Six Against the Yard Read online

  I tapped on the door and the dresser opened it half an inch. It was a new woman. Old Gertie had got the sack, I heard afterwards. This new one was a beery old party with a face like a frightened hare. When she saw I wasn’t going to hit her she opened the door a fraction or so wider.

  ‘You can’t come in,’ she said. ‘Miss Lester’s resting.’

  ‘Resting?’ I said. ‘What’s she been doing? Swimming the channel?’

  ‘Polly!’ I heard Louie’s voice from inside and I pushed the woman aside and went in.

  She was lying on a couch, her make-up still on but standing out from her face as though the skin beneath it had shrunk. I hardly recognised her. She was heavier, older, and although still lovely there was an exhaustion, a weakness which was incredible when associated with Louie.

  ‘Oh, Polly,’ she said, ‘oh, Polly …’ and burst into tears.

  This was so unlike her that I forgot myself entirely.

  ‘Why, Duck,’ I said, ‘why, Duck, what’s the matter?’

  She wiped her tears away and looked nervously at the woman.

  ‘You clear out, Auntie,’ I said. ‘Go and have a drink. I’ll look after Miss Lester.’

  The old rabbit stood her ground.

  ‘Mr. Springer said she wasn’t to be left,’ she said.

  ‘Mr. Springer said …!’ I gaped at her. ‘You get out!’ I said. ‘Gawd luv a policeman, what d’you think Miss Lester’s going to do? Blow up? You get out. And if you meet Mr. Springer, you tell him I told you to.’

  ‘Oh, no, Polly, no.’ Louie put her hand to me and clutched my arm and I looked down at her hand and saw that her rings were paste. I can’t tell you why, but that shocked me more than anything I’ve ever seen in all my life … yes, more than his face when–––

  But I’m coming to that later.

  Finally the old woman went. I’m not so big, and the last part I ever played was a burlesque charwoman, but I usually get what I want when I set my mind to it.

  When the door was closed behind her I locked it and turned to Louie.

  ‘Are you ill?’ I said.

  ‘No. Only tired.’

  ‘How many shows have you done to-day?’

  ‘One.’

  ‘’Strewth!’ I said. ‘What’s the matter?’

  She began to cry again.

  ‘I don’t know, Polly, I don’t know. I’m all right when I’m on the stage, but afterwards I’m laid out. I used not to be like this always, did I, Polly? Did I?’

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ I said. ‘You ought to go along to see a doctor.’

  ‘A doctor?’ She laughed. ‘Frank wouldn’t like me to do that.’

  I tried to point out to her that it wasn’t much to do with Frank, but that made her laugh. She wasn’t bitter about him. She was very nice.

  I was really frightened for her by this time and I remember sitting down at the foot of the couch and trying to get the trouble out of her.

  But you’re helpless, you know, you’re so helples when you’re only fond of people and haven’t any authority.

  ‘How are things going?’ I asked her.

  She shot me a little sidelong frightened glance.

  ‘All right,’ she said dully.

  ‘What do you mean?—all right? How are bookings?’

  ‘Oh, good. Good. Frank says they’ve never been so good. He’s my manager now, you know.’

  ‘What! Old Tuppy gone?’ I was shocked. Tuppy had put Louie on the map years before.

  Her mouth twisted. ‘Tuppy was killed. He would join up—over age, you know. Killed the first day he landed. He’s gone. Everybody’s gone.’

  ‘Except Frank,’ I said rather pointedly.

  She was up in arms at once.

  ‘Frank’s over age and his chest’s weak. There isn’t a doctor on earth who’d pass him.’

  I tried to be more cheerful.

  ‘Well, if money’s all right what are you worrying about? You’re not losing your popularity.’

  She hesitated. ‘Money isn’t too good. We—we have to live extravagantly, you know.’

  I looked down at her hands and she hid them behind her like a child.

  ‘What do you mean, have to live extravagantly?’

  ‘Oh, publicity,’ she said vaguely. ‘Frank—I—I mean, we’ve had a lot of betting losses too. I’ve never been in debt before, Polly, and now I’m getting tired. I get too tired to rehearse, and I’ve got to go on or I don’t know where we’ll be.’

  ‘D’you mean to say you haven’t saved anything?’ I said.

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing. And now we’re getting old. I can feel it coming on. I’m still successful, but it’s not going to last. I don’t get the big hits I used to. The songs aren’t so good and one can’t go on for ever.’

  ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘you’ve worked all your life and your husband’s gone through your money and you’re tired, my girl. You want a holiday. Give it up for a couple of months. Go down to the country.’

  She closed her eys. ‘I can’t. I can’t afford it. I haven’t got anything I could sell, even. Besides, Frank wouldn’t let me.’

  I told her what I thought of Frank. It took me a long time and when I’d done she smiled at me.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ she said. ‘You’ve never understood Frank, Polly, and you never will. He just doesn’t realise, that’s all. He’s so strong, so full of life himself.’

  I remember putting my hands on her shoulders and looking down into her face.

  ‘Louie,’ I said, ‘you’re sacrificing yourself for that man and he’s not worth it. Now I’m going to say something that’s going to hurt you, but I’m an old friend and you’ve got to take it. I’ve heard all sorts of tales about Frank. What about this little ‘bit’ on at the Empire?’

  I could see the colour fade out of her face under the make-up.

  ‘Oh, they’re talking about it, are they?’ she said. ‘Haven’t you heard about the others too? You’re a bit behindhand, you know, Polly.’

  ‘Gawd!’ I said, and I didn’t get any further because there was an almighty row outside the door and Louie was on her feet immediately.

  ‘Quick, let him in,’ she said. ‘We’ve had two barnies with the management already.’

  He came in and I shall never forget him. You’d think that a mint of money spent on a man would at least make him fatter if it made him nothing else. A wizened little brick-red mannikin he looked, not even too clean.

  He glanced round the room, ignoring me.

  ‘Where’s Eva? I told her not to leave you.’

  ‘I sent her out,’ I said. ‘I wanted to talk to Louie.’

  He swung round and peered at me and she tugged my sleeve warningly.

  ‘Miss Oliver, I did not want my wife disturbed.’

  Even his accent was wearing thin and, having decided that he had finished with me, I suppose, he returned to her.

  ‘We’re going on to a night-club,’ he said, ‘and if you’re asked to sing, damn well sing, because it’ll probably be your last chance with the shows you’re putting up here.’

  ‘My God!’ I said, and I began to tell him exactly where he got off.

  He stopped me.

  I’ve been on the stage all my life and I’ve never heard language like it. I could hear footsteps in the corridor outside and I can see Louie’s face as she turned to him imploringly to this day.

  ‘You’re drunk,’ I said at last when I could get a word in.

  But he wasn’t. If he had been I could have forgiven him. He wasn’t drunk. He didn’t need drink. He was like it naturally.

  ‘Louie, for God’s sake leave him,’ I said.

  That did it. The balloon went up. I’ve never had a row like it and I’ve been in a few. I remember turning to Louie in the middle of it.

  ‘He’s ruining you, old girl. And you’ve ruined him. He ought never to have had more than three pounds a week in his life. You’ve given him so much corn he’s blown his head off.’
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  Of course it didn’t do any good. I might have known. She stuck to him and stood by him even then while a crowd of his little girl-friends were waiting for him at the stage door in his own car, anxious to get every little bit they could out of him. Even then she stood for him, poor old girl.

  He threw me out—physically. Took me out by the shoulders and pitched me into the corridor. I was wild. I was beside myself.

  ‘I’ll kill you for this,’ I said.

  But when it came to it and I did kill him I wasn’t in that mood at all.

  They came to live in my house at the end of the ’twenties. We all get old and I admit that the discovery came to me as a bit of a shock, but it didn’t throw me off my balance. It was the same sort of feeling I had when I realised that I couldn’t wear a ballet skirt any longer. Something had to be done about it. It was a pity, but it couldn’t be helped.

  I left the stage and bought my house with most of my little bit of money. It’s not a grand house, but it’s just the place for me and a couple of little girls to run when the boarders do most of their own work.

  I won’t tell you the exact address, but it’s up Maida Vale way, nearly to Kilburn, and it stands in a row with a lot of other houses which used to be very fashionable and are still respectable, in spite of the efforts of some people whom I have to call neighbours.

  There are three floors, a basement and an attic. I live in the basement. There’s a little room for me and a kitchen and a tiny spare room that used to be a pantry where I can put up an old pal who can’t afford to pay me what they’d like to.

  Louie and Frank started on the first floor. That was at the beginning of the time. Then they moved upstairs, but at the time I’m talking of they were in the attic. There were two rooms, with a little gas-stove in one of them and a sink out in the passage. The windows of the rooms looked out over the parapet, which is one of the features of all the houses in our street. It’s a big yellow stucco parapet that finishes the roof off and makes the houses look like great slabs of margarine on a Sainsbury counter.

  I don’t think I ever really got to know Frank until I had him in the house. Louie I seemed to know less. Every now and again I’d recognise the dear old girl she really was and I’d see a spark of the old spirit, the old friendliness that had made me love her all my life. But for the most part she was on guard against me. She wouldn’t let me get near her. She was always defensive, always frightened.

  Frank was mad. I came to that conclusion when he gave the Peeler Ventriloquist Act’s parrot a great lump of bacon and killed it, and Louie and I were at our wits’ end covering the business up.

  It’s difficult to explain why I should have found that so enlightening, but it wasn’t done through, ignorance and it wasn’t done as a joke, and it wasn’t even done out of maliciousness, because he had nothing against the Peeler pair except that they were living; in the rooms he used to have. But it was done out of a desire to be powerful, if you see what I mean, and after that I knew he was dangerous.

  I find myself skipping the story of Louie and Frank in between that time we had a row at the Palladium and the time they finally gravitated to my attic. It’s because it’s an old story and a tragic story, the same old miserable story that any one-time star who hasn’t saved can tell you.

  There were more rows, less good performances, changes in the public taste, hard times and worst of all, a dreadful moment when her old spirit came back and she gave ’em the affection that she used to give ’em, gasping and exhausted and fighting as she was and they didn’t want it any more. And there were empty seats and perhaps even a catcall or so from the gods.

  There were other things too: unpleasant interviews with managers who didn’t even know the names of predecessors who’d been more than half in love with her.

  And all the time there was Frank, making it worse. He’d always done silly things, but being wild with a lot of money is funny and being wild with no money is criminal.

  He was never in jail. She kept him out of that somehow. Now and again she got a little engagement. At those times I had my hands full with him. If he could get down to the theatre he’d make a scene. He couldn’t help it; he just wanted to be in the picture, like a silly hysterical woman.

  He was never drunk, or at least only very rarely and then only when it suited his purpose and he fancied himself doing the Garrick act. Then he’d knock her about. It looks incredible now I’ve written it down. You remember Louie Lester: can you see any man knocking her about? But he did. I’ve had the doctor in to clean up a black eye before now.

  As the years went on it got worse—worse for me, I mean. She’d laways had hell’s delight with him, I imagine. But he became an old man of the sea. They couldn’t pay me very much at first and they paid me less and less until they paid me nothing at all. Time and again I’d lose my temper and threaten to throw him out, and then he’d laugh at me.

  ‘If I go Louie goes,’ he’d say. ‘Can you see her, Polly, sitting under the Adelphi Arches?’

  I couldn’t, but I could see him sitting there and her singing in the street until she could bring him something, like a poor old mother wagtail with an obscene, bald red cuckoo tucked up in her nest.

  So they stayed. Times had been difficult in the theatrical profession. They still are. People have still got to live but they don’t live so well, and there are too many real business people in the boarding-house line to make it all jam for old women like me, who don’t know how to count every halfpenny and haven’t learnt how to be mean.

  He began to affect my business. I haven’t brought myself to tell you his worse fault; I don’t know how to describe it without making him sound a lunatic, which he wasn’t. If he’d been certifiable I’d have had him done long ago, whatever Louie said.

  He used to swank. But it wasn’t only that; lots of people swank, especially old pros. But he did it with a sort of frenzy. A man couldn’t open his mouth and mention anything clever or remarkable that he or anyone else had done without my lord piping up with a tale of how he’d done the same thing much better.

  There wasn’t an actress you could mention he hadn’t either slept with or taught her her job. There wasn’t a manager who hadn’t borrowed money from him. All of it lies, silly lies, lies everybody saw through. He used to get on people’s nerves and I found I was getting my house full of foreigners who couldn’t understand him.

  When he couldn’t get satisfaction that way he’d do tricks, make out he could walk tight ropes and jump on to the ledges of tables. I used to think he’d kill himself and hope he would.

  Louie never deserted him. She used to get cross and I’d hear her pleading with him and sometimes snapping at him. But she’d never do anything definite. She’d never frighten him. She’d never turn him out of the house, even for half an hour.

  He lost her all her old pals, some of them useful There were folks who’d retired and gone down to live in the country who’d have been glad to put her up for a week or so, but they couldn’t stomach Frank and you couldn’t blame them.

  She kept her health wonderfully. You only get a vital personality like that when there’s an iron constitution behind it, and it’s a miracle to me what a real constitution will stand. He’d exhaust her, beat her, jag her nerves to ribbons, and she’d come up again, a ghost of herself but still ready for punishment.

  I gave up trying to plead with her after the first year. She was never angry, only obstinate. She’d never leave him.

  They’d been in the attic over a year and things were terrible. It was two years since Louie had had a shop and then it was in some dirty little unheard-of hall on the south coast. Frank had gone down there and after the management had had a dose of him, if she’d filled every seat in the house it wouldn’t have got her a return booking. And she hadn’t filled every seat by a long chalk.

  Things were bad with me too. I’d mortgaged the place for more than it was worth and got rid of one of my little girls. Money wasn’t coming in. I didn’t see wha
t I was going to do.

  Then one day, just when it looked as though we’d all be in the street, young Harry Ferris came round to see me. Just walked into the kitchen without ringing the bell, and although I hadn’t seen him since he was at school I recognised him; he was so like his Dad. It was all I could do to prevent myself from crying all over him, and that’s not the way to treat any manager even if you’re sixteen, much less sixty.

  He was a nice boy, much quieter and more the gentleman than his father, and he called me Miss Oliver. But he was none the worse for that and he sat down at the kitchen table and talked to me. I soon saw what he was after.

  They were trying to revive the old music hall at the New Imperial and he wanted Louie.

  ‘There’s a chance for her, Miss Oliver,’ he said. ‘A real chance. She could sing all those old songs of—Lord’s, was it?’

  ‘Lorn,’ I said, and I thought of him, the first time he’d come into my mind for years. Poor Lorn! He was just one of the good things Louie threw away.

  ‘Lorn, was it?’ said my visitor. ‘Oh, well … anyway you know the songs. I’m not promising anything, but if she did go over big—and she might; there’s a great revival in this old hearty stuff just now—well, there’d be a good long run. There’s only one thing I’m afraid of, though.’

  He hesitated and I knew why he’d come to me and not gone straight to Louie, and I saw Frank for what he was for the first time in my life. He wasn’t a man at all; he was a vice, a vice of Louie’s.

  ‘It’s her husband,’ the boy said, and if he’d said ‘it’s her drinking,’ he couldn’t have said it in any other way.

  ‘Now look here,’ he hurried on, ‘we’re going to start in Manchester, and I want her up in Manchester for a trial fortnight, and I want her there alone. Can you manage it?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ I said.

  ‘And when she comes to London I want that man kept away,’ he continued. ‘It’s a great chance, Miss Oliver. Do what you can, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ I said, and because I was so happy and because he looked like a rescuing angel I forgot he wasn’t his father and I kissed him.