Bourbon Creams and Tattered Dreams Read online

  Forget all my troubles I can’t tho’ I try, there’s only one thing left for me su-ic-ide!

  At this point she heard an exaggerated ‘ci-hi-hi-hide!’ go round the balconies and yelled up to them. ‘I can’t hear you up there in the posh seats!’ Singing over the laughter in the crowd, she flung herself into the chorus as everyone joined in.

  I don’t like my mother’s pie crust. Eat it? No, I’d sooner die fust!

  I’ve tied it round me neck, and tomorrow I shall be, down at the bottom of the deep blue sea!

  When, by the end of the second verse, she had them in the palm of her hand, a part of her wanted to carry on. It was the most fun she’d had on stage in years, but this time she wasn’t the star. She had to turn their attention back to the main event, so she followed with ‘My Sweet Hortense’, seguing neatly from the real lyrics of ‘She’s got two teeth in her mouth, the one points north and the other points south’ to the electric-sign version: ‘My teeth are bad, my health is poor, I use no brush you may be sure!’ She glanced quickly behind her, relieved to see Dr Salter’s bald head was back on screen. She brought her turn to an end with a Bernie flourish – ‘I give you our own, our very own master of medical mysteries, Dr D. M. Connan!’ The chief medical officer, who had never been greeted with such thunderous applause, took a bow and Matty shouted into the back of the van.

  ‘Roll the film, Tom!’

  *

  Dr Connan was so pleased with Matty’s crowd control that he insisted her little act should become a regular feature of the screenings. From then on they experienced far less panic when setting up or switching between lantern slides and films, as Matty expertly bridged the time gap, keeping the crowd occupied. Now that she had found her voice, Tom suggested another innovation.

  ‘Why don’t we go into talkies! You could sing the verse captions and we could get D.M. to record his lecture, so he wouldn’t have to attend every showing. What do you think?’

  ‘The borough could never afford it. Do you know how much sound equipment costs?’

  ‘No, I don’t, but you could find out for me.’

  He was so enthusiastic she didn’t like to dampen his excitement. But she knew for a fact D.M. wouldn’t go for it. She’d seen the light in his eye when he stood on the stool beside the cinemotor and began engaging the crowd. He was a showman himself and could make the dullest of subjects entertaining, with his dry wit and ease with hecklers. He wouldn’t want to relinquish his stage, she was sure. When Matty took the costings to the office to show Tom, it was clear why talkies were made in huge studios; the recording equipment was far beyond their yearly budget of a few hundred pounds. Tom’s face fell as he scanned the figures.

  ‘There is another way we could do it,’ she offered and his eyes brightened with interest.

  ‘Not so professional, but it might work.’ She hesitated for a moment.

  ‘Go on, tell me.’

  ‘Well, why don’t we just make a gramophone record to play alongside the films? That way we don’t go to the expense of having to remake the films and all we’ll need for equipment is a gramophone player, which I can wind up and keep in synch with the film.’

  Tom jumped up and as there was no one else in the office he gave her an appreciative kiss. ‘Brilliant, Matty. But how do we go about making a gramophone recording?’

  ‘I’ve made a record before and besides, I think I know someone who’ll help us with it.’

  ***

  Matty looked round the waiting room at the new young hopefuls and the usual old troupers. Tommy Turner was still sitting there as though he hadn’t moved for years, perhaps he lived here! But at least she needn’t be embarrassed; she’d done what she could for him.

  ‘Tommy!’ She sat next to him. ‘I heard you’ve got a regular spot at the Star now.’

  He patted her hand. ‘All thanks to you, Matty darlin’. Now what are you going to do about yourself? We miss you in the business.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I’ll be coming back, Tommy.’ She wasn’t going to explain why. ‘I’m here to see Esme about something else. Anyway, I like doing other things, got a new job with the Bermondsey film department.’ She knew it sounded more glamorous than it was, but it might at least stop Tommy from trying to worm any more out of her. He looked impressed, which showed her he had no idea what the borough film department was all about.

  ‘I took your advice, Matty love. I’ve expanded the act, do a bit of tap before the sand dancing, got meself a new partner!’ Here he turned to a petite woman in her thirties, who had been sitting silently, smiling at her as if she knew her. ‘In fact, let me introduce you, this is Tiny – the new Mrs Turner!’

  And to emphasize the point the little lady, who wasn’t much over four feet tall, got up and pirouetted. ‘Tiny by name...’ she said and offered her small-boned hand to Matty.

  ‘Well, congratulations – to you both! I’m so pleased for you, Tommy.’

  ‘What do you think?’ Tommy and Tiny got up and did a few shuffle-ball changes, which brought a round of appreciative applause from the waiting artistes. They both gave extravagant bows. ‘What’s that about old dogs? Eh?’

  ‘Not bad at all, Tommy.’

  ‘But we’re havin’ a bit of trouble with these time steps – will you show us, Matty?’ he asked eagerly. Matty glanced at Esme’s door, then got up quickly to demonstrate a couple of time steps, which brought an even louder applause, causing Esme to poke her head out of her office.

  ‘Struth! Is that the Cockney Canary treading the boards again? I never thought to see the day. Come in, darling!’

  Whatever the season, Esme’s office never changed, only the smoke-brown patina on the walls deepened over time to the colour of over-brewed tea. Esme dumped her overflowing ashtray into the waste bin and offered Matty a black cigarette. Before she’d even sat down a glass of Scotch was thrust into her hand. Esme was grinning, pleased to see her. She perched on the edge of her desk. ‘Look at you! Have you been abroad? You look disgustingly healthy, darling.’ And compared to Esme’s smoke-tinged pallor, Matty supposed she did.

  ‘Cycling tour to Winchester – there has been an Indian summer, in case you haven’t looked out of the window all year!’

  ‘No, no... it’s not the tan. There’s something else about you. Of course it’s been a glorious summer, but you’ve been basking in more than sunlight.’ Esme wagged a nicotine-stained finger at her and jumped off the desk.

  ‘You’re in love!’

  Matty blushed.

  ‘God, I hope you picked a better one this time.’

  ‘I think so.’ She couldn’t help smiling, ‘I’m back with Tom.’

  ‘Tom? Good Lord, he’s the last person—’

  ‘We’ve both changed.’ Matty cut her off, she couldn’t bear any disparaging comment from Esme to tarnish her new happiness. ‘He’s been good for me, Esme.’

  The woman held her hands up. ‘That’s all I could hope for, darling. It’s heaven to see you happy again.’

  ‘I am happy, Esme – very, and what’s more I want you to help me make a record!’

  ‘A record! I’d love to, but to be honest,’ Esme said, blowing out a long plume of smoke, ‘after the clipping in Variety I sent you I thought you’d want to stay out of the public eye for a bit longer.’

  ‘Well, I have been.’

  ‘Doesn’t look that way to me. Here, have you seen this?’

  Esme plucked a newspaper from a small mountain of papers stacked on the sideboard. She flung it across the desk.

  Matty read the headline aloud: ‘Cockney Canary Quells Near Riot in Bermondsey Street Screening.’ Then she silently scanned the rest of it. Our reporter was on hand to witness the comeback of a much loved local star, Matty Gilbie, as she captured the unruly crowd with her magnificently amusing version of ‘Mother’s Pie Crust’, thus saving Chief Medical Officer Dr Connan from much embarrassment, not to say serious injury, at the hands of five hundred boisterous denizens of Bermondsey. The healt
h propaganda campaign was given a cursory reference. But then it went on to describe in good journalistic fashion the exact location and date of the screening, along with further handsome praise for Matty’s impromptu performance. Could it be, the journalist wondered, that the Cockney Canary would soon be gracing a much larger screen than the one at the back of Bermondsey Borough Council’s cinemotor?

  Matty let out a long groan. If the penny-farthing ride wasn’t enough to announce her whereabouts to the Clerkenwell underworld, then the Daily Express had just done the rest.

  16

  Blood Ties

  November–December 1931

  ‘I didn’t know anything about a journalist being there, but, Esme, this is not good, not when Frank’s put out the word to the Clerkenwell mob to find me... so he can look me up when he arrives.’

  ‘He’s coming to England? How can you be sure about that?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure. Tom knows someone in that world. He got inside information.’

  She stood up and went to the window. Lunchtime crowds hustled through the courtyard below – a short cut to Charing Cross Road.

  ‘I want you to be careful, Esme. They might be watching your office, and I know there’ve been people snooping around the Star, asking questions about me.’

  Esme looked shocked. ‘I’d sort of hoped he’d lose interest.’

  ‘I hoped that too, but Frank... I should have known it. He never lets go...’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Tom’s asked this old friend of his to keep an eye out, but there’s nothing I can do, except lie low and hope.’

  ‘So why on earth do you want to make a record?’

  Matty had almost forgotten her purpose in coming here, but the mention of it catapulted her back to a world where death could reach out from the bug-infested walls of your home, and that made the threat from across the Atlantic seem small in comparison.

  She hurried back to the office with the news that Esme had agreed to help them make the gramophone recordings and though she wasn’t intending to mention the newspaper article, she spotted a copy of it on his desk.

  ‘D.M. brought it in,’ Tom said. ‘He’s happy as a sandboy about it.’

  Apparently the chief medical officer didn’t mind cutting a slightly ridiculous figure, considering that the propaganda benefits outweighed any personal ridicule.

  ‘I’ve already seen it, at Esme’s. We might as well have sent Frank a telegram.’

  ‘No, I’m not worried about it, Matty. It’s not front page and chances are no one’ll notice it...’

  Tom was a bad liar. Those too transparent eyes had never been able to hide much from her.

  ‘But you got on to Sugar?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘And all the others in the know?’

  He blushed. ‘Just a precaution.’

  She went behind the desk and draped her arms round him. ‘Tom, you can’t protect me from everything.’

  ‘I’m not trying to, Matty – just from him. But there is one thing...’ He looked away for an instant, his blush deepening.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Matty, you’ve got to trust me. It’s better if I know everything. You told Sugar that Frank had nothing on you, but if there is something, you would tell me?’

  She looked steadily into his eyes. ‘No one can know everything about someone else, Tom, and even if I told you all the facts, you still wouldn’t know everything...’

  He kissed her and said, ‘You always liked to be a woman of mystery, didn’t you?’

  ‘Oh, it’s not that. I’m just trying to forget that part of my life. Anyway, the good news from Esme’s is that she’ll book us studio time and get us a good deal. Bermondsey borough’s going into the talkies!’

  ‘And I spoke to D.M. He loves the idea of a gramophone recording, though you were right about him not wanting to give up centre stage, Matty. It’ll just be you singing his verses and slogans, getting the crowd warmed up, and we might have a few other experts from the health department doing sections. He’s keen for you to put his Grade A TB-tested milk verse to music.’

  Matty smiled ruefully. ‘It’s a good job I like a challenge then.’

  *

  She worked on the material for the recording through until the leaves in Southwark Park turned slowly to gold they were almost ready to cut the vinyl. As she walked home from the town hall one afternoon, clouds covered the sun for the first time in months and she was feeling the shadow of her past hanging over her. There had been no immediate consequences from the Express article, but still she worried. Tom had said it would be better if he knew everything, but of course there were things she would tell no one, especially not Tom. Besides, she suspected he would be less keen to take on the role of protector if he knew everything.

  But tonight she was determined to finish off the blasted Grade A Tuberculin-Tested milk song, which had proved by far the hardest part of the exercise. So after she’d eaten her solitary tea she went to the piano and began to polish the tune she’d composed to match the opening words of D.M.’s doggerel:

  Poor Jimmie’s gained the heavenly prize, his spirit soars beyond the skies,

  Beneath this stone his body lies, and it will cause you no surprise,

  Since we in Bermondsey are Wise, to know that such a sad demise,

  Was due to the appalling lies, told by the milkman who supplies,

  The poison which his firm disguise, as milk!

  The doctor’s verse went on to berate the popular practice of ‘sterilizing’ milk, which amounted to boiling it within an inch of its life while giving bacteria a good soup to grow in. He’d added a dollop of what he referred to as ‘sob stuff’, with Jimmy’s death due to TB. He gave the verse an upbeat ending with Jimmy’s dad educated about the dangers of poor milk, saving the rest of his children from Jimmy’s fate.

  And so he says, “I will arise!”, and off to Bermondsey he hies,

  And soon he knows what we advise,

  Banished his sorrows, gone his sighs, with joyful voice aloud he cries:

  “Blind was I once, but now I see, henceforth I drink Grade A (TT)!”

  The words brought Billy painfully to mind and she doubted that switching to tuberculin-tested milk at this stage would fill Sam and Nellie with any sort of joy, nor wipe away their grief should the worst happen. The tune she was playing had turned into something more like a Scottish lament and she shut the lid of the piano. She told herself that Billy was in the best place and she had no reason to think he’d taken a sudden turn for the worse, but still D.M.’s verse had set her worrying. She’d heard nothing from Switzerland for a while. Not since Nellie had shown her a photograph of Billy with several other children, sitting at wooden desks ranged in a classroom formation, but unlike a normal classroom this one had no walls. The desks nestled into deep snow. Behind them an alpine peak fell away to a pretty village of wooden chalets with an onion-domed church. Billy was sitting near the front of the ‘classroom’, and like all the other children he wore sunhat, socks, walking boots and a loincloth. The risks of pneumonia obviously outweighed that of TB in the sun-cure sanatorium, but Billy had looked happy enough. She’d scrutinized his face and frame for any signs of improvement. Tanned and smiling, he held an open book in one hand and a small bottle of milk in the other; at least Dr Rollier was feeding the minds as well as the bodies of his charges. To Matty, any improvement in Billy’s health would have been worth the struggle to get him to the clinic. She’d convinced herself he looked more robust on the outside; she only hoped the sun was doing as much good on the inside.

  Will, who had recently earned his reviled degree and come into his father’s money, had, in celebration, gone off on a walking holiday in the Alps with Feathers. He’d promised to visit Billy at Leysin and send word back.

  Billy had become a sort of bridge between her and Will, a safe ground to meet on, and she’d been touched by his continuing interest in Billy’s progress. But she’d not received
the expected postcard from Will, who’d been gone over a fortnight. It might be the continental postal service; on the other hand, perhaps there was something happening in Leysin that the doctors were keeping from them. She determined to write to the sanatorium that evening. She found pen and paper in Eliza’s old desk and turned on the lamp.

  But as she went to close the front-parlour curtains she jumped back in alarm, a cry escaping her lips. She let fall the curtain and ran to bolt the front door. Normally she did it automatically, as soon as she came home, but tonight she’d forgotten. Her heart thumping, she was fumbling with the top bolt when she felt a pressure on the other side of the door. Had they picked the lock? She shoved back with her shoulder, leaning in with all her weight, shouting, ‘You’d better go away, I’ve rung the police! They’ll be here soon!’

  But the opposing pressure suddenly stopped as she shot home the bolt. Her breath came in short, painful gasps, her heart was drumming, temples thudding. She was about to run to the telephone when a cultured voice called through the letterbox.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, Miss Gilbie, there’s absolutely no danger. I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  It didn’t sound like one of the Clerkenwell mob.

  ‘Who is it?’ She steadied her voice.

  ‘It’s Feathers... Gerald Fetherstone.’

  She didn’t understand why Will’s friend was here without him, when they were both meant to be halfway up a mountain in Switzerland. She flung back the bolt and as the door swung wide, she saw that Feathers was not alone. Slumped at his feet was Will. He sat on the doorstep, leaning against his friend’s legs as if for support, and Feathers was resting a protective hand on his head.

  ‘I’m afraid we need to impose upon your hospitality, Miss Gilbie. Might we come in?’ he said, as though he were inviting himself for afternoon tea.

  ‘Of course you can, you daft ’apporth! Let me help you with him.’

  She put a hand under Will’s arm and Feathers took the other side. Together they dragged him into the passage, for he didn’t seem able to support himself.