Mr Starlight
Laurie Graham
The novel from the bestselling author of The Future Homemakers of America and The Unfortunates.The Boff brothers live at home with their Mam. They have a lav down the yard and a jerry under the bed and they play bookings at the Birmingham Welsh and the Rover Sports and Social. Cled tinkles on the piano and Sel is the crooner. 'Sel's the one who can lift people out of themselves and send them home feeling grand and you can't argue against that' says Cled.When Sel decides he must try his chances with the brights lights of New York City, he packs up his sequinned suits and enlists his brother as travel companion and accompanist. Things begin to roll and what follows is a tale of high jinx; of mirrored ceilings and heart-shaped tubs; of screaming girls, romancing and No Business Like Show Business. As jealousy starts encroaching on the brothers' relationship, Cled finds that there are more secrets in his family than he had bargained for.With her characteristic wit and wisdom, Laurie Graham brings us a touching celebration of the sparkle and the dust in family life.
MR
STARLIGHT
Laurie Graham
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_197d28fa-8e1c-5988-824c-0a7c25702ecf)
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)
First published in Great Britain in 2004 by Fourth Estate
Copyright © Laurie Graham 2004
Laurie Graham asserts the right to be identified as the author of this work.
Cover illustration © Rachel Ross
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007306480
Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007389087
Version: 2017-03-30
DEDICATION (#u232cd46e-cb51-53dd-bd78-a5e42efdd700)
Dedicated to
Caryl Avery and Les Zuke,
my A to Z friendship,
and
to my best boys,
Tony Bird and Charles Darwent
EPIGRAPH (#u232cd46e-cb51-53dd-bd78-a5e42efdd700)
Give my regards to Broadway
Remember me to Herald Square
Tell all the gang at Forty-Second Street
That I will soon be there
COHAN
CONTENTS
Cover (#u8a1dca74-a4b4-552d-8298-6798b42d0b21)
Title Page (#u6fb67e41-1582-5b93-b0b1-e8ae082fa8c8)
Copyright (#uf83c5378-e27f-5117-b49f-3b4dbadb6db6)
Dedication (#uc42a1fec-c0d7-5fd7-b3a8-73da775bac9a)
Epigraph (#ue3f8c752-91f2-55bc-b343-1ff11f6c95ff)
One (#u7e18fe73-f4f8-584d-960f-271b620410ac)
Two (#ubcb3027f-fef4-5b35-b6f6-55b859ae5b61)
Three (#ua49ee7f5-e9b4-5ba2-b431-0beb1d86b2d4)
Four (#u80ed14d1-ec41-5060-affd-da9d8207dcfe)
Five (#ub03db0e0-b3bd-543b-9124-34b7e4c212dd)
Six (#u2a938916-9286-5d0b-a98c-c0f5b37a6ef8)
Seven (#udf21a3d1-6cc8-5e32-89b3-fda3bbcd4ade)
Eight (#u306f4a54-48e5-582c-b5dc-9c5b6dd5b431)
Nine (#uac0d4e31-c1ef-5d46-a95e-489abd4da3eb)
Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Thirty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Thirty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Thirty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Laurie Graham (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
ONE (#u232cd46e-cb51-53dd-bd78-a5e42efdd700)
He had six bathrooms at the finish, every one of them done up to a different scheme, although most of them were never used. There was his, with a heart-shaped tub and a mirror on the ceiling, and the monogrammed towels folded just so, and nobody else supposed to go in there, only Pearl who looked after him. And then there was my favourite with a glass block floor and gold-plated dolphin taps, and a whole wall filled with water and tropical fish. Not that bathrooms interest me that much. Still, it’s funny to think how we started out in Ninevah Street, with a lav down the yard and a jerry under the bed, in case you needed to go in the night, and a tin bath dragged indoors and put on the hearthrug, but only for special occasions.
We all had baths when our Dilys was getting married, so that was quite a production, and I had another one, I remember, when I was bad with the measles and the doctor had been sent for. But generally speaking, you could go all year in our house and never see that tin tub. Until Sel started getting top billing and Mam got stars in her eyes. Ever after that, if it was club night, it was bath night.
I was in the trimming shop at Greely’s Motors in those days, working six in the morning till two in the afternoon. You could earn more doing a night shift but after I got jilted, the size of my pay packet didn’t seem to matter any more. Renée and I had been saving up, getting our little bits and pieces together for when we were married, but when she called it off, well, I lost heart. And if I worked the early shift it meant I had my evenings. I could do the clubs with our Selwyn, as his accompanist.
When we started out they billed us as the Boff Brothers but that soon changed. Soon it was Selwyn Boff, the Saltley Songster, with Cledwyn Boff on piano, only in smaller letters. It has been my experience that once your letters get smaller they’re unlikely to get bigger again. Then, as he developed a following he dropped the Boff and tried being just plain Selwyn.
‘Your own, your very own Selwyn,’ the emcee would say and by then nobody cared who was playing. As long as Sel was out front, holding the ladies’ hands, looking into their eyes, making out he was singing for nobody in the world but them, he could have had a chimpanzee on the piano stool. Mam used to say, ‘Did you play nicely last night, Cledwyn?’
I’d say, ‘I could have played bare-arsed with my elbows for all anybody would have noticed.’
And I’d duck before she could clout me.
Our mam’s profession was teaching pianoforte so we were all expected to learn when we were nippers. But Dilys apparently would never sit still and pay attention, so she was sent to tap dancing instead, and when Mam decided Sel had the makings of a singer he was sent to Miss Jaycock in Paradise Street, for voice and elocution. After that I got the piano to myself and when I joined the Boys’ Brigade I learned the trumpet too.
Mam believed everybody should be able to do a turn, even if it was only play ‘God Save the King’ with a comb and tissue paper, but Dilys never liked performing. She’d sidle off outside and hide down the yard if we had company, if she thought Mam was going to make her climb up on the table and do ‘You are my honey, Honeysuckle’, and then, later on, she did put up a lot of weight due to married life and you can’t dance if you’re heavy. It’s harmful to the knees.
I was the true musician of the family, but my brother did have another kind of talent and I never begrudged him that, not even for all the times he got written up in the Sunday papers and told a load of fibs or never even mentioned me. He may not have had the best voice in the world, and he never did learn to sight-sing, but he had the knack of showmanship. He could lift people out of themselves and send them home happy. That’s why he got bookings while trained musicians went hungry. But you can’t argue against box office takings. I suppose that’s what Uncle Teilo recognised in him.
Teilo wasn’t our real uncle, but he was bookings secretary at the Nechells Non-Political Club and he wasn’t without influence at the Birmingham Welsh and the Rover Sports and Social, and he’d shown a friendly interest in us from when we were young lads. Also, he was very fond of our mam. I believe he may have made her certain offers, over the years, only she was a bit hazy as to the whereabouts of Dad.
We had our debut at the Birmingham Welsh before the war. Sel was only ten. We were the first act of the evening, doing ‘Gilbert the Filbert’ and ‘I Don’t Want to Play in Your Yard’, and whatever we were paid, I don’t remember seeing any money. It must have gone straight into Mam’s purse. She only ever let us do Friday nights because Sel had school and I had work to get up for, but the Boff Brothers became quite a name, and when I came back after the war we picked up where we’d left off. Of course, by then Sel wasn’t a boy soprano any more. By then he’d been going to the pictures and getting some big ideas. ‘I’ll be appearing in a dinner suit from now on,’ he said.
Uncle Teilo said, ‘Oh yes? What did you do? Knock somebody over for their clothing coupons?’
But he’d been to Horace’s, the house clearance people, and bought a dead man’s suit.
‘I want the lights down,’ he said. ‘I want total darkness before I come on, then Cled’ll play a glissando and when the lights go up, there I’ll be.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Uncle Teilo said. ‘How will folks see to drink?’
But he did agree to a few things. We moved up the billing to close the first half and we were allowed a lacy cloth on the top of the piano and a potted palm. Bloody thing had to be lugged on the bus every time, but Sel said it raised the tone. He wanted the audience to give proper order too and not walk in front of him with glasses of ale while he was singing, but that’s the kind of respect that has to be earned. Still, by the beginning of 1948 we were getting top billing and Sel announced he was handing in his notice at the Milk Maid ice cream factory and turning semi-professional.
Dilys said, ‘Oh, do be careful, Sel. The Milk Maid’s a good place to work.’
Mam said, ‘Well, there are only twenty-four hours in the day and he has to groom himself for stardom.’
Dilys said, ‘What about his benefits? What about the retirement scheme?’
Mam said, ‘Where he’s going he won’t need a Milk Maid pension.’
I said, ‘What I want to know is where does this leave me? We’re supposed to be a duo.’
He said, ‘We still can be, for the time being. Until things really take off. There comes a time when you have to decide what you want. A Milk Maid pension or fame? A long-service medal from Greely’s or a life?’
I said, ‘Why can’t you ever be satisfied?’
Mam said, ‘You’re a good little pianist, Cledwyn, but that’s all you’ll ever amount to. Selwyn’s a true performer. He gives his all.’
I suppose he started giving his all after he got his first shiny jacket. He’d decided the potted palm and the penguin suit weren’t enough, and he wanted to make himself more memorable, so he went off to London on a day return and came back with some glittery stuff that was meant for ladies’ evening gowns. Mrs Grimley, next door, ran it up for him on her sewing machine and the first time he wore it, at the Non-Political, there was nearly a riot. All those women pushing to get up front and touch it, Nechells not being a place where you saw a lot of gold lamé.
The next Saturday he went back down to Oxford Street for more supplies. Mrs Grimley said she couldn’t be doing with any more of it because of the fraying and the mess on her carpet, so he took it all to a tailor called Funkleman and had two more jackets made, one in silver lamé, one in rainbow glistenette. Funkleman thought our Sel was loopy but he took his money anyway.
After that he spent all his time thinking about suits and relied on me to do the musical groundwork, picking out new songs, trying out new arrangements. If we were doing both halves he’d change his whole outfit before the second set. He’d come running on and twirl around, so they could get a good look at his outfit. And the ladies appeared to like it. They didn’t seem to care if he was out of puff and his singing was affected. Sometimes we’d only do half of the second set because they kept calling to him, egging him on to dance around some more and come down to the front, and make goo-goo eyes at them and ask them their names. Married women with their husbands looking on. He was lucky one of them didn’t come over and thump him, but it never happened. Sel always got away with murder.
So the routine was, if we had a booking I’d go straight to bed when I got home from Greely’s, to try and get some sleep, although I hardly ever did, what with the daylight streaming in and Sel upstairs practising his twirling, like an elephant with clogs on. Then, about five o’clock Mam would start filling the tin tub, so he could have a soak before tea. She’d put towels on the clothes horse and arrange it round him like a screen so he could be private. I don’t know why she bothered because she was in and out every minute, topping up the water and scrubbing his back. ‘Don’t mind me,’ she’d say. ‘You haven’t got anything I haven’t seen.’
And he didn’t mind. He’d just sit there smiling like a great pink bab, steaming and smelling of white heather bath salts.
‘Why don’t you get in after him, Cled?’ she’d say. ‘It’s a pity to waste the hot water.’
But I wouldn’t. A stand-up wash in the kitchen suited me and I wouldn’t have put it past him to do a jimmy riddle in the tub, just to spite me.
As it was, I’d had to move out of our bedroom. ‘He needs a room to himself,’ Mam said, ‘so he can work on his presentation and conserve himself for his public.’
She got him a full-length mirror and made a star out of a silver cake board and stuck it to the door, and I had to move downstairs and have a zed bed in the front room.
I said, ‘Why can’t he have the front room? He could hang his stuff from the picture rail.’
We never used that front room. Nobody did in those days. It was kept for funeral teas, but luckily we never seemed to have any.
‘And have everybody peering in,’ she said, ‘spying on his costumes? No, no. That wouldn’t do. You have to understand, Cledwyn. A star has to keep his air of mystiquerie.’
So everybody peered in at me instead, especially Mrs E from next door, because the front-room curtains were the kind that only looked like curtains. You couldn’t actually close them. I always waited till I was under the covers before I took my trousers off.
We were getting three or four bookings a week, travelling as far as Wolverhampton or Castle Bromwich sometimes, struggling on the bus with his shiny jacket on a special hanger and him with his collar up and sunglasses on at seven o’clock on a January night so as not to be recognised.
‘I’ll have to get a car,’ he kept saying. ‘I’ll buy it and you can drive me.’
I wouldn’t have minded.
‘We’ll have tartan rugs in the back,’ he said. ‘And a personalised number plate. SEL 1.’
We were doing all right for money by then but Sel could spend it faster than they could mint it. Day trips to London. Cuff links and fancy shirts and high-heeled boots from Drury Lane. He kept a log of what he’d worn where, so he wouldn’t repeat himself. He bought silly things as well. Knick-knacks for his bedroom. A suitcase with his initials on it.
Mam encouraged him, of course. ‘Beautiful,’ she’d say. ‘You’ve got very good taste, Selwyn, like me.’
But it would have been nice if he’d put a few quid aside every week, like I did. There were things needed doing around the house. The roof needed re-tiling and the gas stove was from the year dot. And then there were the sanitary arrangements. The council were bringing in home improvement grants and not before time.
I said, ‘I think this is something we should look into. Get this place brought up to standard. We should do it for Mam.’
The way it worked was you paid half and the council paid half, and you could get a proper bathroom put in, next to the kitchen. Mrs Grimley had signed up for it and the Edkinses at number 15, but Sel wasn’t interested.
He said, ‘Mam, do you want the upheaval of getting a bathroom?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Where would we keep the coal? And how would we go on without our convenience?’
That was what they did. Took your coal house and the outside lav and converted them into all mod cons.
I said, ‘That’s easy. We can get a bunker for the coal and we won’t need an outside lav any more because we’ll have an inside one. And lovely hot baths whenever you want them. We can put a shelf up, for your Amami and your talc. You’ll be like Cleopatra.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. She was wavering, I could tell.
I said to Sel, ‘Tell her how nice it’d be. No more lugging in bathwater for you every club night.’
‘Cled,’ he said, ‘frankly I’m thinking bigger than Ninevah Street. Bigger and better, onward and ever upward. I’ll be moving on soon so what’s the point of spending money on this dump?’
I said, ‘Oh, well, then, you’ll be moving on so you’re all right. What about the rest of us? How about a few comforts for Mam in her old age?’
‘You plum duff,’ he said. ‘When I move on, she’ll move on. And so will you, unless you intend trimming car seats the rest of your life. I’m on my way to the big time, our kid, and you and Mam are invited along.’
But his first move out of Ninevah Street was nearly his last. He came close to moving on somewhere nobody else can follow.
TWO (#ulink_4c775f07-7028-5971-a65f-2914d3a76f15)
It was September of 1949 when it happened. It had been so hot the tar was melting on the roads and there wasn’t a breath of air. You didn’t feel like doing anything, only sitting still in your vest and pants and having a glass of lemonade, but we had club appearances three nights in a row so we had to stir ourselves, and of course we got a very poor turnout. People were staying at home, sitting out on their front steps, hoping for a cooling breeze. Things were so half-hearted the night we played the Alma Street Liberal I said we should cancel the rest of our bookings till the weather broke, but His Numps wouldn’t hear of it.
‘Sel Boff never cancels,’ he said. ‘The show goes on.’
So the show did go on. We were appearing at the Birmingham Welsh, with a novelty gargler who did the William Tell overture, Chucky Crawford doing his old card tricks and a vocalist called Avril who was just starting out, dark honey blonde with a nice frontage and a big voice for such a pint pot. She was making a play for Sel, straightening her stocking seams in front of him, getting him to fasten her necklace. I could have saved her the trouble. When it was showtime he had a one-track mind.
He seemed all right in the first half. We did ‘Start the Day With a Smile’, ‘Where or When’ and ‘You Rascal You’, and he’d acted the giddy goat as usual, running around, showing the ladies his new cummerbund, getting into a sweat.
I said, ‘I don’t know why you insist on wearing a jacket in this heat. Why don’t you get yourself a short-sleeved shirt like me?’
‘Because I don’t want to look like a PT instructor,’ he said. ‘Because I’m tonight’s star turn and my public has expectations.’
Then, just before we were due back on, he said, ‘Cled, I don’t feel too clever.’
I said, ‘Is it your guts?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I keep coming over dizzy. Ask Mostyn to give us another five minutes.’
Mostyn was the emcee. He said, ‘It is stifling tonight. I’ll open another window.’
I fetched a glass of water and carried it through, and there was Sel, collapsed on the floor, turning blue around the mouth. I thought it was his heart. You do hear of it happening in young men. His eyes were open but he appeared not to hear me. We needed to phone for an ambulance but the telephone was in Mostyn’s office and he had to find the key.
Avril was shouting, ‘Hurry up, you silly old sod. There’s a boy dying while you’re going through your pockets.’
‘I am hurrying,’ he said. ‘You go out front and keep the punters happy.’
‘Send the gargler on,’ she said. ‘I’m not leaving Selwyn.’
Chucky Crawford said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll go back on.’
By the time Mostyn came back from the telephone Sel’s eyes had rolled back in their sockets.
Avril said, ‘Did you tell them to hurry?’
Mostyn said, ‘Ambulances always hurry. And you’ve got a few things to learn about show business, my girl. Rule number one, whatever’s going on backstage, you look after your audience.’
‘Mostyn,’ she said, ‘there’s hardly anybody in and as long as the beer keeps flowing they won’t complain.’
And it’s true. It’s been my experience that people would rather take part in a heart attack than watch card tricks any day.
That ambulance had no great distance to come but it seemed to take hours. We were in a cubbyhole that passed for a dressing room, boxes of Christmas trimmings piled up on the shelves, mops and buckets in the corner, wondering if Sel was going to last the night.
Avril had his head cradled on her lap, stroking his hair. ‘Beautiful curls,’ she said.
I could have told her where those curls came from: a Toni home perm done in our Dilys’s living room.
When they arrived they gave him oxygen and asked me a lot of questions. All I knew was he’d had a ham salad and a glass of orange squash for his tea, the same as I had except I’d let him have my spring onions. I didn’t like to eat anything like that on a club night, in case I got lucky with the ladies. Also, he’d had brown pickle instead of salad cream, and three rock cakes. He’d seemed right enough during the first set apart from missing a line or two, but he did that sometimes, when he ran out of wind. He never breathed properly, for a singer. They said they were rushing him to the General Hospital and I might want to notify his next of kin.
Then Uncle Teilo turned up, alerted by Mostyn. ‘Oh dear,’ he kept saying. ‘My star turn. Oh dear, oh dear.’
By rights I should have ridden in the ambulance. I was family. But Teilo whispered something to the ambulance people, elbowed his way in.
‘You go and fetch your mam,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about Sel. I’ll make sure he gets a top doctor.’
I’d have had to wait for a bus only a very nice couple called Jean and Dennis offered to run me home in their Hillman Minx.
‘We couldn’t bear for anything to happen to him,’ Jean said. ‘We follow him all over, don’t we, Dennis?’
He had fans like that even in those days. The husband didn’t say a lot. It always was the ladies he appealed to, but still, that Dennis drove like the clappers to get me back to Ninevah Street.
Jean said, ‘And then we’ll run you to the hospital, won’t we, Dennis? Who’d have thought it! Selwyn Boff’s brother riding in our motor!’
‘Did you loosen his cummerbund?’ That was the first thing Mam wanted to know. ‘Did you tell them he was invalided out of the RAF?’
I could have strangled her. Three times she ran back into the house, fetching things to take to the hospital. Indigestion pills and his hairbrush and then the evening paper, for the crossword puzzle, and all the while the car was ticking over, burning juice.
I said, ‘Leave that! He’s in no state for crosswords.’
‘He will be,’ she said. ‘He’ll perk up once he knows I’m there. Did you tell them he can only drink sterilised milk?’
I said, ‘He’s unconscious, Mam. He won’t be drinking any milk tonight.’
She said, ‘Well, if they give him the wrong milk and he comes out in hives we’ll have you to thank.’
I said, ‘I’m not his keeper.’
‘Yes you are,’ she said. ‘That’s exactly what you are. He’s only a bab.’
They allowed us to see him for five minutes but he was in a big machine, to help him with his breathing so we couldn’t really see him at all. They said they hoped to be able to tell us more in the morning.
Mam said, ‘I’ll just brush his hair. Tell him I’m here.’
‘Not tonight,’ they said. ‘He’s too ill.’
That’s when it hit her. ‘Oh, Cledwyn,’ she sobbed. ‘Whatever can it be? Don’t let me lose him. I couldn’t bear to lose him.’
She wouldn’t come home, insisted on waiting there all night though there was nothing to be done.
I said, ‘Should I ask Dilys to come? She could wait with you.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘Dilys is neither use nor ornament at this time of night. She can’t manage without her sleep the way I can.’
I said, ‘Well, if I’m going to be up all night, I’d better phone Greely’s, tell them I shan’t be in tomorrow morning.’
‘Just go home,’ she said. ‘I don’t need anybody to sit with me. It’s a mother’s job to keep watch. And it’ll be me he asks for when he wakes up.’
So Jean and Dennis kindly drove me home and when I offered them something for their trouble and their petrol, Jean said, ‘You keep your hand in your pocket. We don’t want your money, do we, Dennis? Of course, what we’d really love is an autograph.’
‘Happy to oblige,’ I said. ‘Where’s your autograph book?’
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘This wouldn’t be the right time. He’s a sick boy. But when he’s on the mend, if you think to mention it to him, a signed photo would be lovely.’
I expect she lived to regret not letting me sign her book, especially after I’d had my hit single.
Sel got worse before he got better. He was on the critical list for several days and Mam instructed us on what we were to say to the reporters.
Dilys said, ‘There aren’t any reporters, Mam.’
Mam said, ‘That’s because you keep using the front entrance. They’ll be round the back, thinking to catch you out. That’s what they did when Judy Garland was in hospital.’
Avril tried to visit too, just the once, but Mam soon saw her off. ‘Family only,’ she said. ‘Doctor’s orders.’
This wasn’t quite true because Uncle Teilo was buzzing around every day, looking for progress reports, wondering how many more bookings he’d have to cancel. Sel was unconscious for a whole day and when he came to we had a bit of a fright. ‘I’ve gone blind,’ he said. He was clinging to Mam. ‘I can’t see anything. I’m too young to go blind.’
Mam said, ‘Don’t worry, Selwyn, Mam’s here. Mam’ll send for a specialist. Cledwyn, tell your Uncle Teilo to get a specialist. Whatever it costs.’
But it was only blurred vision. Gradually it cleared, then his eyeballs turned yellow and his belly swelled up like a balloon, and he itched so much he scratched himself nearly raw. It had all been caused by his jacket, they said. He’d been poisoned by the stuff that had been used to clean it. Carbon tetrachloride. Mam said, ‘It was no such thing. It was DabAway. And I only freshened it up. What was I supposed to do? Leave the sweat to rot the seams? Costly fabric like that?’
They said Mam wasn’t to have known. It was in very tiny print about using the product in moderation and airing the garment thoroughly after it had been cleaned. They said four bottles was a lot, but she still shouldn’t blame herself. She said, ‘I’m not blaming myself.’ But I think she did, on the quiet.
At the end of the first week they asked me to step into the doctor’s office.
I said, ‘Are you sending him home?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘far from it. Your brother isn’t out of the woods yet. There could be kidney damage. We have to wait and see.’ I said, ‘How long?’
‘Two to three weeks,’ he said. ‘If there is damage … you might want to consider whether your mother should be warned.’
I said, ‘She’ll do whatever it takes. She’ll cash in a policy if it’s a case of going private.’
‘It isn’t,’ he said. ‘It’s a case of a possible sudden deterioration.’
Dilys was visiting when I looked in on him. She was trimming his hair and they were laughing and joking, no idea he might be on death row. ‘Cheer up, our kid,’ he said, when he saw me. ‘You look like you just saw a ghost. Come and sit down. I’ve got quite a story to tell the pair of you. I’ve had an amazing experience. A vision.’
Dilys said, ‘Well, you are on a lot of medication.’
‘Nothing to do with medication,’ he said. ‘A beautiful lady came to me, in the middle of the night. She was dressed in long white robes.’
I said, ‘It was probably that little staff nurse with the nice ankles.’ I had my eye on her myself, always crackling her apron, pretending to be busy.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t any nurse. It was a visitation. She stood as near to me as you are and she was bathed in a heavenly glow.’
Dilys said, ‘You must have been dreaming. Had they given you a jab?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I was as wide awake as I am now. Something made me sit up all of a sudden and there she was, smiling at me. But here’s the best bit: she knew all about me, all about my singing career and everything.’
I said, ‘Did she tell you Industrial Brush Social Club want to charge us for a no-show?’
‘Bugger Industrial Brush,’ he said. ‘This lady laid out my whole life before me. She said my days singing on the clubs are finished. She said I have a Higher Purpose.’
Dilys said, ‘What, like Dewi Elias?’ Dewi was one of Aunty Gwenny’s in-laws, worked as a roofer for years until he slipped and had a bang on the head. Then he went for a deacon. Reckoned he’d heard celestial voices.
‘Never mind Dewi Elias,’ he said. ‘I’m on the threshold of a momentous change in my life.’
It made my blood run cold to hear him making plans, after what I’d been told.
‘See?’ he said. ‘That’s why I was spared from DabAway poisoning. She told me I’m meant to go to America and there I shall make my fortune.’
Dilys said, ‘Could it have been the lady with the library trolley?’
I said, ‘Not in the middle of the night.’ I was hoping he had seen a vision, in a way. He was too young to die.
He said, ‘She was sent from above. I know she was. One minute she was here, clear as I see you, next minute she was gone.’
I said, ‘Did she glide away?’
‘Not so much glide as fade,’ he said.
Dilys said, ‘You haven’t told Mam?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think she’d like it.’
He was right about that. Mam didn’t even like Joan Wagstaff visiting, who had been one of his best pals in school, and she was a married woman.
I’ve often wondered if it was caused by the pills or if he made it all up, but he stuck to the same story all his days. Then again, Sel never saw any harm in being approximate with the facts.
I walked with Dilys to the bus stop.
She said, ‘Are you going to say anything to Mam?’
I said, ‘I think I might. If America’s on the agenda she ought to be warned.’
I was inclined to leave well alone with the other business. If Sel started to go downhill I could always get the doctor to explain things to her. No sense in running to meet trouble.
I said, ‘It could kill her.’
Dilys said, ‘What? Him going to America? I don’t think so. She’s made like a Sherman tank. As long as Sel’s in the limelight she’ll keep rolling.’
So I brought the matter up with Mam that same evening.
‘Visions!’ she said. ‘I’ll give them visions. They’ve been letting nuns in to bother helpless invalids. I shall make a complaint to the matron in the morning.’
Mam hated nuns. We were chapel. Well, we weren’t anything, really, but if we’d had to be something we’d have been Ebenezer Congregational.
‘Well, that settles it,’ she said. She’d got a right old cob on her and I hadn’t even got as far as the details of Sel’s Higher Purpose in America. ‘I’m getting him out of there,’ she said. ‘I’ll have him moved somewhere nice and quiet where he’s not troubled by intruders.’
And she did. As soon as he got the all clear on his kidneys he was on his way to a convalescent home in Abergele, thanks to the generosity of well-wishers from the Birmingham Welsh, and then on to Aunty Gwenny’s, for fresh air and home-made currant bread. It made no difference, though. He may have been sitting in the Land of our Fathers with a rug round his knees, but in his heart he was already on his way to America.
THREE (#ulink_72ec7fda-f5fe-5288-b657-b0b1008a1c97)
I was six when Sel came on the scene. I’ll never forget the day. We’d had team games that afternoon, out in the yard at Bright Street Infants because it was such a nice day and I’d been called out to the front to show the class good ball control. I was feeling very pleased with myself and then when I got to the corner of Ninevah Street I bumped into Mrs Edkins.
‘Cledwyn,’ she said. ‘You’ve got a new bab at your house so you’d better come to me for your tea tonight.’
I ran home so fast, to see if it was true about the bab and beg Mam not to send me to Mrs E’s. Normally my sister Dilys could have given me my tea. She was fourteen. Only she was on holiday at Aunty Gwenny’s, getting over tonsillitis. But when I ran in the door there she was, back from the country, and Mam was on the couch in her nightie and His Numps lay in a drawer out of the sideboard, all wrapped up in blankets and a woolly bonnet.
First thing I said was, ‘Can Dilys give me my tea? I’ll be good.’
Mam said, ‘Look at you, in a muck sweat. What have I told you about running? See what’s in the crib?’
‘Is it a bab?’ I said. I’d never really seen one close up. ‘Where did it come from?’
‘Under a gooseberry bush,’ Mam said. ‘Now go and wash your face and then you can give him a kiss.’
I said, ‘How long is he stopping?’ and Mam and Dilys both laughed. The main thing was, I didn’t have to go to the Edkinses for my tea, as long as I went about on tiptoe and didn’t wake the baby. I hated going next door. There was nothing to play with and Mrs E smelled of fried bread and sometimes she didn’t button up her blouse properly, so you could see things, unless you closed your eyes tight. Dilys wanted to name the bab Skippy, like in the cartoons, and I wanted him to be called Billy Walker, like the Aston Villa captain, but Mam said neither of those were proper names and he’d to be called Selwyn. Selwyn Amos, like I was Cledwyn Amos, after her brother Amos who’d died in the Battle of the Somme. Dad wasn’t around at that time so he didn’t get a say. Even in 1928 it could be hard finding the right kind of work. A man had to be willing to travel. By the time he turned up again the new bab had opened his eyes properly and was all signed up as Selwyn Amos. It was official. Dad didn’t seem to mind.
According to Mam, our dad had had a college education, though where he’d had it we never knew, and it didn’t appear to have done him much good because he was always getting laid off, or having a falling out that wasn’t his fault and being sent on his way. It was a good thing for us that Mam had a profession.
Mam met our dad when she came to Birmingham before the First World War. She’d been in Oswestry in service, and then she’d come to a big house in Edgbaston, to be a governess to somebody’s kiddies, teaching them their ABC and piano and manners. She was Anne Roberts, from Pentrefoelas, and she was quite the traveller of the Roberts family. Her sister Gwenny married Rhys Elias and never went any further than Denbigh.
Aunty Gwenny and Uncle Rhys had three sons, all named John because only the youngest one lived, and he did pretty well for himself. He ended up in Chester, in wholesale fruit and veg.
Dad’s people were the Boffs and they came from the Shrewsbury area. I don’t think we ever met any of them.
Aunty Gwenny didn’t approve of Dad. ‘You could have done better, Annie,’ she always said and she nicknamed him ‘Gypsy’, which stuck.
But I never heard Mam say a word against him. ‘Gwenny doesn’t understand,’ she’d say. ‘She’s not seen the world the way I have. Your father’s overqualified for the work that’s on offer around here.’ As to why we didn’t all move somewhere nearer to work that was up to his high level of aptitude, that was never gone into. Actually, it quite suited us, his not often being there. It was only a small house and he was a big man. And Mam kept cheerful enough. She had her piano pupils and there was always Uncle Teilo if she needed a new light bulb screwing in.
I’ve often wondered if our dad’s problem was drink. We were teetotal so we never had alcohol in the house, but money did seem to run through his fingers and he used to weep sometimes, too, which might have been brought on by the demon drink.
But Mam always stayed calm. ‘Go down to Sturdy’s,’ she’d say. ‘Mr Edkins says they’re setting men on. Go and ask at the gate.’ She’d give him the bus fare and a bit extra, to help him feel like a man, but she never let him see where she’d fetched it from. Mam had hiding places all over. In her shoe sometimes. In her brassiere. ‘And remember not to mention your college education,’ she’d say.
But he’d usually come back with a long face and a story. He was too old. Or the powers that be had it in for him. I question whether he even went to Sturdy’s gate and asked.
I liked having a bab in the family. After Sel arrived I didn’t get so much attention paid to me, which meant I could stay out in the street later, practising my ball control. And with Dilys helping in the kitchen I could get away with things Mam didn’t allow, like not eating my crusts. Then, just before Sel’s first Christmas, Dilys got a start as a jam tart packer at Oven Fresh, which meant Mam had all the housework to do again and I could get more time on the piano.
I loved my music. Mam had children sent to her for lessons who had to be threatened with the stick before they’d practise, but not me. And I caught on fast, too. Mam wasn’t a great one for dishing out praise but she did tell me once I had natural ability.
Sel was a wakeful type of baby and he only had to see me lift the lid of the piano to start smiling. That’s how I picture us then: him propped up in the corner of the couch, big and bonny, blowing bubbles and dribbling down his bib, and me playing him my little pieces, still too short to reach the pedals.
After he learned to walk he’d tag along behind me everywhere and on school mornings, when I had to go and leave him, he’d cry as though his heart was broken.
Mam’d say, ‘You’re too soft, Cledwyn. Just walk out of the door and don’t be so daft. Babies are meant to cry.’
I never really understood the wisdom of that.
So me and Sel were close from the beginning although, of course, as the years went by we had our ups and downs. By the time he started at Bright Street I was nearly ready to move on to the big school. I didn’t want him trailing behind me, expecting me to play with him like I did at home, but one thing about Sel, wherever he went people liked him. He made some little friends of his own that first week and that was how he carried on. He was no footballer and I don’t even remember him joining in a game of conkers, but he got along with the girls, like Vera Muddimer and Joan Wagstaff, skipping with a rope and playing Kings and Queens and getting up little concerts. He joined the Cub Scouts but he only went once. He said, ‘I’m not going back.’
And Mam said, ‘You don’t have to, darling, not if you don’t like it.’
I said, ‘You made me go. You said I had to persevere.’
‘Selwyn’s cut from a different cloth,’ she said. ‘He’s not tough, like you.’
So he was allowed to stay at home and develop what Mam called ‘the domestic arts’. Stitching an S on all his hankies. Rearranging Mam’s ornaments. Decorating biscuits. Dilys used to bring bags of mis-shapes home from Oven Fresh and he loved titivating them with coloured icing and silver balls. He could be quite artistic. I was already working at Greely’s by the time he passed for the Grammar School. I said to Mam, ‘I hope he’ll get on all right there.’
‘Why wouldn’t he?’ she said.
I was worried about him because the Grammar School was boys only. I said, ‘He’s going to miss Joan and Vera.’
‘Selwyn makes friends wherever he goes,’ she said. ‘And there’s time enough for girls later.’
And it was true, he did have the knack of playing the fool and winning folks over, even the ones who called him a sissy. It was as though he was daring the whole world not to like him.
When Dilys was eighteen she started walking out with Arthur Persons. Mam never let them out of her sight. They had to keep the door open while they said goodnight out on the front step, even if there was a gale blowing, and if she couldn’t be in the room supervising them, I had to keep watch.
‘Play your new piece for Arthur,’ Mam’d say, which meant she needed to go outside and pay a penny and I was supposed to guard our Dilys’s virtue.
Poor Arthur. He endured two years of that while they saved up for a bed and some easy chairs, and then they got married, in the spring of 1933. The wedding took place at Miller Street Congregational. Dilys wore a blue suit made for her by Mrs Grimley and Uncle Teilo walked her up the aisle, our dad having had to rush away to Gloucester to follow up a business opportunity. Me and Selwyn were attendants. I wasn’t keen but Dilys begged me. I was twelve years old by then and I’d seen some of the get-ups attendants were expected to wear. There were often weddings round the corner at St Botolph’s and I’d seen boys dressed in velveteen and lacy collars. But Mam said there’d be nothing like that, just a bath the night before and a nice clean shirt and tie, so I agreed. Sel had long white socks and new shoes, and he carried a lucky cardboard horseshoe to give to the happy couple as they came out of the chapel, and the reason I remember that is he was so pleased with his white socks he spent the whole time looking at them and worrying in case they got smudged. If you look at Dilys’s wedding photo all you can see of him is the top of his head because he’s busy gazing down at his legs.
Dilys and Arthur started off in one room at Arthur’s parents’ house in Tysely, and then they got a flat with shared kitchen and bathroom on the Pershore Road, and all the while Arthur was climbing the ladder at Aldridge’s Machine Tools and doing very well for himself. By the time Dilys was in the family way they were buying a house at Great Barr with a garden front and back, so much down and then so much per month.
Every so often Dad would turn up with a bag of laundry and holes in his socks, and I’d be sent to Jewks’s for a skein of darning wool. ‘And while you’re out,’ Mam’d whisper, ‘run round to Uncle Teilo’s and tell him your father’s home.’
It was one of Dad’s homecomings that led to a big falling out between Mam and Dilys.
‘Tell Arthur your father’s available for work,’ Mam said.
‘No need,’ Dilys said. ‘I expect they’ll be giving it out on the wireless. But Arthur can’t get him work.’
‘Of course he can,’ Mam said. ‘If he’s any kind of son-in-law. If he’s as high up at Aldridge’s as he cracks on.’
Dilys said, ‘If Arthur sullied his hands setting Dad on he soon wouldn’t be anything at Aldridge’s. I’m not asking him.’
Mam said, ‘Then I’ll get him a start. I’ll go to Aldridge’s myself and tell them who I am.’
‘Don’t you bloody dare,’ Dilys was shouting. ‘Don’t you bloody bloody dare.’ I could see her point of view. There were always complications where Dad was involved, complications and recriminations. It was just as well Dilys stood her ground because Arthur was too mild to have done it for himself.
Then Dad went off to the Labour Exchange one morning and didn’t come back. It was the usual pattern.
Mam said, ‘I expect he was offered something. He’d heard there might be an opening in the Potteries. That’s how it is. If an opportunity presents itself you have to jump in quick, before someone else does. You don’t have time for goodbyes.’ But I noticed his spare shirt was gone and so was my Brylcreem.
I went over to Dilys’s to tell her Gypsy was gone. I said, ‘So you and Mam can patch things up now.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s quite a relief not having to see her.’
I said, ‘Sel misses you.’
‘Bring him over on the bus,’ she said. ‘I’d like that. And Mam doesn’t need to know.’
But however much Sel missed Dilys it wasn’t enough for him to go behind Mam’s back. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Mam’s the mam and Dilys is the girl, so what Mam says goes. And if you go to Dilys’s again, I’m telling.’
So we were incommunicado until Arthur came round one night and said Dilys had had two lovely baby girls and it was time to let bygones be bygones. And as it was Dad they’d quarrelled over and he himself was a bygone just then, Mam relented and we all went to see the new arrivals. They’d named them Betsan and Gaynor.
I was fifteen and Sel was nine, which seemed young to be uncles, but we were both pretty chuffed about it.
Dilys said, ‘Sit on those kitchen chairs, the pair of you, and each of you hold one of the babies.’
I was up for it, but Sel wouldn’t. ‘Their legs are too thin,’ he said. ‘And they’ve got funny skin.’
There were certain things he never liked to touch and there was no persuading him. He could be very funny that way.
‘Well, Dilys,’ Mam said. ‘Now you’ve got your work cut out.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Dilys said. ‘I’ve got a good man to help me.’
After that peace broke out and we saw Dilys most weeks. If Villa were playing at home she’d bring the girls over to see Mam while me and Arthur went to the match. I always liked Arthur. He was as gentle as a lamb. Then sometimes we’d go over there, to Great Barr, on a Sunday afternoon and we’d have tinned salmon and salad and pears in syrup or fruit cocktail, and then walnut cake, with white icing and glacé cherries. Happy days.
Then, of course, along came the war and I decided to jump before I was pushed. I tried for the Engineers and when they realised I could get a tune out of a cornet they made me a bandsman, which meant being a medical orderly too in case we saw action. I was at home, on embarkation leave, when Dad turned up. His face suddenly appeared at the kitchen window, cigarette behind his ear, silly grin on his face, as if he’d just come home from work, not been missing, whereabouts unknown, for more than twelve months. ‘Put the kettle on,’ he said. ‘Where’s your mam?’
She was at Spooner’s, fetching gammon for my send-off tea.
‘Bloody wars,’ he said. ‘I did my bit in the last lot. And you’ll be all right at Greely’s. Reserved occupation.’
I said, ‘I volunteered.’
‘Oh yes?’ he said. ‘More fool you. And what are you doing, half-pint?’
Sel was snipping holes in a piece of paper, making a doily for the cake stand. ‘Helping my mam,’ he said. ‘And there won’t be enough gammon for you. You weren’t expected.’
But of course Mam gave up her rasher for Gypsy and when Uncle Teilo called in she came over very light-hearted. Whatever Dad said, she laughed, whatever Teilo said, she laughed, although he didn’t seem to be in a very humorous mood. ‘I’ll be seeing you, Annie,’ he said, as he was leaving. ‘You know where to find me.’
‘Home is the hunter, Teilo,’ she said. ‘So I won’t have to trouble you for any more light bulbs.’
We didn’t sleep much that night. I was wondering what war was going to be like and Sel wasn’t happy about the new arrangements. ‘Don’t go in the army, Cled,’ he said. ‘What if you get shot?’
I said, ‘I have to go, our kid. It’s my duty. And it’s your job to look after Mam.’
‘I always look after her,’ he said. ‘But why did he have to come back and upset everything?’
I said, ‘You know Dad. He probably won’t stay long.’
‘Yes he will,’ he said. ‘He told Mam he’s going to build her an air raid shelter.’
But Sel didn’t know Gypsy Boff as well as I did. By the next time I came home on leave he was history. Mam had volunteered him for the Miller Street Home Guard but he only lasted a week or two and then he’d disappeared for the duration.
I said, ‘I suppose he was too brainy for the Home Guard?’
But Mam wouldn’t be drawn on the subject. ‘People lose touch when there’s a war on,’ she said. ‘As you’ll find out.’
I reckon he must have had a woman somewhere. Some lonely widow who was glad to have his ration book. We did see him again after the war, though, so whatever else had transpired, the Luftwaffe hadn’t flattened him.
I didn’t have a bad war, compared with some. I saw some terrible sights but at least I came home. There were quite a few I’d known at Bright Street who didn’t make it, and then there was Mr Grimley from next door. He was believed to have copped it when they bombed the cannon factory in Armoury Road. They never found anything of him. He just never came home again.
I was demobbed early in 1946 and not long after I arrived home Sel got called up to do his National Service. He had to report to a recruitment station in Acocks Green.
Mam said, ‘This government seems determined to rob me of a son.’
I said, ‘They’ll never take Sel. One look at him and they’ll send him home.’
‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘He’s a fine-looking boy.’
He was tall and well-built, but there was that soft girlie side to him too. I couldn’t see him clambering up and over a cargo net. He didn’t have the musculature for it. I couldn’t see him getting stuck in to bayonet practice. And neither could he. ‘I’m not letting them cut my hair,’ he said. ‘I’m going to tell them I’m a pacifist.’ So he went off to Acocks Green, whistling and smelling of talc and expecting to be back in five minutes, but he was gone all day and when he did turn up he looked like a bulldog chewing on a wasp. ‘Fat lot you know,’ he said. ‘I’ve only gone and got into the RAF.’
Now, there was a lot of competition for the air force. Nobody just walked, especially not a boy who didn’t have the right attitude.
I said, ‘You can’t have done. You’ve misunderstood.’
‘No I haven’t,’ he said. ‘They asked for anybody who’d passed their School Certificate and there was only me and one other, so they said we were both in. Now what am I going to do? I don’t want to fly aeroplanes. I want to work on my singing career.’
Mam said, ‘Go back and tell them you’re musical. Tell them you’re willing to serve in a concert party.’
I said, ‘This is National Service, Mam, not Take Your Pick.’
‘Then he can be a bandsman,’ she said, ‘like you. I’ll write to them.’
I said, ‘He can’t play anything.’
She said, ‘He can play the triangle. You don’t need to be Paderewski to be an air force bandsman.’
He said, ‘But I don’t want to be a bandsman. I’m going to be a singer.’
Dilys said, ‘The RAF does have a nice uniform, Sel. Anyway, perhaps it won’t come to it.’
But it did come to it. Well, it did and it didn’t. He got his papers to go to RAF Padgate for basic training. He left on the Friday while I was at work and by Tuesday night he was back home, medically exempt due to ‘Weak Back and Nervous Temperament’ and whistling again. He walked straight back into his job in the payroll office at the ice cream factory, Uncle Teilo got us some club bookings and we all settled down again.
Sel practised his singing in front of the dressing-table mirror and I kept up to date with the hit parade. A song didn’t have to be aired many times before I had it committed to memory, and we were known around the circuit for offering a good mix of old and new. I began trying my hand at composition too and, although I didn’t receive a lot of encouragement, I’d say many of my early efforts have stood the test of time: ‘Gnat on the Windscreen of Life’, ‘Knee Deep in Love’, which I wrote for Renée when we started courting, ‘You Pulled the Chain on Me’, written after she called things off.
Renée had a look of Rita Hayworth about her and she was my first experience with the fair sex. Mam didn’t like her, but Mam never got along with other ladies. She’d chat for hours with Mr Edkins next door, laughing and joking, but the minute Mrs E poked her head out she ’d turn frosty. And she was the same with any girl I looked at. ‘Too full of herself,’ she’d say. Or, ‘All kid gloves and no drawers.’
Me and Renée had to do what courting we could in the back row of the Gaumont, so after six months I asked her to marry me, in the hope of moving things along in the bedroom department. After we got engaged Mam had to allow her in the house, begrudging as she was. It looked like being a long haul, saving up for our bits and pieces, but at least we could be in out of the cold. At least we didn’t always have to have fish and chips and a cuddle in the bus shelter. We even had full-scale relations, just the once, when Mam was getting over pleurisy and went to stay at Aunty Gwenny’s.
But then Sel had to open his mouth and ruin everything. ‘Mam,’ he said. ‘I reckon there’s a spring gone in the front-room couch.’
‘Why?’ she said. ‘Have you been going in there, wearing it out?’
‘Not me,’ he said. ‘But Cled did, and when he lay on top of Renée it didn’t half make a noise.’
It was all very well for him. He hadn’t matured to that degree yet. His idea of having a good time with a girl was meeting Vera Muddimer for the Shoppers’ Lunch in Lewis’s. He thought it was highly amusing when Mam said I’d have to move out if I was going to treat the place as a knocking shop. But I couldn’t move out. We didn’t have enough in our savings account, and after that Renée wouldn’t show her face in Ninevah Street. ‘I’ve got needs, Cled,’ she said. ‘So you’ll have to decide. Is it me or your mam?’
I said, ‘If you’ll just be patient. Another twelve months and we’ll be set up.’
But she suddenly got it into her head to leave Greely’s and be a bus conductress, five pounds a week, free uniform and half-price travel. And then, well, the writing was on the wall. A bus conductress has men hopping on and off all day long. It was really no job for an engaged person who was having second thoughts.
FOUR (#ulink_f4f44e70-9cc9-5dda-8b8c-82cc987afd4d)
After Sel had recuperated from his suit poisoning Uncle Teilo was keen to get us bookings for our comeback season, but His Numps wouldn’t apply himself to it. ‘Time to move on,’ he said.
Uncle Teilo said, ‘Oh yes? Where to? Has Norman Hewitt been talking to you?’ Norman was another big fixer in Birmingham. Sel just laughed.
I said, ‘Well, I think I should be kept in the picture.’
‘Look, Cled,’ he said. ‘We’ve been a good team, but we’ve got different plans. I’m a pro and you’re playing for pin money. And you can’t say I didn’t warn you.’ It was that business with the lady in white.
I said, ‘You don’t have to go to America to branch out, you know. We could travel further afield, do some private functions. Sutton. Lichfield. We could get a little motor.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m going to America. I’ve outgrown this place.’
I said, ‘Please yourself. I’ll go solo. You’re not the only one with a following, you know. I’ll always find a welcome at the Birmingham Welsh.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘In that case you won’t get your knickers in a knot if I go my own way, under new management.’
Dilys said, ‘Don’t worry, Cled. Perhaps it won’t come to it. America might not want him.’
But when Sel set his heart on something he always got it. Like that painting by numbers kit he pestered Mam for when he was nine. Like that old clock covered with cherubs he outbid everybody for at a big auction. Ugly bloody thing, supposed to have belonged to some French nob and he paid thousands for it.
So he went off on one of his jaunts to London and came home with a pair of patent leather boots and a promise of work through the Ted Sibley Agency, Representation for International Artistes.
Uncle Teilo had popped round to put a new flex on Mam’s iron and we were all sitting having tea when Sel walked in. ‘I’ve done it!’ he said. ‘Ted Sibley signed me on the spot. He had to admit it wasn’t every day an act like me walked through his door.’
I said, ‘When are you leaving?’
‘When the right opportunity opens up,’ he said. ‘See, Cled, you don’t just leap at the first thing you’re offered. You have to know where you want to get to, and then you have to have a plan and everything you do has to fit in with it. It’s no use jumping on a bus going to Walsall and then complaining it never took you to Kidderminster.’
I said, ‘Thanks for the tip, big shot. So what’s it to be? Broadway? Hollywood?’
‘The top,’ he said. ‘That’s the only destination that interests me.’
‘That’s the ticket, Selwyn!’ Mam said. ‘I always knew you’d go far.’ She didn’t show any signs of being grief-stricken.
Uncle Teilo said, ‘Some tin hut in Africa, that’s where he’ll end up. Concert parties in Umbongo Land. Ted Sibley! After all I’ve done for you. You could be playing the Aston Hippodrome in a year or two if you stick with me.’
‘No, Teilo,’ Mam said. ‘He has to move on, same as I did from Pentrefoelas. People who’ve got any gumption always do. You’re never appreciated in your own backyard.’
I said, ‘Well, I’ll be staying on your books, Teilo. As a matter of fact I’ve got a few ideas of my own. I might look around for a bass player and a drummer. Maybe a little vocalist too. A nice little songstress who’s easy on the eye. The Cled Boff Combo. We’ll be playing some of my own material.’
‘Oh yes?’ he said.
A bit of enthusiasm would have been nice.
Dilys didn’t like the sound of Sel’s plans. She said, ‘Who is this Ted Sibley anyway? Sel’s too young and trusting to sign papers for going overseas.’
Of course, Sel always brought out the protective side in women. They always worried about him and ruffled his hair and cut his toast into soldiers. I put a lot of it down to his dimples.
She said, ‘Will you go with him, Cled? Make sure he doesn’t get double crossed?’
I said, ‘I’m not giving up my prospects to play nursemaid to him.’
Mam said, ‘You don’t have any prospects.’
Sel said, ‘I’ll be all right, Dilys. I’m twenty-one. I’ve got my wits about me. And I’ve got talent. All I have to do now is share the good news with the rest of the world, specially those Americans. They’re going to wonder what hit them.’
I watched Mam’s face. ‘And there’s the difference’, she said to Uncle Teilo, ‘between an artiste who starts on the clubs and an artiste who stays on the clubs.’
Dilys said, ‘Well, I still think Cled should go with him.’
‘Cled won’t go anywhere,’ Mam said. ‘He’s a stay-at-home.’
Sel said, ‘Look, if you want to try your luck too, Cled, I’ve no objections. Go and see Ted Sibley. If you’ve got what it takes he’ll sign you, if you haven’t he won’t. And you’re well thought of at Greely’s. Let’s face it, stardom isn’t for everybody. But whatever you do, don’t any of you worry about me. I’m on my way and I don’t need a babysitter.’
He was so full of himself and all he had was a pack of promises, not a single paying engagement in the book. I was the one getting enquiries from Wednesbury Oddfellows and the Sluice and Penstock Social. I thought, ‘I’ll show the ruddy lot of you.’
I took a day’s holiday and went down to London to see this Ted Sibley. It caused quite a flutter in the Trimming Shop. I had to promise to send them a picture postcard, even though I was only gone for the day. Sel insisted on coming with me.
I said, ‘You’re the one supposed to need nannying.’ I’d been to London before. I’d been through on a troop train. I said, ‘Got you worried, have I? Think Ted Sibley might recognise who’s the real musician in the family?’
‘Ah, come on, Cled,’ he said. ‘Don’t be like that. Don’t let’s fall out. We’ve both got something to offer. You’re a good steady instrumentalist. I’ve got that added vital ingredient.’
We went to a cafeteria and he put away two eggs on toast and a pot of tea. I couldn’t manage a thing; I was so churned up with nerves. I’d never had to audition for strangers very much, with Uncle Teilo having so much pull.
Sel said, ‘Here’s my advice. Forget you’re trying out for Ted Sibley. Pretend you’re at home. Enjoy yourself. Pretend you’re playing for Dilys and Arthur. And look at it this way, if it doesn’t pan out, at least you’re a skilled car seat finisher. You’ll never starve.’
I played ‘Lazy Bones’ and ‘Nice Work’. It was a good piano, but I wasn’t up to my usual mark. Ted Sibley had the habit of narrowing his eyes while he was listening, giving the impression he was in pain, or falling asleep.
I said, ‘I’m better with an audience.’
‘You should be so lucky,’ he said. Then he threw me a play list and told me to show him what I could do on trumpet. That was when I hit my stride. I gave him ‘Blue Orchids’ and ‘Night and Day’ and my own arrangement of ‘Little Brown Jug’, mood perfect, note perfect, even though I was in a bit of a haze. I think it had been caused by a beverage called a Rusty Nail, bought me by Sel to help settle my stomach. Anyway, Sibley stubbed out his cigarette and said, ‘Yeah, you’ll do. I’ll put you on my books. You understand what’s involved? You’ll have to have a medical. You have to be willing to travel. You single, Cled? No encumbrances?’
I was between romances as it happened. I said, ‘Is that it, then? When do I start?’
‘As soon as I need a trumpeter,’ he said. ‘Are there any more of you at home? Any other Boff talent I should know about? No chorus girls? Sax players?’
Ted Sibley did a lot of business with the shipping lines and he was looking for a tenor sax for a sailing to Ceylon and some high-kickers for a variety show going to South Africa. There was no telling where an international entertainer could end up. ‘And Sel,’ he said, ‘I’m still waiting for a photo of you in a normal suit. Single vent, no spangles, remember? I can’t sell you as a supporting vocalist if you look like something off a flying trapeze.’
‘I’ll get it done tomorrow, Ted,’ he said, and then he winked at me. ‘I’ll wear something from Hepworth’s Mr Normal Collection and just let my natural incandescence shine through.’
He didn’t appear to notice he’d had a ticking off. He’d received so little criticism in life I’m not sure he always recognised it when he heard it. And it never crossed his mind that things might not go his way. All he could see was that house with the swimming pool waiting for him at the end of the rainbow.
We went back to the cafeteria and I had my first breakfast of the day and Sel had his second.
I said, ‘I’ll have to give Greely’s a week’s notice.’
‘Yeah?’ he said.
I said, ‘Renée used to say I didn’t have enough get-up-and-go. I’ve a good mind to go round to the Midland Red depot tonight and see what she’s got to say for herself now.’
‘Yeah?’ he said.
I said, ‘Where is Ceylon, exactly?’
‘Don’t know,’ he said, ‘and don’t care. The only boat I’m getting on is one going to New York.’
I said, ‘It might be nice to see some other places first. World travel is bound to give a man a certain something. It can’t help but give you more pull with the ladies.’
‘Yeah?’ he said.
He had several girls keen on him at that time, including his old school pal Vera Muddimer, but he didn’t seem inclined to make the kind of move they were hoping for. He knew the facts of life. I’d filled him in on all that. You pick up those kinds of things when you do military service, but of course that was an experience that had passed him by.
I said, ‘Don’t you like Vera?’
‘I love Vera,’ he said.
I said, ‘Then how come you haven’t got round to kissing her yet?’
He said, ‘I kiss her all the time.’
I said, ‘I don’t mean on the hand. That’s just fooling around. I mean kissing. On the lips.’
‘Bleeah!’ he said. ‘Germs!’
He was an oddity.
‘Cled,’ he said, ‘I hope you’re not expecting us to get booked for the same engagements? Just because we’re family doesn’t mean we’re joined at the neck. Ted’s business is getting the best he can for his artistes. He can’t be ruled by sentiment.’
I didn’t have any expectations. Once we were back in Ninevah Street it all seemed like a dream and anyway, I didn’t want to prejudice my position at Greely’s. I said to Mam, ‘Nothing may come of it. Sel talks as though it’s in the bag, but it’s not.’
But Mam said, ‘Of course it is. You’ll probably get a letter tomorrow.’
Uncle Teilo wasn’t so impressed. ‘Chugging back and forth on some tub,’ he said. ‘What if you get seasick?’
Mam said, ‘They won’t get seasick. They went on pleasure pedalos in Cannon Hill Park and they were as right as ninepence.’
Sel said, ‘Yes. And anyway, I might only have to chug forth. Some millionaire impresario might come aboard and discover me. Then I’ll be down that gangplank and on my way, first trip.’
No letter came the next day, nor even the next week, even though Sel had sent in a plain vanilla photo as instructed.
I said, ‘Looks like Ted Sibley was all talk. How about going back with Teilo? Put a bit of jingle in our pockets?’
‘Not me,’ he said. ‘You go back with Teilo.’
But Uncle Teilo had got the hump.
When I asked him if he had anything for me he said, ‘Back from your world travels already? That didn’t last long. Well, I’ve got all the solo pianists I need just now, Cledwyn. I’ve got Winnie Skerritt and a nice steady boy from Coleshill, who knows which side his bread is buttered. So I’m afraid I can’t help you at the moment.’
I said to Sel, ‘Brilliant. We appear to have lost our shirts on Ted Sibley and now Teilo’s turned funny.’
‘Ask me,’ he said, ‘you’re better off staying at Greely’s. Clock in, clock out, pick up your wages every Friday. See if Norman Hewitt can get you something. But let’s face it, Cled, you haven’t got the balls for real show business.’
Then I came home from work the following Monday and there was a letter waiting for me, propped up in front of the mantelpiece.
Mam was banging about in the kitchen.
I said, ‘Well?’
‘Well what?’ she said.
I said, ‘Did Sel get New York?’
‘He’ll get his tomorrow,’ she said. ‘They send notices to bands-men first, then the soloists’ letters get posted the day after.’
Sel was out, eating Kunzel cakes with Vera Muddimer and pretending not to be bothered that he hadn’t heard anything.
When I was on the early shift Mam always kept my dinner for me till I came in, hot enough to take the roof off your mouth, but it was stone cold by the time I’d finished looking at that letter. Six transatlantic sailings with Cunard, subject to a medical examination. Contract renewable subject to my giving satisfaction. Terms of employment enclosed.
I said, ‘I’ve done it, Mam. I’ve got a job playing trumpet on the Queen Mary. I’ve ruddy well done it!’
‘Now, Cledwyn,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you crowing and upsetting your brother. It’s very hard on his nerves, all this waiting.’
‘I’m not bothered,’ he said, when he eventually turned up. ‘You need nerves of steel in this business and I’ve got them.’
Mam said, ‘You’ve got a very generous spirit, Selwyn. You deserve every success.’
Of course, he made sure she was out of earshot before he said anything else to me, whispering, trying to needle me. ‘You’ll only be a bandsman,’ he said. ‘You won’t get your name on the programme. And you’ll be kipping down in the depths,’ he said, ‘Down with the rats. If the boat sinks you won’t stand a chance. You’d better start practising “Nearer My God to Thee”.’
Then Mrs Edkins came in to borrow a shilling for the gas meter.
I said, ‘I’m sailing to New York, Mrs E.’
‘Subject to medical examination,’ Mam said.
Mrs E said, ‘I didn’t know you had it in you, Cledwyn. Now won’t it be a caution if Selwyn never gets a letter and you have to go without him?’
‘No,’ Mam said, ‘it won’t be a caution, it’ll be a clerical error. Now take your shilling, Connie Edkins, and stop bringing on Selwyn’s nervous tension.’
Of course, he did get a letter. It came the next day, offering him the same sailings I was on, as intermission singer. By the time I got home he’d been to the post office to draw money out and gone to Man about Birmingham to buy a blazer and two pairs of strides. ‘Hello, sailor,’ he said, when he saw me. ‘Splice the mainbrace!’
He was back in a good humour. ‘What did they say at Greely’s?’
I hadn’t actually got round to telling them. It was a big step, giving up my security and when it came to it, that morning, I’d had some doubts about going through with it. I’d proved I was a match for Sel and that was what mattered to me.
We had seven days to consider and send the papers back, and it was a funny thing made me do it in the end. They’d just brought something in at Greely’s called time and motion studies, which was a man with a clipboard, writing down every move you made including when you went to answer a call of nature. It was in the interests of greater efficiency and nobody liked it. Stan Walley, our shop steward, reckoned it was a Trojan horse got up by management, looking for ways to lay people off. I wasn’t a big union man myself but Stan turned out to be right and I’ve often wondered whether I’d have got the chop, if I’d stayed long enough to find out. As it was, something in me snapped that morning. Clicking his ballpoint pen, getting under my feet.
I said, ‘I’ve been offered work on a transatlantic luxury liner so you can stick that stopwatch up your arse.’
And that was that. I signed on the dotted line and then we waited to get our medicals. Arthur and Dilys thought I’d been hasty, giving my notice at Greely’s. Dilys said, ‘Sel failed for the RAF. What if he fails this time? You surely won’t go without him?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe I will.’
But Sel’s weak back was of no concern to the Cunard doctor. We both passed A1 and when we came out on to the Marylebone Road it was still only half past twelve. We had the rest of the day ahead of us. The rest of our lives.
He said, ‘I’m going round the shops. Are you coming?’ He wanted to buy some sparkling cuff links and once Sel started shopping you could be there till they were cashing up and putting the lights out.
I said, ‘No. I think I’ll wend my way to a Corner House for cod and chips. I might go to the pictures.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ he said. ‘You go your way and I’ll go mine. I’ll see you at home.’
I saw William Holden and Broderick Crawford in something and then I went on to a very saucy peepshow, so it was nearly nine o’clock before I got back to Ninevah Street.
‘Where’s Selwyn?’ Mam wanted to know.
It was past midnight when he came creeping past my door, new shoes squeaking.
I said, ‘You’re in trouble with Mam.’
‘No he’s not,’ she shouted. ‘You’re in trouble, for losing your brother.’
‘It’s all right, Mam,’ he said. ‘I made myself scarce so Cled could go to an opium den.’
‘As long as you’re safe,’ she said. ‘Now get up to bed.’
He was hanging about in my doorway.
I said, ‘Get your cuff links?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘And I had sex.’
I said, ‘You did not.’
‘Yes, I did,’ he said. ‘Did you?’
I said, ‘No. I didn’t feel like it. Where did you have it?’
‘Not saying,’ he said.
Not saying because it hadn’t happened.
I said, ‘You’re a bloody liar, Boff.’
He went off to bed laughing.
‘I’m in the mood for love’ – I could hear him whistling while he was putting his pyjamas on.
FIVE (#ulink_c4bde64d-39b0-5d59-9e1d-74714165ccde)
I had a right royal send-off from Greely’s. They’d had a whip round and they presented me with a travelling shaving compendium and a card signed by everyone in the Trimming Shop. One of the bosses even came down from the top floor to shake me by the hand.
I said to Stan, ‘See, they are human after all.’
‘That’s because you’re leaving,’ he said. ‘Think what you’re saving them in severance pay.’
Our first sailing was mid-April and we had to be aboard twenty-four hours before departure. There was a lot to do, packing our valises, saying our farewells, and we were quite the celebrities in Saltley those last few days. Mam sent me round to Jewkes’s to buy her a hairnet and Mr Jewkes got so carried away, surmising how much money we’d be earning, after stoppages, he took the last hairnet off the card and then put it back in the window, empty. I always remembered that.
And then Mrs Edkins yoo-hooed me from the doorway of Spooner’s the butchers, wanting me to go in so she could show me off to all the ladies who were queuing for their meat. ‘This is Annie Boff’s other boy,’ she said. ‘I’ve known them both since they were babs, and now young Selwyn’s going to America to be a star, and he’s taking Cledwyn here along with him. Isn’t that nice?’
The morning we left, people gathered on the corner of Ninevah Street to wave us off. Mam was coming with us, to see us on to the train, but Dilys never liked goodbyes. She said she’d stay behind and make a start on stripping the old wallpaper off Sel’s bedroom wall. ‘You won’t know it when you get back,’ she said. Dilys loved paperhanging.
He said, ‘I’m not coming back.’
Dilys said, ‘Oh, don’t say that.’
Sel said, ‘Don’t worry. It won’t go to waste. Cled might be glad to move back upstairs.’
He’d insisted on riding to the station in a taxi. ‘Stars don’t wait at bus stops,’ he said. And he was wearing sunglasses.
Mam said, ‘I’ll leave you here, then,’ when we got to the barrier. ‘I won’t hang about.’
She’d spotted Vera Muddimer and Joan Wagstaff. They were down on the platform with a big sign that said ‘Bon Voyage’ and Mam never liked competition. Still, it was hard to watch her walk away, all on her own. Sel was smiling and bouncing around, but I was having a few qualms myself.
Vera said, ‘Cheer up, Cled. Or shall I go in your place? I can play “Good King Wenceslas” on the mouth organ.’
It was raining as the train pulled out, but he kept his sunglasses on.
I said, ‘Do you think Mam’s going to be all right?’
‘Why wouldn’t she be?’ he said.
It was a Monday, as I recall. Monday we generally had cold meat and pickles, and a milk pudding to follow. Rice was my favourite, but I didn’t object to sago or tapioca, provided there was jam to go with it.
I said, ‘I don’t know. Suddenly she’s all on her own. I keep thinking of her, dishing up one plate instead of three.’
‘It’s the natural course of things,’ he said. ‘All these years she’s groomed me for stardom and now I’m on my way. That’s more important to her than having to eat her tea on her own. Anyway, Teilo’ll probably turn up.’
I’d seen pictures of the Queen Mary in the newspapers but nothing prepared you for walking out of the shed and seeing the curve of her bow towering over you. Her name alone must have been fifty feet long, and the sun had broken through, bouncing off the shine off her new demob paint. Glossy black and white, and her raked funnels dark orange. She was beautiful.
Sel was eager to go aboard and sign on, but I persuaded him to wait with me a few minutes and watch all the comings and goings. A big fancy motor car was being lowered into the hold and two ratings were carrying vases of white chrysanthemums up the gangplank, floral arrangements taller than they were. There were crates stacked all over the dockside and a young Yank overheard us guessing what was in them. ‘Eleven thousand pounds of sugar,’ he said. ‘Twenty thousand bottles of beer. I see you’re new boys. What’s your trade?’
He was Jim Ganey, Dining Room Waiter, First Class, and he had all the answers. ‘That automobile is the property of Lord Freddy Orr,’ he said. ‘He likes to while away the crossing losing at poker. And the chrysanthemums are for the Duke and Dukess. The ones you Brits ran out of town. I’ve sailed with them before and I can tell you, they always travel with a quantity of flowers.’ We were going to be sailing with the Windsors.
Sel said, ‘How about that, Cled! I could be doing a Royal Command Performance sooner than I thought.’
But Ganey said, ‘Don’t fool yourselves. Once their stateroom is fixed up to their liking they stay put, save theirselves the bother of getting pestered by nobodies.’
I’d have liked to take a look around but there was a band call at six o’clock and we had three queues to join before we could go anywhere and the first one was to join the union.
Sel said, ‘I’m not joining any bloody union.’ But it was that or go home and the representative didn’t appear to care which way he jumped as long as he made his mind up and stopped holding up the queue. It was a terrible shock to him, to be spoken to like that. There were all types signing on and Sel wasn’t accustomed to the rougher element. He couldn’t take his eyes off them.
And then we got our quarters. A four-berth cabin, aft on R deck. Sel said, ‘There must be a mix-up. I should have my own cabin. I’m a vocalist.’
‘Intermission singer,’ the Ship’s Writer said. ‘R64. Next!’
Sel went very quiet. At home he was accustomed to a room of his own, with his costumes hung on padded hangers and a lace mat on his bedside table. He was very particular about his bits and pieces. Mam mopped his lino twice a week and dusted where she could, but she never moved anything because he liked everything just so. If ever we went to our Dilys’s for tea he’d start tidying her spoon drawer.
I said, ‘Cheer up, our kid. At least they’ve put us together.’ We were sharing with a bass player called Feifer and a drummer called Wilkie. Bunk beds and tin lockers, and two strangers watching every move you made. Feifer was a bad-tempered type, used to lie in his cot eating slices of raw onion, and Wilkie was plain light-fingered. My shaving set from Greely’s disappeared before we were out of sight of land. It was a good thing I was there, to show Sel the ropes and make sure nobody nicked his brilliantine.
He said, ‘This is insulting. Where am I supposed to hang my suits?’
I said, ‘We could be worse off. People like the greasers and the bellboys are ten to a billet.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Could be worse. That’s your way of looking at a situation, Cled. Could be better. Should be better. That’s my way of looking at things.’
The night before a sailing was always organised chaos. Crew who turned up at the last minute, crew who didn’t turn up at all, companion ways like Piccadilly Circus, trolleys of liquor and cigarettes and linens being pushed along the working alleys. ‘Burma Road’ they called it down there. And all the while cargo being winched aboard. Three tons of butter, according to Jim Ganey. Fifty thousand pounds of spuds.
We had a pep talk from Massie, the entertainments manager. ‘Punctuality, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Please remember to adjust your timepieces every night. And remember you’re here to do a job of work. Don’t venture into passenger areas. Don’t presume to fraternise with the clientele. Any questions?’
I don’t think he expected any.
‘Yes,’ Sel said. ‘How about if the clientele try to fraternise with me?’
‘Mr Boff,’ he said, ‘I believe you’re engaged as a vocalist. This is no time to try being a comedian.’
We piled down to the mess room for Beef à la Mode with three veg, cheese and biscuits and a choice of ice cream, then somebody set up a card school and a dartboard in the post room. You couldn’t have your usual recreational facilities the night before sailing or the night before docking. The social club was in the baggage area.
Sel was sitting down the table from me, chatting to an older man with epaulettes on his shirt.
I said, ‘Are you coming for a game of arrows?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve made other plans.’
I heard somebody say, ‘Good lad. Keeping Mother happy. You’ll go far.’
Sel’s new pal was Mess Room Steward Noel Carey, but everyone called him Mother and he took a shine to Sel right from the start. You need company if you’re below decks all the time. We musicians at least got to move about a bit, but Carey never went up for air. He led a lonely life, but Sel humoured him, and when Mother Carey had been humoured the door to the pantries would swing wide open. Once my guts had got accustomed to the way the ship rolled, I enjoyed a late supper, after showtime. Ham and eggs, or a flash-fried steak slapped between two slices of bread. All thanks to Sel’s cheery personality. But a ship’s crew is a close community. You need to go carefully. He said, ‘I’ll see you later. Noel’s got something he wants to show me.’
I said to him later, ‘We only just got here, so take things steady. When you’re a newcomer you have to be careful not to tread on anybody’s toes.’
‘What?’ he said. ‘Whose toes?’
I said, ‘That pantryman with the gappy teeth. After you went off to see Mr Carey’s theatre programmes he said, “I wonder if he’s going to show him his etchings as well?” sarcastic like. I think I detected a note of envy.’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ he said. ‘Envy’s something I’m going to have to get accustomed to. Listen, I had a look in one of the First Class staterooms. You get a three-piece suite, Cled, not just a bed. And a coffee table and a drinks cabinet. That’s the way to travel.’
I said, ‘You’ll be getting the sack before we’ve even sailed. You heard what the boss said. No snooping off limits.’
‘I wasn’t snooping,’ he said. ‘Noel took me up and showed me around. It’s beautiful, Cled. Elegant. That’s what I’m going to have some day. A stateroom, with a pink leather settee and a telephone and a fresh bowl of fruit every morning.’
‘Shut yer yap, pretty boy,’ Feifer said. ‘Some of us is trying to sleep.’
SIX (#ulink_53081b27-6698-573c-b52e-e392bc32d072)
There was no peace once the boilers were fired and the baggage lifts started up, but Sel lay on his bunk like the Queen of Sheba anyway, cucumber slices over his eyelids and curlers in his quiff. ‘Preparing to meet my public,’ he said. ‘You don’t get a second chance at first impressions.’
I said, ‘Come upstairs with me. You’re the one with the open sesame. See if we can get near a rail. Watch for big names arriving on the dockside.’
The word was Henry Ford was expected plus a Guinness millionaire, a mysterious star of the British stage and, of course, the Duke and Duchess.
Wilkie said, ‘You won’t see them. They’ll come aboard from a launch once we’re under way.’
But I went up anyway with a little Eyetie from the Tourist Class barber’s shop who knew a window we could watch from, and we had company. A girl called Ginger from the beauty parlour, very jolly with lovely knees. She let me light two smokes for her before she mentioned she had a fiancé.
Her friend was quieter. Black wavy hair and skin so pale you could see the veins on her temples. Hazel. Not my usual type. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘There’s Lady Clackmannan.’
But it was only Lady Clackmannan’s maid, down on the quayside supervising where the trunks were going.
‘Princess Olga,’ she said. ‘Mr Vansittart.’
She was reeling off all these names, but they were just the servants down there. Hazel worked in the passenger laundry, so it was the maids and the valets she knew.
I said, ‘Isn’t it boring down there, dhobi-ing? Never seeing daylight?’
‘It is not,’ she said. ‘Dhobi-ing! Cheeky beggar. What do you think I do? Bash shirts on rocks?’
Ginger said, ‘Don’t bite his head off. He’s new.’
Hazel said, ‘What’s your name, new boy?’
‘Cled Boff,’ I said. ‘Musician.’
‘Well, Cled Boff,’ she said. ‘I hope you’ll enjoy your work as much as I enjoy mine. I get to handle couture garments. They come to me when they need a delicate touch, see? Hopeless cases, that’s my speciality.’ She smiled at me. ‘And every stain tells a story,’ she said.
Ginger shouted, ‘There’s Rex Harrison!’ And it was the actual man himself, climbing out of a taxi.
Sel was still stretched out on his bunk, reading Tit Bits.
I said, ‘I think I just got lucky.’
‘Oh yeah?’ he said. ‘I hope she won’t be disappointed when she sees your love nest. I hope she likes the smell of second-hand onions. See any notables?’
I said, ‘Rex Harrison. The Windsors’ pug dogs. And there’s a Princess Olga come aboard.’
He sat up. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘What, tiara and everything?’
I said, ‘No. Felt hat and an overcoat.’
‘Glad I didn’t stir myself, then,’ he said. ‘If I had a tiara I’d never leave home without it. I won the toss, by the way. I’m letting Tex do the big one tonight.’ Tex Lane was the other support singer and the two of them had to cover six spots a night. If you did the First Class Dining Room, you finished with the ten o’clock spot in Cabin Class. If you did a turn in Tourist, you opened the late show in First Class, the Starlight Club in the Veranda Grill priming the pump for the star vocalist.
I said, ‘I thought you were gagging to play the Starlight Club?’
‘I am,’ he said, ‘but not the first night out. I want Tex Lane to go over the top first, let them see how mediocre he is. Suits me to warm up on the peasants. By tomorrow night I’ll be ready for anything.’
He slipped in the back of the Grill after he’d finished his last spot for the night, although I didn’t see him. He must have blended in well, in his new dinner suit and a crisp new shirt. Not like Tex Lane with his frayed cuffs. But Sel wasn’t interested in Tex. Glorette Gilder was the one he was there to study, in her fishtail gown and her dangling earrings. ‘She’s nothing special.’ That was his verdict. ‘Wait till they see me in action.’
But a warm-up only got seventeen minutes: ‘How High the Moon’, ‘Slow Boat to China’.
I said, ‘I don’t see that you’ve got a lot of scope. You’re just there to air the room and Tex could hardly be heard tonight, for all the laughing and chattering. Nobody listens till the big name comes on. You’re supposed to sing your numbers plain vanilla. No chatting to the audience. No holding a lady’s hand.’
‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘We’ll see.’ That was when he started developing his trade mark wink.
Of all the public rooms on board the Queen Mary the Veranda Grill was my favourite. It had a big curved window that looked out over the stern of the boat. Everything was cream and silver and mahogany, with soft pearly lighting and wide steps from the dining area to the dance floor, with thick black carpet and glass balustrades. I’ve played much bigger rooms since, and plenty of five star venues, but I’ve never seen anything to top it.
We were an eleven-piece band under the baton of Lionel Truman and everyone had better know their play list. ‘Number twenty-four,’ he’d say, quiet but clear, and we’d go straight into ‘Tangerine’.
Even now, if somebody says ‘Thirty-nine’ I think ‘Besame Mucho’.
Sel opened his first night with ‘Blue Champagne’ and ‘Cruising Down the River’, and then he unbuttoned his jacket for ‘Moonlight Becomes You’ I don’t know if it was his silver cummerbund that got their attention but they piped down a lot more for him than they had for poor old Tex. He even got a little ripple of applause. ‘Thank you so much,’ he said.
He wasn’t supposed to say anything. He was meant to finish his last song and clear off, but Sel never liked to be hurried. ‘Tonight was my Starlight Club debut,’ he said, ‘and you couldn’t have been a nicer audience.’
I heard Glorette whisper, ‘Play me on.’ But Lionel Truman hesitated and as long as he hesitated Sel stayed out there.
‘Don’t forget,’ he said, ‘Thursday night is Gala Night. I’ll be here but it won’t be Gala night unless you’re here too.’
Glorette was getting irate. ‘Play me on, you deaf old fucker,’ she kept whispering and eventually Lionel lifted his baton.
But Sel still wasn’t finished. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘a warm welcome, please, for a lady who was playing the Veranda Grill while I was in short trousers. The one and only, the very fabulous, Miss Glorette Gilder.’
SEVEN (#ulink_f2dcfda0-eab9-5f63-9c28-d79afe570388)
I didn’t see Hazel again till our last night at sea. After showtime I always went to the Pig and Whistle with the rest of the boys. It was nice to wind down with a cold beer and a game of cards, or a sing-song round the piano, but Hazel didn’t seem to socialise.
‘I haven’t had time to draw breath,’ she said, when I did run into her. ‘Pulled threads. Duck grease. You name it, I’ve had it this trip. Coty pancake on the neck of Mrs Vansittart’s beaded silk.’
I said, ‘You want to be careful, cooped up with cleaning products.’ I told her about Sel’s episode with DabAway.
She said, ‘I wouldn’t mind having a few visions myself. But I don’t use a lot of chemicals. Guess what I use to lift pancake make-up? A heel of stale bread. Never fails. See, I have to be careful. I can’t have my clients collapsing or going up in flames if somebody lights a stogie near them. Bread. That’s the answer. And a slow gentle rub.’ She brushed a bit of fluff off my shoulder.
‘Hello, hello, hello,’ I thought. ‘Cledwyn, your luck is in.’
The question was where to take her. Last night out was cleanup night below decks so the place never went quiet. We went up on top to where you could have your dog walked by a bellboy. There wasn’t anybody about. She had a smell of soapsuds when I kissed her. It was lovely, after days of Feifer’s onion breath and Wilkie’s socks. I only got as far as unbuttoning her cardie, though.
‘That’s enough,’ she said. ‘You’ll be waking the dogs.’
‘Funny you’re Welsh,’ I said. ‘I’m hundred per cent Welsh myself.’
She said, ‘Well, you don’t sound it. You sound Birmingham to me.’
We got a two-day lay-over in New York.
I said, ‘Got any plans, after we dock?’
‘Sleeping,’ she said.
I said, ‘We could go dancing.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Perhaps another time. You go and enjoy yourself. There’s nothing like New York, especially the first time. And don’t bother going to bed tonight. The pilot comes aboard about four o’clock. You should bring Sel up here, watch the sun come up over the city.’
I couldn’t persuade her to stay there with me.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m going to tidy my work table, soak my feet and go to sleep.’
Playing hard to get.
So I had to make do with Sel for company. We stood on the starboard side, like Hazel had said, and watched New York appear. First everything glowed red and then it turned pale green, and by the time we were coming into the pier, everything was sparkling in the sunshine. The whole place looked like it was made of glass.
‘I’ve arrived, Cled,’ he said. He was looking radiant for a person who wasn’t usually up before dinner time.
‘No, Sel,’ I said. ‘We’ve arrived.’
But the ship’s whistle blew, so he could pretend he hadn’t heard me.
We’d had a plan of campaign. Test the water with some booking agents, see a few sights, send postcards to Mam and Dilys. And we were going to watch what we spent.
I said, ‘We should always have something put by for a rainy day.’
‘Yes, Cled,’ he said.
I said, ‘And business before pleasure. We should do the agents first. You got your list?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But I’m not settling for any old ten percenter. It’s got to be somebody who can bring in quality venues and a record contract. He’s out there now, Cled, shaving, sipping his coffee. No idea that this is going to be his lucky day.’
He was only a few places ahead of me in the queue, but by the time I’d drawn my pay he’d disappeared.
Somebody said they thought he’d gone ashore with Mother Carey. Somebody else said he’d left with a bunch of boiler room boys. He was gone, that was all I knew, and he hadn’t taken his good jacket with him.
Two of the clarinettists were going off to get one of those big American breakfasts. I said, ‘I don’t know what to do. I suppose I should go looking for him.’
‘Save your shoe leather,’ they said. ‘You’ll never find him. He’ll be all right. You pal along with us.’
Which I did and I had quite a nice time, considering how worried I was about Sel, on the loose in a great big foreign city.
It isn’t just the look of a new place that can muddle you. It’s the smell of it and the noise. Steam leaking out of the ground and trains rumbling under your feet. Hot dogs and coffee and car horns tooting for the littlest thing. Even the girls were different: brighter and cheekier-looking, swinging along in their shiny nylons. The boys said they could point me in the direction of a bit of business if that was what I fancied, but I was contented just to look. Where the ladies are concerned I’ve never believed in paying for a thing when you might get offered it for free. I bought a little bottle of Evening in Paris scent in Macy’s department store. If Hazel was willing to play ball it was hers. If not, there’d be others. Scent never goes to waste.
‘The theatres,’ I said. ‘That’s what I want to see.’
And I wasn’t disappointed. Mary Martin was appearing in South Pacific at the Majestic, Carol Channing was in Kiss Me Kate at the Mansfield and Brigadoon was playing at the Ziegfeld. But the biggest thrill was Radio City Music Hall with pictures outside of all those high-kicking lovelies and Sold Out stickers across the Frank Sinatra posters. It made me realise what a fall Sel was heading for. It was one thing to be the toast of the Nechells Non-Political, but something else to come to a place like New York and think he could ever be a match for the big boys. We finished up in a club on 52nd Street called the Three Deuces listening to the great Art Tatum. I hadn’t realised he was black till I saw him in person. When I look back on my first time in New York that’s what I think of: seeing black people. And the meatball sandwiches, so big you needed both hands and dripping with gravy. And the adverts that lit up in Times Square. There was one that made smoke rings from a cigarette, and one that looked just like a waterfall, only it was all done with light bulbs.
I never did find out how Sel had passed his time. All I know is sign-on time was nearly up and he hadn’t appeared.
I said to Massie, ‘I won’t be able to sail without my brother.’
‘Entirely up to you, Mr Boff,’ he said. ‘But you’ll be leaving without your papers.’
Then he rolled in, with two days’ beard and a package under his arm.
I said, ‘Dilys was right. You’re not safe on your own.’
It struck me, seeing him unshaved, how much he looked like our dad.
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ he said. ‘What’s your grouse?’
I said, ‘Try any agents?’
‘Fuck agents,’ he said.
Two days in the company of E deck types and that was how he was talking.
I said, ‘Well, you’d better buck up. If you go on tonight looking like you do now, you’ll be out of a job. You make Tex Lane look dew-fresh.’
‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘And fuck you too.’
But Sel could always turn himself around for an audience. By seven o’clock he was shaved and shampooed, and ready to give them ‘They All Laughed’ in First Class cocktails. He was wearing his latest purchase: a white tuxedo with a black satin shawl collar.
I said, ‘How much did that set you back?’
‘It’s an investment,’ he said. ‘Look like a star, you’re halfway to being a star.’
He looked like a Latin American bandleader to me.
EIGHT (#ulink_289df0e4-2e7d-5b74-a30c-036f7ae40594)
I wished Uncle Teilo could have been there to see us, ‘chugging back and forth on some tub’ as he’d put it. The Queen Mary was no tub. She was a floating palace. You could go to the pictures, in a proper cinema with flip-up seats, or play ping-pong, or keep fit in the gymnasium, riding on a bicycle that was nailed to the floor. You could get a shave and have your nails buffed, send a telegram, get your trousers mended. There were even churches: a normal one and a Jewish one. And there was plenty of entertainment: a band, a string trio and two feature pianists, four showcase ballroom dancers, and Sel and Tex and Glorette. It must have been a headache if you were a passenger, deciding how to fill the days. I’d have been worried there wasn’t enough time to sample everything.
It was different for us, of course. I enjoyed the work. Lionel Truman led a good band and I liked the camaraderie of it, but when you weren’t working you were very cooped up and five days at sea could seem longer than five days in Saltley. It was very gloomy below decks. The walls were painted dark-green up to the dado. You needed the lights on all the time and you could never get away from the vibration of the turbines and the smell of cooking and machine oil and men’s socks. Tempers were liable to get frayed, as they did between Sel and Mess Room Steward Carey.
Carey was a man who got very attached to people and if he liked you he expected to monopolise you. So when Sel went down to G deck one afternoon, taking up the offer of being shown around by one of the firemen, Carey got overexcited and fetched a knife from the galley. ‘Guided tours, is it!’ he shouted. ‘I know their game!’
Hazel was on her break. We were having a cup of tea.
‘I’ll kill him,’ Carey was shouting. ‘I’ll kill them both!’
He’d been at the cooking brandy. You could smell it on him.
I said, ‘God Almighty, Hazel, I’d better run and warn Sel.’
But there were three hundred yards of boiler rooms and he could have been anywhere. I didn’t like it down there. I never liked the idea of all that steam being pent up.
Hazel had fetched two big kitchen porters in case assistance was required, but Carey had shut himself in his cabin in the meanwhile and was promising to do himself an injury, and as everybody seemed to be ignoring him I surmised it wasn’t the first time this had occurred.
I said, ‘I couldn’t find Sel.’
‘Shaft alley,’ somebody said. ‘That’s where he’ll be.’
I said, ‘I don’t know where that is.’
Everybody laughed.
Hazel said, ‘Pay no attention, Cled. And don’t worry about Mother. You couldn’t cut hot butter with that knife he was brandishing.’
I said, ‘I get the impression Carey isn’t a family man. I suppose things can get out of proportion when you don’t have a home life. It’s a shame he’s gone off the deep end, though. He’s been very fatherly to Sel.’
Hazel said, ‘I don’t know about that. Ask me, half the crew belongs in the madhouse.’
She’d put a saucer over my teacup, to keep it warm while I was searching for Sel. It’s funny the little things that make you fall for a girl.
I said, ‘Are you going to let me take you dancing when we get to Southampton?’
‘Maybe,’ she said.
I knew one of the pastry chefs was keen on her. I’d seen her chuckling with him.
Sel didn’t have a good trip sailing east that first time. There was the upset with Carey. Then one of the pianists complained about him improvising in the Midships Bar so he got a stripping down from Massie about doing what he was paid to do and not a note more. They started trying to needle him in the mess room too, calling him Sally instead of Sel.
‘Sally, Sally, don’t ever wander,’ they’d sing, hoping to aggravate Mother into grabbing a knife again.
On Channel night I went looking for Hazel before we started the show in the Veranda Grill. She was working on a silk blouse with a piece of tissue paper, trying to get a water mark off it.
I said, ‘Well, have you made your mind up? What’s it to be? Coming ashore with me or sleeping your life away?’
‘I don’t drink, mind,’ she said.
I said, ‘That’s all right. You can have a port and lemonade.’
‘Cled,’ she said, ‘invite Sel to come with us. He seems very down in the dumps.’
We had a nice crowd in for Gala Night. Tex got in a bit of a tangle with ‘Fascinating Rhythm’ but nobody appeared to notice and Tex couldn’t have cared less. He knew Sel outshone him. I think he was just vamping until something else came along; a rich widow looking for companionship, or death from strong drink. It’s only when you’re on the up that you care how highly you’re rated. The downward slide is the downward slide wherever you are on it.
I said to Sel, ‘Me and Hazel are going to the Imperial for afternoon tea after we’ve docked, but I don’t suppose you feel like coming with us?’
‘Yeah, all right then,’ he said. ‘Keep an eye on you, you old goat.’
The ladies always liked him, laughing at his silly jokes, telling him all their business. Not that he ever had a lot to show for it. I was the one who got results.
‘Hazel,’ he said, ‘I want to pick your brain. What’s the best thing for my patent leather shoes?’
‘Vaseline,’ she said.
He said, ‘And what about the black satin on my revers?’
‘Potato water.’
‘This woman’, he said, ‘is a treasure.’
He was holding her hand.
‘Now what about old Chufty Auchtermuchty? I was watching him during the cocktail hour. He looks like a man who doesn’t always know where his mouth is. You been removing stains for him?’
‘His name’s Lord Auchinloss,’ she said, ‘and I’m not telling.’
He said, ‘All right, just tell me this, you know that furry thing he wears between his legs all the time?’
She was laughing. ‘That’s called a sporran, Sel,’ she said.
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ he said. ‘But seriously, what would you do with that if he brought it to you and asked you to take care of it?’
‘Throw it a steak,’ she said.
They were in a silly mood, the pair of them.
I said, ‘Don’t let us keep you, Sel. I expect you’re keen to go and meet your pals.’
It was seven o’clock before I got shot of him.
Hazel said, ‘He’s lovely. I have enjoyed myself.’
I said, ‘I hope you’re not using me to get to him because you’ll be in for a disappointment. That business holding your hand? It’s just acting. He’s got no time for romance. All he’s interested in is seeing his name in lights.’
‘He’s still lovely,’ she said. ‘He has a very happy attitude to life.’
Of course, she didn’t know the half of it. She hadn’t seen him moving furniture half an inch till it was just so. She hadn’t seen him throw out a perfectly good egg cup because it had got a little chip on the rim.
Still, after Sel’s patter and three port and lemons she did allow me to get more serious with her. One of the telephonists she shared with had stayed aboard and I daren’t risk R64 in case Wilkie rolled in drunk, so we ended up in the Ripening Room.
Hazel had learned her trade at a high-class dry cleaner’s in Belgravia, and then joined the Queen Mary after her refit at the end of the war.
I said, ‘Don’t you get tired of not having a place of your own?’
‘It’s economical,’ she said. ‘It means I can save up.’
I said, ‘What for? Your own laundry?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’d like a seaside guest house. Different people passing through, in a good mood because they’re on holiday. Nice bed linen and towels and a brass dinner gong.’
We had Fred Astaire on our next passage to New York, a lovely, quietly spoken gent. I got him to autograph a First Class menu for Dilys. She was thrilled. Hazel came ashore with me that trip. I bought her a Pepsi at the Spanish Garden and took her to Radio City Music Hall to see Jerry Vale and the Rockettes. Where Sel got to I’ll never know, but for a boy who liked scented soap he kept some very low company.
Every sailing day we’d go up to watch for celebrity arrivals. Douglas Fairbanks Junior, Constance Bennett, Gloria Vanderbildt, Vincent Price. Kings, princesses, millionaires, we entertained them all. But my greatest highlight was the time Gracie Fields was aboard. She was an old friend of our leader, Lionel Truman. ‘Come down to the Pig and Whistle, Gracie,’ he said. ‘Give the crew a treat.’ And she did. I played for her, ‘Sing As We Go’, ‘Orphan of the Storm’, ‘I Took My Harp to a Party’ and they were packed in like sardines, singing along with her. Her voice wasn’t properly trained but she was a real card. Sel turned up when the party was in full swing, pushed his way to the piano.
I said, ‘Fetch Hazel.’
‘Fetch her yourself,’ he said.
He wanted to get into the limelight with Gracie and the mess room crowd were egging him on. ‘Go on, Sally!’ they were shouting. ‘Give us “Sally from Our Alley”. You and Gracie together.’
She said, ‘And who’s this when he’s at home?’
I said, ‘This is my brother Sel. On his way to stardom.’
‘Not with my audience, he’s not,’ she said. And although they did sing it together and she pretended to be amused, I could see she didn’t like it. They were two of a kind, Gracie and my brother. Very ‘hail fellow well met’ provided you remembered who was the great star.
Still, it had been a big moment for me, playing for a singing legend, and Hazel missed the whole ruddy thing.
I said, ‘Where were you?’
‘Working, Cled,’ she said. ‘I sometimes think they sit in their staterooms doing nothing but throw food and spill ink.’
I said, ‘Well, I had a great triumph last night.’
‘So did I,’ she said. ‘I got a big mayonnaise stain off an organdie skirt and four hours’ sleep.’
She could be testy, even then.
Sel was riding pretty high by the time we reached Southampton too. He’d had a couple of billets-doux passed to him, and presents, at the Au Revoir Gala. A tiepin from a lady in First Class and an alligator photo frame from an old gentleman in Cabin Class.
‘First stop the Imperial?’ he said.
I said, ‘I don’t know. Hazel’s tired.’
He said, ‘Then you and me can go drinking.’
I said, ‘How is it when we get to New York I don’t see you for dust and yet you’re hanging around me like a bad smell when we get to Southampton? What about all your pals?’
‘Going home to see their mams,’ he said.
I said, ‘Do you want to?’
‘Not worth it,’ he said. ‘We’d only be there five minutes. Let’s go to the Yard Arm and plan worldwide fame.’
NINE (#ulink_2c7cafe3-8e51-5d65-9e07-e24370ac035b)
The thing about working on the Queen Mary was you didn’t really get to see the world. You got to see galleys and corridors and Wilkie’s scabby foot dangling down from the top bunk.
Sel said, ‘I’m not sticking this much longer. There’s no scope.’
I said, ‘Then do something about getting an agent. Next leg, when we get to New York, don’t run off like a dizzy kid.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Definitely next time. I’m not getting due recognition with this lot.’
I said, ‘We’ll put our suits on. Decide on a couple of songs.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘“Some Enchanted Evening”. I see that becoming my signature tune.’
I said, ‘And I think we should go back to being the Boff Brothers. Sel Boff, accompanied by Cled Boff, it sounds too complicated.’
He said, ‘I don’t know. I might start being just “Selwyn”, you know? Like Hildegarde?’
I said, ‘Then what would I be? I’m not being “Cledwyn”.’ I hated ‘Cledwyn’.
‘Quite right,’ he said. ‘It sounds like a boarding house. This Hazel? Are you two getting serious?’
I didn’t have an answer to that. Sometimes, in the fruit store, I thought we were. Then I’d catch her chuckling with that pastry chef. ‘I’m a single woman,’ she’d say. ‘I can chuckle with anybody I choose.’
I said, ‘Why? You interested?’
‘She’s nice,’ he said. ‘And it strikes me, if you’re serious about her you’ll probably want to stay put. There doesn’t seem much point in you trying out for agents if you’re contented where you are. See what I mean?’
I said, ‘And who’s going to play for you if I don’t?’
‘I’ll find somebody,’ he said. ‘Don’t feel you have to throw up your chances with Hazel just to play for me. Accompanists are ten a penny, Cled.’
The ruddy nerve of it. But it did make me wonder how I stood vis-à-vis Hazel. I said, ‘If I got a chance in America, would you come with me?’
She said, ‘What kind of a chance?’
I said, ‘With Sel. I’m a class instrumentalist, Hazel, as you’d know if you’d seen me in action with Gracie Fields. I don’t have to play in a ship’s band for ever more.’
She said, ‘You only just started. And what would I do?’
I said, ‘You’d find something. You could work in a dry cleaner’s.’
She said, ‘But I’m happy here. Where? What dry cleaner’s?’
I said, ‘We could get married.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Cled,’ she said. ‘I’m in no hurry. I saw what my mam had to put up with all those years. Anyway, who’s going to give you this big chance in America? I’ll think about it if something happens and not before.’
But on that trip two things happened. Mr and Mrs Hubert F. Conroy came aboard, on their way home from London where they’d been celebrating thirty-five years of marriage. And Glorette Gilder was quarantined with a temperature of 105° and a nasty rash.
They asked Tex Lane to stand in first but as Tex himself admitted they were leaning on a weak reed. Being a front-liner is a high-pressure business. ‘Give it to the boy,’ he said. ‘He’s hungry for it.’
And that was how Sel got his chance as featured vocalist, with two hours’ notice. He unpacked his gold suit and Hazel steamed the creases out of it and goffered the frills on his dress shirt; Mother Carey brought him a cheese omelette on a tray, and while Tex opened the batting in the Starlight Club, Sel lay on his bunk wearing nothing but his Y-fronts and a mud pack.
He must have been nervous. I know I was. But he didn’t show it. He made his entrance cool as you like, strolled on, carrying a tea towel and two plates, deadpan face. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Who ordered the turbot?’
Glorette used to just stand there, like she was propped up and daren’t move. A smoker’s voice and low-cut backs, they were her stock-in-trade. But Sel was a natural. Put him in front of a microphone and there was no stopping him. ‘Old Black Magic’, ‘If I Loved You’, ‘Beginning to See the Light’. ‘The Anniversary Waltz’, for Mr and Mrs Conroy. ‘A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes’, for ‘anyone who ever wished upon a star’ as he put it.
It was nearly daybreak before they let him go and he was buzzing. ‘Eh, Cled, eh!’ He kept hugging me and thumping me on the back. ‘They loved me! And just wait till the next show. Tonight I’m really going to shake my feathers.’
I said, ‘What if they let Glorette out of quarantine?’
‘Get down to the infirmary,’ he said. ‘Put a pillow over her face.’
But there was no need. Glorette was out of action for the whole crossing and Sel saw this as his big chance. ‘Come upstairs with me,’ he said. ‘I’m going to need extra shirts.’ There was a branch of Austin Reed in First Class, but it was strictly off limits for us.
I said, ‘Smile nicely at Hazel and she’ll freshen your things up between shows.’
‘I know she would,’ he said, ‘but that’s not the point. What kind of star wears the same shirt three nights in a row? Anyway, come on up, see how the other half lives. How we’ll be living.’
There were stewards you had to get past. Tourist Class weren’t allowed into Cabin Class, Cabin weren’t allowed into First Class and crew weren’t allowed anywhere except in the line of duty. But Sel breezed us both through, greeted the gatekeepers like old friends, told them we were on urgent outfitting business for the Starlight Club.
‘Ask for George,’ one of them said. ‘He gets stuff brought back, already worn. He’ll fix you up with something.’
He did too. He had a dress shirt with a pin-tucked bib and a slightly imperfect cuff, and a silk waistcoat with a seam that had taken too much strain.
Sel said, ‘How about shirt studs? Have you got anything glittery?’
But everything George had was from Garrards, top of the line, in beautiful silver-bronze display cases.
Sel said, ‘How about on loan, like a library book?’
George said he didn’t really see how he could, considering the value of the goods.
‘Unless somebody stands surety for you,’ he said. ‘How about your uncle? Won’t he treat you?’
I always had a more mature appearance than Sel.
Sel said, ‘What, Uncle Cled? No, he’s as tight as a duck’s arse. Oh well, I’ll just have to hope nobody notices I’m wearing the same old studs.’
That was when Hubert Conroy stepped forward. ‘Why if it ain’t Mr Starlight!’ he said. ‘Can I help? My money any good around here?’
So Hubert left a precautionary deposit with Austin Reed and Sel walked out with a set of lapis lazuli shirt studs and a new name. Hubert only called him ‘Mr Starlight’ because he couldn’t remember his name. All he knew was he’d seen him in the Starlight Club. But anyway, it stuck. Ever after that Sel styled himself ‘Mr Starlight’.
Hubert said, ‘Come and meet Kaye. She’s in the Garden Lounge ordering tea and pastries.’
Hubert was a retired refrigeration tycoon from Los Angeles, California. He was a big man, very friendly considering his wealth, and he knew what he liked. ‘It’s a pleasing thing’, he said, ‘to find a vocalist singing tuneful songs and not ignoring his audience. Eye contact, that’s what I like. There are too many performers who act like they’re singing to an empty room, never mind the poor Joe who’s paid for his seat. And enthusiasm is another thing I like. Me and Kaye have seen big names and there are some come out on the podium and look like they’re doing you a biggest favour just being there. You this boy’s manager?’
‘No …’ I said.
He said, ‘Well, you should be. I know a good thing when I see it and he’ll go far. Have a pastry.’
Kaye wanted to know all our history and Sel was never afraid to embellish a story, or ‘make it more entertaining’ as he put it. How we’d grown up barefoot and starving. How we’d had to sing for our supper even when we were nibs, and then the Virgin Mary had visited him on his deathbed and told him to head for America.
I said, ‘That story better not get back to Mam. You’ll get a clip round the ear.’ We’d always had shoes and three meals a day.
He laughed. He said, ‘It won’t get back to her and anyway, I was just giving value. Fans want a story. Rags to riches or riches to rags. Mam’d understand that.’
We were walking aft along the sheltered promenade when we ran smack into Milligan, the Ship’s Writer. He never forgot a face. ‘Well, what have we here?’ he said. ‘Two lost boys.’
You got a warning the first time you went out of bounds. After that they sacked you.
Sel said, ‘I’m glad I’ve run into you. I’ve been thinking, now I’ve replaced Glorette I should be getting my own cabin.’
Milligan looked at him. He said, ‘On this occasion I’m going to pretend I’m deaf as well as blind, Mr Boff, but it’ll only be temporary, the same as your promotion, so don’t depend on being so lucky a second time.’
Sel never batted an eye. ‘Temporary!’ he said. ‘We’ll see about that.’
His name was on the agenda they printed every day. The first time it said ‘Tonight in the Starlight Club, Sel Boff replaces Glorette Gilder who is indisposed’. The next day it said ‘Midnight in the Starlight Club, Selwyn, with the Lionel Truman Band’. The last day it said, ‘Au Revoir Gala with Mr Starlight, Midnight in the Veranda Grill’.
I said, ‘You must be driving them round the bend in the print room.’
‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I’ve brought a bit of interest and variety into their lives. And I’ve been talking to Lionel, too. I’m going to loosen things up. Take requests, talk to people. I’m not up there to see how fast I can race through the play list.’
I said, ‘Well, while you’re redesigning the show, you might think of singing one of my compositions. That’d give the evening a bit of added interest.’
‘Such as?’ he said.
I said, ‘How about “You’re the Vinegar on my Chips”?’
‘I don’t think so, Cled,’ he said. ‘I think it still needs work.’
See, he was all for himself.
He wore the blue lamé jacket for the Au Revoir, with the lapis studs in his shirt and he fetched Kaye Conroy up to the microphone, kidding her to do a daft old Max Miller song with him, ‘La-di-dah-di-dah’. Now there’s a song that needed further work. But he pulled it off, wisecracking between verses. He had them in stitches. And then he did a canny thing. He changed the mood. Number 22: ‘Till Then’. He played it straight to settle them down, and then he went roving, like he’d started doing at the Birmingham Welsh, casually looking for a place to perch. But I knew him. He’d already weighed up the scene. He knew exactly who to aim for. Mrs Gertie Walters, widow of Walters the suet king and worth a mint, but Sel didn’t pick her out because of that. He picked her because she was sitting on her own, looking wistful, and he took her hand and sang to her as if he was singing to our mam.
Although there are oceans we must cross
And mountains that we must climb
I know every gain must have a loss
So pray our loss is nothing but time
Ooooh ooooh …
He closed with ‘A Grand Night for Singing’, then straight into number 49, ‘We’ll Meet Again’ and there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.
It was a grand night for singing, and for playing. I was proud to be there; proud to think he was family. I thought, ‘Perhaps he has got what he takes. If he can light up an agent the way he’s lit up this crowd …’ This wasn’t the Nechells Non-Political. This was Lord and Lady Delacourt, and Aly Kahn, plus a very big name in suet.
We didn’t go to bed. We never did before a New York docking. Mother Carey made us smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, and then we went up to the dog deck to watch the pilot take us through the Narrows. There was the kind of mist you get before a hot day so they blasted the foghorn a few times, bottom A. I loved the sound of it.
I said, ‘So today we go looking for an agent.’
‘Correct,’ he said. ‘Hubert sees me in musical shows for family audiences. Hubert’s got contacts in Los Angeles.’
Hubert Conroy giving him this inflated opinion of himself didn’t help Sel strike the right attitude when we went to sign off. Glorette Gilder had got a clean bill of health for the next sailing.
Massie said, ‘You can put your iridescent garments back in mothballs, Selwyn.’
Sel said, ‘You’re not having her back, after the way I performed?’
Massie said, ‘Of course I am. Glorette is our featured vocalist.’
Sel said, ‘You’re out of your mind.’
But as Massie said, Sel had only ever been a stand-in. And he’d been paid extra.
Sel said, ‘What about the paying public? Why don’t you ask them who they’d rather see?’
Massie said, ‘Do you mean the passengers who just disembarked, or the passengers who’ll be arriving on Thursday, expecting to be entertained by Miss Gilder?’
I said, ‘Leave it, Sel. You’ve got your bonus.’
‘Mind your own!’ he said. ‘And you want to wise up, Massie. Call yourself an entertainments manager? You wouldn’t recognise entertainment if it flew in wearing a leopard-skin jockstrap. I’ve had offers from California, you’ll be interested to hear.’
Massie said, ‘That’s neither here nor there. Miss Gilder has a contract.’
‘Well,’ Sel said, ‘now we all know which old lizard is sucking your dick.’
Massie sacked him on the spot. Ripped up his discharge book. ‘I’ll not delay you a moment longer, Mr Boff,’ he said. ‘I’m sure California is impatient to have you.’
Sel stormed off, left me with everybody staring at me. They’d all been earwigging, of course.
I found him in the cabin, sitting on his valise, trying to fasten it. ‘Don’t start,’ he said.
I said, ‘Nice work. You’re out of a job, out of a bed for the night and you’ll be out of money by tomorrow the way you spend it. You haven’t got the sense you were born with.’
‘No?’ he said. ‘Well, I’ve got no regrets neither. I’m ready to move on. Onward and upward.’
I said, ‘Don’t you move in any direction. You’re to wait here while I see to a bit of business.’
‘Just don’t go crawling to Massie,’ he shouted after me, ‘because I wouldn’t take his poxy job back if he came in here on his knees.’
But it was Hazel I had to see.
I thought, ‘Well, this isn’t quite how I planned it, but why not? She’s a pretty little thing, hard worker, not averse to a roll in the Ripening Room.’
I intended asking her to come with me. We could have got engaged, set ourselves up in America. She’d have been handy to have around with Sel, too. He was more likely to listen to her. But there he was, when I got to her billet, leaning in her doorway chatting her up, still in his whites. That ruddy pastry chef.
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