by Pamela Brown
“Are we silly to be going back to the Academy when we were getting professional experience?” mused Vicky.
“No. Not really. We’re only half-trained, aren’t we? There are so many things we’ve still got to learn.”
“And it will have been wonderful experience when it comes to starting up the Blue Door, won’t it?”
“Yes. The boys and Sandra ought to get into rep. first, oughtn’t they? And however we’re going to manage the business side, I don’t know.”
“Lyn,” said Vicky slowly, “do you realize something?”
“What?”
“All these years we’ve been talking about starting the Blue Door professionally, yet we’ve never thought of the most important thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I heard Diana telling someone that it was impossible to start a decent rep. without a capital of several thousand pounds.”
“Gosh!” Lynette, electrified, shot up in her seat, awakening an elderly farmer who was dozing next to her. “I never thought of that! And I’m sure the boys haven’t. Of course—there’s advertising and scenery and salaries. What idiots we are! We’ll never do it.”
The rest of the journey was taken up with schemes and ways and means of making some money. Now that they had experienced how a professional company was run, the old Blue Door system seemed very meagre and amateur.
“We’ll have to have a confab with the others when we see them,” said Lyn. Soon the carriage became stuffy and they dozed fitfully, tired after their midnight adventures. Tutworth seemed to have vanished as if it had never existed. It was hard to imagine Terry still painting scenery, the shows going on, and the band still playing in their absence.
They woke in time to see a red tube train emerge from its burrow into daylight, and realized that they were in London again. They breathed deeply.
“Lovely to be back.”
“But a few hours ago we were nearly in tears at leaving Tutworth.”
The factories, the little houses, and then the gloom of Paddington. They tidied themselves and lifted their cases down from the rack. With much snorting and hissing the engine bumped on the buffers and recoiled.
At the barrier were the three boys and Sandra, all looking very brown and healthy. They started waving excitedly from yards away, and fell on Lyn’s and Vicky’s necks as soon as they had given up their tickets.
“You two look awful,” they were told. “What have you been doing?”
“Working,” said Lyn and Vicky proudly.
8
MAINLY CRAB-LIKE
One evening early in the autumn term the Blue Doors had a council of war. It all started because Nigel had not paid his rent again, and neither of the twins could help him out.
“And we’re not writing home for any more,” said Vicky firmly.
“Well, what are we going to do? It’s quite obvious we can’t live on our allowances.”
“But we can’t possibly ask for any more. It was bad enough to come to Dramatic School when our parents didn’t want us to, but then to keep on asking for money…”
“Why is it we can’t manage this term?” asked Sandra. “We did it perfectly for the first two terms.”
“It’s because our expenses have gone up,” explained Nigel. “Do you realize that half our pocket-money this week has gone on play scripts that we simply must have? And then there’s food and shoe repairs. We’re in a jam, if you ask me. We should have saved during our holiday jobs.”
“We weren’t making enough to save.”
“Let’s sing in the street,” suggested Bulldog flippantly.
“We’ll have to get jobs to do in the evenings,” said Lyn firmly, remembering Helen.
“On the stage, you mean?”
“Of course—if we can. Vicky could easily get a chorus job. And we could—walk on or something.”
“It’s an idea,” said Nigel. “But we’re not really supposed to do it during term time.”
“Lots of people do, though. There are two girls in our class who are in the Hippodrome chorus at the moment.”
“And what about matinees?”
“Oh, we’ll just have to miss classes on those days.”
“Come on,” said Lyn, putting on her coat, “let’s go down to the Leicester Square reading-room and look at today’s copy of The Stage.”
In the reading-room of the Leicester Square Library there was a queue of out-of-work actors in faded teddy-bear coats, waiting to look at their last hope—the “Artistes Wanted” column of The Stage. While they waited the girls looked at old numbers of Vogue with rapturous sighs. At last the six of them were huddled round the theatrical newspaper, breathing down each other’s necks and running their fingers down the column which was already grey with much fingering.
“Refined chorus ladies wanted. Able to dance. Tap and ballet. For West End production. Audition Abbey Theatre, Saturday morning, eleven o’clock. Practice dresses.” Vicky read it out excitedly.
“Am I refined?” she asked anxiously.
“You’ll just pass,” Jeremy told her.
“I think I’ll try.”
“Hey!” cried Bulldog, so loudly that the librarian nearly turned them out. “What about this?”
“Ladies and gentlemen required to walk on in spectacular musical production. Must be tall.”
“Oh, dear! Must be tall,” sighed Bulldog. “I don’t think I’m slender enough to look tall.”
“We could try it,” said Lyn. “Sandra, you’re not short, neither is Jeremy nor Nigel.” They took down the address and departed, chattering at the tops of their voices, having completely disturbed the breathless hush of the reading-room.
Luckily both the auditions were on the following Saturday, so they did not have to take any time off from the Academy. Vicky, carrying her toe and tap shoes and blue-spotted practice dress, approached the stage door of the Abbey Theatre with a fast-beating heart. It seemed so impudent to enter a London theatre for an audition. There was a stream of girls and women of all shapes and sizes being directed by the stage door-keeper down on to the stage. The audition had already begun, and a piano was beating out a jazz rhythm, while on the stage a girl in a bathing suit was dancing excellently. Vicky gave her name in to the stage director and was sent up to the chorus dressing-room to change. There she almost decided to turn round and go home. The other girls looked so grown-up and glamorous and well-poised. They all seemed to know each other and discussed previous auditions that they had attended. In the wings Vicky was about twentieth in the queue to perform. At last her name was read out, and she went on to the enormous stage on which so many spectacular revues had been performed. Now it was empty and lit only by a cold rehearsal light. In the front row of the stalls sat three men with spectacles and bald heads, talking to each other, completely absorbed. Vicky handed her music to the pianist, saying, “Not too quickly, please,” and consequently the tempo was more like a funeral march.
“Yes, we’ll see her ballet,” came a bored voice from the stalls. This was cheering, for some of the girls were sent home after their tap dance. As she changed her shoes, Vicky vowed to make the silly old men look up at least. As she handed the music to the pianist, she whispered, “Stop after the first eight bars, and give me eight silent bars, please.” It did the trick. The sudden silence made the three men look up in time to see Vicky do a very showy series of pirouettes.
“That’s enough,” one of them shouted. Vicky prepared to retire defeated.
“Give your name to the stage director,” she was told, and when she did so he said, “Rehearsal, Monday at eleven.”
“You mean—you’ve engaged me?”
“Yes. Next, please.”
On airy wings Vicky floated up Charing Cross Road, and it was not until she was nearly back at No. 37 that she realized that she had not asked what the salary was to be, not even what the show was called. At No. 37 she found a message from the Blue Doors, “Meet us at the Acropolis for lunch.”
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“That means they’ve got their jobs,” she guessed, and ran across to the little Greek restaurant at which they ate when in funds. The Blue Doors were immersed in platefuls of moussaka and their faces were smug.
“What luck?”
“I got it,” said Vicky airily. “Rehearsal Monday.”
“So did we. Also rehearse Monday. But not Bulldog. He wasn’t tall enough.” Bulldog stuffed rice into his mouth.
“I’ll get something,” he vowed. “Never you fear.”
“What do you have to do?” Vicky asked them.
“We’re courtiers in Queen Elizabeth’s court,” explained Lyn. “We just wear lovely clothes and drift about, evidently. It’ll be rather boring, because it’s a silly spectacular sort of thing—from what I can gather—but the pay is wonderful. What’s yours like?”
“I forgot to ask,” confessed Vicky.
“You goop! That’s the whole point of getting jobs.”
“But what on earth are they going to say at the Academy when we’re missing for rehearsals next week?”
“I’ll have to say you’ve all got ’flu,” said Bulldog. “It’ll be rather fun. I’ll describe your symptoms in great detail to everyone.” He carried this out so well that the following week he was continually bringing home gifts of books and grapes and chocolate from their sympathetic companions at the Academy.
“It was all I could do to dissuade Myrtle from coming round to see you,” Bulldog told them with glee. “She said she was sure I wasn’t looking after you properly, and you needed a mother’s care.”
They ate the grapes with relish and guilt.
“It’s a good job we’re only rehearsing a fortnight,” said Lyn. “Think what a lot we shall miss.”
“It’s all for the good of the cause,” Sandra reminded her.
“I don’t think we’ll tell our parents, shall we?” asked Vicky.
“Oh, no. They probably wouldn’t like you to do chorus work,” said Nigel.
“I wish there were some circuses in London,” complained Bulldog. “Then I’d try to get a job as a clown.” But next day he returned late in the evening glowing with achievement.
“I’ve got a job!” he shouted, pink to the ears. “And it’s not in the chorus, and it’s not walking on.”
“What is it, then?”
“In the zoo?” suggested Jeremy.
“A sandwich man?” said Nigel.
“I’m doing a cabaret act in that most select of night haunts, ‘The Hotch Potch’.”
“‘The Hotch Potch’! Don’t be silly, Bulldog.”
“It’s true. The brother of a boy in the Juniors plays in the dance band there in the evenings. I was talking to him today, and he said that they wanted a comedy act for the cabaret, so I went along and saw the manager, a Frenchman, and I did a few impressions and sang ‘Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthington,’ and—the job was mine.”
“You—you sang?”
“Yes. And they seemed to think it was jolly funny, too.”
“I don’t wonder.”
“Bulldog, you’re a dark horse! When do you start?”
“Next Sunday. I do ten minutes at nine and again at eleven o’clock, and oh, boy, the cash! It’s only for four weeks, though, which is a shame.”
As their shows were not opening until the following week they decided that they must go to “The Hotch Potch” for Bulldog’s first night.
“But we haven’t got evening dress,” objected Jeremy.
“You must hire it—like Bulldog is doing.”
“I hope ours will look a bit better than his does.”
Bulldog certainly presented a rather odd spectacle in his hired evening dress. The trousers were too tight, the jacket too loose, and his tie would not stay in the right place.
“Oh, well, I’m meant to be funny,” he sighed, trying to see himself sideways in the fly-blown long mirror. Jeremy and Nigel went along to a theatrical costumier’s in Lisle Street, and for a very reasonable charge hired evening clothes that were slightly more presentable than Bulldog’s.
The girls got round Mrs. Bertram in the Academy wardrobe to lend them evening cloaks to go over their old evening dresses, and there was much altering and trying on and ironing for days beforehand.
Bulldog rang up and reserved a table for them, and then said, “I wish you weren’t coming.”
“Why?”
“Well, if they don’t think I’m funny it will be so much worse if you’re there.”
“But we’ll laugh at you so infectiously that everyone else will join in,” Lyn promised.
Then came the question of transport.
“We must have a taxi,” Vicky insisted.
“We just can’t afford it.”
“Well, we’ll have to sell something—or pawn it. We can redeem it the next week out of our wages.”
They looked round the room. There seemed to be nothing but books, and they knew that, valuable as these were to themselves, they would not raise much.
“I’ll pawn my wristwatch,” offered Bulldog. “That should about pay the taxi, and also the dinner bill. Mine will be free, as I’m performing, but your bill will be pretty heavy.”
“No! no!” they argued. “Why should it be you?”
“Well, it’s on my account you’re coming, isn’t it? And I can get it back next week. I shall be a millionaire on Friday when I get my pay.”
So they sallied out to a murky little pawnbroker’s on the corner of Fitzherbert Street and haggled with the little man behind the counter until he gave them almost the amount they had asked for.
“Phew!” said Sandra as they came out. “That’s the first time I’ve ever been in a pawnbroker’s! What would our parents say?”
Lyn walked along the street grimly for a few minutes and then expostulated, “Oh, it’s horrible—”
“What’s horrible?”
“Living like this—in smelly digs. Having to pawn things when we want to enjoy ourselves. Counting every penny. Oh, one day I’m going to be so rich. Why aren’t we like Primula and Stephanie?” She named two of the debutantes in their class at the Academy.
“Would you seriously swop over with Stephanie? And have a frightful mother like old Lady Myers and as much acting ability as a broomstick, just to be stinking rich?”
“No, I suppose not,” Lyn admitted, “but it would make life easier to have a bit more cash.”
On Sunday morning they were up early and dashing about saying, “Oh, I know we’ll never be ready by eight o’clock,” although the whole day lay before them. They took it in turns in the cold bathroom, where chips of enamel came off the bath and stuck uncomfortably into one, and the plug didn’t fit properly, so that after a few minutes one was left high and dry. The girls played at ladies’ maids, and as they set about their mending Sandra said airily, “Oh, Jane, just run out and buy me half a dozen pairs of silk stockings, finest gauge, will you?” and “Mary, ring up and make an appointment with the hairdresser, will you?” said Vicky, plunging her red head into the basin. They were still thinking along the same lines at lunch.
“Pass the caviar, please,” said Bulldog, holding out his hand for the cold mashed potatoes.
“Super venison, this,” said Nigel, attacking yesterday’s mutton that lay in colourless slices on his plate.
Although they had had all day there was still a scramble at eight o’clock when the taxi which they had ordered arrived at the door.
“Where’s my collar stud?” yelled Bulldog frantically.
“Bother! I haven’t got a hanky!”
“Oh, my stocking’s laddered.”
“No-one will see it. Come on! The meter goes extra fast when the cab’s standing still.”
At last the six of them were bundled in, rather to the horror of the driver, and they set off through the gaily lighted streets.
“Doesn’t London look different from a taxi?” observed Lyn, sitting back luxuriously, although Bulldog was almost on her knee,
and Vicky’s elbow was in her eye.
At “The Hotch Potch” the commissionaire who opened the door of the cab for them was somewhat surprised to count six people extricating themselves from its depths. On the pavement the Blue Doors pulled themselves together, drew deep breaths, and walked through the canopied doorway.
They soon found themselves in a small softly lit room, with tiny tables crowded together and a minute space for dancing. Here they were shown to their table, ploughing their way through the dancers. The manager, a dapper little Frenchman, came up and greeted Bulldog, and told him to go round to the orchestra room just before nine. Bulldog was definitely scared by this time. He looked round anxiously at the diners, who all seemed very poised and sophisticated.
“It’ll never amuse them,” he thought desperately, and mopped his brow.
“Don’t let’s eat until I’ve had my first ordeal,” he implored the others, and the waiter was not a little astonished to receive an order for six orangeades. The Blue Doors sat and stared at everything. The boys were intrigued by the band and the girls by the women’s clothes.
“I think we look all right, though, don’t we?” whispered Vicky. Soon it was time for Bulldog to depart. Vicky straightened his tie for the tenth time. Nigel thumped him on the back, and Bulldog got up unsteadily.
“‘We who are about to die, salute you,’” he quoted.
“‘It is a far, far better thing you do,’” returned Lyn.
As he threaded his way between the tables Jeremy said, “Poor old thing. Wouldn’t be in his shoes for a thousand pounds.”
“The back row of the courtiers for me, any day!” agreed Nigel.
The first turn of the cabaret was a girl crooner, who received tepid applause. People talked all the time, and the Blue Doors began to feel very worried on Bulldog’s account. Then the band did a fanfare, and the little Frenchman announced, “And now I present to you a new face—that young humorist, Bulldog Halford!”
“Never heard of him,” said someone at the next table.
Bulldog appeared in the spotlight, looking very red and shiny, and his evening dress worse than ever. First he did impressions of stage and screen stars which were clever, if not particularly funny, and then a sketch of two charwomen, with a different hat for each, which he whipped on and off as he spoke one part in Cockney and the other in North Country dialect. This amused the audience, who put down their knives and forks, and devoted their attention to him. The cries of “Encore” were so loud that the manager nodded and beamed, and Bulldog came back and sang a funny little song about an Irish country boy in London.
