A Winter Love Song

by Rita Bradshaw

  It was some minutes before her grief subsided; grief for her father, grief for the young girl she had been before Franco had taken her, grief that life could never be the same again. She was sore in mind and body, exhausted and at the end of herself, but as she dried her face and redid her hair in order to go downstairs, she told herself she wouldn’t always feel like this. Alone, lost, all at sea. And then her gaze moved round the room again, and the ember of gladness glowed faintly once more.

  Her chin lifted. This wasn’t the end of something, it was the beginning. Mrs Nichols had said there were lots of girls like her who could sing, and there might be, but they didn’t want to succeed as a singer as much as she did. Furthermore she might not have known what a casting couch was, but she’d cottoned on to what Mrs Nichols meant after a time, and she would fight tooth and nail before she let any man do to her what Franco had done. She shuddered, her mouth tightening in disgust.

  Her da had always said that she was like him in as much that she had a double portion of get-up-and-go. She inclined her head at the thought. It was up to her to use it now. And she would. No more crying or looking backwards. Life had to be lived looking forwards, it was the only way.

  Chapter Seven

  Over the following weeks as summer gave way to autumn Bonnie’s resolve to find work as a singer was severely tested. She picked Hilda Nichols’s brains for the location of any local pubs and clubs and halls which hired live entertainment for the enjoyment of their customers, and then widened her search to include areas as far flung as Kingston upon Thames to the south and Barnet to the north, but all to no avail. The fact that she couldn’t read music was a handicap, even though she assured prospective employers that she could learn a tune after hearing it only once or twice, along with the words. Some rejections were couched more kindly than others but they all boiled down to the same thing; she had no proven experience of singing professionally, she spoke with a strong north-east accent, she was untrained, and – which she soon realized was the most important thing – she had no contacts within the industry and no one to vouch for her.

  She left her lodgings each morning after one of Hilda’s generous fry-ups and returned late evening having spent the day trying her luck at any and every club, pub, theatre and hall she could find. She scoured the papers each night before going to bed, cutting out notices about venues and shows – those advertising for singers and even those that weren’t – and then would present herself at the door of said establishments the next morning, but not once did she get as far as someone actually listening to her sing.

  She was often frustrated, sometimes angry, once or twice unnerved when Mrs Nichols’s casting couch was covertly suggested, and totally exhausted every night. But through it all she made herself count her blessings. First and foremost, Franco’s attack hadn’t resulted in a bairn, as the normal occurrence of her monthlies confirmed. But almost without her being aware of it, her horizons were broadening, her knowledge of the world outside that of the fair and the showmen was being developed, and – through disappointment after crushing disappointment – her inner self was being strengthened. After she had scoured the newspapers for advertisements, she read them from cover to cover, absorbing facts like a sponge. She was horrified to learn about the Nazis herding Jews into concentration camps in Germany, and the more she read about Adolf Hitler the more uneasy she felt; this was heightened when in October it was reported that the Nazi government had walked out of the Geneva Disarmament Conference and withdrawn from the League of Nations.

  She discussed this over breakfast with Hilda, Selina Parker – who was fast becoming a close friend – and Verity and Larry McKenzie, the married couple who occupied a room on the floor below herself and Selina. Larry fancied himself as a political activist although Bonnie didn’t see that he did anything but talk, since Verity wouldn’t allow him to attend meetings or rallies and the like; he was scathing about the Nazis and their brutal rise to power.

  ‘They’re bullies,’ he said earnestly, his eyes blinking like an overwrought owl’s behind his round, metal-rimmed glasses. ‘And everything that was predicted after Hitler became Chancellor is happening in front of our eyes. The persecution of the Jews and anyone who disagrees with it, the burning of all those so-called “un-German” books in May and the purging of the trade-union movement, banning all opposition parties and creating this Hitler Youth movement to brainwash the young, it’s relentless. And what about the sterilization of “imperfect” Germans? How can anybody in their right mind agree with forcing those who are blind or deaf or physically deformed and so on to be sterilized? But it’s happening, right now it’s happening and the world is doing nothing about it. And this referendum next month to supposedly give the ordinary German man and woman the opportunity to approve Hitler’s policies is a joke. All the other parties in Germany have been outlawed, for crying out loud. There’ll only be the name of the Nazi Party on the ballot paper, and Hitler’s Storm Troopers will make sure people are dragged to the polling stations if necessary. Hitler’s crushing all resistance and rearming Germany, and you know what that means, don’t you?’

  Bonnie, Hilda and Selina stared at him, but Verity continued eating her breakfast. She had heard it all before, many times.

  ‘War,’ said Larry after a thespian pause.

  ‘Don’t say that.’ Hilda’s voice was sharp. She had lived through one war and seen the devastation it caused in families when their menfolk didn’t come home.

  Larry went a little red. ‘Sorry, Mrs Nichols,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘I was just saying, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, don’t.’ Verity glared at her husband. ‘Upsetting people when they’re trying to eat their breakfast. And you don’t know how things will turn out anyway. No one wants war, not even Hitler.’

  There the conversation had ended, but in November when the Nazis won ninety-five per cent of the German vote, Bonnie thought about what Larry had said. Perhaps unsurprisingly though, not for long. She had come to the conclusion that the dream would have to wait for a while. She needed a job, any job. Her money was disappearing with alarming regularity. When she’d first arrived in London she’d bought a wardrobe of lovely clothes, knowing that she needed to be dressed well if she was going to have any chance at all at an interview or audition. On top of that expenditure, there was the rent for her room, an evening meal each day – after Hilda Nichols’s cooked breakfast each morning she had decided she could forgo lunch in the interest of economy – bus fares and the like as she travelled further and further afield in an effort to find a singing job, and, since the weather had worsened, coal for the little fireplace in her room. After seeing some of the other pretty young things she was competing against in the entertainment world, she had visited a hairdressing salon and had her long wavy hair cut into a shoulder-length, curly style that had immediately added two or three years to her age. The salon had also sold a selection of cosmetics, and the very nice girl who had cut her hair had shown her how to use the minimal amount to make the most of her clear translucent skin and big eyes. She had left the establishment clutching a bag holding creams and powders, lipstick and mascara as well as tweezers for tidying up her eyebrows, and feeling very much a modern miss.

  But everything cost money, and she was finding life in the capital expensive. She had been hoping against hope that something in the entertainment industry would come her way but it was clearly not meant to be – yet.

  After discussing her predicament with Selina, Bonnie knew the only sensible thing to do was to get herself a waitressing job or bar work because she couldn’t face working in a factory and being shut in all day. She had come to this inescapable conclusion after lasting one day in a job at a pickling factory. The noise, the feeling of being hemmed in, the smell, and not least a foreman with roving hands, had made Bonnie sick to her stomach. She had arrived at the café where she was meeting Selina for their evening meal close to tears, but after a substantial plate of sausage and mash and a chat with her
friend she’d felt better.

  ‘You need a job where you’re meeting people,’ Selina had comforted her. ‘Something with a bit more freedom to it than being confined to a conveyor belt from nine to five.’

  Which was why, on a cold November morning with the smell of frost in the air, Bonnie left the house in Shouldham Street for a working men’s club not far from Paddington station that had vacancies for barmaids. After the fiasco at the factory she felt more than a little nervous. She wanted the job and she needed to work, but if it was offered her she didn’t want to fail again.

  She had dressed carefully for the appointment she’d made the day before when she had called at the club. An elderly grey-haired woman had opened the door to her knock, and when Bonnie had explained she was answering the advertisement ‘Barmaids wanted’ in the previous evening’s paper, the woman had nodded. ‘There’s only me here at the moment, ducks,’ she’d said cheerily. ‘I do a bit of cleaning most mornings. It’s Ralph you want, he’s the manager. I know he’s told a couple of other girls to come along about ten tomorrow morning. Give us your name and I’ll let him know you’re coming an’ all, all right?’

  She had stuttered her new name, Bernice Cunningham, which still felt strange on her lips, and left. She had visited the club some weeks before looking for a singing job and on that occasion had seen a man called Dennis Heath who had the grand title of ‘master of ceremonies’. He’d been very offhand with her and she was glad she wasn’t seeing him again. In fact she nearly hadn’t gone after the barmaid’s job because she hadn’t wanted to face him.

  By the time she reached the club it was just before ten o’clock and several girls were waiting outside, eyeing each other up and down. One of them had been talking to another girl – a brassy blonde, Hilda would have labelled her – and it was she who turned and looked at Bonnie. ‘You here for one of the barmaids’ jobs too?’ At Bonnie’s nod, she added, ‘Great. That’s five of us after two jobs. Oh, well, better than odds of ten to one, I suppose.’

  She smiled and Bonnie smiled back. None of the other girls spoke and after an awkward moment, Bonnie said, ‘I’m Bonnie, by the way.’

  ‘Betty.’ Then the blonde giggled. ‘Flippin’ heck, Betty and Bonnie. Sounds like a double act, don’t it! You’re not from round these parts, are you?’

  ‘I’ve recently moved from the north.’

  Betty nodded. ‘Thought that was a northern accent. I used to go out with a bloke whose family were from Newcastle. That where you’re from?’

  ‘No.’ Feeling it would be rude not to elaborate, Bonnie added, ‘Not as north as that.’

  She was saved from further questions by the arrival of a dapper little man whose grizzly grey hair stuck up straight from the crown of his head when he doffed his hat to them all. ‘Ladies . . .’ He grinned widely. ‘What a bevy of beauties, if I may say so. A pity I haven’t got work for five barmaids. Still, there it is. Come in, the lot of you.’

  He unlocked the door to the club and stood aside for them to file past. A couple of the girls smiled at him as they did so and one, a small redhead with a definite wiggle to her hips, said cheekily, ‘Ta, Mr Mercer, or do we call you Ralph?’ as she fluttered her eyelashes.

  ‘You can call me whatever you like, sweetheart, but if you want me to answer, it’s Mr Mercer.’ The tone was affable but Bonnie detected an edge to it, and Betty must have thought the same because once they were inside, she whispered, ‘I reckon there’s only four of us in the running now. He didn’t like her coming on to him, did he?’

  The club smelt strongly of smoke and stale beer but after the eye-watering smell of the pickling factory it was almost pleasant. The five girls followed the manager through a large room that had a bar rail down one side and a stage at the far end and was packed with tables and chairs, and out through a door into the back of the club where the manager’s office was situated, along with the ladies’ and gents’ toilets. There was a row of hard-backed chairs along the wall of the corridor and Ralph Mercer pointed to them, saying, ‘Sit yourselves down, ladies, and decide who’s first and second and so on. I’ll call you in one at a time.’

  After he’d shut the door to his office, the redhead said, ‘Well, I was here second after her.’ She inclined her head at one of the girls who’d smiled at the manager as they’d come in. ‘I suggest we go in the order we got here. Agreed?’

  They all nodded.

  Bonnie’s heart sank. She was the last. That didn’t bode well.

  The first girl and the redhead were in the manager’s office for no more than five minutes respectively and both left without a word to the others. Betty looked at Bonnie and the remaining girl, a tall individual with dark, bobbed hair. ‘Neither of them have been offered a job,’ she said definitely.

  ‘Perhaps he’s going to see us all and then let us know,’ said the dark-haired girl in a bored voice. ‘I don’t care whether I get a job or not anyway. I’m getting married in the spring and my Hector don’t agree with women working once they’re wed.’

  Betty stood up then as the door to the office opened and Ralph Mercer beckoned her forward as the third applicant.

  Once they were alone, the girl continued, ‘I was working at the Red Lion on the Bayswater Road till a few days ago, do you know it?’

  Bonnie shook her head.

  ‘It was nice there but my Hector got the idea the barman was after me and waited for him after work and punched him on the nose. The owner wasn’t too pleased and I was out on my ear.’

  Bonnie didn’t feel she’d like ‘my Hector’ over much.

  ‘Still, like I say, I don’t care. My Hector works at the docks and earns loads. He buys me whatever I want. Look –’ She thrust out her left hand where an engagement ring sparkled. ‘Nice, ain’t it? An’ Hector’s already put a deposit on our house. He says he’d rather me stay at home and get me bottom drawer ready for when we get married than get another barmaid job.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  The girl stared at Bonnie as though she’d asked something ridiculous. ‘Whatever Hector wants,’ she said after a moment or two. ‘If I don’t get this I shan’t bother to go after anything else.’

  Bonnie gave up. For the next few minutes she listened to the girl rattle on about her wedding plans with ‘my Hector’ this and ‘my Hector’ that, and was inordinately glad when the door to the office opened again. Betty sailed out, giving Bonnie a broad wink and thumbs-up as she passed, and almost immediately ‘my Hector’ was called into the manager’s office, only to emerge even faster than the first two applicants had done, grim-faced and with a heightened colour in her pale cheeks.

  Mr Mercer was in the doorway and looked at the list in his hand. ‘You must be Bernice Cunningham. Come in.’

  The office was bigger than she had expected and had three desks in it. Ralph Mercer sat himself down behind the largest one in the middle and pointed at the hard-backed chair set in front of it. ‘Sit yourself down, Bernice.’

  ‘I – I like to be called Bonnie,’ she stammered as she did as she was told. ‘No one calls me Bernice.’

  ‘Right you are. Now, before we get going, tell me. Are you about to get married, Bonnie?’

  Startled, she stared at him and a pair of keen blue eyes smiled back at her. Betty must have told him what the other girl had said. Unsure whether he meant the question seriously, she said, ‘Absolutely not, Mr Mercer.’

  ‘Well, that’s a start.’ He settled back in his chair. The office was lovely and warm from the heat given off by an electric fire and for the first time that morning Bonnie felt herself relaxing. ‘Now, that’s a northern accent if I’m not much mistaken. Your family moved down south, I take it?’

  Bonnie gave him the limited version of the truth she’d told everyone since arriving in London, but without mentioning her desire to sing as she felt it could hamper her being offered the job, and insinuating that she had only just arrived in the capital.

  Ralph Mercer listened without interrupting,
but behind his expressionless face he was summing Bonnie up. After years in the pub and club trade he prided himself on being a shrewd judge of character. Hadn’t he suspected his two previous barmaids were on the fiddle? That fool Dennis had taken them on when he was on holiday and as soon as he’d laid eyes on them his sixth sense had kicked in. Sure enough they’d had a scam going between them and had had their hands in the till until he had caught them at it and sacked them on the spot. They were lucky he hadn’t called in the law; he would have done but for the fact that he knew one of them had an ailing mother and younger brothers and sisters to support and was the sole breadwinner in her house, the father having done a runner years before. Too soft, that was his trouble.

  But this girl seemed honest enough although he’d bet his bottom dollar there was more to her than met the eye. Still, who didn’t have skeletons in the cupboard? And she was dressed well and a bit more refined than Betty Preston who he had just taken on. They’d balance each other well.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Betty Preston tells me you really want this job, unlike Miss Madley. Is that true?’

  Taken aback, Bonnie stared at him for a moment. How nice of Betty to put in a good word for her. Finding her voice, she said, ‘Aye, yes, Mr Mercer. I do.’

  ‘But you haven’t worked behind a bar before?’

  ‘No, but I’m a quick learner.’

  ‘Good at adding up?’

  This time she was ready. ‘Definitely.’

  ‘There’s no standing on ceremony here so I warn you now. Old Ada comes in most mornings and does a couple of hours’ cleaning, but when the club’s busy you might be asked to clean the ladies’ or mop up spills before someone slips and brains themselves, things like that. You’ve got to be prepared to muck in. There’s a small kitchen at the rear where we make hot drinks but no food is prepared on the premises. Me missus brings that to sell to the customers – sandwiches, pork pies, scratchings and so on. We bring it out from the back as needed and the prices are on a blackboard behind the bar. There’s a dance every Saturday and a couple of concerts in the week; always something going on so it’s lively and there’ll be times, lots of times, when you’re fair rushed off your feet and on the go non-stop. It’s always at the busiest times you’ll get an awkward customer who’s mouthy with it. Think you can handle that while still smiling? On the whole we have a nice enough bunch in but there’s a couple of right so-an’-sos an’ all. Same as anywhere.’