Chapter Thirty-Three

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

T he weeks Dixon Wells had spent at The Empire, and lodging at Lassiter Court, had been the happiest of his life. People had given up commenting on his coat – largely – though he didn’t notice it, because the staff at Lassiter Court had been repairing it overnight, and their furtive piecemeal attempts had resulted in it looking a great deal better.

The old restaurant had become his particular domain, and while Little Sam and his crew worked to construct the recording studio to Dixon’s specifications and designs, he ordered boxes of coiled wires and electronics from a variety of specialist firms in Manchester and London, and set about them with a will and his set of tiny screwdrivers. He had almost electrocuted himself once, and literal sparks had flown on a couple of occasions, but progress was being made.

Little Sam was not just supervising the construction of the recording studio. He had also been charged with the other works necessary to convert the restaurant into a record shop with a small café. Dixon was amazed how he and Jack could stand together in the middle of the space and see what it could be. Dixon knew he was not blessed with that sort of imagination, but he had his own creative spark: sparks of real electricity turning noise into a fluctuating current, then into a physical form – a shape cut by a stylus into a beeswax master. The moulding and casting and pressing was Tom Lassiter’s remit, but then the process was reversed and the shape became sound again. Sound in a physical form. Sound you could carry to your friend’s house; sound which would live on – not be lost in the air like every other song sung, tune played, or word spoken from the beginning of time. Sound which would stay, the way stories did in books.

Dixon was savouring this thought for the thousandth time during his second week of residence, when he happened on the Lyons teashop a hundred and fifty yards from the theatre. He had been ordered out for a walk and some proper food by Jack, and now he was in smelling distance of the café, he was glad of it. Some sort of meaty soup, it smelt like, and warm bread.

He pushed open the door and blinked until his vision cleared, and when it did, smiling up at him over her book in a corner of the shop, was Miss Chisholm. She invited him to join her, and he did. It became a routine. For some reason they never walked from the theatre together, but every day when he arrived, there she would be with a pot of tea. After a week the staff began to recognise them and offer them their usual: Miss Chisholm had a cheese sandwich, Dixon had the soup and a roll. The days filled further with variety and wonder. The day after he had dinner at the Metropole, he was brave enough to ask her her first name.

‘Bridget!’ she replied cheerfully. For some reason, she didn’t have a book today but a roll of plans.

‘What are those?’

She tucked them into her handbag. ‘I’m trying to get to know the theatre a bit better. Mr Treadwell wants to serve milk shakes at the record shop, and I think there’s space in the basement for a cold room. It’ll need a way into it from the shop, though, and a hatch in the street for the ice man, so I’m trying to see how it might fit.’

‘Are you an architect as well as a secretary?’ he asked. She studied him suspiciously for a moment, then grinned.

‘You say exactly what you mean, don’t you? No, Dixon, I am not. I’m just interested in all sorts of things.’

The waitress arrived with their food and Dixon twisted the plate slightly so the Lyons’ emblem was at twelve o’clock on his dish and side plate, then set about buttering his roll.

‘Jack is a nice man, isn’t he?’

Miss Chisholm nodded. ‘Yes. Perhaps a little cavalier sometimes, but certainly good-hearted. Why do you ask?’

Dixon immediately wished he hadn’t, remembering the morning he had seen the picture of Jack, Lillian and Nikolai in the newspaper on the breakfast table in his mother’s home. He had come to Highbridge with a question because of that photograph, and now it was impossible to ask. She sensed his discomfort. ‘Do tell me how things are going on in the studio. When will you be ready to record?’

‘Very soon, I hope. It’s a matter now of finding the right song. But Grace told Jack today that Ruby is planning something, and I understand she’s terribly clever. They seemed very excited at the idea.’

Bridget asked intelligent questions, and Dixon responded with detailed answers. ‘I suppose everything will be on hold for a little while for the wedding. They have set a date, haven’t they?’

‘The ninth of April,’ Bridget confirmed. ‘I’ve been sending out invitations.’