Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX

S ome hours later, and a mile west of The Empire, in an attic room over the Bricklayers Arms, Sally Blow looked out of the window over the slate roofs and the moon rising, as fat as butter, over them, and shivered. Not that it was cold in her room – the coals glowed in the fireplace – but you could see winter coming in the air now. Blink and it would be Christmas, with all the fuss and fun that brought. The moonlight made the damp slates shine. A laugh, bouncing off the brick and cobbles up to the room, made her smile, then she twitched the curtains closed.

She was proud of the curtains. She’d run them up herself on Belle’s machine, and the cotton was yellow with little blue cornflowers, so even when the day was dreary, they brought a little sunshine in with them.

‘Not all the way, Mum,’ said a voice from the bed.

‘’Course not, Dougie,’ she said, and pushed them apart a little way so the glow from the street lamp could make its way in, then turned round to her son. He looked so small in the bed by himself, though some nights he’d toss and turn so much Sally was sure he was made of elbows.

‘Now you get settled while I make myself pretty.’

He scooted down under the blankets and Sally seated herself at the table and brushed out her hair, listening to his breathing. He’d had an asthma attack that afternoon, and though she’d dosed him with light cod liver oil and spread Angier’s Emulsion on his chest, he still sounded a little wheezy. And he wasn’t giving her cheek, either, so he definitely wasn’t himself yet. At least now she had the money to buy the potions and salves which helped him. Yes, life was a lot easier than it had been when she’d met Belle and Alfred outside The Empire two years back. She liked working for Mrs Parsons in the grocer’s, and the five shillings and tips from singing on Fridays and Saturdays in the bar meant most weeks she had a shilling or two to put aside. They had this room in the attic above the pub, too, at a keen price, and the good cheer coming up through the walls made it cosy.

‘What will you sing for them tonight, Mum?’

‘Whatever they ask me to,’ she said, plaiting her hair with quick fingers and pinning it up. It was an old-fashioned style, but Noah, her husband, had liked it; she could almost feel his hand on her shoulder as she slid the last pin into place. ‘Lively ones early on, then something soppy at the end of the night. Got any requests?’

Dougie had the blanket pulled up to his nose. He shook his head. He was pale as the sheet. Had the Angier’s Emulsion helped at all?

Chin up, Sally Blow.

She squinted into the mirror and pinched her cheeks to get some colour into them, then turned down the lamp.

‘You’ll leave the door open, so I can hear a bit?’ Dougie asked. When she drew breath to answer, he rushed on. ‘There’s no draught, not really, and I like to hear you sing.’

‘All right, then.’

She left the door open a crack. The light from the first floor leaked up and into the room and fell on a single dried rosebud in a thimble-sized vase. The one Lancelot Drake had given her outside the theatre that night. The Rose of Highbridge. Sally shook herself a little. Of course she’d been teasing with Alfred then, funning about her fancy car and her name in lights, but some small part of her had believed it. And yes, things were a thousand times better now, but . . .

People come to hear the songs, not me , she thought as she walked downstairs. They liked her well enough, but if another girl came to lead them into the choruses, they’d ask after Sally once, shrug, and then enjoy themselves as much as they ever had.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she put her smile on and lifted her chin. Alfred spotted her.

‘Here she is! Sally, love, do you know “I’ll Show You Around Paree”? Request from Bert.’

‘The old Vesta Tilley one? I might make up a few of the words, but I know the chorus.’ She came into the bar behind him, then ducked under the bar and headed for her corner, nodding at the regulars.

‘All right, Johnny? How are you going, Fred? How’s the grandkids, Marsha?’

She had her spot under the window by the piano. No sign of George today. She raised an eyebrow back at Alfred and he shrugged. Damn, they got better tips, no doubt, when he was along to bash out a few chords.

She lifted her hands. ‘I’m on my own tonight, ladies and gents, so how about we all get warmed up with a favourite?’

She launched into ‘Oh! Mr Porter’, a cheeky silly tune with a chorus everyone knew, and it got them started. Lots of familiar faces in the crowd. Funny how even in a town the size of Highbridge, different wards had different populations. This was the corner where the railway workers and tradesmen lived – a different crowd from her old neighbours, who all worked at the Lassiter factories and lived in houses owned by the company. The thought of the day she’d got her eviction notice, the day after her husband’s funeral, caught her out, and she almost missed her words.

Sally sang for an hour, then had a port and lemon at the bar. It was a busy night, foggy with warm bodies and pipe smoke, bursts of laughter, cries and cheers round the dartboard, and the late autumn winds cooling their ankles whenever the doors to the street opened and closed. As she sipped her port, Sally noticed a man in a flat cap, sitting alone and drinking his pint at a corner table. He had a thin face, with a long nose and deep-set eyes, but what was remarkable was the space everyone gave him in the busy bar. No one rested their drink on his table, or asked to share it, and the people near him seemed to avoid even looking in his direction. She leant over the bar as Alfred came close.

‘Who is the bloke on his own behind me, Alf?’ she asked, keeping her voice low, though she couldn’t say why she did.

The landlord hardly had to glance up, and when he replied, it was in a mumble.

‘That’s Mr Sharps, Sally. Ray Kelly’s man.’

She felt a shiver of fear. No wonder people were steering clear of him. Ray Kelly had his finger in every pie in town. Wherever there was fear, violence or corruption in Highbridge, you caught a glimpse of him, like the stench of sulphur the Devil leaves behind him.

‘He came in last week when you were singing, too,’ Alfred added, then he carried his freshly pulled pint over to a waiting customer.

Sally glanced back in his direction. Sharps was looking straight at her.

She finished her drink, and returned to the silent piano for another hour. Sharps stayed until the end, not cheering or clapping or singing along – just watching; then he got up and left while the rest of the crowd were still cheering.

It gladdened Sally’s heart to see him go. She had her second port and lemon, trying to catch the eye of anyone slipping out without dropping a penny or two in her tin. Alfred called last orders and the crowd started to thin out.

As they did, Sally noticed a tall young man, dressed like a gentleman, with sandy hair swept back from his forehead, sitting in the snug with an older lady. He was watching her through the rippled and engraved glass.

Had he been there for her set? By the look of him, he could drop a crown in her tin and not bother about it. Sally was wondering about sashaying over there and rattling her tin right under his nose, when he got up and made his way towards her through the people leaving. Yes, definitely a gentleman. What was he doing in a place like the Bricklayers Arms?

He dropped a coin in the tin. He was too quick for her to see what it was, but it made a good hard thunk .

‘Thank you, sir,’ she said. ‘Come again!’

The man nodded and looked as if he was going to turn away, then changed his mind. He was quite young, Sally realised – like her, nearer twenty than thirty – with high cheekbones and nice eyes.

‘You have a lovely voice, Mrs Blow,’ he said.

‘So do you,’ she replied, and blushed. She hadn’t said it to be smart, but rather because it was true. His voice was light and warm and smooth, as if someone had polished it with beeswax. He smiled, a bit shy and off balance at that.

‘I wonder . . .’ He paused. ‘What do these songs mean to you?’

She shook her head, confused. ‘They mean what they mean – no great mystery about it.’

‘But what do they mean to you ?’ He looked terribly serious as he said it. ‘I’ve listened to lots of singers in my time, Mrs Blow. Not half of them had as pretty a voice as yours, but the ones who became really great, they sang songs that . . . When they sang them, you felt like they’d just sprung free from the core of them. You couldn’t imagine anyone else ever meaning that song the way they did.’

Sally felt herself blushing again, as if he’d seen her in her dressing gown and curling papers, and sipped at her port. ‘You mean they acted them out?’

He shook his head. ‘Didn’t even have to move a muscle. They chose tunes which meant something to them, and lived them inside out. Made it feel as if there was no distance, no space between them and the song, between the song and you. Listening tonight, I thought how wonderful it would be if you found a song like that.’

He seemed to realise he was looking at her more intently than was strictly polite, and put out his hand. ‘I’m Tom, by the way.’

‘You a musician, Tom?’ she asked, shaking it.

‘Sort of. I love music – I arrange it, I play it. But I don’t create it. Sorry, you’re very talented and it’s none of my business. Just my friend over there . . .’ He nodded to the older lady in the snug. ‘She’s a real musician, and when she’s been talking to me about music, I get all het up. You understand what I mean?’

Lord, what lovely eyes he has. Sally realised she was still holding his hand. She released it quickly. ‘I do, Tom,’ she said quietly.

‘Well, I hope you find a song like that, Mrs Blow. It’d be a thing to hear.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

Then, with a nod and a wave, he wandered off; the older woman he was with had stood up and was waiting for him. She had cheeks like apples. A musician, he’d said. Sally wondered who she was. Then Mrs Parsons tapped her on the shoulder to ask if she could come into the grocer’s early on Tuesday, as she had an errand in town, and by the time Sally had agreed to it, the gentleman with the beeswax voice and the older lady were gone.

There was a song.

Sally said goodnight and took her tin upstairs, emptying it out on a napkin by the light of the low-burning lamp, so as not to wake Dougie. He had tied himself into a knot in the blankets, but there was a bit of colour in his cheeks now and his breathing sounded easier. She moved the coins about with her fingertip. A good night, and a crown piece in there. She’d lay odds that was from Tom. Sharps hadn’t left anything; she hoped that was a sign he didn’t mean to come back.

That song. It was a sentimental ballad she’d learned off her own mother when she was not much older that Dougie, about having a hole in your heart where your man should be. It had wound its way round her heart and hands in the hours and weeks after her Noah was killed. An angry, painful jewel of a thing, a thousand miles away from the sort of cheerful tunes and soupy old favourites she entertained them with downstairs. She tided the coins away into the old cigar box which held her everyday money, put the crown in the beaded purse with a drawstring her mother had given her the Christmas before she passed, and started singing it to herself.

When I feel the cold, when the mist

runs down the hills, the ghost of Johnny D

puts his hand on my shoulder

and I’m struck with what couldn’t be.

She sniffed and thumbed the tears away from the corners of her eyes. ‘What does he know?’ she whispered. ‘This Tom, who’s seen lots of singers.’

She unbuttoned her good blouse and hung it over the door of the wardrobe to air, stepped out of her skirt, smoothed it flat, and sat at the chair to roll down her stockings.

Oh, what use your fairy gold,

what use grape and grain,

when my chance to have a heart that’s full

can never come again?

She put out the lamp and got into bed, teasing free enough blanket to cover herself without waking her child.

They say I’ll see him in Heaven

But what good is that to me

when the mist quiets the streets

and there’s no place I can flee

To escape poor Johnny’s ghost

And the grief and the old oak tree.

She’d give Tom back the crown in a heartbeat if he’d take the thought of that song back with it. She shut her eyes, and whether she wanted it to or not, the song sang her to sleep.