Chrissie's Children

by Irene Carr

  Chrissie repeated the men’s warnings when the girls ran her to earth. She was in consultation with the architect and the builder whose men were carrying out the work, their heads bent over plans. Chrissie eyed the girls with disapproval. ‘This is no place for you.’

  Sophie answered cheerfully, ‘I just wanted to see and I brought Helen along.’

  ‘Well, you’ve seen. Now stand here till I’ve finished and you can go out with me. Don’t wander off on your own. Buildings like this can be dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing.’

  Chrissie turned back to the architect and builder but as she resumed their conversation she could see Sophie out of the corner of her eye. After some minutes she broke off again with a word of apology to the two men: ‘Excuse me a moment.’

  She stepped over to where Sophie was strolling back and forth, smiling at the men who were working near by. Helen stood gazing into the distance, pink cheeked. Chrissie seized Sophie by the arm, spun her round and hissed, ‘Stop that!’

  Sophie protested, ‘Stop what?’

  ‘You know very well.’

  ‘It’s only a bit of fun,’ Sophie complained at her mother’s vice-like grip. ‘And you’re hurting me.’

  ‘I’ll hurt you a damn sight more if I have to. It may be a game to you but other people might want to play differently. Now behave yourself.’

  Sophie looked into her mother’s eyes and obeyed.

  That night Chrissie recited the incident to Jack and sighed, ‘She’s acting just like her grandmother – my mother.’

  Jack asked, ‘Do you know where she is now?’

  ‘The last I heard she was in London.’ Then she added, ‘And I hope to God she stays there.’

  11

  September 1936

  A month later the old Wiley’s building, changed almost out of recognition, opened as the new Ballantyne Hotel. Matt took Pamela Ogilvy along to the celebration opening and wore his best dark blue, double-breasted suit on his mother’s instructions. He explained as he ushered Pamela in through the swing doors, ‘There are two bars, a residents’ lounge, reception and offices on this ground floor. Then upstairs there’s a dining-room, function room and kitchen. And on top of that there are two floors of bedrooms.’ Then he realised his pride in his mother had led him into boasting and he stopped abruptly and asked instead, ‘Fancy a drink?’ There was a buffet for the invited guests, local dignitaries and press.

  Pamela asked, ‘Can I have a gin?’

  Matt stared at her. ‘Are you kidding?’

  Pamela tossed her head. ‘I’ve had gin before.’

  ‘Maybe you have but you won’t get it from me.’ Matt grinned at her. ‘Dinsdale Arkley’s running this bar and he won’t serve me with beer, let alone gin. How about a lemonade?’

  Pamela grumbled, ‘Oh, all right.’ Left to herself she stared around at the spacious foyer with its deep carpet, the magnificent staircase leading up to the dining-room, trying to calculate the worth of it all. When Matt returned, edging through the throng with two glasses of lemonade, she asked him, ‘Why don’t you go into the hotel business?’

  Matt laughed at the idea. ‘Not on your life. Anyway, I’m studying to be an artist.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s funny.’ Pamela’s wealthy father had made a number of jibes about her starving in a garret if she kept up her acquaintance with Matt.

  Matt still grinned. ‘I do. Me, run a hotel? I wouldn’t know where to start.’

  Pamela gave up for the time being and sulkily sipped her lemonade.

  Chrissie saw the tousled head of her younger son in the crowd and noticed how he resembled Jack in height and breadth of shoulder, though he still had a few inches and years to grow. She also recognised the girl with him and sighed. Matt seemed to look for trouble.

  Tom, talking now with Jack, while an inch or two shorter than Matt, was more like Jack in character, decisive and clear minded as to where he was going. She wondered if this was just an extraordinary coincidence or imitation, the most sincere form of flattery – albeit unwittingly.

  Sophie and Helen Diaz suddenly appeared out of the crush, Helen in her cotton frock and Sophie wearing a ‘junior miss’ dress that had cost three times as much. She carried a folded raincoat over her arm and smiled at her mother. ‘We’re just off. Going to the pictures.’

  Helen blinked, startled, because Sophie had not mentioned any proposed visit to the cinema.

  Chrissie said, ‘Well, don’t be late.’ As she watched them go she thought sadly that her daughter was not flattering her by imitation. Sophie was not like her at all.

  Some of the guests came to thank Chrissie on leaving and she laughed and joked easily with them, elated by the success of this opening. She had pushed through the refurbishing – nay, the transformation of the old Wiley building into the Ballantyne Hotel – in record time. All her guests had been favourably impressed and the resulting publicity would be good. She had been showered with congratulations all evening and was suffused by a warm glow of success.

  Then she saw Jack edging through the crowd towards her and she remembered he was leaving again this evening, this time for France, still seeking a contract for another ship. She knew he was worried, was always worried these days about the survival of Ballantyne’s yard. She started to move to meet him but then the architect and the builder got in her way. They were celebrating and wanted her to join them. She laughingly tried to put them aside but had to stay to be introduced to their wives and accept their congratulations, too. She saw Jack raise a hand to wave to her, unsmiling, then he turned and walked away. The last she saw of him was his broad back disappearing through the door.

  As soon as she could detach herself from the laughing group she hurried out of the hotel, dodged between trams to cross the street to the station and ran down the stairs to the platform. She was only in time to see the last carriages of his train pull away. Chrissie walked back to her hotel despondently.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Helen put the question as she followed Sophie up the curving stairs to the top deck of the tram.

  Sophie only answered, ‘You’ll see.’ The conductor yanked on the cord that looped along the ceiling above his head. It rang the bell by the driver who set the tram moving. The conductor came along the aisle, swaying to the motion. The girls paid their pennies and took the tickets he punched and handed to them. Sophie went on, ‘I had to say we were off to the pictures. Mum doesn’t mind me going there so long as I’m not too late home. I will be tonight, though, so when I get in I’ll tell her I stayed talking to you.’

  Helen protested, ‘I’m not telling lies to back you up.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to. I doubt if she’ll check up on me, anyway.’

  ‘Why can’t you just tell the truth?’

  ‘Because Mum would be dead set against it.’

  ‘Against what?’

  ‘Singing.’

  ‘Singing! What sort of singing?’

  But Sophie only replied again, ‘You’ll see.’

  The tram rolled across the bridge, turned down towards the sea and the two girls got off at Church Street then walked down the hill towards the river. They came to a pub called the Frigate, and Sophie recalled her mother telling her that she had worked there as housekeeper some thirty years ago – when she was just Sophie’s age now.

  Sophie led the way down its passage to the ladies’ toilet. She went into one of the cubicles while Helen waited outside. When Sophie emerged Helen saw what the raincoat had been hiding. Now Sophie wore a new pair of high-heeled court shoes she had bought herself and kept hidden from her mother. They had replaced a pair similarly bought and secreted a year ago. Her dress was not the ‘junior miss’ she had worn to that evening’s function but one that belonged to her mother – as did her sheer silk stockings. Now she applied lipstick and powder and asked, ‘How do I look?’

  Helen answered, startled now besides being worried, ‘All right, but what . . .’

  ‘Come on, then,
or we’ll be late.’ Sophie led on again, out of the Frigate and through the lamp-lit streets to the club. Helen followed, but when they came to the club she stopped. Sophie paused on the steps to urge her, ‘Don’t hang about. Let’s get in.’

  Helen shook her head firmly. ‘Not likely. I live just down the street. There’ll be all kinds of people in there that know me. If I went in there tonight me dad would hear about it tomorrow and I’d get a belting.’

  Sophie stared at her, at first disbelieving. ‘Would you?’

  ‘Aye, I would. I don’t know what you’re up to, but . . .’

  Sophie glanced at her watch and said quickly, ‘I’ve got to go in now. I’ll let you know how I get on.’ She hesitated, nervous at entering this male stronghold. She needed someone . . . A young man in worn and baggy grey flannels, a collarless shirt and darned woollen pullover started up the steps. He was barely taller than Sophie on her high heels but broad in the shoulder and deep chested. Sophie put out a hand to catch his sleeve. ‘Excuse me.’

  He paused and asked shyly, ‘Aye?’ This blonde, blue-eyed girl, or rather young woman, was poised, attractive, well dressed. The girl with her looked a year or more younger.

  Sophie gave him a wide smile. ‘There was an advert in the Echo about a talent contest in here tonight. Do you know who I have to see to go in for it?’

  Peter Robinson said, ‘Aye – well, I think I do. It’ll be the entertainments secretary, I suppose. Do you want me to show you?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Peter held the door open for her and Sophie passed through. Helen stared after her for a moment then sighed, shook her head and walked home, wondering.

  ‘This is the entertainments secretary.’ Peter introduced Sophie ‘This – er – lady wants to go in for the talent competition.’ He stepped back then, reluctantly, and said, ‘I’ve got to meet a feller.’ Joe Nolan was waiting for him in the gym. ‘I hope I’ll see you later on.’

  ‘I hope so.’ Sophie smiled at him, then she was left with the entertainments secretary, a short, thickset man with a wide, flat face and a pair of Woolworth’s spectacles perched on the end of his nose. He held a pen in fingers that looked like a bunch of bananas and asked, ‘What name is it, lass?’

  ‘Sophie . . .’ She paused then for a moment, panicking. She hadn’t thought of this. Impossible to use her own name, so . . .

  The secretary prompted, ‘Sophie . . .?’

  ‘Nightingale,’ and wondered if he would recognise that one, if he remembered her grandmother, Vesta Nightingale.

  He did not. He wrote down the name carefully, his tongue following the pen: ‘Sophie Night-in-gale.’ Then he asked, ‘And what d’you do?’

  ‘I sing.’

  He wrote that down, too, then told Sophie, ‘Righto, lass. See Billy – he’s the piano man on the stage – then get yourself a drink and find a seat.’

  The hall looked enormous to Sophie and was already nearly full of members and their wives. Billy was short, fat and had a stool with a cushion on it to lift him high enough to play the scarred upright piano. He was playing when Sophie climbed up the steps at the side and stepped on to the stage. She bent to say, ‘The entertainments secretary said I should see you.’

  ‘In the competition?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I’m a singer.’

  ‘What are you singing?’

  Sophie laid her music on the empty stand before him and Billy played on with one hand while lifting a pint glass of beer from the top of the piano. He drank a quarter of the contents then replaced the glass. He gave the music a cursory glance then grinned at her. ‘Right y’are, I know that one. I’ll be ready when you are.’

  Sophie smiled weakly and got down from the stage, away from the stares from scores of curious eyes. She found a seat close by the steps and tried to look poised and used to this business. A woman hurrying past with an empty tray checked in her waddling stride and asked, ‘Can I get you owt, pet?’

  She looked kindly, and old enough to be Sophie’s grandmother. Sophie clutched at this little bit of friendship and said, ‘I’d like a lemonade, please.’ Then she worried if she would have enough to pay for it. She did, just, when the waitress brought it on a tray filled with pints of beer. Sophie sipped it and told herself it would have to last.

  The contest got under way, the secretary pulling names out of a hat, and as each name was called its owner climbed on to the stage and gave his or her performance. There were comedians, an accordionist, two baritones and a tenor. There was one other girl singer, announced as Mollie Gates. She was in her mid-twenties and obviously known already, because she was applauded as she came to the stage and waved to friends in the audience, confident and smiling. She sang and Sophie watched and listened, immersed in the performances. She thought coolly that this girl was good, but she herself was better.

  Then came the moment when the secretary announced, ‘Sophie Nightingale!’ and she was climbing the steps on legs that seemed to wobble, then teetering across the stage on her high heels to stand at the microphone. Billy played the opening chords and she took a breath, then turned to him to say, ‘That’s too high.’

  Billy stopped his playing, fingered a key then started again, eyebrows raised in a question. Sophie nodded gratefully and he winked at her. Sophie faced the stares from the packed hall, but she had prepared herself for this. She picked out a face at the back of the room and saw without surprise that it was the young man who had brought her into the club, now standing by the long bar. Sophie sang to him.

  Peter Robinson had just finished his training under Joe Nolan’s tutelage. He listened open mouthed as the girl on stage sang. He thought that she seemed to be singing to him, then told himself that it was just his imagination. But she was good!

  He did not notice a slight, dark-haired girl only a yard away from him.

  Sarah Tennant had come through to the bar with a tray of clean glasses. The singing caught her attention first and then she froze as she saw the girl on stage. She whispered to herself, ‘Oh, my God! Miss Sophie! And in her mother’s dress!’ She had seen Chrissie wearing it only a few days before. But then she watched and listened.

  Sophie relished the applause as she took her bow, and it accompanied her back to her seat. She waited, excited, until the secretary consulted the judges scattered around the room and then announced, ‘The winner is . . . Mollie Gates.’ There was polite applause but also a rumbling of discontent. The secretary peered out at them unhappily and went on, ‘The runner-up is Sophie Nightingale.’ That was greeted with cheers and hammering on tables. ‘Now I’ll call on the winner to give us an encore.’

  Mollie Gates obliged and was again politely applauded. Sophie waited until she had left the stage and then quickly took her place, whispered in Billy’s ear and faced her audience. Billy began to play and the secretary came hurrying over. ‘Here! Now then, lass, it’s only the winner that gives an encore.’ But Sophie was already singing: ‘It’s A Sin To Tell A Lie’ and the crowd cheered her on, then fell silent and listened, and cheered her again at the end. The secretary retired sheepishly, muttering, ‘Young lasses think they can do as they like . . .’ Mollie Gates was red faced and furious.

  Sophie thanked Billy and left the stage knowing she had won a moral victory. Then she put a hand to her mouth as she saw Sarah Tennant watching from behind the bar. Their eyes met then Sarah turned away and went out through a door.

  Sophie collected her prize of ten shillings from the secretary and then made for the bar. Peter Robinson met her there and said, somewhat awed, ‘You were great. You should have won. All the fellers round here thought so.’ He jerked his head sideways at the men lined up along the bar.

  Sophie laughed, the excitement still flushing her cheeks. She pressed the folded ten-shilling note into his hand, surreptitiously to preserve his male dignity, and asked, ‘Will you get that changed for me? Buy us a drink apiece.’

  ‘Aye.’ Peter was glad to take the money. Nearly all his small wage as a l
abourer was swallowed by the upkeep of the two rooms that made up the family home, and supporting his mother and brother. ‘Wait here.’ He pushed his way through to the bar.

  Sophie glanced around her, and did not see the face she sought, but then the waitress who had brought her lemonade came out of the crowd round the bar carrying a tray of drinks. Sophie asked her, ‘Can you tell me where I’ll find a girl called Sarah Tennant? I saw her behind the bar a minute ago but she isn’t there now.’

  ‘Sarah will be washing glasses at the back – in the little room there.’ The motherly woman pointed. ‘Go through that door to the passage, then in the door on the right and you’ll find her.’

  Sophie found Sarah working over a huge sink of soapy water filled with glasses. She said, ‘I didn’t know you worked here.’

  Sarah sighed and admitted, ‘I’m not supposed to. The law says I should only work a certain number of hours and I put them in at the hotel. I do this to make a bit of extra money.’ She appealed to Sophie: ‘You won’t let on to Mrs Ballantyne, will you?’

  ‘No.’ Sophie looked around the bare little room, walls dripping with condensation from the steaming sink. ‘How long do you work in here?’

  ‘Seven till ten, six nights a week.’

  ‘Doing this all the time?’

  ‘Sometimes in the week when business is slack and there aren’t many glasses I do a bit of cleaning or odd jobs like that.’

  And that’s after a day’s work at the hotel, Sophie thought. She said, ‘I won’t tell Mother – provided you don’t. Will you keep quiet about me singing here tonight?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Miss Sophie,’ Sarah agreed willingly.

  Sophie squeezed her arm and said, ‘Righto, then.’

  She returned to the bar and found Peter waiting with a lemonade and a half-pint of beer, looking about for her. She apologised. ‘Sorry. I thought I’d be back before you were.’

  He said quickly, ‘That’s all right,’ then he furtively pressed her change into her hand. They sat down at a table and he said, ‘I haven’t seen you in here before.’