arms and legs at the same time and looked her up and down critically before putting his head on one side and staring into her eyes. His focus on her was disconcerting, but she stood her ground and met his gaze.
‘Come on then, young lady. My boy was right about one thing, you certainly look the part. Now sing for me, show me what you’re made of. X marks the spot, off you go.’
Caught off-guard, Maggie didn’t know what to do without Andy there to guide her, it was nothing like she had anticipated, but she knew it was going to be her only chance so she went over to the spot on the floor that had been marked with a splodge of black paint.
‘Take your coat off. I need to see how you move. It’s not just your voice; it’s your performance. You have to persuade me you’re different; pretty little singers are two a penny nowadays.’ Jack Blythe’s booming voice echoed around the empty room making her feel even more nervous. ‘The mike isn’t working, but I want you to pretend it is. Use it properly and sing into it.’
She took her coat off and dropped it on a nearby stool along with her handbag. Before she moved back to the mark she self-consciously straightened her clothes and tugged at her hair as best she could without a mirror. There was nothing else she could do apart from get on with it.
She moved bac
k, took a deep breath and, with no backing, started to sing. As she did so she swayed a little and tried to imagine herself up on stage singing to an audience; she also tried to ignore the man sitting across the room staring at her.
‘OK, that wasn’t bad. Have you got another song, or are you a one-trick pony?’ he asked as she stood silently at the end of the song.
‘I know lots.’
‘Have you brought a list?’
‘No, sorry, I didn’t think …’
Jack Blythe sighed loudly as he lifted his arms up and crossed them behind his head. ‘Pick another one from your mental list then.’
Maggie was halfway through her third song when Andy slid quietly into the room and sat beside his father. She had started to relax a little and get into the songs, but now she suddenly felt nervous all over again. She carried on until the end, though, and then stood silently on the same spot, unsure of what to do next.
Jack Blythe stood up and, without a word, walked through into his office.
‘He didn’t like me,’ Maggie said as she walked across the room and sat down beside Andy on the seat his father had vacated. ‘Now I feel stupid for doing it. Come on, let’s go. This was a daft idea …’
‘No, no,’ Andy said quickly. ‘We can’t go until Dad says. We’ll just sit here, and he’ll soon come out again. It’s what he does. He needs to go off and think on his own. If he likes you then he’ll talk to you in his office.’
Maggie didn’t want to stop there a second longer. Her face was scarlet with embarrassment, and she could feel the walls closing in on the room. She had made a fool of both herself and Andy. ‘Will he be cross with you if I wasn’t good enough? It was hard standing there in front of your dad like that … He made me feel so nervous.’
‘Why would he be cross with me? I only gave him the record to listen to; it was his choice to see you after he heard you sing on the record. He did that, not me, so no, he can’t blame me.’ Andy smiled encouragingly, but Maggie could sense his nerves also, and again she wondered at it.
Andy was normally so confident and proud of his role as heir to the Blythe business, yet in the presence of his father he seemed almost tongue-tied and nervous to the point of being scared.
The door opened. ‘Come in now, young Maggie. You too, Andrew, as she’s your lucky find.’
They went in together to a smaller room where Jack Blythe was seated behind his carved wooden desk. It was obviously his office, but it was also warm and nicely furnished, with a couch and coffee table on the other side of the room and framed photos all over the walls. While Maggie sat on one of the chairs opposite Jack, Andy went round and stood behind the desk next to where his father was sitting.
‘How old are you, Maggie?’ Jack Blythe asked her.
‘Sixteen.’
‘That could be the sticking point, then. Your parents or guardians will have to sign an agreement giving you permission to perform. Will they do that?’
‘My parents are dead …’
‘Guardians then … I know you have them. I know the story, remember?’ He smiled and winked at her. ‘I don’t want to get into the emotional hoo-ha about what happened with your inheritance, but Andy here said you’re living with guardians and that they have control of the whole kit and caboodle. I’m sure they’ll sign if you can persuade them that this is a reputable agency. Most parents love the idea of their kids earning them a fortune.’ He laughed loudly. ‘And this is, of course, a reputable agency, in case you’re wondering.’
Maggie felt extremely uncomfortable but forced herself to smile and be adult about the situation. It would soon be over.
As he was talking, she studied the man surreptitiously. She could see the family resemblance between father and son, but where Andy’s features had been softened by his mother’s more gentle genes, Jack Blythe had sharp, handsome features. He was tall and broad shouldered but not too muscular, which allowed him to wear his clothes well. Despite her young age, Maggie was perceptive about people, and she could sense a powerful and ruthless streak in him that could probably be very hard.
As she was thinking about similarities between Andy and his parents, her mind wandered, and she started to think about the photos she’d studied recently of Ruby and Johnnie and her own genes. Much as she didn’t want to admit it, she could see something of both of them in her own appearance.
‘Are you listening to me, young lady?’ Jack Blythe snapped at her when she didn’t answer immediately.
‘Of course. I’m sure that’ll be OK with them. But what are they agreeing to? I need to know so that I can discuss it with them. What am I going to be doing?’
‘I don’t know yet. I’m going to need to see you again, maybe with some added vocals and a mike, see what you’re really capable of.’ Again he stared at Maggie, and then after a few moments he let his eyes wander slowly up and down her body then back to her face. ‘You’ve got a good voice, a great figure. I could maybe use you as a backing singer for one of my acts, get you some experience. I don’t know. I’ll have to give it some thought first.’
‘Thank you, Mr Blythe. I’ll talk to them when I get home.’
‘Oh, thanks, Dad.’ Andy grinned and put his hand on his father’s shoulder.
‘Don’t do that, son. It’s not businesslike.’
Jack Blythe quickly swatted him away in irritation, his frown telling Maggie all she needed to know. She felt a wave of sympathy for Andy, so she pretended to rub away at an imaginary mark on her stocking.
‘Sorry,’ Andy said sheepishly. ‘Shall I see Maggie back to the station now?’
‘Yes. Give her the forms she needs to take home, but go through them with her, and then you can take the rest of the day off … I’ve got appointments in here this afternoon, and I need privacy to make decisions.’ Jack Blythe pulled open a drawer of his desk and proffered something to his son. ‘Here’s some luncheon vouchers. Go and treat yourselves down the road.’
‘Can we go upstairs first? I’d like to show Maggie the view …’
The man shook his head and laughed. ‘You do that, son, but no hanky-panky. Your mother’ll have my guts for garters if you get in trouble up there.’
As Jack winked at her, Maggie blushed and looked down, and when she looked up again he had already picked up a folder, opened it and started scanning the pages.
She knew they had been dismissed.
‘Is that all there is to it?’ she asked Andy once they were out of the office with the door closed behind them. ‘But I don’t know about the permission. Ruby and Johnnie will go ape at this idea; they want me to go to secretarial college. Or back to live in the vicarage in Melton.’
‘You never told me about that.’
‘It doesn’t matter. It’s just another of Johnnie’s ideas to get me away from being a bad influence on their precious boys. I’m not going.’
‘OK.’ Andy looked bemused but didn’t pursue it. ‘What do you think about asking them? If you do and they say no, they’ll be on the alert …’ He paused. ‘Unless, of course, you want to forge it. That’ll be easy enough; others have done it. Dad doesn’t mind so long as he doesn’t know about it.’
‘I don’t want to ask them and have them say no or, even worse, have them interfere. It’d be her, him and fatman all over again. I’ll have to think about the best way to get round it.’ She paused and frowned. ‘And they’re bound to find out what I’m doing … Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I might just run away. I don’t think they’d mind; they’d probably be grateful to see the back of me. Their perfect lives could be perfect all over again. They probably wouldn’t even bother to look for me.’
‘Find something with their signatures on, then, but don’t you dare tell anyone that’s what I said if you get caught. I’ll find the papers for you later. First, let’s go up, and I’ll show you the flat.’
It wasn’t a large apartment, but it was at the top of the building. There was a small balcony at the back with a view out over fire escapes and chimney p
ots. It was nothing exceptional and certainly nothing like the picture Andy had painted of it, except for the fact it was right in the centre of London. As Andy showed her around, Maggie couldn’t help but notice that there were very few feminine touches in the flat. In fact, it was almost utilitarian.
‘Does your mother stay here as well?’ she asked.
‘God no, she hates it. She’s happiest being Lady of the Manor in Melton. No this is Dad’s place. And mine.’
‘It’s nice,’ Maggie said. ‘I’d love to live in London.’
‘Perhaps you can if you get your singing going … Maybe you could stay here. I’ll ask Dad.’
‘There’s not enough room though.’
‘We’ve got rooms downstairs that Dad lets out. You could have one of them. Dad doesn’t spend many nights here, anyway; he’s always out with his friends. They all like gambling and drinking and staying up late, all the things Mum hates. We have a cleaner for the flat, which means I don’t have to do anything.’
‘Her, him and fatman would never let me.’ Maggie frowned and shook her head.
‘Don’t tell them. Don’t forget, when you get your inheritance you can do whatever you like. Until then duck and dive, go back and forth, pretend you’re working in John Lewis or something …’
‘My inheritance is years away – five years away, in fact. Well, four and a half years …’ Maggie said after a few seconds’ thought. She had been about to show him the piece of paper with all her financial details on, the information she’d got from the filing box, but something stopped her.
‘Come on then,’ Andy said. ‘Let’s go and make the most of these vouchers. Dad doesn’t usually hand them out willingly. We can decide when you’re going to come to live in London, at least for part of the time, like I do!’
Maggie Page 15
