Chapter Fifty-Three

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

S harps consulted first with Mr Kelly, then steps were taken. Given what they had learnt, they knew the sort of person they were looking for. In the days leading up to the arrival of the Prince of Wales in Highbridge, the members of Kelly’s gang quietly ceased their usual activities. Debtors got an accidental day or two of grace. The working girls found they could set their own hours, and keep more of what they earned. Young men of means looking for a chance to gamble illegally looked in vain. Instead, the web of Kelly’s workers became a web of watchers.

They found the man they were looking for on the day of the pageant, heading quietly for the station in the thin hours of the early morning. He was intercepted, and Sharps himself drove him up to the Dales cottage where Ray Kelly, the spider at the centre of it all, was waiting.

Sharps developed a certain grudging professional respect for the man over the course of that long day. It was late before he gave up the information Ray was asking for. Sharps sent two of his people to lay the man in his final resting place, and carried the information back into Highbridge himself.

Tom could not stop himself. The acts who were to perform had to arrive at the theatre by five, and when Sally hadn’t arrived by four, he went down to wait at the stage door. The weather was warm – a little too warm for comfort – and the air heavy.

Stella seemed supremely confident Sally would come, but the passing minutes were an agony for Tom. The town clock struck the quarter, then the half-hour, and he began to feel a crushing sensation in his chest which meant the end of hope. He didn’t care about the pageant, not in this moment, but if Sally did not come tonight, any chance of her looking at him favourably as a suitor would be done with. The decision was one and the same to her. It was certainly possible she would do the show, and then turn him down flat, but if she came, he would at least be able to hope.

He heard footsteps and looked up, but the silhouette at the gate was of a boy, not a woman. It took him a moment to recognise Clive, his accordion case over his arm, and he felt himself stand, lifted to his feet with hope.

And there she was, walking into the yard in her long grey coat with her bag over her arm.

‘Tom!’ she said as she spotted him. ‘What are you doing here among the bins? Clive, you go in, let Mrs Treadwell and Miss Stanmore know we’ve come.’

Clive trotted past Tom with a wink, but he didn’t notice; he was too amazed by the fact that the rough yard, with its summer weeds softening the edges, its bare brick walls with a handkerchief of blue sky visible above the slate roofs, had been transformed into a romantic fairyland by the presence of Sally Blow.

‘I was waiting for you, of course.’

She came towards him. ‘I almost didn’t come, even after Miss Stanmore turned up at the pub. But guess what she did?’

‘What?’ Tom said, and without thinking quite what he was doing, he took her hand. She allowed it.

‘She only sent Lancelot Drake to see Noah’s parents. He told them the whole story, and drove them to Highbridge. Said to come and collect me and get me here, and that’s just what they did. Now, how do you think Stella knew to do that?’

‘I don’t know. She’s had a strange time this year. I’ve always thought she was terribly wise, but I think it’s made her wiser.’

Sally looked suddenly serious. ‘Tom, they’re talking about you at the pub.’

His mouth went dry. ‘And what are they saying?’

‘That you’re a good boss. That you work as hard as they do and the pay is decent.’

‘I want to be like my grandfather,’ he replied with a sigh of relief. Then he grinned, struck by a very pleasing thought. ‘He married a singer, you know.’

He was still holding her hand and risked squeezing it, very gently, as he spoke. She looked a bit shocked, then pink.

‘He married Lillian Lyons, you daft thing. She was a star already. I mop floors.’

‘But I know you’re a star, Sally.’

She blinked a couple of times, then glanced at the stage door. ‘Well, Stella has landed me in it now, hasn’t she? What am I to do? This frock is all wrinkled from the dresser, and Clive knows the song, of course, but—’

‘The band has the music,’ Tom blurted out, still astonished by the miracle of her hand in his. ‘Ruby’s arrangement. And Milly will run an iron over your dress. You’ve plenty of time, you’re on after Stella in the second half.’

She withdrew her hand finally. ‘You never! Tom, what are you and Mrs Treadwell trying to do to me, putting me on after her?’

‘It’s the right place for you,’ Tom said, mourning the loss of the hand, but sure of his ground as far as the billing went. ‘And for the song. You can carry it, Sally, you know you can.’

‘In the pub, maybe . . .’

‘Just be yourself, Sally.’

She looked unsure, then flashed him a quick grin. ‘Fine. Well – here goes nothing. I can’t believe Lancelot Drake fetched Mr and Mrs Blow. I saw him, the night that the theatre opened again after the fire. He gave me the rose out of his lapel before he went in.’

Tom felt a lightness shivering through his bones. ‘You are chosen for greatness, Sally Blow.’

‘I suppose we’ll see,’ she said. Then she lifted her chin and opened the stage door.

‘And I love you very much,’ he added as the door swung to behind her.

Sir Gideon received the telegram in the late afternoon, and his first call was to the Royal Air Force. His second was to the Marakovian embassy.

‘No, I will not wait until tomorrow and I will go in person. This is not the sort of news one delivers over a crackling phone line. Taargin can come or not as he sees fit, but I have an aircraft standing by and I will make use of it. We will call at the embassy on the way.’

The show would begin at half past seven. Sally, once she’d been greeted by a beaming Grace, was ushered into a large dressing room normally shared by the chorus, and was introduced to the other acts. There were half a dozen of them, including her. Milly ironed her dress, and Ollie toured the room, allowing all those who wished it to scratch his ears for luck, before trotting back to the stage door and his basket.

Ruben, the stagehand, told them the audience was due to be let in, and the receiving line arranged for the princes. The applause in the auditorium when the princes appeared in the royal box, they heard for themselves. Sally began to feel a bit sick.

‘Here.’ Baby June thrust a powder compact at her. ‘Put some of that on or you’ll look like death out there.’

‘Thank you,’ Sally said, taking it. Her face looked very pale and ordinary in the mirror. She stole a look sideways at June, who had heavy blue eyeshadow and eyelashes that looked like they were made of paper. Baby June pulled a cigarette case from her little wicker basket and started smoking.

‘Sorry about Mother fussing,’ she sighed. ‘She gets anxious.’

Mrs Dudley had spent the hours between their arrival and now in a twitter of nerves. She had been exhaling loudly and at random intervals, muttering to herself about lighting cues, and starting up so often and so suddenly from her seat with some vital thought she needed to share, all of the pageant competitors had begun to look strained.

‘Where is she?’ Sally asked.

The powder did help a bit. She pinched her cheeks to put some colour into them and handed the compact back to June. She dropped it in her basket.

‘Oh, with our agent, Worton Webster, in the audience. They had to be in their seats before the princes came in.’ She blew out a long stream of smoke and for a moment her painted face showed something like real distress. ‘They’re evil, both of them.’

‘What, your mother and your agent?’ June nodded. ‘Oh, love, I’m sorry to hear that. Don’t you like being on the stage?’

June looked at her. ‘I did, when I was little. Then my dad left. He set up with the grocer’s widow down our street and Mother went a bit mad after that. I’ve got two little brothers at home. All this. . .’ she pointed at her outfit, ‘pays for their schooling.’

‘They must be done with school soon!’ Sally covered her mouth. ‘Oh, sorry . . .’

June chuckled. ‘Youngest is doing engineering. He’s graduating end of this year and marrying a nice girl from our village. Second they’re hitched, I’m leaving all this and me and her are going to set up a little business.’

‘That sounds lovely. What business is that?’

June leant in close to her, whispering, her pink lips almost brushing Sally’s ears. ‘Grocer’s!’

Sally giggled again. ‘But won’t you miss performing?’

June shrugged. ‘I will. But the last few years – skipping around in frills and grinning for the old men? No. I shan’t miss that. And Mother will never let me act my real age. It’d remind her she won’t see fifty again. Most fun I’ve had this year was when that piano player got me to play it for laughs at the audition. Handsome fella.’ Sally guessed she meant Tom, and found herself blushing, but Baby June was looking off into the distance. ‘Maybe I should play it like that this evening.’

‘Of course you should! Sounds like the sort of thing Harold Drabble would like, and he’s a judge.’

Baby June tilted her head to one side and fluttered her eyelashes. ‘Ooh, where’s my tiffin?’

Sally almost choked laughing that time.

‘Beginners, please . . .’ Grace, clipboard in hand, called from the far corner of the room.

‘When are you on?’ Sally asked.

‘Middle of the first half,’ June replied. ‘You?’

‘After Stella in the second.’

‘Oh, poor you, following Stella Stanmore!’ June said, grinding out her cigarette with her heel.

Sally’s slight feeling of sickness intensified as the opening bars of the first number, a Lancelot Drake and Stella Stanmore duet, drifted from the stage.