Stella, page 7
‘It’s not like that,’ squealed Sadie. ‘You’re making it sound dirty and . . . and . . . well, just horrible.’
Stella moved up close to her sister and clasped her hands in her own. ‘You’re not Joan Crawford love, and he’s certainly not Gary Cooper. In Lancaster, once you’re married, you end up like Mam and Dad. Just waiting for the end of time, and filling it in by doing the pools and drinking beer at the weekends.’
‘But we’re in love,’ Sadie wailed, as if desperately trying to establish this fundamental point.
‘Of course you are. If you weren’t we wouldn’t be sitting here now talking about it all. But do as I say. Get married, fine – but wait a while. Give yourself a chance to live. Give us a chance to launch our careers.’
‘Our careers are all you think about. You bully me around for your own ends. Well, I’ve had enough of it.’
Stella couldn’t say anything. For the first time in her life she was stunned into silence. She felt a twisting hurt in the pit of her stomach. ‘I see. I didn’t know that you saw it as being like that,’ she finally managed to say in a hoarse voice.
Sadie shook her head a few times, and freed her hand to rub her troubled brow. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a level voice. ‘I really didn’t mean that – really.’
‘And what do Mam and Dad think of all this, then?’
‘They’re for it,’ she replied quickly, sure she’d trumped Stella’s trump card.
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Stella, as if she was a bad loser. ‘You’re under twenty-one, which will worry Dad, and also Mam knows that if you get married then it’s goodbye to that extra few bob a week in keep.’
‘Write and ask them, then – then we’ll see who’s right.’
‘What’s the point of that? The letter will only end up on the mantle-shelf until the end of time.’
Stella picked up the teapot and cups and began washing them in the sink. When she had turned the teapot upside-down and left it on the draining board to dry, she said to Sadie, ‘You know that if you leave me now I’m in big trouble? I’ve got us the next six months booked. It’s the biggest break we’ve had. And they’re good dates, Sadie. Number-ones, some of them.’ She felt a bit strange talking to her own reflection in the kitchen window, but it was easier than turning to face her sister. ‘I’ve got us this agent chap. His name’s Johnny Burton, and what can I tell him? He’d most probably thump me – he’s that type.’
Now Stella did turn round. There were tears streaming down Sadie’s face yet she wasn’t flexing a muscle. Stella went for a hankie and gave it to her. ‘I read in the paper the other day,’ she said, changing the subject with a shattering abruptness, ‘that Hull fishermen had the biggest catch they’ve ever known.’
Sadie looked up with a tear-stained face, but her composure returned. ‘Pardon?’
‘I was talking about the trawlermen. They’ve caught the biggest catch ever. I suppose they were just lucky to get into such a big shoal.’
‘I suppose they were.’ Sadie gave a solid blow on her nose which sounded like the signal to launch a lifeboat. Then she said, ‘But I’m still going to marry him, Stella.’
Stella took a few deep breaths. She could feel the anger welling up in her. She hadn’t anticipated Sadie’s return to London bringing such upset and misery. ‘Look, I know how you feel. Honest I do. But what about me? Let’s face it, Sadie, I’ve signed a contract and I’ve signed it for both of us. Can’t you, just for my sake even, wait until we’ve done these dates? That’s all I’m asking. And think of the money you’ll save – that’ll be a great wedding present in itself. Dad won’t be able to afford to give you much of a wedding, so we’ll both put into it and make it special.’
Sadie kept quiet: she thought it best to. Stella was coming to the boil and she didn’t want to accelerate the process. ‘I don’t want to have to give up the business, Sadie. I’m not like you; I don’t want to go and spend the rest of my life in Lancaster raising kids.’
The negative response she was receiving made her change her pleas into offers of compromise. ‘Look, just give me three months,’ she said. ‘I think I could manage to find a new partner by then. Even two months would be a help; but don’t let me down now, Sadie.’
Sadie gave a single, firm shake of her head, which made her hair drift across her face. ‘Jesus!’ shouted Stella. ‘Don’t you realise what you’re doing, you selfish bitch? You’re cutting my lifeline; you’re killing my future; you and that stupid git from next door.’
Stella had reached bursting-point. ‘He put you up to this, didn’t he, eh? It was him, wasn’t it? And what can he promise you? I’ll tell you what – sod-all, that’s what. You stupid girl, you’ll end up like our Mam – seventy years old at twenty-one.’
She would have continued overflowing with frustrated anger if they hadn’t been interrupted by the dull ring of the hallway telephone. ‘That’ll be Tommy,’ said Sadie, in a soft, unaffected voice, as though she’d been out of the room all during her sister’s remonstrations.
‘Give the bastard my love, won’t you?’
Sadie trotted from the room and Stella heard her muffled voice. Ten minutes later, with Sadie still on the phone, Stella wrapped a coat across her shoulders and drifted past her and out through the front door. She wandered aimlessly down the street. She followed the pavement, staring in windows at shoes, handbags, and dresses, but she didn’t really see them.
It’s eight weeks to the show, was all she was thinking. If Sadie can be persuaded to stay on for that time I’m sure I’ll be able to get myself another partner.
Her attention fell on a wedding dress displayed in one of the shop windows. She nearly spat at it. Making her way back to the flat she wondered how she was going to survive on fifty-six pounds, which was the sum total in her post-office savings book.
She opened the door and discovered that Sadie had finished on the phone. The bare bulb on its ragged cord was still weakly illuminating the kitchen. Resting on the upturned teapot was a note. Stella read it.
‘Dear Stella,
I’m sorry but I waited as long as I could for you to come back. Tommy wants me to come home and there’s a late train tonight. I’ve given it much thought and have decided it best I go home. I want to be with Tommy more than I want to struggle along in showbusiness. I love you Stella, and always will, but Tommy needs me. Please don’t think I’ve run out on you, as I was never much good in the act as it was. You’re the talented one. It’ll take a brave man to stop Stella Raven from making it.
I’ve left two pounds ten shillings under the plant pot for my share of the flat for this week. Don’t think too badly of me. Tommy and I will be getting married soon. I’ll let you know when the wedding is,
Your loving sister, Sadie.
PS: I’ve packed all my own stuff and left the stage costumes under the bed in the big case.’
Stella reread the letter a couple of times and certain parts of it several more times. She cried on and off for nearly an hour, then she washed her swollen face and looked at her dishevelled state in the mirror.
She went to her bed and, perched on one corner, munched at an apple and thought about her career. After that night it was a long time before she thought about Sadie again.
Chapter Six
‘C’min,’ said her agent, Johnny Burton, in answer to her knock. He didn’t have a secretary. He couldn’t afford one.
She entered his Charing Cross Road office, which was all of twelve feet by twelve feet, and walked up to a desk that would have been old when Charles Dickens was a boy. She sat down in the only seat that faced it.
Johnny Burton was in his late thirties, and had all the trappings of someone who had never quite made it but intended pretending that he had. His suit was obviously expensive – and obviously not his. His late thirties body ‘ was turning to late forties fat, and when he smiled, which wasn’t very often, he revealed a lack of teeth.
His pasty face tilted up from the desk to frown upon Stella. She thought it resembled an unhappy pancake. ‘Sit down,’ he instructed, grumpily.
‘I am sat down.’
‘Oh yeah. So what was all that crap you were giving me on the phone about your kid sister?’
‘Mr Burton, I’m very sorry about all this but, like I said, she’s decided to give it all up. It was totally unexpected, I assure you.’
Burton gave her his most piercing stare and she shuffled uncomfortably in her seat, trying to attain a relaxed posture. She couldn’t find one. ‘You’ve really got me into a right bleedin’ mess haven’t you?’ He massaged his forehead and cheeks firmly enough to momentarily alter the shape of his face.
‘I’m very sorry,’ she whispered, meekly.
‘Sorry? You’re bleedin’ sorry,’ he growled. ‘That’s a lotta bleedin’ good that is, girlie.’
Stella glanced down, noticing how white her clenched hands had made her knuckles. ‘All morning I’ve been sat on the bleedin’ phone and some cow of a secretary at Cranbourn Mansions* kept me waiting fifteen minutes before I could speak with anyone in authority to do with Moss Empires’ bookings.’
He jerked back his desk drawer and took out a single cigarette. As he lit it Stella noticed it wasn’t for the first time. A puff of grey smoke swept across her face but she refused to flinch or cough. He released a couple of bronchial-sounding coughs, then pointed several times at the telephone with a loose finger. ‘Twenty minutes I’ve been on that bleedin’ phone to the producer of the Shanklin summer show.’ He coughed, agonisingly. ‘You’ll never get the chance of Moss Empires again, I can promise you that, girlie. You’ve Friar Tucked your chances there, kid.’
Still coughing, he began to wipe away the tears that filled his beady eyes with a sheet of used blotting paper that he’d pulled out of the waste-paper basket. ‘Have you brought your date book?’
‘Er, yes.’ She fumbled hurriedly through her bag.
He lunged forward, rudely swiped the diary from her hand, and began rifling through the pages with stubby, nicotine-stained fingers. ‘You’ve had it with Moss Empires,’ he repeated, thinking that maybe it hadn’t registered the first time.
She tried to muster a weak smile but it came out as more of a grimace. ‘I might, and I mean might, be able to save you the summer show,’ he said. A slight ray of hope ran through her body. ‘But I’ll have to work bleedin’ hard on that one for you. I mean, it isn’t worth a bleedin’ miserable ten per cent.’ Stella kept quiet. He tossed the diary back at her and it landed on the floor near her feet. She reached down in a slow and dignified manner and retrieved it. ‘Moss Empires don’t want to know. They’ve already got another act to take your place.’ She thought that was remarkably quick replacement work.
‘I’ll have an act ready for the summer show,’ she said. ‘You see, I’ve got this idea for a solo act where I sing more than dance, and joke a bit with the aud—’
‘Solo?’ He gasped. His eyes hardened. ‘For Christ’s sake don’t go and tell them it’s solo. As far as they’re concerned they’ve booked a duo. They’ll want to pay less money if they know it’s solo. Keep that bleedin’ piece of news to yourself, girlie.’
‘Yes, yes, of course. And do you think that there’s any possibility of getting me anything in the next few weeks – to tide me over, sort of?’ Though her voice was steady, she couldn’t disguise the begging tone. He took a long time to answer.
‘I might.’ He stood up and he was nearly taller sitting down. He waddled over to the curtainless window and tried to open it, but it was stuck, so he dropped his cigarette-end on a stretch of bare floorboards where the carpet had worn out, flattened it with a cruel foot, and returned to his chair. ‘You’re lucky,’ he finally said. ‘The producer of the summer show likes you. He saw you working with that bitch of a sister of yours and he liked what he saw.’ He gave Stella a slow, meaningful wink. ‘You know what I mean?’
Stella played the innocent and said, ‘No, I don’t.’
‘Well, you should do, ’cos he wants you in the show and he wants you to feed the comic, Allan Walker, as well. Ever heard of him?’ She didn’t reply, and she wouldn’t have had time to anyway. ‘Bleedin’ awful. Twenty-five and thinks he knows the game backwards.’ He winked at her again. ‘You must have played it pretty smart with that producer then, eh?’
‘I’ve never even met him,’ she replied, honestly.
‘I bet. He’s the biggest crumpet king in the business. Had ’em all, he has. His name’s Ken Hutton. Come off it, girlie, you must have heard of “Hutton’s Mutton?”’ Stella gave him a long, cold look with a smile to match. ‘Anyway, he says he likes you – fancies you a bit maybe. Have to keep your hands on your drawers with him about.’
‘Do you think you can get me some work within the next couple of weeks, so I can get my act together?’ Her tone was businesslike, and the frown on Burton’s face showed how it aggravated him.
‘I might,’ he said with little optimism, and then started to leer across his desk at her. He rested his face in his hands as if to stop it running down his shirt. ‘Depends on what you can do.’
‘Anything; anything at all.’
‘That’s nice,’ he groaned. ‘Can you lock doors?’
‘Lock doors?’ she asked, her eyebrows raised in a questioning arch.
‘You heard me,’ he said firmly. ‘Lock doors.’
His eyes looked over her shoulders, asking her to follow them. She turned round and saw the key in the lock. She turned back, giving him a seductive smile. ‘I would say that was easy enough,’ she said, tossing her head casually back at the door. ‘What about being disturbed?’
‘No chance,’ he croaked as if he’d just eaten three slices of sandpaper.
She stood up slowly, and walked rhythmically to the door, her hips playing a rumba as he watched.
Burton could feel stirrings in his trousers and a trickle of sweat running down his chest. She pulled the key out of the lock, opened the door, walked out of the room, closed the door, locked it, put the key in her handbag, and, with all the time in the world, moved elegantly down the stairway and out into the bright, noisy street.
The spring sun felt good on her self-satisfied face. She glanced up to the second-floor window and saw the great Johnny Burton trying to open it. She waved to him and he mouthed something back, followed by violent gesticulations of his fist.
Taking the key out of her bag she held it high for him to see. He went very still, clasping his hands together as if in prayer. She laughed, then dropped it down the drain.
She knew Ken Hutton’s address from The Stage, and if by chance he had really thought something of their act, and not just their figures, then it had to be worth a visit. She really had very little to lose at this present time. She’d already succeeded in losing her partner and agent within about twelve hours of each other.
She went directly to his office, hoping she would beat Johnny Burton’s phone call informing him, and the rest of showbusiness, to avoid Stella Raven like the plague. Mind you, she was fairly sure that there weren’t too many bookers and agents in the business who would take much notice of an oversexed shark like Johnny Burton.
Minutes later she was in Beak Street, just off Regent Street. She apprehensively entered through the glass door marked ‘K. Hutton Productions’.
A smart young secretary smiled up from her typing. The front office was empty of people but there was still a sense of activity and success. ‘Good morning. Can I help you?’ enquired the smiling face.
‘Yes. Is Mr Hutton in?’
‘Who shall I say is calling?’
‘Miss Stella Raven.’
‘And what time was your appointment for?’ She was looking down a long list of names on a large diary page.
‘Actually, I’m here on the offchance of seeing him.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘But Mr Hutton only sees people who have appointments.’ The smile didn’t once leave her face, which irritated Stella more than if the girl had been insulting to her.
‘It is rather important,’ said Stella, raising a serious expression.
‘I am sorry, but he’s very busy today. If you’d care to ring in some time, perhaps then we could fix you an appointment.’
She began to type, now oblivious to Stella’s presence. Even her smile was waning. Stella didn’t go away, though. She stood there for a moment in thought, wondering what her next move should be. ‘I’ve got to see him,’ she blurted.
‘Then please ring for an appointment.’ Her tone was much firmer now.
This secretary had obviously been instructed on how to deal with the desperate, off-the-street artiste. Stella knew that there must be a dozen a day like her who came wandering in hoping to have the chance of seeing Mr Hutton. To this secretary she was no doubt just another piece of animated flesh, young and ambitious, and who would never be heard of in a million years. ‘Well, could I leave a message then?’ The secretary stopped typing and looked at her cautiously.
‘A message – what kind of message?’
‘It’s a personal message,’ she explained. ‘And I’ll have to wait here while you deliver it, as it does need an urgent reply.’
‘I understand,’ said the secretary, not really understanding. She reached for a pad and pencil.
‘Will you tell him that Stella is here, and that all our fears have been verified – I am pregnant, and I’ll be phoning his wife this afternoon.’ Stella inwardly smiled as the secretary went the colour of sunset and, with shaking fingers, tore the sheet away from her pad. ‘And tell him that if he doesn’t see me now, then I have a sneaking suspicion that both his wife and my husband will be round to see him this afternoon.’
‘Er, yes. I . . . I’ll be right back.’
‘Remember, it’s Stella. Stella Raven.’
With the message in her hand she hurried into Ken Hutton’s private office. ‘Stella Raven to see you, sir.’
‘Do I know her?’
‘Miss Stella Raven, sir. Yes, I believe you know her very well,’ she said bitterly.
