Bourbon Creams and Tattered Dreams Read online

‘Oh, all sorts, Matty – sending artwork, like today, arranging meetings and lectures, general office work and anything else that crops up. Sorry it’s not very regular work, could be mornings or evenings. Can you do evenings? I forgot to ask.’

  She ran her finger along the dust on the edge of his desk. ‘Since I stopped singing in the pubs and halls I’m free most nights.’

  ‘Well... that’s good,’ he said a little awkwardly.

  But it seemed her tasks were over for the day and she left feeling that he hadn’t really explained much about what she’d be doing. She would just have to take each day as it came and that suited her mood. If her hours didn’t pick up she wouldn’t be earning as much as at the pickle factory, but she’d rather starve than go back there.

  It had been a strange reunion. She’d often wondered how Tom’s life had turned out. She’d imagined him ruined by heartbreak and pitied him, or else she’d envisioned him married with children and then, perversely, had been angry with him, but after she met Frank she didn’t think about him at all, not until things went bad, and then she began to remember everything she’d ever loved about him. But the reality was nothing like her imaginings. He’d been cool, professional and as far away from her as if the Atlantic Ocean still lay between them.

  11

  Silver Screens

  June–July 1931

  The next few days followed a similar pattern, with Tom largely out of the office and Matty left to get on with various jobs involving the health department’s ‘propaganda materials’. Then one morning she went into the office to find him in the middle of a telephone call, a harassed expression on his face. He hung up and put his finger to his mouth, his brow furrowing. He looked up, not really seeing her.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she said, tossing her hat on to the stand so that it landed neatly next to his.

  ‘Ohh, I just lost another wife...’ he said distractedly, and before she could question him he pointed straight at her. ‘Trust you to make your entrance dead on time! Follow me!’

  He picked up his hat and flung Matty hers before hurrying out of the office. She followed down the hushed, polished corridors of the town hall, out on to the steps and into Spa Road, not daring to ask him what he meant about losing his wife. Perhaps there was something Winnie hadn’t told her?

  He was the sort of man that was unhappy sitting around, which was one of the reasons she’d been surprised he’d gone into office work. Now, walking rapidly with an easy long stride, he explained as they went.

  ‘Matty, you’re going back into the film business – Bermondsey style!’

  She smiled uncertainly. ‘Are you pulling my leg?’

  He stopped outside a large Victorian house in Grange Road that announced itself as the TB Dispensary. ‘No! I’m dead serious, Matty. The health department propaganda doesn’t stop at electric signs – we make films too!’ He pushed open the front door and led her through a waiting room, out into a large back garden bordered with high trees.

  ‘Welcome to the skeleton room,’ he said proudly.

  She was looking at something which looked very like a film set. Constructed of thick plywood and raised on a wooden dais, the three walls of the skeleton room were wallpapered, with painted-on windows and a real door to finish the effect. It was furnished like a typical overcrowded Bermondsey home, with two beds, a kitchen table and chairs all in the same room. The table looked set for tea and in the painted fireplace there was a notable absence of coal.

  ‘So, I help Dr Connan make the health department’s films – organize set-making, props, casting, lighting equipment, all that sort of thing.’

  ‘Like a stage manager?’ She immediately recognized the invaluable behind-the-scenes role without which any production would flounder.

  ‘If you like.’ He grinned. ‘And today, you, Matty Gilbie, are the answer to my prayers.’

  He looked her full in the eyes for a moment then quickly turned to the set, beckoning her over to meet a young man who stood beneath a tree, smoking.

  ‘Reggie, meet Matty, your new wife.’

  Reggie threw away his cigarette. ‘Pleased to meet ya,’ he said, shaking Matty’s hand. ‘I don’t go much on bigamy meself, but you’re the third trouble and strife I’ve had this week!’ The young man’s laugh turned into a cough.

  ‘Don’t look so worried, Matty, you’re not really marrying him. I’ve been looking for someone to play Reggie’s wife but they keep getting cold feet!’

  ‘Sight of my ugly mug.’ Reggie smiled good-naturedly.

  ‘Don’t worry, Reggie, she’s not fussy about looks.’ And for a minute she thought she saw a mischievous glint in his eye. But then, all business, he went on, ‘Now before Birdy and Plum arrive I’ll fill you in, Matty.’

  Things were progressing a little faster than Matty could keep up with.

  ‘Hang on, Tom, are you expecting me to act?’ she said, feeling panicked. ‘I’m not prepared!’

  ‘Matty, you could do this with your eyes closed. It’s a silent, no lines to learn. The storyline’s simple. He’s a consumptive.’

  Tom nodded towards Reggie, who banged his chest and said, ‘Good job I’ve already got a cough, eh? No need to put it on!’

  ‘Reg’s coming home to tell his wife – that’s you – the diagnosis. You’ll answer the door to him, but when he comes in you’re waiting for your kiss and he walks right past you. So you get upset with him, but then he explains why,’ Tom said.

  ‘And I ain’t got the ’ump, I’ve got the TB, and the doctor says I can’t kiss no one, not even me wife, because that’s how it gets spread,’ Reggie explained.

  ‘So now you just have to act upset and cry – a lot.’ Tom went to the table and picked up an onion. ‘And if you can’t cry to order, then we’ll cut the onion.’

  ‘No, no onions!’ Matty said in alarm. ‘I’ve had enough of them lately. Don’t worry about my tears, I can turn on the taps whenever I need to,’ she said, thinking of the technique she’d always used when tears were required. She simply conjured up her own sadness, of which she had plenty at the moment.

  Just then two men appeared, one middle-aged in a three-piece suit, the other younger with a jolly expression. They were laughing over something and didn’t look at all like serious public health officials to Matty. Tom introduced the older man as Mr Bush and the other as Mr Lumley, a radiographer, who would be in charge of the camera. Matty gathered film-making wasn’t their full-time job, which explained their high spirits – perhaps this was a welcome break for them both.

  Mr Bush shook her hand warmly. ‘Well I never, Matty Gilbie, the Cockney Canary! Bermondsey’s own star of the silver screen! Thank you for gracing our set, my dear, we’re honoured. I don’t believe we’ve ever had a professional in one of our films before. Tom finds all our home-grown talent for us, but he has excelled himself this time.’ Mr Bush stopped mid-flow, a look of concern clouding his good cheer. ‘Tom, you did explain to Miss Gilbie about the, ah hem,’ he gave a cough and lowered his voice, ‘the remuneration?’

  ‘Oh yes, Mr Bush, I know the borough can’t pay me a Hollywood salary!’ Matty answered for him, unembarrassed, though she appreciated his delicacy.

  ‘Just so, my dear. Dr Connan – our Chief MO – is very keen to keep our costs down, we use only home-grown talent, our actors are usually council employees and our Bermondsey audiences are always willing extras!’

  Matty could see this was film-making on a shoestring, but she was impressed by Mr Bush’s enthusiasm.

  ‘Plum, if you’ll kindly set up the camera.’

  It was a smaller version of the Hollywood studio cameras Matty was used to. Plum adjusted the tripod so that the camera pointed towards the door of the set.

  ‘Actors in position!’ Mr Bush settled into his director’s chair. ‘I believe the phrase is, lights, camera, action!’

  Tom was right, she need not have worried. As soon as the camera started rolling Matty was in her element. Reggie had a little trouble open
ing the set door which stuck, but once he was through managed to snub her pointedly puckered lips in a very deliberate way, making a good job of looking weighed down by bad news. She pouted prettily and looked hurt; they were after all meant to be a young, married couple. Then he led her to the table, where after giving her the bad news, she sobbed effectively into a handkerchief, shedding real tears, without recourse to the onion.

  ‘Cut!’ Mr Bush called and sprang up out of the director’s chair with a delighted smile. ‘In one, my dear, in one!’

  It seemed she’d passed her screen test.

  They shot three more scenes, the last featuring Reggie setting up one of the garden sleeping shelters the borough provided for TB sufferers. Tom had shown her one already assembled in the dispensary garden and she was astonished that this was considered good for a sick person’s health. Little more than a shed with a cot-bed and chair inside, it had louvre shutters on its front, which could be raised so that the consumptive slept virtually in the open air and away from his wife and family, all of whom would often be sleeping in the one room.

  At the end of the morning’s shooting Tom looked at his watch. ‘It’s about lunchtime. I’m off to the pub for a pint and a sandwich.’ He hesitated, then asked, ‘Fancy coming?’

  This was the part of the job she was going to find difficult. Not that Tom had made her feel awkward. His focus had obviously been on getting the job done. She didn’t think he’d hired her because they’d once been in love; she knew it was a practical decision and she’d seen how pleased he was by Mr Bush’s praise for his ingenuity. But still she couldn’t help wondering if he’d felt pressurized into asking her to lunch. He was her boss, after all, not her friend. But if he was her boss, she supposed she shouldn’t upset him in her first week.

  They went to the nearby Grange pub and over a drink he explained that this afternoon he’d be taking her to see one of the cinemotors that were used for screening the health films around Bermondsey’s streets.

  ‘You won’t just be acting, Matty. You’ll have to turn your hand to whatever needs doing. Setting up the captions or getting hold of equipment – we might need to pick your brains about a new camera soon.’

  ‘But I was always on the other side of the camera!’ she said quickly, hoping he hadn’t overestimated her experience.

  ‘Well, you’ll know a lot more than we do! But remember I asked if you could do evenings? You’ll be needed once the evening screenings start, probably just handing out leaflets, or helping D.M. keep the crowd in order – you should be good at that, after dealing with the scrums at the Star for all those years.’

  She was glad he wasn’t being overly sympathetic about her changed circumstances. He obviously wasn’t too interested or worried that the new Matty Gilbie had none of the fame or fortune of the old. Instead she found herself in the position of being the one intrigued by his new life.

  ‘So – how on earth did you get into all this?’ she asked.

  ‘It wasn’t such a leap really. I moved out of the cleansing station and started driving the disinfectant vans. The medical officer turned up at the depot one day, looking for a van he could convert into a mobile cinema. Our foreman got me to show D.M. the van. He asked loads of questions about converting it, how we could put a screen in the back, where we could mount a projector. Well you know me and motors. I came up with a drawing showing how to make the adaptations and took it to my foreman the next day, and that’s how I got myself a new job in the film department!’

  Matty was used to the idea of projecting on to a screen but she couldn’t work out how that could be achieved with a van.

  ‘You project it through a translucent screen. Anyway, you’ll see this afternoon. But converting that van was the most fun I’d ever had – working! It made me feel as if I’d got something to live... work towards.’

  He covered well, but Matty knew he had been about to say ‘live for’. He must be talking about just after she’d left for America.

  ‘So, I went to night school,’ he went on quickly, ‘got my qualifications and that’s how I worked my way up.’

  ‘I’m pleased for you, Tom. I always knew you could make more of yourself, not that I didn’t love you just the way you were!’ she joked, then seeing his face redden, wished the floor could swallow her up. She must remember, it had been her choice to go and, despite his detached air, his slip of the tongue suggested wounds that hadn’t entirely healed.

  ‘You never did have a very high opinion of me, did you? But there was a lot about me you were never interested enough to find out, Matty.’

  It appeared she’d misjudged him again, for it didn’t seem like a broken heart but wounded pride that had caused his outburst.

  ‘Tom...’ She wanted to explain that of course she’d been interested in him, she had loved him, but that would be no consolation, for she’d also left him.

  He interrupted her. ‘Sorry, Matty. It was a long time ago.’ He spread his hands as though it were aeons, but Matty had discovered that in matters of the heart, time had a strange ability to coil back upon itself – past hurts could deliver a serpent’s bite every bit as venomous as on the day they were first inflicted.

  She was remembering even now the first time her impossibly handsome and always attentive lover, Frank Rossi, had narrowed his beautiful long-lashed eyes before slapping her across the face, shouting that she was a washed-up has-been he should never have wasted his time on.

  ‘Where are you?’ Tom asked, getting her attention.

  ‘Oh, nowhere.’ She smiled.

  ‘Nowhere must be a nasty place then. You didn’t look very happy.’

  ‘Sometimes, when I remember America...’

  *

  Tom leaned back in his chair. His large hazel eyes were so transparent, like one of those screens in the cinemotors he was so proud of, with all his feelings projected through them. And as those eyes fixed on hers it was as if three years fell away in an instant. Tom had been the person she could tell everything to and now, before she could stop herself, she began to unburden her heart. Telling him, not everything, but enough, so that he understood how poor her choices had been in America. When she told him Frank’s name and what his businesses involved, he nodded. ‘I know the type, Matty.’

  And she knew he wasn’t just speaking generally. When they’d first left school, Tom and Freddie Clark had flirted with membership in a gang based at the Elephant and Castle, who were every bit as tough as Frank and his boys. But it was a world Tom had always felt lucky to escape; he’d once told her that Freddie Clark had probably saved his life by insisting that they get out. Freddie, Tom said, with all his bent ways, was a pussycat compared to most of the Elephant Boys.

  ‘So you picked up with a wrong ’un?’ he said, his voice level and matter-of-fact.

  ‘He didn’t seem that way at first.’

  ‘They never do,’ he said dryly, and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  She knew it wasn’t fair, to expect him to still be the one she could tell anything to, especially when it concerned another man.

  ‘Did you hear about Eliza?’ she asked, quickly changing the subject, and he seemed to relax.

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry. Winnie told me she left you the house in her will. You were always a favourite of hers.’

  He waited for her to answer and when she couldn’t, he leaned forward. ‘Are you all right, Matty?’

  Angry with her own weakness, she brushed away tears. But talking to Tom had unstopped them and she put up a hand to shield her face. He pulled out the handkerchief from his top pocket, handed it to her and waited till she was able to speak. ‘Winnie told me that the boy took you to court over it. I know you idolized Will.’

  ‘It was horrible, but that’s not the worst of it. He told me something that’s just turned my life upside down.’ And ignoring all her resolves to keep her distance, she plunged on. ‘It turns out Eliza wasn’t my sister. She was my mother.’

  Tom’s face registered disbelief. �
�Oh my God, Matty, you poor kid.’

  She looked up sharply. She had only wanted to share the unbearable load of that knowledge with someone who would understand, but she’d always been ‘his kid’, his pet name for her, and for a minute she thought he might put his arms round her. But his expression revealed shocked concern, nothing more.

  ‘I know what it means for you, Matty, you thought the world of your mum. It must have knocked you for six.’

  ‘Thanks, Tom. I knew you’d understand. But the terrible thing is, ever since I found out, I haven’t been able to sing and I can’t work out why. I did everything I could to get it back – trying to sing around the house, doing voice exercises – and I even thought I’d go and see this hypnotist up the Old Kent Road!’

  ‘You don’t need hypnotism! You’ve had a big shock. It’ll come back.’

  ‘That’s what Esme Golding said, but I’ve just about given up.’

  It was a relief to have told him, yet she felt guilty to have traded on their past intimacy. But after they left the pub Tom seemed to slip back gratefully into work mode. So they were just colleagues again as they walked towards the borough disinfectant yard where the cinemotor van was garaged, and she found herself wistful for those long vanished days when they had been so easy with one another they could finish each other’s sentences.

  The cinemotor was about eleven foot long, with the slogan Fresh air and fun painted on the side. Back-door flaps opened up into a clever viewing box, shading the thin rubber screen from too much exterior light. Tom helped Matty through a side door into the back of the van, where a projector was clamped to a stand. He pointed to a stool. ‘The projectionist sits there to run the film, which gets projected out through the back screen. The audience just crowds around outside. The screen’s high enough up for them to get a pretty good view.’

  ‘Seems a bit airless in here. Doesn’t the poor projectionist get hot?’ Matty ducked her head as she examined the bulb in the projector.

  ‘Not really. It’s a cold light, cos of the fire risk, and look...’ He pointed to louvres in the van sides. ‘You just open one of these for a bit of air! I designed them,’ he said proudly.