All That Glitters (43 page)

‘What time is it?’ William tried to decipher the numbers on the clock without much success.

‘Too early to get up. Go back to sleep.’ Eddie found the bag he’d carried from the shop the night before and hadn’t unpacked. Backing softly out of the door he tiptoed downstairs. He washed, shaved and changed in the washhouse. Picking up his bag again, he realised that he’d find no use for half the things in it once he was in uniform. He took it into Haydn’s room, switched on the light and emptied it out on to the bed. He repacked his towel, shaving kit, Post Office book, boxing gloves and strip. He felt a momentary pang of regret for the match with the South African that he wouldn’t be fighting, but then, after what he’d done to his own brother he wasn’t sure he wanted to enter a ring ever again. A grim smile crossed his face as he realised the strange sentiments he was carrying to war.

He left before dawn. The things he’d left behind were in a neat pile on Haydn’s bed. Two of the letters he’d written were on the kitchen table, one addressed to Evan and the other to Charlie, William would take Charlie’s down. Another rested in his pocket. The hill was in darkness, but his eyes became accustomed to the blackout long before he reached Griffiths’ shop. He stopped and posted the envelope through the door. Walking on, he stood on the hill for a few moments looking down at the dark shapes of the Maritime and the workhouse.

He reached the station just as the first pale light of dawn touched the eastern sky.

‘You’re up and about early, Eddie,’ Dai Station commented as he walked into the booking hall.

‘Couldn’t sleep. When’s the Cardiff train due?’

‘Five minutes. Fight lined up?’

‘The biggest one of all mate,’ he answered before running up the steps to the platform.

‘You’re not going to get a better offer, boy.’

‘I know and I’m grateful.’

‘Think about it, Haydn. What else could you possibly do until your leg mends?’ Chuckles pressed insistently, very much on the producer’s side. He’d been responsible for inviting the producer down to see Haydn perform in Pontypridd, and the least he could do was ensure that the man succeeded in his aim of putting Haydn under contract, and incidentally compensating him for having to replace his leading man for the remainder of the Summer Variety run. There isn’t a show that will consider a leading man, or for that matter a chorus boy, with a broken leg and facial scars like yours.’

‘I know.’ Haydn shifted restlessly on his bed. Six days in hospital was six days too long. He was stiff, irritable and bored witless. Not one of his letters to Jane had been answered. On reflection – and he’d had a lot of time for reflection – he didn’t blame her for not writing after some of the things he’d said. It was just that he couldn’t stop hoping that she’d take pity on him in his present state. The other girls had. He’d been showered with chocolates, magazines and kisses from the chorus and every usherette except the one he wanted to see. But it wasn’t just Jane. It was the war. Eddie had joined up and William and Charlie were both talking about volunteering. And all he was capable of doing, all he’d been offered was...

‘It’ll practically be your own radio show, son,’ the producer said persuasively. ‘There’ll be others, of course. Four singers in all, two men and two girls, but you’ll be the linchpin and I’ll personally see to it that you’re given a free hand. You’ll have a secretary to sift through the requests from the troops, but you can pick and choose your songs from whatever comes in, and perform and arrange them any way you like as long as you keep the audience happy. And from what I saw of you on stage, that seems to be second nature.’

‘We’ve talked to the doctor. He’s agreed that you can leave with us tonight.’

‘Tonight?’ Haydn looked at Chuckles in disbelief.

‘He said there shouldn’t be a problem, provided you carry on your treatment in London. You’ll get the best possible doctor, help with dressing -’

‘But we have to leave in an hour,’ the producer interrupted, checking his watch.

‘If I agree to go with you, there’s one thing I want you to know …’

‘That you intend to join up as soon as you’re back in one piece? Don’t look so surprised,’ the producer said irritably. ‘It’s what everyone is threatening to do these days. But don’t worry, boy. You won’t be needed. By the time that leg heals it’ll all be over.’

‘There’s also someone I’d like to see before I go,’ Haydn looked at the clock. Eight! Jane would be in the Town Hall. He wouldn’t even be able to climb the stairs with the plaster cast.

‘We have to get back to London before morning, and that means leaving as soon as we’ve eaten. I’ve no time to waste shilly-shallying.’

Haydn looked up to Andrew in the doorway.

‘I can pack your things and bring them here.’

‘Sounds like a conspiracy.’

‘I can’t see you getting a better offer in your present state of health.’

‘Have I got time to dress?’

‘You can have as long as it takes us to dine in the New Inn. Well pick you up afterwards. Don’t worry about accommodation or anything. Everything will be sorted for you, including a doctor to keep an eye on those cuts and that leg.’

Andrew brought not only Haydn’s case but also the entire family. Suddenly there seemed to be no time left for anything. Diana and Phyllis sat ripping the seam open on the right leg of a pair of his trousers. William ate the last of the chocolates the Variety girls had sent in to save him the trouble, and Evan, Bethan and Phyllis tried to ask sensible questions about the job, but didn’t get very far because Haydn was too abstracted to listen to what anyone was saying. Knowing that there was absolutely no chance of Jane walking in still didn’t stop him from hoping.

‘They’ve just pulled up outside,’ Andrew pushed a wheelchair into the room. ‘Right, if you ladies leave, we’ll get what’s left of his trousers on, then you can say goodbye.’

Diana, Phyllis and Bethan left. William and Evan helped him on with his clothes; Andrew handed him his hat.

‘This,’ Andrew produced a letter from the pocket of his white coat, ‘is for your new doctor.’

‘Thanks, not just for this but for everything.’ William and his father had gone out into the corridor. He could hear Diana and Bethan laughing at something William had said. ‘I have one more favour to ask.’

‘Ask away.’

‘You remember what I said that morning you gave me a lift?’

‘About Jane?’

‘Will you see she gets these?’ He thrust a note he’d managed to scribble in the bathroom and a small box into Andrew’s hand. ‘I told her if she doesn’t want to keep the ring she can give it back to you.’

‘You want me to send it on?’

Haydn shook his head. ‘If there’s no letter, just write and tell me what she said.’

‘I’ll do that. And Haydn,’ Andrew offered his hand as William wheeled him out. ‘Good luck. I hope it works out for you.’

‘For him!’ William exclaimed indignantly. ‘Why shouldn’t it? He’s going to have a cosy studio to sit in, girls flocking around him, not to mention money in his pocket. It’s the poor Taffs like me and Charlie who’ll be left with all the dirty work in this man’s war.’

‘That’s because poor Taffs like you were born without brains.’

‘Talk to you at the end of the war, mate, about who’s got brains.’

Haydn forced a laugh. They were his family, the people he cared for most, only this time it wasn’t he who was leaving them. Next time he came home they wouldn’t be here. First Eddie, soon William and, he looked at Andrew and Bethan, eventually, even the men who had a lot to stay for.

‘Be seeing you.’

‘That a cue for a song?’ Diana asked.

Everyone laughed.

‘Not this time,’ Haydn called back as William wheeled him to the waiting Bentley. ‘But maybe next.’

Andrew handed the box and the letter to Jane at the stage door. He didn’t have time to stay, and she didn’t have time to say more than ‘Thank you.’ She put the box into her pocket, opened the envelope and walked slowly up the stairs, reading it as she went.

Dear Jane,

I’m sorry I had to leave before seeing you. I love you, and I want to marry you. I understand now that it’s not for me to forgive you, but for you to forgive me. I hope you can.

Please write. Phyllis will have my address.

All my love, now and for ever,

Haydn

Chapter Twenty-six

‘I hate it when the autumn run ends and the pantomime starts. It’s the first sign winter’s arrived.’

‘Never mind the birds migrating, the panto’s started,’ Avril laughed.

‘Birds? What birds do we see in here?’ Ann asked. She moved out of the office as Arthur grated back the bolts on the door. ‘That’s the end of peace and quiet. Last performance of any show always brings them out in droves.’

Jane picked up her programmes and followed Ann into the auditorium. Two theatrical seasons had come and gone since she had bulldozed Joe Evans into giving her a job, and with it her diffidence. She took her station at the back of the auditorium every bit as confident as Ann and Avril, selling programmes, directing people to their seats, giving out change, tearing up ticket stubs. It was second nature to her now. Soon it would be Christmas and a New Year and a new decade, 1940 and still no sign of the war abating.

The orchestra’s discordant tune-up notes melted into the opening bars of the overture. The lights faded, darkness closed around her, just like the very first time she had visited the theatre with the orphanage. There was the same sense of expectancy – of something about to happen – of people holding their breath. The curtains began to rise, slowly, infinitely slowly, and there it was. A moonlit garden, but not the one Haydn had danced in the first time she’d seen him on stage.

A man and a girl emerged from the wings, singing, they waltzed to centre stage. But the man was short and dark, not tall and fair, and although he sang well, he didn’t sing as well as Haydn. Time had moved on to a different garden and a different hero.

Angry because she’d allowed herself to think, and remember, she moved back behind the last row. The problem was, everything always came back to Haydn. The wonderful times she’d spent in Barry and Shoni’s, and the most miserable, when she’d swallowed her pride and gone to see him at the hospital only to discover he’d left the night before. Until that moment she hadn’t really believed there would be a time when he wouldn’t be there. And Dr John hadn’t helped by giving her that expensive ring and the letter. She’d kept the letter, slept with it under her pillow every night since he’d given it to her eight weeks ago, but she’d given the ring back to Dr John. If it had been a cheap one she might have been tempted – but it hadn’t.

She promised herself that if Haydn wrote again she’d answer him. But days turned into weeks and nothing had arrived, although he knew she could be contacted through the theatre. Once or twice she’d picked up a pen, but every time she looked at a blank sheet of paper she saw his face, dark and angry as it had been when he’d flung the photographs at her. In the end it had been easier to allow time to pass and do nothing. Easier – except at times like this when the darkness of the theatre closed around her, affording privacy to think, and remember – things that were better forgotten.

She looked out over the shadowy heads of the audience. When she had started working in the Town Hall she hadn’t been able to imagine a time when she would want to leave. Now all she could think of was change. She burned to move on as so many others had done, and were doing.

The Summer Variety had gone, taking with it the chorus girls she’d come to regard as friends. When they’d left she’d missed them all, even Babs, who’d married Chuckles suddenly and very unexpectedly. Since then there’d been no time to exchange more than passing pleasantries with the casts of shows that flitted in and out of Pontypridd within a week. Then Myrtle and Myra joined the WAAF. They’d tried to persuade her to go with them, but the manager had pulled a face and she had agreed to stay until the New Year. The way things were going he’d have no more time for socialising in his office. Joe Evans was leaving on the first train out of Pontypridd on Monday morning. Two of the stagehands had already left. William and Charlie had called into the theatre to kiss her goodbye. Change – all change – and it had made her restless, given her the urge to become a part of it.

The singing stopped and the curtain fell on the opening number. The orchestra struck up again as the short dark man moved out on to the apron. She closed her eyes and listened.

‘Fare thee well … till I can be beside you once again my love … Parting is such lovely sorrow …’

Another voice joined in: ‘We can dream about a sweeter tomorrow …’ She turned clumsily, hitting her torch against the wall.

She blinked, wondering if she was dreaming, Haydn was there – but a different Haydn, dressed in khaki, his blond hair gleaming in the darkness, his cap in his hand.

‘Ssh …’

He smiled charmingly at the woman who had hissed at him. ‘
So
sorry, madam.’ Gripping Jane’s arm he pulled her out into the corridor. The door clanged noisily behind them.

‘You didn’t send the ring back?’

‘I did. I gave it to Dr John.’

‘You did?’ The smile died on his lips. All the way up in the train he’d been dreaming of what he’d say to her, what she’d say to him. The kiss they’d exchange when she flung herself into his arms. He hadn’t bargained on Andrew trying to play Cupid.

‘I didn’t want to give it back, but it was so expensive.’

‘Oh Jane, what’s that got to do with anything?’

‘I didn’t want you to think you could buy me. Not after … after …’

‘Have we got some talking to do. Come on.’

‘I can’t go anywhere. I have to work.’

‘Not tonight. I’ve seen Joe, he’s covering.’

‘Looks like you got your knight, Jane.’

Ann and Avril were standing in front of the confectionery booth smirking like a pair of fat cats.

‘Without his armour and charger.’ Avril laughed.

‘And with a limp.’

‘Right, there’s enough witnesses.’ Leaning heavily on his stick, Haydn bent his good leg and extended the other with difficulty. ‘This is the nearest I can get to kneeling. Will you marry me?’

‘But you said -’

‘No buts. Yes or no?’

‘Your uniform? You’re in a show?’

‘Jane, do you ever give a straight answer to a straight question?’

‘Are you in a show?’

‘You could say that.’

‘You’ve joined up?’

‘They’ve given me a seventy-two hour pass. For the last time, will you marry me? If it’s yes we’ll get a special licence first thing in the morning.’

‘Yes.’

Using his stick he clambered awkwardly to his feet and kissed her.

‘Let the poor girl up for air,’ Avril protested.

‘Come on, there’s people around here.’ He offered her his arm.

‘Don’t forget to leave the unsold programmes and the money,’ Joe shouted from the office.

Jane handed them to Avril.

‘And take tomorrow off,’ Joe offered generously.

‘Thanks, she will, and the day after that,’ Haydn called back.

She tore the band from her hair as she helped him negotiate the stairs.

‘There’s one more thing that needs settling. A special licence takes forty-eight hours to clear. I only have a three-day pass. I don’t suppose you’d consider honeymooning before the wedding?’

‘Where?’

He looked across the blackened square towards the New Inn.

‘You know me, always optimistic.’

‘You booked into the New Inn?’

‘I booked Mr and Mrs Haydn Powell into the New Inn.’

‘Can we stay there until you have to leave?’

‘I was hoping you’d say until we have to leave.’

‘We?’

‘I have a room in London. It’s not much, but it would be a lot better with you in it.’

‘I promised the manager I’d stay until January.’

‘You’re about to make a promise to obey me.’

‘I’m not sure I can hold to that.’

‘I’m not sure I’d want you to – all the time. I like a girl with a bit of spirit.’ He wrapped his arm around her and kissed her again.

‘In that case you won’t be able to complain that you didn’t know what you were getting.’

‘I know exactly what I’m getting. I love you, Jane Jones.’

‘Jane Powell.’

‘Mrs Powell. Let’s go and see exactly how much can be packed into seventy-two hours, shall we?’