All That Glitters, page 14
‘Pleased to me you, Jane.’
Jane shook Fred’s hand before taking the chips he handed her, and leaving the shop.
‘Best chips in the country.’ Haydn blew on his fingers after trying to pick one up. ‘I know, I’ve tried all the others.’
‘It must be fun touring the country.’
‘You think so? Different digs, different town every week. No one close to talk to …’
‘Except the twenty-odd people in the show.’
‘Even they change. One whiff of a better engagement in the offing, and all you see is the dust at their heels.’
‘Is that what you would do?’
‘I’m doing it. Leaving the Revue at the end of next week for Summer Variety. It’s a simple case of self-preservation. The Revue only has two more weeks to run in the provinces before being disbanded, and the Variety’s booked in the Town Hall for a season.’
‘And if something better than the Summer Variety comes up?’
‘I’ll be gone the minute they can replace me.’ He looked across at her. She’d only eaten one or two of her chips, while there was nothing but hard crumbs left in his paper. He screwed it into a ball, and lifting the lid of a dustbin pushed it in. ‘One word about these to Phyllis, or one mouthful of the meal she’s cooked left on your plate and I’ll brain you.’
‘I’m not a tattle-tell.’
‘You’re not?’
They were under the lamp that burned outside the Graig Hotel. Something in the tone of his voice made her look up. She was glad she did. The expression on his face made her remember the story she’d told Phyllis about Haydn and Rusty last night, before he’d walked into the kitchen and she’d realised he was Evan’s son.
‘So that’s why you wanted to walk me home!’ she retorted angrily, suspicion clearing her mind. ‘To ask me not to carry any more theatre gossip back to your family.’
‘It might help to make my stay in Pontypridd run a little more smoothly.’
She wrapped her chips in the newspaper that Fred had left open so she could dip into them as she walked. ‘I suppose Phyllis said something to you about cavorting with naked girls in your dressing room.’
‘She mentioned that she hoped I knew what I was doing, so I guessed that you’d told her about Rusty. There’s no point in you upsetting the family over nothing.’
‘Nothing! And I suppose that kiss you gave Mandy tonight when you came off stage and she was waiting in the wings, was nothing either?’
‘Theatre people kiss and hug each other all the time, it doesn’t mean a thing. And even if it did, what are you getting so worked up about? What I do is my affair and none of yours.’
‘I never said it was. I didn’t even know you were related to Evan when I told Phyllis about you and Rusty last night. If I had, I wouldn’t have said a word. And I’ll tell you something else for nothing, Haydn Powell. I’m not a gossip. And the last thing I want is to be associated with you, lest I get mistaken for one of your … your …’ she remembered reading The Arabian Nights and found the word she was searching for ‘... concubines. And if you thought you could buy me off with a walk home and a few pennyworth of chips, you have another thing coming. Keep your damned chips.’ She dumped them in his hands. ‘And in future I’ll walk myself home.’ Striding ahead, she stepped into a puddle of water.
Haydn watched her go, shaking his head and cursing Phyllis for bringing a girl into the house who worked in the Town Hall and had a mouth he couldn’t control.
‘Here’s everyone’s mending,’ Jane handed the parcel to Mandy, hoping she would do the same as she had done the rest of the week and pay the whole bill, the other girls’ as well as her own. Today’s was half a crown. Once the rest of the chorus girls had seen the neat stitching on Mandy’s blouse they had queued up to hand over their own chemises, petticoats and fine lingerie.
‘Thanks, you’re a gem,’ Mandy opened her bag and took out her purse. Reading the label, she handed over two shillings and sixpence. ‘You haven’t forgotten about coming to the dressing room after the matinee, have you?’
‘No,’ Jane assured her, trying to keep her mind on the ten pounds she might earn, and not the prospect of taking her clothes off in front of a male photographer.
‘I hate bloody matinees!’ Judy complained as, cigarette in mouth, she left the dressing room in search of a light. ‘Locked up here all day with no one to talk to except Billy. Nothing to do except listen to Haydn and Rusty banging away through the wall. Nothing decent to eat except chocolate bars and cold sandwiches …’
‘There’s a shop down the road that sells hot pasties. I could get you one after the first show,’ Jane offered.
‘Now, that’s an idea. I’ll give you the money.’
‘I’ll get it with this,’ Jane held up the money Mandy had just given her. ‘You can pay me when I bring it.’
‘Bring one for me too,’ Mandy asked. ‘And I bet the others will want some too.’
‘I’ll come back afterwards to see how many you want.’ Slipping the money into her pocket Jane went to the manager’s office, sealed it into an envelope and put it in his safe lest it get mixed up with her tray money.
‘We’re going to be bored rigid this afternoon,’ Avril grumbled. ‘No one will risk being seen by their neighbours coming to a show like this in broad daylight.’
‘The men of Pontypridd might give us a wide berth,’ Ann agreed, ‘but those who live further afield won’t. We’ll be inundated with boys from the top end of the valleys, and Abercynon and Aberdare. The trains will be fuller today than they are for a rugby match.’
Ann’s prediction proved correct. As soon as the doors opened, the by now familiar masculine horde surged up the stairs. ‘Quick,’ Ann sniggered as one man glanced over his shoulder, ‘before you’re seen by a scandalmonger who’ll tell the wife.’
Jane had no time to think about the transformation Mandy and Judy were going to effect on her between the shows. The interval had to be extended by ten minutes for all the usherettes to refill their trays, an unheard-of phenomenon in a matinee. At the end of the performance the hall resounded with claps, cheers, wolf whistles and demands for encores, but Haydn wasn’t egotistical enough to think the audience wanted to see or hear any more from him. He retired gracefully after the final curtain, leaving the girls alone on stage to stand through two more curtain calls.
The increase in ice-cream and sweet sales brought a corresponding swell in rubbish. Jane filled a sack entirely by herself before she was finally able to take her break.
‘An hour before we’re on duty again,’ Avril sighed wearily, pushing a cigarette into her mouth as she sank down on a bar stool. ‘Mine’s an orange juice, Des.’
‘I’ll have mine later please, Des, I promised to get the girls hot pasties from Charlie’s meat shop.’
‘That sounds a good idea, Jane, get me one too.’ Avril pulled her purse from her pocket.
‘And me,’ Ann and Des chimed together.
Jane ran down to the manager’s office to get her half-crown.
‘We want twenty,’ Mandy called out as Jane tried to force her way to the dressing rooms through the milling crowd of half-dressed girls.
‘I haven’t enough money for that many.’
‘How much are they each.’
‘Twopence halfpenny,’ Jane said, forgetting the discount the boy had offered her for bulk.
‘Here’s ten bob, we’ll square up when you come back.’
Even the air in Saturday’s crowded Market Square felt clean and invigorating after the stuffy confines of the Town Hall. Jane suddenly realised just how little time she’d spent outside since she’d left the workhouse. There, she’d seemed to spend every waking minute when she wasn’t eating, scrubbing down the outside steps, and yards. And because she’d worked through the height of the winter, the skin on her hands and face had become red and roughened, and her feet plastered with chilblains. Now, in warm summer, she spent her days cooped up in the artificial darkness of the Town Hall. She looked up at the clear blue sky. Whoever was organising her life should try to do better.
Pushing her way through the crowds, she shivered in her thin, short-sleeved dress. Although the air was warm, it was colder than the moist, steamy atmosphere of the theatre. Next week, if the sewing kept coming in, she resolved to ask Wilf Horton to look out for a coat for her. She hadn’t taken Phyllis’s today, because Phyllis needed it to go shopping.
There was a long queue in Charlie’s shop. The good-looking dark boy who’d given her the misshapen pasty was serving alongside an attractive auburn-haired woman. By giving up her place to an old woman, she managed to be served by him again.
‘Twenty-three pasties please.’
‘You must have liked the last one.’
‘I did, thanks.’
‘And it looks as though you’re doing better than you were?’
‘I can’t complain.’
The auburn-haired woman looked at him. He picked up a pair of tongs and began to pile warm pasties into brown paper bags.
‘Twenty-three pasties will cost you four shillings and three pence halfpenny. Twenty four, four shillings. Cheaper by the dozen, remember.’
‘In that case I’ll have two dozen, please.’ She did some more mental arithmetic. Twopence each when bought in dozens, two pence halfpenny when bought singly. She’d made sixpence on the first dozen, threepence halfpenny on the eleven and had a free one thrown in for herself into the bargain. It might be worth trying to make the pasty trip a regular run. It was certainly a quicker and easier way of making money than sewing.
The boy bagged the last of the pasties and handed them to her. ‘Careful now, they’re hot,’ he warned as he took the ten-shilling note.
‘I’ll be careful.’ She waited for her change.
‘You working round here then?’
‘Not too far away.’
‘Eddie, there’s customers waiting,’ his fellow assistant reprimanded.
‘Two slices of pickled tongue, cut extra thin mind,’ A woman wearing a hat with a glass-eyed bird balanced precariously on the crown, ordered brusquely, clearly none too pleased at being kept waiting while Eddie flirted.
‘Right, soon as we finish these,’ Mandy held up her pasty, ‘we’ll see what we can do with you.’
‘I will be able to get the make-up off afterwards, won’t I?’ Jane asked, looking from Mandy’s glossy, luridly painted face to Judy’s.
‘Of course.’ Judy held up a jar of cold cream. ‘All we have to do is plaster this over you.’
‘I’ll just take these pasties to the girls in the bar.’
Jane dashed into the corridor, straight into Haydn who was demonstrating a complicated dance step to Billy and four adoring chorus girls.
‘Look it’s easy. So easy, you don’t need any formal dance training to follow it.’ He sidestepped past Billy and the girls and took Jane’s arm, sweeping her in front of him down the corridor.
‘Let me go,’ she hissed between clenched teeth, trying to hold on to the pasties and keep them from getting crushed at the same time.
‘One thing you should know about me, I get upset when people don’t like me,’ he whispered into her ear.
‘I couldn’t give a damn.’
‘Language! Struggle any more and people will think there is something going on between us. That’s it,’ he shouted in a louder voice for the benefit of the watching girls. ‘One two three, one two three …’
‘If I drop these pasties you’re going to have to pay for them.’
‘Take them off her, Billy, there’s a good man while we show you how it’s done.’
Billy grabbed the bag and Haydn locked his fingers firmly into Jane’s. With Haydn gripping her hands and the girls cutting off her retreat, Jane had no choice but to go along with him.
‘Right, look down,’ he ordered, holding her out stiffly at arm’s length, ‘watch my feet and do everything I do. And a one and two,’ Haydn’s taps echoed on the floor of the corridor, Jane’s soft-soled shuffle following one step behind.
‘You know, that girl’s definitely got something,’ Billy commented thoughtfully, as Jane finally capitulated and began to copy Haydn’s steps.
‘She’s certainly quicker and lighter on her feet than you, Billy,’ Mandy laughed.
‘Probably because she’s got something more than sawdust between her ears,’ Rusty commented nastily, frowning at the attention Haydn was paying to the usherette.
‘Right foot forward, hands up, half-turn to the right, and another half-turn and another … That’s it.’ Haydn relinquished his grip on Jane’s hands. ‘And …’
‘And now I’ve got to take these pasties to the bar.’ Jane retrieved her bag from Billy, and dashed through the cordon of girls.
‘Give the kid her due, she’s actually got talent,’ Billy said admiringly.
‘But not stage presence,’ Rusty declared flatly. ‘She’s too short and skinny, and that’s before you look at her face.’
Haydn said nothing; he was too busy watching Jane’s legs as she ran along the corridor away from him.
Chapter Nine
‘You going out tonight, love?’ Harry Griffiths asked his daughter as he dragged two boxes of tins into the shop ready to restock the shelves that had been emptied by Friday’s wages and dole money.
‘Not tonight, Dad. I was out last Tuesday, remember, and I’ve promised to go down the café tomorrow with the girls.’
‘In that case you won’t mind watching the shop for me?’
‘Of course not. You off somewhere special?’
‘Just picking your mother up from your Aunt Edna’s. If I go over to Trallwn early I thought I might call in the Queen’s.’
‘For a game of cards?’
‘I haven’t had one in months.’
‘I wouldn’t mind if you did.’
‘Don’t you dare go saying anything to your mother.’
‘As if I would,’ she protested indignantly.
‘I know you wouldn’t say anything intentionally, love, but I also know what your mother can be like when she’s ferreting around after my doings.’ He ripped open the top of a box, took out a couple of tins and pushed them on to the shelf. ‘Who did you go out with on Tuesday?’
‘Diana Powell,’ she lied.
‘Then you must have been back early. I saw her passing the windows of the Morning Star on Tuesday night before ten o’clock.’
‘It was somewhere around then when I came home.’
He looked hard at her. ‘Sure you’ve got the right Powell there?’
‘There’s nothing going on between me and any of the Powells, Dad.’
‘Look, love, I’m not angry, just concerned. I know how upset you were when Haydn went away. I half expected him to turn up on the doorstep when he came back, I suppose I sort of hoped he would. You seemed happy enough together before you had that row.’
‘I suppose we were,’ she conceded.
‘I know, it’s none of my business.’ He pushed the last of the tins from the box on to the shelf and punched the box flat. ‘I’m just trying to tell you that if you need someone to talk to, I’m here. That’s all, and if you need money for a new dress or anything else...’
‘Now you’re talking, Dad.’ Of course! Why hadn’t she thought of that? Haydn spent all his working time in the company of glamorous girls. Girls who travelled the country, and made enough money to patronise good shops like Gwilym Evans, and even expensive department stores like Howell’s in Cardiff. She’d had hardly anything new in the last six months. ‘There’s a dress in the Co-op I’ve been fancying.’
‘How much is it?’
She held her breath, hoping he was prepared to dig deep into his pockets. ‘One pound seventeen and six.’
‘Well, seeing as how you’re minding the shop for me tonight, here’s five pounds.’ He pulled a large white note out of his wallet. ‘Call it an early birthday present. Go and spend it on some nice things for yourself.’
‘Dad, you sure?’ She took the note and untied her overall, giving him no time to reconsider.
‘Just mind you’re back here before five o’clock.’ He smiled fondly at her as she went to the door. ‘I’d like ten minutes to change before I go out.’
‘I’ll be here.’
She ran up the stairs, pulled her large felt tam on her head and picked up her short coat, checking the clock as she went out through the front door. She had two hours. Time enough to buy a new dress, some cologne, a little make-up – not too much or she’d end up looking cheap, like the chorus girls who occasionally called into Ronconi’s for tea and cakes between shows at the New Theatre. Then after she’d bought everything, all she had to do was dress up and waylay Haydn as he walked home. It would be simple to inveigle him into the shop on some pretext or other. When they were alone she’d tell him she still loved him. It wouldn’t be that difficult, not when she remembered all that they’d had to say to one another before last Christmas. And if Eddie had already boasted to his brother about his night out with her, she’d tell Haydn the truth. That she’d only gone out with Eddie twice in her life: the first time to hurt him after their argument and the second because it was the only way she could think of seeing him on stage.
‘Hello, Jenny.’
‘Hello, Mr Richards.’ She caught sight of her reflection in the large mirror that flanked the porch of Richards’ barber’s shop. She didn’t compare too badly with what she’d seen of the girls in the Revue, and once Haydn saw her in a new outfit, her hair freshly washed and waved, and smelling of the best scent she could find, he wouldn’t be able to resist her. But first she had to buy the clothes and watch the hill. Sooner or later Haydn had to walk up it. It was simply a matter of time, patience – and waiting for the right moment.
‘We’ll lend you one of the long wigs from the costume department.’ Mandy brushed bright green powder on to Jane’s eyelids with the largest, bushiest paintbrush Jane had ever seen. ‘I realised your hair was short, but I had no idea it was this short. Good job you have an usherette’s band to hide it under. What on earth possessed you to cut it like this? There isn’t even enough left to take an iron waver.’
