by Pip Granger
It was fairly crowded already, although it was barely noon, but we managed to find a table for four next to one of the windows. It was a far cry from the canteen I was used to. With its rows and rows of tables crammed into a lofty, dingy space, that was more like a mess hall in a run-down barracks. The cafe was cosy in comparison.
The ceiling was lower, for starters, so you didn’t get the feeling that there were bats in the rafters way above your head. Although there were plenty of tables, it didn’t feel like an institutional canteen. There was no dark green and mashed potato paint on the walls either; the plaster beneath the dado rail was white, and above it was panelled in pine, also painted white, with shelves and mirrors fixed to it. The shelves held china, spare cups, saucers and plates. Every now and then, a spider plant or wandering Jew hung over the edge and was reflected in a glittering mirror. The whole effect was light and airy, and a far cry from the dark cavern I worked in.
There was a counter at the back of the shop, with an urn and a display cabinet with rock cakes, scones and teacakes tastefully arranged on plates, complete with sparkling white, lace-edged doilies. A large, ornate till stood at the other end of the counter and behind, on each side of the door leading to the kitchen, were more shelves. The woman who appeared to be running the show couldn’t have been more different from Mrs Dunmore. She was younger for starters, and a good deal bigger. She looked as if she actually enjoyed her food, whereas Mrs D. looked as if she never touched the stuff. Maggie, as she was called, was what you might call a real advert for the delights on offer.
‘Hello, Miss Makepeace, how nice to see you again. It’s been a while,’ said Maggie, little realizing that she could have knocked me down with a feather as she said it. How did she know our Zinnia? ‘What can I get you? The special today is liver and bacon, mashed spuds and gravy. Oh yes, and some cabbage and carrots to go with it. Or we’ve got cauliflower cheese or sausage dish, take your pick.’
The boys were struck dumb and could only stare, open-mouthed, looking around the place and at the other customers; anywhere except at Maggie, poised with her pad and pencil. In the end, I chose liver and bacon on their behalf, when it looked as if their voices had deserted them for ever. Once the food was delivered, however, they tucked in quietly. They even used the table manners their mums had tried so hard to teach them. There were no elbows on the table, they chewed with their mouths closed and took small mouthfuls, instead of stuffing their cheeks like hamsters, the way they did at home. Their mums would have been puffed with pride and I was quite pleased myself. As Zinnia said, the boys were a credit to us. They were too overwhelmed by their new surroundings to be anything else, but nobody mentioned that.
We even had a pudding – apple crumble and custard – and I was in heaven. I wasn’t expecting a pudding. Neither were the boys, and they wolfed theirs down in double-quick time as if they thought some bugger might nick it from under their noses. Zinnia ate hers in a more leisurely manner and chatted quietly with Maggie.
‘And how’s your husband, Maggie?’ she asked politely.
‘Lovely, thanks, Miss Makepeace. His trouble’s a lot better since you gave him that jar of ointment.’
‘I’m glad you reminded me.’ Zinnia stuck her head into her enormous bag and came out waving a large jar. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d whipped out her range, the butler’s sink and her two cats while she was at it. It seemed to be bottomless, that bag of hers. ‘Here’s some more. Do give it to him with my compliments, hen.’
Maggie smiled. ‘I will. He’ll be pleased. He’s been eking the last lot out.
‘Are you here to see Mr Burlap? He was in just the other day. He came in with Mademoiselle Hortense and some of her dancers.’
‘Aye, hen. We’ve brought young Tony here for an audition,’ Zinnia explained.
‘Good luck then, Tony. Mr Burlap’s a poppet, you needn’t worry about him. We all think the world of him round here. He put on some lovely carol singing last Christmas, right in the middle of Soho Square. Cheered us all up no end. He’s a good teacher too, or so the show people say, and they should know. Right, I’ll leave you to finish your pudding. Would you like some tea?’
By the time we’d finished our dinner and taken a stroll up Shaftesbury Avenue and back again, it was time to go to see Mr Burlap. I noticed that as well as being quiet, Tony had also managed to lose some of the blush from his normally rosy cheeks. He must have been afraid, poor lad. I would have been, too, in his position. It was scary to have to perform all on your own, for a complete stranger who knew his stuff.
18
There was nothing to show that Digby Burlap’s music studio was above the violin shop called Fishbein’s Strings, except a small sign that simply said Digby Burlap and nothing else. Below it was another plate that read Mademoiselle Hortense, Ecole De Dance in the same fancy writing as Mr Burlap’s and Mr Fishbein’s signs, so I figured they must have got a job-lot price from the signwriter, who went the whole hog once he’d got his eye in. Zinnia applied a large, capable finger to the brass bell push and we waited and we waited and we waited.
I was just wondering if we’d arrived at the wrong time, or on the wrong day, when I heard a sound like a runaway horse clattering down the stairs. The brown door crashed open and a tiny figure in black chirruped, ‘Zinnia, ma chère, ’e is up the stairs in ’is studio, waiting for you. I must fly. I ’ave a re’earsal with a ’erd of buffalo that I must turn into swans before ze month is out.’ Then the wispy little figure flitted down the area steps and disappeared into the basement, where she could faintly be heard yelling. ‘Come, mes petites pachyderms. Places, places and one and two and …’ A piano started up a shade before what sounded like a dozen sets of hobnailed boots began to thunder a syncopated rhythm on wooden floorboards. ‘Non, non, non – glide like the swan, not thump like the kangaroo! Alors! It is ’opeless, ’opeless …’
I was beginning to think that Mademoiselle Hortense might’ve been better off keeping a zoo, when Zinnia led the way up the narrow stairway. The boys were in the middle and I brought up the rear, ready to field Tony if he made a last-minute dash for it. The poor lad looked as if he was mounting the scaffold.
At last Zinnia arrived on a small landing. A panelled door flew open and a huge, indistinct figure swept her up into the most enormous bear hug, swung her off her feet and round so that she landed inside the room before turning to greet us in a voice that could clearly be heard in Slough. ‘Welcome, welcome! Come in, do. Zinnia, my flower, so good to see you.’
I just had time to think ‘Zinnia, a flower? A thistle perhaps,’ when my hand was grabbed in a giant paw and raised to a pair of full lips. ‘Enchanted, my dear lady. And the boys? Not yours, surely, you’re far too young, far too young! Nothing but a spring sapling yourself.’
Once the introductions were made and I had got over some of the shock of seeing Zinnia manhandled by this giant of a man and apparently loving it, we settled down to business. ‘Which one of you likely looking lads is the singer?’ Mr Burlap asked, turning first to Tony and then to Reggie, shaggy eyebrows raised in enquiry.
Mr Burlap had a huge head to go with his body, and thick, black hair that seemed to writhe with a life of its own. He wore a rusty brown velvet jacket, with tarnished gold braid around the lapels and cuffs. More gold braid made elaborate patterns around the buttonholes that strained across a large chest and an even larger belly. Mr Burlap was definitely built for comfort, and speed was not an option. What I liked most about him were his eyes, which were large, brown and very kind.
‘Zinnia, my queen, sit, sit, do. And you, dear lady, and the spare boy, sit and we will proceed.’ So we sat. Tony, Reggie and I were too overawed and dumbstruck to say anything, but Zinnia chatted away comfortably about Tony’s singing as if she was in Rainbird’s grocery buying tea and a bag of flour and discussing the state of the Empire with Terry. She seemed oblivious to our astonishment at her being addressed by Mr Burlap as a ‘flower’ and his ‘queen’.
/>
‘I see. Right you are. You, Tony, come and stand by me and we’ll run you through a few things. See how we do. Hmm?’ Up went the caterpillar eyebrows again and Tony followed him over to the piano. Mr Burlap sat down on the piano stool and ran his fingers over the keys in an absentminded sort of way. He looked Tony up and down, nodded once and played his little tune for a moment longer. Then he asked Tony about his experience of singing with the Reverend Cattermole’s choir at St Mary’s. Tony told him about being the main soloist and singing at all the important church events.
‘Enjoy it, do you?’ Mr Burlap asked, when Tony had run out of steam. Tony nodded. ‘Good!’ Another tinkle or two on the piano and then he said, ‘Right you are. Your scales now: run up and down for me, will you?’
Tony obliged and was rewarded with a nod and an ‘Again.’ Tony’s voice sang out in the silence. ‘Hmm,’ was Mr Burlap’s only comment.
Then, out of the blue, he asked, ‘Can you sing the tune I’ve just been playing, dear boy? In your own time.’ And without hesitation Tony’s voice soared over our heads, chiming out the intricate tune in a voice as clear as the waterfalls Zinnia talked about when she fell to pining for her Highland home.
‘Hmm, I see,’ said Mr Burlap again after another moment or two. He fumbled on a shelf and found some sheet music. He began to play the piano again, then asked Tony to hum what he’d just heard and follow it up with the first piece again. He did that once more, with a different piece of music. Then he took a funny fork thing out of an otherwise empty milk bottle that stood on the shelf next to the piano stool, gave it a resounding whack on the edge of his stool and said, ‘Can you hum that note and hold it?’ Tony did as he was asked. After another half an hour of similar exercises Mr Burlap turned to Zinnia with a smile that matched the rest of him. Big, in other words.
‘The boy has perfect pitch.’ Another smile, this one so wide that you could’ve posted parcels in it. ‘Absolutely perfect pitch. That’s a rare gift. And a good musical memory. He’ll do. I’ll teach him.’
‘Oh Digby, dear, I am delighted,’ Zinnia said, and she looked it too.
I was sorry to spoil the mood, but I had to be practical. Apart from anything else, Vi would expect it of me. ‘Can I ask about cost?’ I said in a small voice. ‘You see, his mum doesn’t have a lot of spare money. So it’s something we have to consider. Sorry,’ I finished lamely.
‘Oh don’t trouble yourself too greatly about that, dear lady. Zinnia and I have already made an amicable arrangement. A donation of a pound a week to my poor box should do nicely. Or less, if you find that troublesome. Dear Zinnia will arrange everything to everyone’s satisfaction I am sure.’
I wondered what ‘amicable arrangement’ he and Zinnia had come to, but realized I’d never find out unless she chose to tell me. I was determined to try, though. You never knew, she might come over all communicative. And pigs might square-dance, I thought to myself. Still, I reckoned that between me and Vi, we’d manage a quid a week, just. I might even be able to tap Dilly for a few bob, and her mum too, I thought. They were, after all, Tony’s relatives just as much as we were. One way or another, Tony was going to get his lessons, if I had anything to do with it. That’s if he wanted them, of course. It’d be a waste of money otherwise.
I turned to him. ‘What do you think, Tone? Fancy giving it a go, do you?’
Tony nodded, his face aglow with achievement. ‘Yes, Auntie Zelda, I’d like to give it a try.’
‘Good!’ boomed Mr Burlap, and it was arranged we’d present ourselves the following week.
Tony was very quiet on the way home as he thought about Mr Burlap and the new direction he was taking. It was certainly a lot for the lad to get his brains around. We had never seen anyone even remotely like Mr Burlap in our entire lives before.
Which had me thinking about what I had learned about our old friend Zinnia. She was pretty eccentric herself, in her own quiet way, but seeing her being treated to hugs, kisses and extravagant endearments by someone so much bigger than life was a bit of a facer. We were all too much in awe of Zinnia to take personal, physical liberties like grabbing her and hurling her around, but she did seem to love it, so may be she missed it when we kept our distance. Or possibly it was only Mr Burlap who was encouraged to take such liberties. In which case, why was he the exception?
Then, on top of all that, Soho’s apparent familiarity with our Zinnia suggested she was a fairly frequent presence in their midst, which made the whole thing even more of a mystery. She really was a much darker horse than I’d ever given her credit for being. She’d have made an ace spy or member of the Resistance. She had never, ever given us the slightest hint that she’d even stopped in Soho for a cup of tea, let alone long enough to be well known and held in obvious affection by quite a few of the locals.
I couldn’t guess what Reggie was thinking about, but he too was silent on the way home. He simply gazed out of the bus window, taking in the passing scene. Like Zinnia, our Reggie was a deep one. In the end I asked him, ‘A penny for ’em, Reggie.’
‘They’re not worth it, Auntie. I was just thinking what a nice afternoon we had, what a funny lot they are in Soho, ’specially that Mr Burlap, and what a lucky bug … bloke Tony is to have a talent, and that I wished I had one too,’ he said, rather sadly I thought.
‘But you have got a talent, Reggie, lots of them in fact. You’re clever for one thing. You always do well at school in most of your subjects,’ I pointed out.
‘That’s because I work hard at it, not because I’m clever,’ Reggie answered me glumly. ‘Being a swot is nothing to write home about.’
‘But you are clever, Reggie,’ I argued. ‘You have the sense to work hard, make the most of your talents and best of all, you have the sense to keep out of trouble, which is more than can be said of your cousin.’
Tony came round at that and grinned at me cheekily. ‘Thanks a lot for nothing, Auntie.’
‘Oh it ain’t nothing, Tony, to get singing lessons. Anybody’d think you was being rewarded for being a tearaway,’ Reggie told his cousin bitterly. Tony did have the grace to look a bit ashamed and he looked away, blushing.
Reggie had made a good point. It did look that way. I made up my mind there and then to make sure Reggie had his turn one day.
19
It was Sunday. Charlie had been safely back in Catterick for only a week, but my bruises were fading and the aches and pains were getting better already. Having missed church the previous week, I was about to give official thanks to the Lord for Charlie’s blessed absence and my healing powers. I also thought I’d offer up a prayer that I wouldn’t have to put up with Charlie around the flat again until he was demobbed.
Charlie had been one of the first into the army when the call came, not from choice but because getting away had seemed like a very good idea at the time. He’d had a spot of bother with Lily Law over some boxes of fags found in his cousin’s possession. They had been ambushed somewhere between a bonded warehouse at the docks and a posh tobacconist’s in South Kensington. The law couldn’t prove Charlie was actually there, but on the other hand, Charlie couldn’t prove that he wasn’t. After all, Lily Law reasoned, his cousin had possession of the swag and had been seen hanging around the bonded warehouse along with Charlie’s older brother, Sid. The chances were, therefore, that Charlie boy was busy close by.
So, with his relatives tucked up in custody awaiting trial, hostilities with Hitler had come to the boil and call-up seemed inevitable, so Charlie thought, why not volunteer? That way, he could get away in a reasonable and orderly fashion and be thought to be a gung-ho hero ready to serve King and Country, while he was at it. He’d also just discovered he was going to be a father and strongly suspected a shotgun wedding was in the offing. He felt that great distance would definitely lend enchantment to that particular domestic view. He was right, too.
Anyway, the upshot of all that was, the first men and women into the forces were likely to be the first out again
. So I was going to pray hard for an administrative cock-up that would keep Charlie in service until the very last knockings. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be that long before he was home for good. It didn’t bear thinking about, so a fervent knee job was definitely called for. God might be listening. A body never knew for sure, even if He had been cocking a deaf ’un from the very start of my married life. Let’s face it, if He’d been listening, there never would have been that grapple on Emily Alice Davies’s grave, there’d have been no wedding and my whole life would have been different.
I was just getting my hat and gloves on, ready for church, followed by dinner at Mum’s along with the rest of the family, when a loud hammering on the street door made me jump. I snatched up my handbag and the oilcloth shopping bag with my meat ration in it. I had worked out that there was just enough time to drop in at Arcadia Buildings to put it on to cook in the huge stew pot before we made our way to St Mary’s church. We often pooled our meat rations on a Sunday. It made a morsel go a long way and every little helped. This week we had a minuscule, tough and stringy mutton chop each and a few spuds, onions and carrots too. So stew it was.
The Sunday routine in our family rarely varied. Mum and the rest of us girls were expected to attend the nine o’clock service while Dad had a lie-in. He attended the eleven o’clock, which was done and dusted in time for a swift pint at the King’s Head and then home for his Sunday dinner, cooked by his women. Any men at home went to church and, if old enough, to the pub with Dad, except poor Tony who had to be at all the services because he was in the choir.
The Reverend Cattermole loved music. He always had Mrs Cattermole pounding her heart out on the organ and had the choir in attendance as often as humanly possible, war or no war. ‘Music lifts the spirits,’ he’d say, ‘far better than any sermon I could preach. This is especially true if young Tony’s singing a solo, because his voice is so beautiful, so strong, so sure and so pure.’
