The Urchin's Song (43 page)

Josie nodded. ‘Just so, Lily. You’ve hit the nail on the head. And it was started long ago and not by me.’

‘But you said earlier that this man, this bloke up in Sunderland that you hired, he couldn’t find the lads.’ Ada had pulled away and was adding a chopped onion, carrots and turnip to the stock in the dish. ‘What makes you think he’ll have any more luck now?’

‘He probably wouldn’t,’ Josie agreed. ‘But Hubert found us once before; he could do so again. You and Dora could come with us, Ada. The four of us will go. Any of the theatres would be glad to have me’ - this was said without any vestige of pride but as a statement of fact - ‘and I could let it be known in the
Sunderland Echo
that I’m visiting with my sisters, two of whom I’ve only just been reunited with. That’ll draw Hubert out, I know it will.’

‘Me and Dora go back? Not on your nellie. Wild horses couldn’t drag me back up there, lass. No, we’re all right here; we’ve got a nice little goin’ on and I’m not spoilin’ everything to jaunt up to Sunderland for a visit I don’t want to make. I’m sorry, lass, but that’s how it is. Dora’ll say the same.’

Josie nodded. It was probably asking too much of Ada and Dora to do what she had suggested, but now she had made up her mind she wondered how she could have waited so long before going home. ‘I understand, and you and Dora must do what seems best to you, but I have to try and see Hubert again, and this is the only way I can think of.’

‘What about Oliver?’ said Gertie flatly. Over the last hour she had been considering her brother-in-law’s reaction to the news about Ada and Dora - and likewise Anthony’s. This last idea of Josie’s would be sure to send Oliver into a frenzy, and she knew exactly how Anthony and his mother would view their going off on some wild goose-chase to Sunderland. Oliver was already in one of his sulks because of their visit to the East End that morning, and when he was like that it made things so difficult for Anthony at the office. Anthony . . . She had glossed over much of her life before she had come down to London with Josie; he had no idea that her sisters had been prostitutes. The word reverberated in her head. She couldn’t tell him, she just couldn’t, and his mother would be horrified. They had always known her as the sister of a successful and wealthy music-hall star.

‘Oliver?’ Josie shrugged off-handedly as though she hadn’t also been considering how her husband would react. ‘He will probably disagree, but after four years I don’t think it’s too unreasonable to have a spell working up north. It need only be for a few weeks. Lots of the stars work the provinces now and again, and there are some excellent music halls in other places but London.’

Whether Oliver agreed or not she was going to stick to her guns over this. She was grateful for the way Oliver had helped to further her career, and she knew he had opened doors with his connections which would have remained closed a lot longer without him, but he’d done all right out of her success. What would Gertie say if she told her what Oliver lost in the gambling dens he frequented? She felt it disloyal to discuss such things, even with Gertie, and especially now her sister was so involved with Oliver’s right-hand man at the agency. She was aware Gertie had assumed Oliver’s bad temper that morning had been due to this visit, but in reality they’d fought half the night when she’d told him she was going to seek a solicitor’s advice about the possibility of her earnings being paid into a new and separate bank account from their joint one.

Maybe she should have done it years ago, but she hadn’t wanted that sort of marriage and she’d felt it would belittle Oliver. She didn’t feel like that any more. In fact, she didn’t know how she felt about a lot of things . . .

Upon discovering Ada’s identity, Josie had asked the driver of the horse-drawn cab they’d travelled to the East End in to return to the house at midday, but when the cheery-faced man put in an appearance it was only Lily who left.

Dora wouldn’t return to the house until just after four o’clock from her job at the box-making factory a couple of streets away, having started work at six that morning, and Josie couldn’t bear to leave before she’d seen her other sister.

The driver declared himself more than happy to return for them at five o’clock - ‘You’re paying the fare, missus, and I always say the customer is right’ - and so Josie and Gertie spent a very pleasant afternoon getting to know Ada again. Josie thought Gertie was a little subdued, but in view of the surprise which had been sprung on them she couldn’t blame her youngest sister for being bowled over.

When Dora walked through the door there were more happy tears and plenty of laughter, too, Dora being what Nellie would have described as a card. Although rosily plump and somewhat matronly for her twenty-six years, Dora looked a great deal younger than Ada. Dora’s disposition was inclined towards jollity and she did not seem so severely affected by her traumatic childhood as her elder sister. She was a pretty woman, unlike Ada, with a ready smile and a mass of golden-brown hair not unlike Josie’s. Just before the cab driver arrived, and amid promises that she and Gertie would return soon after the weekend, which Josie was committed to spending with Oliver and his friends at the country estate of some squire or other, Josie found herself thinking that none of them resembled their parents at all.

Except Jimmy. The thought was unwelcome. Jimmy, who had been the image of their da in every way, and who had been under the tutelage of Patrick Duffy for almost ten years . . .

Oliver was not at home when Josie called in at Park Place, before asking the cab driver to take them straight to the Empire in Leicester Square so that she wouldn’t be late for the first of the two houses that evening. She just had time to ascertain from Mrs Wilde that her husband had not been back all day, before she had to dash off. Oliver was calling for her at the theatre that night in the carriage and they were driving straight to his friend’s estate in Berkshire. There would be time enough on the journey to tell him about the events of the day, and of her decision to play a theatre in Sunderland again, if only for a short season.

The Empire was a luxurious theatre with deep pile carpets and footmen in blue and gold livery, and it advertised itself as ‘The Cosmopolitan Club of the World’. The manager always wore full evening dress and white kid gloves, and would pat any young blood causing trouble on the shoulder before a footman escorted the offender out of the theatre. Bernard, the manager, always concealed a piece of chalk in his right glove which left a warning mark so that, should the young man try another entrance, he was recognised and refused admittance. Bernard had been using this ploy for years and it amazed Josie that the clientèle never tumbled the ruse.

Bernard was fond of telling of the time, some eleven years before, when the London County Council insisted on the foyer at the back of the circle being closed due to it being a frequent haunt of ‘ladies of the night’. Regular habitués protested in a forcible manner and a small riot ensued, when barriers were torn down by dashing young fellows led by a certain Winston Churchill, now an MP, Bernard told them. Young Winston had then marched at the head of a procession round Leicester Square, which carried debris as trophies. Josie could never quite work out if Bernard was applauding the act by the young man or decrying it, and as yet no one had had the nerve to ask the imperious Bernard which it was. Nevertheless it was a good story in view of Churchill’s venture into politics, and one which Bernard derived great satisfaction from telling.

She and Gertie passed Bernard on the way to the dressing rooms and as always he was charm itself to the two women. However, they had heard him put more than one rebellious performer in their place and he could be formidable. He had been a polished artiste himself years ago, with a good light baritone voice and reportedly somewhat handsome and always immaculately dressed, but when he’d been offered the chance to step out of the fickle world of the halls and into a steady job as manager, he’d taken it.

Once dressed in the silk and satin of her stage clothes and with her face freshly made-up, Josie found she was too het up to sit quietly in the dressing room with Gertie drinking tea as was their custom. The euphoria caused by the wonder of finding Ada and Dora again hadn’t abated in the slightest, but all the talk of the old days they’d indulged in that afternoon had set her thinking about Barney so strongly she couldn’t force him out of her mind no matter how hard she tried. She knew from experience that only regret and pain would result from giving in to this, and she needed to be strong tonight when she talked to Oliver.

‘Come and watch Annabelle with me from the wings. This dressing room is too stuffy, and you haven’t seen her act all the way through yet, have you?’ Josie pulled Gertie to her feet, the excitement of the day all too evident in her animation, but once outside the dressing room the cloak of decorum and sedateness expected from someone in her position settled over her. She wondered how often other people ran and skipped and danced in their minds whilst giving an outward impression of dignified composure.

Annabelle was already climbing into her large glass tank filled with water when they reached the wings of the stage, looking as pretty and graceful as ever, and her husband, Gerald, resplendent in full evening dress, had begun the first of his announcements of each feature of her performance which was accompanied by a little discourse. ‘The lovely Annabelle La Belle is now opening and shutting the mouth underwater; gathering shells underwater; sewing and writing underwater; eating underwater; drinking from a bottle underwater . . .’

‘This is a good bit.’ Josie nudged Gertie whose gaze had wandered to the audience. ‘Gerald borrows a lighted cigar from someone in the front row and gives it to Annabelle, and she smokes underwater for a minute or more before reappearing with the cigar still unextinguished. Bernard asked Gerald how they did it but he won’t let on.’

‘Josie.’ Gertie’s gaze had narrowed and she didn’t look at the tank. ‘Is that . . . No, it can’t be, can it? Not today of all days.’

The tone of Gertie’s voice rather than what she had said checked the laughing comment Josie had been about to make as Annabelle puffed away under the water with every appearance of contentment, and as her head turned and her eyes followed Gertie’s, the same thought sprang into Josie’s mind. It can’t be.
It can’t be him.
After four years or more, how could he choose this particular day to come to London?

Her heart thudding fit to burst Josie sank back against the thick velvet curtains at the side of the stage. Of course it was him. Every fibre of her being had known it the second she had laid eyes on the big handsome man in the second row of the stalls. He looked . . . well. She would not acknowledge that her mind had used the word ‘wonderful’ instead. Oh, what was she going to do?
What on earth was she going to do?
Barney.
Barney.

She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time as she raised her hands to her burning cheeks. Oh, to see him again. To have him so close she could reach out and touch him. She felt faint for a moment, and it was only in that blinding second of truth that she acknowledged exactly what Barney meant to her. What he had always meant to her. She had often thought in the last years that Oliver was a man who should never have married, but now she knew that truth could be applied to her, at least concerning every other man but the one sitting in the second row of the theatre. She had fought her feelings for Barney every day since she had first laid eyes on him as a bairn of twelve, and for a moment it was a relief to admit it to herself.

And then she brought herself up very straight, and as Gertie’s head turned and her sister looked at her, saying, ‘It’s Barney, lass. What are you going to do?’ Josie answered stiffly, ‘Sing. That’s what I’m paid to do, after all.’

‘You know what I mean.’

Yes, she knew what Gertie meant, and her sister’s tone had told her Gertie didn’t appreciate the facetiousness, but at the moment all she could deal with was the immediate future in terms of her performance. Barney might be here but nothing had changed. She was a married woman.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, the lovely Annabelle La Belle will now adopt an attitude of prayer.’

Gerald’s voice filtered through her whirling thoughts, and as Annabelle sank to her knees under the water, folding her hands with every appearance of rapt devotion while the orchestra played ‘The Maiden’s Prayer’ and rays of crimson and green light shone into the tank indicating morning and evening prayer, Josie made every effort to pull herself together. The conjurer was on next, and then Clarence, who had toured in burlesque before turning from singing to dramatic monologues. Clarence had revived Charles Godfrey’s lurid sketch
The Night Alarm
which was ridiculously melodramatic, and featured a burning building, a horse-drawn fire cart, a maiden in distress and three songs, and the audiences loved it. With any luck, he would receive his usual encores which would give Josie time to compose herself.

‘Come on, Gertie.’ As Annabelle hopped out of the tank and bowed herself off, Josie was already retracing her steps and Gertie had no choice but to follow her.

Would Barney try to see her in between shows? Once in the privacy of her dressing room Josie sank down on to a stool, and Gertie walked across to the small stove in one corner and began to brew up without any prompting, her little face expressing her concern. He had obviously come to this particular theatre because he knew this was where she was appearing, Josie thought, but she didn’t flatter herself that he was down in the capital just to see her. No doubt he had some business here - or perhaps he was visiting someone? Again her heart began to pound. She hadn’t noticed anyone with him, but then again she hadn’t looked any further than his face. The thought that he might be with a lady friend was so unbearable Josie brought herself up sharp. She addressed the tight feeling in her chest which the mental picture of Barney and another woman had caused, saying silently, Don’t be so stupid. He’s a free man; he can have as many women as he likes and it is absolutely nothing to do with you. You’ve no right to have even a moment’s objection.