Chapter Twenty

CHAPTER TWENTY

S ally Blow tied the handkerchief over her hair a little tighter, then pushed open the door to the rehearsal studio with her shoulder, rolled in her mop and bucket, and looked around. It was an aching sort of pleasure to be here at the end of the day and to guess at where the mess had come from, picturing them all at work.

Mrs Briggs was a decent boss and the pay was no worse than the shop, but it was hard physical labour, and Sally’s hours were full of cold dirty water and the slap and slide of her mop. Her favourite hour was half past three when she took round the office teas. Bridget Chisholm would be rattling away at her typewriter, not even looking at her fingers as they flew about. Jack Treadwell was hardly ever at his desk, and half the time when she went to collect his cup for washing, it would still be full, or only half drunk. When Sally had brought Lady Lassiter a cup of tea on the first day, she’d asked for her name and said, ‘Welcome to The Empire.’ The next day, Lady Lassiter had looked up from her papers as she took her cup and said, ‘Thank you, Sally’ – proving that dreams can come true, as long as you keep them small enough. The company for the pantomime had their own tea urn, so she didn’t see much of them, though Mrs Treadwell smiled at her in the corridor.

Very slowly, Sally was learning the mysteries of the theatre and its personalities. She felt as if she was an explorer, like Dougie wanted to be, and this was a strange continent she was mapping, bit by bit. The different departments had different names, hierarchies and their own ways of doing things. Mr Treadwell was the manager of the whole theatre, but, she thought, he was like an emperor with lots of kingdoms under him – the chop shop, wigs, wardrobe, the stage crew, the lights – and then there was front of house, Frederick Poole’s kingdom, which covered the lobby, auditorium and bars. Sally went back home every night and whispered her new discoveries to Dougie as they curled up in the big bed.

Coming into the rehearsal room at the end of the day made Sally’s heart swell and tighten in the same moment. She was so close to this theatrical magic, but still a little separate from it. The blackboard showed the scene they’d been working on and what they planned to do the next day. Mrs Treadwell always forgot to put the chalk back on the sill under the board itself, and Sally found it twice among the scrambled-up notes on her table. These were always lists of things she needed to do and remember. As soon as Mrs Treadwell had ticked them all off, she’d tear the page into four and drop them in (or sometimes near) the wastepaper basket. Sally took a moment to fit them together.

Better joke for Act I Scene 2

Water effects for Act III

Milly on Zanzibar costumes 4 o’clock. More gold?

Then she sighed, dropped the pieces of paper in the bin, and got to work mopping the floor. She’d be singing in the pub the following night. Maybe, if the crowd wasn’t in a boisterous mood in the first hour, she’d try ‘Then You’ll Remember Me’. It was a cosy sort of tune which made her think of warm fires, and the feel of rabbit fur against your skin, with a bit of a swoop to it which could squeeze your heart if you hit it right. Sally’s mother had had a rabbit fur collar on her Sunday coat. When the coat fell apart, she’d made Sally a toy bear out of the scraps. She’d never dared hug it; she’d just stroke it till she wore little bald patches between the ears.

She mopped to the rhythm in her mind, then began to hum. Finding she liked the way the tune bounced around the walls, she sang as she worked along the floor under the windows, where the dancers’ tap shoes had scuffed the pine, then into the middle of the room, carefully avoiding the coloured marks on the floor, which showed the edges of the bits of the set. When she caught a movement, she saw in the mirror there was a man standing in the doorway behind her.

She spun round. ‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’

It was Tom. Sally’s hand flew to the kerchief around her hair and her cheeks grew hot.

‘I knew I recognised that voice!’ he said, grinning at her. ‘Same as you, I think. I work here.’

‘Tom who has heard lots of singers . . .’ Sally said. ‘What do you do here, then?’

He pointed at the piano, and she noticed he had sheets of music in his hand. ‘I assist Ruby Rowntree. She has a room here.’

‘Oh,’ Sally said. ‘She doesn’t drink tea.’

‘No, she doesn’t.’ He walked towards her, avoiding where she’d mopped, and put his hand out. ‘I realise I never introduced myself properly, in the pub or the park. I’m Tom Lassiter.’

She wiped her hand on her apron before shaking his. ‘Lassiter? Like Lady Lassiter? Who owns the theatre?’

He smiled. ‘Yes, she’s my step-grandmother, believe it or not.’

She blinked. ‘I saw you were a gentleman, but I didn’t know you were Highbridge royalty .’

‘More like the court jester. When did you start working here?’

‘Just a week or so ago. Ollie sort of recruited me.’ That was a daft thing to say.

It made him laugh, though. ‘Ollie and Jack Treadwell run this place. If Ollie approves of you, you’re destined for great things.’ He put the song sheets on top of the piano. ‘Did you think of a song, Sally? That one you were singing as I came in sounded a bit more like you meant it.’

Sally gripped her mop handle and looked away from him. ‘I can’t sing sentimental stuff in the pub. Alf and Belle don’t want people weeping into their beer.’

He shrugged. ‘You’re allowed to do both, but every singer needs a signature tune. Sure you haven’t got one?’

‘Maybe I have,’ she said with a sigh. ‘But singing it would be like going up there without my clothes on.’

‘You’ve got to take a risk sometimes. Find a way to let the audience know who you really are. It’s like Harold and his catchphrase.’ He beamed with sudden excitement. ‘He’s amazing, you know. He can have us all weeping one second, then he’s clowning again and you think your sides are going to split. You’ll see when we start rehearsing on the main stage. Just watch him. Or what about the Metropole? See how the singers there switch the mood about.’

His eagerness irritated her. All right for Mr Lassiter, isn’t it? With his soft hands and his ideas about what I should do. ‘I can’t afford to go to the Metropole! I’m barely keeping a roof over my boy’s head as it is!’

‘I’m just saying, be brave.’

Easy for him to say. Sally felt foolish suddenly, and ashamed for looking at Mrs Treadwell’s notes, and felt as if, somehow, it was Tom’s fault.

‘Yes, I can see how you’ve really struck out on your own, Tom. Working in the theatre owned by your family.’

He blushed a bit. ‘That’s fair, I suppose. Sorry. I know it’s none of my business.’ He took a step back towards the door. ‘Thing is, Sally, I love music, and I get all carried away when I meet people who have real talent. I just haven’t found my way in.’

‘Be brave. Take a risk.’

He looked stung, turned and began to walk away, his shoulders hunched.

‘Tom!’ He turned back. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not usually such a cat, you just caught me unawares.’ He turned back to her, cautiously. ‘It’s nice, you taking an interest.’ Now he smiled again – that slow, warm smile. ‘It’s hard to take a risk, though, when there’s nothing to fall back on.’

‘I suppose it must be. How old is Dougie?’ he asked.

She was touched he’d remembered the name. ‘Dougie’s six now. He was two when Noah died.’ She swallowed. ‘Noah worked at one of your family’s factories.’

There, that was said now. The words seemed to sweep over them both like a cold wind.

‘What happened?’

‘He got his sleeve caught in the grinding belt. Broke his arm and then he got . . . what do you call it? Blood poisoning.’

‘Sepsis.’

She looked at him. ‘That’s it.’

‘I’m sorry. I’ve never had much to do with the factories myself.’

Tom looked down at his expensive shoes, at the bottom of his expensive trousers. Why did this feel like a tragedy? As if a great chasm had opened up between them on the half-mopped floor. What was the point, she wondered, of a crackle in the air and the fact Dougie liked him, when she was mopping the floors and he was a Lassiter? He knew nothing of her life, and she could never know anything of his. But he looked so mournful standing there, with his big brown eyes.

‘I’ll try out that one I was just singing at the pub tomorrow. See how it goes over.’

She squeezed out her mop and slapped it onto the floorboards.

‘If they don’t like it,’ Tom said, ‘you can knock me over the head with the mop next time you see me.’

‘Can’t think that would be good for my employment prospects.’ She grinned.

‘Don’t be too sure. You got Ollie’s seal of approval – that means you can bash us all about a bit.’

For some reason, that made her eyes sting. She half nodded, and returned to her mopping.

The pub was busy that Saturday. The Highbridge Wanderers had won their match and it had put all the men in a high old mood. The women in the bar had a loose and happy air to them, too. They had a little money in their pockets, the fire was warm, and when the men were grinning rather than scowling, the air felt lighter. Hardly the time to try out that sentimental number, Sally decided. Maybe she’d just lean on the old favourites again. An image flitted through her mind of Tom Lassiter looking disappointed.

‘You get up and sing then,’ she murmured.

‘What, Mum?’ Dougie said. He’d had a good week and was sitting in bed with a story paper. Ruben, the lighting technician at the theatre, bought them twice a week for his little boy, and had offered to pass them on to her. Dougie’s face had lit up when she brought him in a stack that afternoon. It was hard for him, not being able to run about with the other kids on the street, but she felt her heart lift with pride, seeing her boy with his nose in the stories like a little scholar.

‘Nothing, pet. I’m arguing with people in my head, which is as silly a way to spend your time as I can think of. Now, if I leave you to yourself, do you promise not to read too late?’

Dougie beamed and nodded. ‘All right, then.’

Sally kissed the top of his head and made her way downstairs. The fight with Tom was not over in her head, so when Alfred spotted her and nodded to the corner of the bar, and said, ‘You’ve got a visitor,’ she half-expected it to be him, badgering her about sad tunes and looking at her with those big eyes.

It wasn’t Tom. The crowd parted and Sally saw Ruby Rowntree sitting near the saloon door. She had a battered black case on her lap, and a tartan shawl round her shoulders.

‘Miss Rowntree, isn’t it?’ Sally said, approaching and offering her hand. ‘It’s very nice of you to come and hear me again, miss. I do so like your songs.’

Ruby smiled, patting the bit of bench next to her, and Sally sat down. ‘I’m glad, dear. Most of the tunes I’ve published are for the stage, you know – music for rich people to hum as they drink their cocktails. But I do enjoy music hall songs, too, and the old folk tunes. They have more bounce and grit to them.’ She put her head on one side like a robin watching someone dig an allotment. ‘Like a football crowd. Or the look on a woman’s face as she’s getting through the laundry and wondering if the bread will stretch.’

Sally had never heard a tune described like that. It made her laugh. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

Ruby wrinkled her button nose. ‘I’m always right, dear. About music, anyway. Any sign of your piano player tonight?’

Sally peered around the jostling crowd. On the other side of the room a woman laughed, and a man slapped a friend on his back, making him spill his beer.

‘No, the bugger’s let me down again. Still, I can carry it on my own.’

‘You can, I’ve heard it.’ Ruby opened up the case on her lap. ‘But I thought I might join you.’

Sally looked down. In the case was a polished wooden squeeze box, with ivory buttons.

‘No! Really? Well, if you like, Miss Rowntree. But you play piano, don’t you? Why not play on that?’

‘Call me Ruby – and this is much more fun, I think. I don’t get to play it often, and it’s a nice instrument for the bar. Got a wheeze in it, like it’s been smoking a pipe by the fire all afternoon.’

‘Why have you taken the trouble to come and play with me, Ruby?’ She bit her lip. ‘Did Tom say something?’

‘You might have come up in conversation once or twice recently,’ Ruby said. At the bar someone delivered a punchline and a roar of laughter went up. Ruby waited till it had died down a bit before she carried on. ‘I hear you’re working at the theatre now?’

‘Just charring with Mrs Briggs.’

‘I bar Mrs Briggs from my room,’ Ruby said cheerfully. ‘A nice woman, but I’m afraid she’ll try and tidy me up and I’ll never find anything again. Anyway, Tom said your pianist wasn’t here when he popped in a second time. So I thought I’d come along and take another look at you. And play, if there was a chance. It will please me, Sally, to do it.’

‘That’s very good of you, Miss Ruby. Tom was kind to my boy, in the park,’ Sally said, not sure why she was telling Ruby that, other than it felt good to say his name out loud again, somehow.

‘He is a kind man.’

‘Easy to be kind when you’re rich,’ Sally replied with a sigh, then blushed, feeling Ruby’s careful assessing gaze on her.

‘Yes, Sally. But it’s easier to be cruel, too. Tom isn’t. Don’t judge him by his mother or brother.’ Her voice became brisk. ‘You’ll be singing the songs you did the other week, will you?’

‘And the like.’

‘Tell me the name and hum me the first bars, and I’ll be able to follow you.’

Sally hesitated. She’d been arguing with Tom about not singing anything sentimental, but now . . .

‘I was thinking maybe I’d try “Then You’ll Remember Me”, too,’ she said.

Ruby nodded. ‘I know it. You give me the nod when you think the moment’s right, and I’ll back you up.’ She tucked the case under the bench. ‘Shall we, then, Sally?’

Sally felt herself blush furiously, but Ruby was already making her way through the crowd, tapping on men’s shoulders to let her through. Bert Hargreaves turned round and almost jumped out of his skin when he found himself looking down into Ruby’s little red face. Then he doffed his cap and escorted her to the corner like a ma?tre d’. The crowd made room for them, and those nearest to the corner settled themselves to pay attention.

‘Shall we start with “How Do You Do”?’ Sally asked.

Ruby nodded and played the starting note quietly on her squeeze box. Then Sally turned to the crowd, and Ruby’s fingers bounced over the tune, giving a bit of an introduction, the way the organ players did in church, ready for the people to come in.

And Sally started to sing.

Sally had had various pianists bashing out chords for her before. George was her favourite because he didn’t complain about splitting the tips sixty–forty in Sally’s favour, and mostly kept an ear out for what tempo Sally wanted, but singing with Ruby was something different.

After ‘How Do You Do’, they went on with ‘A Little Bit of Paradise’. Ruby played a simple sort of jogging rhythmic line under Sally’s voice, and it felt like they were getting to know each other. The crowd started paying attention, and after Sally rounded that one off and thanked Miss Ruby for her help, the lads banged their fists on the tables a bit.

Sally went next for ‘A Lassie Up in Lancashire’, which had one of those choruses you can’t help singing along to; Ruby’s squeezebox started rippling up and down scales and made it feel jollier than ever. Sally half watched her, getting comfortable and confident now. It was like dancing, but not like dancing with Noah, who had liked music but was too self-conscious to let himself go. With Ruby playing, Sally felt as if the music itself was swirling her around on the dance floor, and, magically, that the music was listening to her. Sally stretched her hands out and led them into the chorus and Ruby bent over her squeeze box, working it back and forth with her wrinkled hands.

Sally felt as if she was being lifted – carried up into the air. It was a thrill, like being in love, or that rush Sally had felt when the midwife put Dougie in her arms and told her the little mite of a thing was her son. Not just lifted – flying.

They finished the first hour to cheers twice as loud as usual. Someone had bought them a port and lemon each, and set them on the table nearest the piano. Bert shoved a couple of young fellows off their seats to give them a place, and Sally saw Alfred and Belle at the bar, both with grins splitting their faces from ear to ear.

‘Shall we have a go at “Then You’ll Remember Me” when we get back.’ she said.

Ruby’s eyes twinkled. ‘Are you sure that’s the one you want to do, dear? You have them in the palm of your hand now. How about being really brave?’

‘He listens too much, that Tom,’ she said, plucking at her dress. ‘There is this ballad. But I can’t. It kills me to sing it.’

‘Like going up there with no clothes on?’

Sally blushed. ‘He told you that, too?’

‘He did. He was kicking himself for not finding the right words to say, to encourage you to give it a go. That’s why I’m here.’

‘But, Miss Ruby—’

‘Don’t “but Miss Ruby”, me, dear. They’re all ready, and you’ve got me this evening. When will you have a better chance to give it a go?’

Chin up, Sally Blow.

‘Oh, very well. And if it all goes to rags, we’ll just wake them up again with “Burlington Bertie”.’

‘That’s the spirit, Sally. Now hum me the melody.’

Sally leant over, and very quietly sang the first lines into Ruby’s ear. Her skin smelt of lavender talc. The expensive sort.

‘I have the shape of it,’ Ruby said after a minute or two. ‘Shall we, then?’

Sally took a huge swallow of her port. She had never been so scared in her life. For one thing, when Ruby took her place on the piano stool with the squeeze box on her lap, the crowd in the pub settled and turned their way, nudging one another to quieten down; then, when Ruby played the first note – a long drawn-out and swelling sigh – the words seemed to go out of her head. Then she thought of Tom as the song rose – what he’d said about being the song – and the words started unfolding from inside her. She didn’t need to look at Ruby; she knew Ruby was watching her, feeling her way around the tune Sally was singing and building something round it, like a frame. With her old fingers and squeezebox she was fashioning some kind of golden cup, like they had at church, to hold the song in, even as it spilled straight out of Sally and into the room. Her mind flickered to Noah holding Dougie in his arms, pleased as Punch, laughing as the baby held his finger, then back to the days they were courting, and he’d get up at dawn on his day off to pick flowers for her from the hedgerow outside the town. Why hadn’t I pressed those? Because I’d always thought there’d be more. And she thought of him in the weeks before the accident, worn down and nervous-looking, but always trying to smile back at her when he caught her eye.

She was aware of the crowd, somehow in her blood, without thinking of them. She could see through her memories, the women leaning on one another, foreheads touching as they watched. She saw Alfred had gone still, halfway through pulling a pint; saw a young man’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard, Bert thumbing away a tear from the corner of his eye. And she saw out in the street the snow falling in the glow of the gaslight, and felt that old squeeze box putting her on her toes.

She let the last phrase fall, as if she was laying it at their feet. Ruby’s squeeze box sighed into silence and for a second, everything was absolutely still. Then Belle started to clap, tears running down her dear old face, and that set them all off.

‘Now give them a lift,’ Ruby said, playing the opening of ‘Burlington Bertie’, and Sally launched in while the whole pub sang along, only pausing to shout their orders at Alfred, till he was red-faced and sweating with all the business.