Used to look after her, she corrected herself bleakly. She leaned back in her chair, her pleasure in the performance evaporating. She’d never get used to it, never — had tried from the first to persuade Lexie she didn’t have to live alone as she did, but there, Lexie had as always insisted on her own way. It hadn’t been so bad for the first three years, when her flat had been at Manor House, in the same block as Fanny and Dave; Bessie had been amazed that Lexie was making enough money to pay such a high rent — fifteen shillings a week, it was, a dreadful amount — but Lexie had said she could afford it and so she had, and the fact that Dave and Fanny were nearby to keep an eye on her, Bessie had told herself in those first years, had helped.
But now all that was changed. The day Lexie had told Bessie she was moving into a flat in Mulberry Walk, in Chelsea, Bessie had only just managed to control her tears. Lexie so far away, in so alien a part of London — it sounded so raffish, so unprotected, so dangerous that her belly had tied itself into a knot, and she had told Alex of her fears as soon as she could, hoping he’d be able to think of a way to stop Lexie from being so foolish.
He’d sat as he always did, with his head on one side and his knees spread wide to accommodate his steadily burgeoning belly, his heavily ringed hands firmly set on each knee and his cigar stuck between his teeth at a jaunty angle. He had listened carefully, then made a face and shaken his head.
‘I know how you feel, Bessie,’ he’d said. ‘Funny people round there, very funny. M’niece has lived there for years, you know, years and years — but do you think she knows any of her neighbours? Hardly a one — and the way that girl’s suffered, I tell you, she needed good neighbours.’ He had launched himself into an account of his beloved Hannah’s problems and Bessie had listened as patiently as she could, wanting desperately to bring him back to her own worries but not able to do so until he stopped to take a breath.
‘The thing is, it’s so expensive.’ She’d let the words come out as carefully as she could, not wanting it to sound as though she were criticizing Lexie but needing his reassurance too much not to explain what it was that was distressing her. ‘I mean, five pounds a week, she said, for the rent! For a place with a bedroom and a living room and a kitchen and a bathroom, that’s all. I’ve got two bedrooms at Victoria Park Road and it costs me just seven and six a week and —’
He had laughed fatly, the ash from his cigar shaken over his waistcoat by his mirth. ‘Victoria Park Road — you should forgive me, Bessie — is a slum compared with Mulberry Walk in Chelsea. Respectable, you understand, but a slum. In Hackney you could get the whole Park and a few roads besides thrown in for a fiver! Listen, five pounds — it’s not so much for such an address. A good address, you see — it costs money. You got to pay for it —’
‘Yes, but who’s paying for it, that’s the thing,’ Bessie said, and then went scarlet. ‘Oh, that sounds so awful. I didn’t mean it, really I didn’t —’
He had stared at her and taken his cigar out of his mouth for the first time. ‘Yes you did,’ he said slowly. ‘That’s just what you meant. You got reason to believe that she ain’t a nice girl no more?’
‘I don’t know,’ she had said miserably, and then the tears had started. ‘I just don’t know! Can she be making enough money out of that act to pay that sort of rent? She’s got to find the costumes and the music and then there’s Ambrose and Poppy — they get paid as well. She can’t be making that much money. Can she?’
‘You’ve asked her?’
‘Of course I’ve tried, but you know how Lexie is —’ Her voice had trailed away.
‘Yes. I know how Lexie is. She bullies you, that’s how she is. She crooks her finger, Bessie comes running. She doesn’t crook her finger, Bessie sits home and cries. She smiles, Bessie smiles. She don’t smile — pah!’ And the soft little sound was full of affectionate anger. ‘I tell you, Bessie, after all these years you still make me so mad I could throw you out o’ the office, only no one else could do the job you do for me! I told you, you shouldn’t let her get away with it —’
‘What can you do when young people insist on going their own way? What can you do if you love them, except follow them?’
‘You make ’em toe the line, that’s what,’ Alex had said grimly. ‘My Hannah, she’s havin’ the same sort o’ trouble with her girl — a bit younger than your Lexie, I’ll grant you, ten years younger, but it’s all the same. Hannah dances when her Mary Bee pipes a tune, and so do you for Lexie — for God’s sake, Bessie, tell the girl what’s worrying you! Ask her who’s payin’ the rent — it’s the only way you’ll feel right.’
But she’d shaken her head and gone on fretting. All the time she was helping Lexie move out of the Manor House flat and into Mulberry Walk, all the time she had hung curtains and filled cupboards, she had tried not to count the cost of the new furniture delivered from Maple’s in the Tottenham Court Road, the best of everything in chrome chairs and Chinese-style laquered furniture and crushed velvet drapes and Lalique glass ornaments, but she had not succeeded. Lexie had paid for everything so cheerfully, writing cheques as casually as though they were made of confetti, that her anxiety had deepened, and now at the first night of the new act with all the new material at the Café de Paris her fears came back with a rush. She’d have to find out, somehow, how she was doing it. She didn’t want to know, but she had to.
After the show was over, and the dance band had taken its place on the miniscule stage and the glass floor was crammed with foxtrotting couples sweating in the crush, Lexie came out to sit with them. Again Bessie felt a stab of pleasure as the woman at the table behind them fluttered and exclaimed at being so close to the star of the cabaret, but Lexie ignored her with great aplomb and sat down beside Alex, smiling at him brilliantly as she slipped into her chair. She had changed from her flimsy costume but what she was wearing now was almost as revealing and Bessie literally bit her tongue. If she wanted to wear little more than a scrap of silk and chiffon and show her knees, why should Bessie distress herself? It wasn’t as though she didn’t look wonderful. She did, with that thick square-cut fringe of hers over her slanting eyes and her thin but seductive little body. She looked wonderful, and that, Bessie tried to convince herself, was what mattered.
‘Ambrose’ll be here soon,’ Lexie said. ‘It takes him twice as long to change as it does me. I told him if he’s not here by two I’ll go to the Bag o’ Nails on my own. I’m not going to miss the best party of the year while he curls his toenails or whatever it is he spends so long at. Dearest Alex — it’s divine to see you! I did so hope you’d catch the act —’ She smiled at Alex Lazar with a practised sparkle and he smiled back, beaming and contented to be in her company.
‘Bessie told me that Fanny and Dave couldn’t come, last minute, so naturally here I am!’
She shook her head at him, and laughed. ‘One of these days you’ll have to tell me what it is with you two. Always slanging each other —’
‘Hey? What’s that? He’s been saying things to you about me?’ Alex said and his forehead creased sharply. ‘If that man’s been —’
‘No, no,’ she said, leaning back in her chair to catch a waiter’s eye. ‘Of course he hasn’t. It’s just that once ages ago he said the sort of things you say — that you don’t get on. Nothing more. Bessie, do you like the new act? What did you think of the “Princess in the Park” number?’
‘Lovely,’ Bessie said, and then, hating herself for the words that came out, knowing what the effect would be, went on, ‘What’s this about the Bag o’ Nails? I thought you were going to a party at someone’s house in Grosvenor Square and then —’
At once Lexie’s face hardened and she flicked a look at Bessie that made her sit back in her chair, her cheeks hot. ‘Ah, here’s a waiter at last. What’s that you two have there? Oh, I need better than that — make it a pink gin, Joe, will you? And quickly, because I can’t stay here long. I’m due somewhere else. As soon as that wretch Ambrose gets out I’ll be
gone. Send someone round to tell him to hurry, Joe, will you?’ She smiled at the waiter with the same trained sparkle she had shown for Alex, and Bessie said no more. She knew when she was defeated.
But Alex did not. ‘So, Lexie, what’s this about the Bag o’ Nails? It’s not a nice place, that —’
‘No, thank God! I wouldn’t be going there if it was, would I? I want a little fun after a day slaving over a hot act — why not come too, Alex? You’d love it. Lots of fun there — they’ve got the most divine jazz band you ever heard, I promise you. It’s not one of these milk and water imitations but a bit of real New Orleans stuff. And the best cocktails in town —’
‘I’ve got work to do tomorrow, young lady,’ Alex said, reaching over to pay the waiter who had brought her pink gin. ‘And so has your sister. We’ll be on our way. Ambrose is taking you, you say? Hmm. Well, I suppose as long as there’s someone there to take care of you —’
‘My dearest old owl, I hardly need taking care of, you know!’ Lexie’s tone was still a bantering one but there was an edge beneath it that made Bessie feel a stir of anxiety in her belly. Don’t let her make a scene, she said inside her head. Don’t let’s have a scene, please. Not with Alex. Not here.
‘Yes you do,’ Alex said unperturbed. ‘Any girl as pretty as you needs to be looked after. The way I look after your sister. She’s a whole three weeks older’n you, but I still like to look after her.’ He grinned at Bessie and the danger subsided as Lexie laughed, drank her gin and watched them both over the rim of her glass, her eyes amused.
‘You two ought to have an affair, you know,’ she said and lifted her brows at Bessie. ‘Do you both the world of good. Or are you already? Maybe I’ve been too busy lately to notice —’
‘Lexie!’ Bessie gasped, but Alex just laughed.
‘Wouldn’t you like to know! But want’ll have to be your master, Miss, because we ain’t tellin’! Eh, Bessie?’ She smiled at him as best she could, picked up her own neglected glass and pretended to drink. She didn’t know what hurt more: Lexie’s awareness that what she had said was absurd, or Alex’s chuckling sharing of the joke. Why should it be funny to think of Bessie having an affair? Why should Alex laugh at the idea so cruelly? And then her commonsense took over and she managed to laugh too, for it was funny, after all. She, Bessie Ascher, having love affairs like ordinary people? A lunatic idea, ridiculous, hilarious. And she did her best to laugh.
‘Did Dave and Fanny say why they couldn’t come?’ Lexie asked casually, but Bessie’s ears sharpened. Lexie’s voice was almost too casual, her interest in the answer to her question too obvious.
‘He’s probably too busy screwing some poor fella out of his life savings somewhere,’ Alex grunted, and lit another cigar. Bessie shook her head at him in mild reproof and turned to take her wrap from the back of her chair.
‘Fanny said she wasn’t well,’ she said. ‘I spoke to her this morning. She told me she felt terrible. You know how Fanny is, always got something wrong with her these days. I told her she should sec a doctor, but she wouldn’t. Said they make more trouble than they save, but I don’t know — anyway she’s not well and Benny’s in Scotland, seeing after some deal or other Dave’s doing there, and with Joe in America who else could stay in with her but Dave? So he couldn’t come either. He said to tell you good luck and mazeltov —’
‘Good,’ Lexie said, and sounded abstracted now. ‘Good. I mean, thanks for the message. I just wondered — oh, at last! Here’s the answer to every girl’s prayers, and I don’t think.’
Ambrose had come across the big restaurant, stopping at table after table to chatter and giggle, but now had reached them, and at once Lexie stood up.
‘I was all set to go on my own,’ she said crisply and picked up her own wrap, a fragment of satin and feathers that looked as though it would blow away in the least breath of wind. ‘Goodnight, Alex, Bessie. See you soon —’
‘When?’ Bessie said it without thinking, and Lexie looked back at her over her shoulder, her eyes bright yet somehow empty.
‘Oh, dearest one, I can’t say! I’ll phone you, I dare say. At the office if the boss doesn’t mind! Goodbye, Alex — lovely to see you. Thanks for the gin — too divine —’ And she went, not looking to see whether Ambrose was following her.
‘And if I don’t go I’ll have my boss after me!’ Ambrose said, twinkling at them both. ‘Enjoyed the act, I hope? Full of great new stuff, isn’t it? Did you see those twirls of mine, Bessie? How about that, then, hmm? I tell you, I topped myself with those — oh, all right!. She’s getting mad, got to go — ’night all!’ And he was gone too, leaving them both sitting and staring after them.
She’s a lot more ill than they know, Lexie thought, staring out of the cab window at a rain-washed Piccadilly and its clotted crawling traffic. A lot more. And suppose it gets worse, then what? Dave on his own — he won’t care then who knows, and anyway he may want — oh, damn. I wish I’d never started it. I wish he’d go away. I wish Fanny wasn’t ill — and she blinked at her own reflection in the wet window. Fanny, who’d always seemed too remote and rather alarming when she was a child and had become a boring and irritating irrelevance in her life in her older years, now seemed to shift in her mind, to take on a new and protective role, like Bessie’s. While Fanny was there, behind Dave, he couldn’t be a nuisance. He could go on as he’d been this past five years, devoted to Lexie, signing her bills, providing what she needed, and getting nothing back but vague promises and teasing and occasional dinners and dancing in the sort of restaurant where no one knew him and those who recognized her cared nothing about with whom she might be spending her time. But if Fanny were no longer there, then what? He’d start wanting more. And if he didn’t get it, then maybe the spring would dry up and the drought would start — she thought of the way her costs were spiralling now, even with his name on the rent book at Mulberry Walk, and shivered slightly in her flimsy wrap.
‘Cold, ducky?’ Ambrose said. He put his arm round her shoulders and hugged her. ‘Never mind. Soon be there — I say, it went like a dream, didn’t it, tonight? Did you hear the way they shouted? At the Café de Paris, yet! They never shout there — but they shouted for us — oh, I reckon we’re on to a goody with this stuff So does Poppy, you know. She said so, and she should know. She’s sat and listened to enough managements’ conversations to have all the nous anyone ever needed. She says we’re on to a winner —’
‘Yes,’ Lexie said with none of his excitement in her voice. ‘We’re on to a winner. We’ve got a month at the Café and then they want us at the Mirabeau, and then we can go back to the Café with a couple of new numbers. We’re all right —’
‘Great,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it great?’ He hugged her again and she felt the tightness return in her chest and was furious with herself for allowing it, but could do nothing to stop it even though she knew she was a fool to feel so. She had realized within a year of their starting the act that she had been barking up any number of wrong trees as far as Ambrose was concerned. Nothing she did or could ever do would change him; he had his Alan and his Clive and his Douglas and now that stupid American, Irving, and she felt her throat tighten when she thought of Irving and the way Ambrose was when he was around. There was nothing she could do about it: Ambrose felt for Irving what she felt for him. Or had, she told herself now as she patted his hand and smiled the cheerful smile she always used for him, and said nothing. What would be the good of saying anything? They were great friends, colleagues, partners, everything but what she wanted them to be. Settle for that.
And I’m not missing all that much, she told herself as at last the cab reached the middle of Piccadilly and could turn left into Half Moon Street on its way to the Bag o’ Nails nightclub. It’s only a lot of stupid tumbling about and messy groping and who cares anyway? Such a fuss about so little. She thought of the last time someone had got a crush on her and had begged her to accept him as a lover, and shook her head in the darkness. That had been so
boring and you couldn’t say anything worse than that. To be bored — it was like being dead. And sex was boring. Men were boring. There was just work and getting money to make everything come out the way she wanted it and getting the act to bigger and better venues and making more money. That’s all. And having a partner who dances like Ambrose is more important than having any number of stupid lovers — and again she patted his hand as it held her upper arm, and he grinned at her and said, ‘Attagirl,’ with vague good humour as at last the cab drew up at the dark doorway with its discreet brass plate that read, ‘Bag o’ Nails. Members only.’
17
For the first half hour or so it was fine. The place was full of people she knew well enough to talk to but not so well that she was irritated by the company. There were strangers who had caught the act at the Café and were filled with extravagant praise, there were lots of cocktails, and the jazz was good.
But then the clock turned past two, and the crowd thickened, became noisier and more frantic in its chatter and dancing, and as Ambrose was whisked away by that damned Irving, gloom settled on her again. She thought for a while of going home, but that would be dreary. She was still keyed up from the excitement of the performance, needed time to come down, to loosen up and begin to yawn. Nothing was worse than going home too soon, to sit in the flat, listen to the distant noise of traffic from the King’s Road, and lie awake and awake and awake.
She sat at a table in the corner, her back to the wall, watching them all, surrounded by people who gabbled and exclaimed and shrieked with laughter, and yet it was curiously peaceful. She could lean her head back against the yellow velvet upholstery and stare round and see without making any real effort to be part of it. She could be there, and yet remote from it. The light immediately above her head threw an agreeable warmth on to her neck and she liked that, for it was a cold night and even here in this crowded basement she could feel the chill of the rainy October dark that filled the streets outside, seeping through the walls and into her fragile bones. So she sat and let her. own thoughts fill her, giving up the impossible task of keeping her mind a blank. It would be wonderful she told herself dreamily, if she could. But it just wasn’t possible —
Family Chorus Page 19
