All That Glitters (31 page)

‘Haydn didn’t mean anything by that,’ William apologised to Andrew after Haydn left.

‘I’ve learned that insults from the Powells are a kind of initiation rite into the family. I hope that if I continue to take them without complaining too much, you may eventually accept me.’

‘It’s not been easy for Haydn since he’s come back. He was looking forward to it, he even wrote to me to tell me how much, but now he’s actually here, all he does is moan that nothing’s the same.’

‘And it won’t be ever again, because he now lives in a different world. One foot in both and belonging to neither. I know exactly how he feels.’

‘You do?’

‘I went to medical school when I was eighteen, and came back at twenty-three to find everything changed. Principally myself.’

‘Come to think of it, Haydn has changed more than the rest of us.’

Andrew picked up his pint and the orange juice. ‘I should be getting back to Bethan.’

‘And I to the chorus girls. I seem to be the only Powell who hasn’t got girl problems, and one or two of the right kind would be very welcome.’

Mandy and Judy were holding centre stage with an up-to-the-minute version of ‘Dance Little Lady’ that brought the Charleston into modern times. Billy had handed over the microphone to Haydn, who was down on one knee, singing to the girls, much to everyone’s amusement.

‘Life on stage seems to be one big party.’ A real, or imagined wistfulness in Jenny’s voice set Eddie’s teeth on edge.

‘You think so?’

‘It’s not all glamour, exotic clothes and good times, Miss …’ Billy looked at Jenny.

‘Griffiths. Jenny Griffiths.’

‘I’ve yet to meet a Jenny who wasn’t the essence of loveliness.’

‘You were telling us about life on stage,’ Andrew broke in hastily as Eddie glowered at the comic.

‘It’s sheer hard work. And an awful lot of it. Practise, rehearse, practise, and then at the end of the day when all you want to do is fall into your bed, alone,’ he nudged Jenny’s elbow within Andrew’s sight, but thankfully out of Eddie’s, ‘because you’re too tired to do anything except sleep, you have to get out there and perform. Give your all and more because you can’t disappoint your audience, even if they are only local shopkeepers on complimentary tickets that have been handed out by the bill-stickers. And you even learn to be grateful for that appalling audience, because the alternative of no audience at all is too ghastly to contemplate. If you don’t believe me, all you have to do is ask that one.’ He pointed to where Jane had retreated with the rest of the usherettes.

‘She’s not on stage,’ Jenny said sharply.

‘Ah, but she wants to be, and she has talent.’

‘Jane?’

‘Your brother has been coaching her,’ Billy informed Eddie.

‘Hey, darling,’ he waved vigorously to Jane, who, immersed in Mandy and Judy’s dancing and Haydn’s singing, didn’t hear him until the music ended. Just as the orchestra fell silent, Billy put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. ‘Here girl,’ he commanded as though she were a dog.

‘What do you want, Billy?’ She sidled over, half expecting a squirt of water from his buttonhole.

‘‘‘Something to do with spring,”’ he shouted down to Gustav in the orchestra pit.

‘Only if you tear up my poker IOUs.’

‘You’re on.’ He turned to Haydn. ‘Do you mind?’

‘Mind what?’

‘Me dancing with your protégé.’

‘I’m not dancing with you. Not with the manager, Mr Evans and everyone else watching,’ Jane protested.

‘Everyone’s had so many glasses of champagne they wouldn’t notice if I was dancing with a two-headed octopus.’

‘Come on,’ Haydn took her arm.

‘Hey, this was my idea,’ Billy shouted.

‘No chance, Billy boy. Jane’s my discovery.’

‘Good heavens, is that Jane?’ Joe Evans peered over the rim of a glass at Haydn who was dancing to the refrain of ‘Poor Little Rich Girl’ with Jane.

‘Talented theatre as well as stage staff.’ Trevor pushed his glass towards the manager, who was topping up all the glasses on their table.

‘What a party. I can’t remember one like it.’ The manager carried on splashing champagne recklessly into every glass in sight, forgetting that Norman had only offered to pay for the first two dozen bottles.

The music ended. Haydn stood and laughed as Jane, red-faced and breathless, ran off backstage.

Andrew left the table. ‘Lovely party. Thanks for getting us invited, but it’s time we were on our way.’

‘Nothing wrong with Bethan?’ Haydn slurred slightly, on target towards his goal of getting drunk.

‘Just past her bedtime.’

‘We’ll be seeing you tomorrow?’ Bethan asked as Trevor helped her on with her wrap.

‘Wouldn’t miss your birthday for the world,’ Haydn kissed his sister’s cheek.

‘I suppose it is too early to offer you a lift?’

‘Yes it is. I’ll walk up later with Jane.’

Bethan looked over to the gap between two flats where Jane was hiding with Ann and Avril. ‘Bring her tomorrow will you, Haydn. Everyone else is coming, and she can’t very well stay at home by herself.’

Haydn walked Bethan, Andrew, Laura and Trevor to the door.

He locked it behind him and slowly climbed the steps. The champagne had gone to more than his head. Or possibly it was the dancing. Either way, his feet were dragging when he looked up and saw Mandy standing in front of the shuttered box-office, two glasses in hand, her light green silk gown clinging seductively to her voluptuous curves.

‘Goodbye drink?’

‘I have to get back to the party.’

‘I’m not here to whine, Haydn. Not like Rusty did last week when you told her it was over between you.’

He recalled the ugly scene between himself and Rusty and the thin walls between the dressing rooms, and wondered if anything in his life could be classed as private.

She smiled, biting her lip to stop it from trembling ‘It was fun while it lasted, but I knew I’d never have exclusive rights, not over someone like you.’

‘I doubt you’d want to if you knew what I was really like. As Rusty said, I’m a rat.’

‘When romance is in the air, a girl never notices what part of the animal kingdom a man comes from.’

He was left with the uncomfortable feeling that he’d heard the line somewhere before. In a play or a film?

‘To success, and our separate careers?’ She descended the steps and pressed a glass into his hand.

‘To success.’ He drank, but he had reached a watershed. His stomach revolted at more liquid being poured into it. Even champagne. ‘Good luck on the rest of the tour. Got anything lined up at the end of it?’

‘Not straight after, but I’ve been offered pantomime at Yarmouth for the Christmas season. I was there last year. It’s
Dandini
. What do you think? Third billing’s not bad for a Revue girl?’

‘Not bad at all.’ Because her face was barely an inch away from his, he bent his head intending to kiss her cheek, but she moved at the last minute and he found himself kissing her mouth.

‘Goodnight, Haydn.’ Jane brushed past him, descending the steps in company with the other usherettes.

‘I’ll walk you home,’ he called after her, forgetting Mandy’s presence.

‘I’d rather walk home with the other girls.’

‘Goodnight, Haydn,’ Avril called blithely. ‘See you next week.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Mandy said tartly as they slammed the door behind them. ‘I didn’t mean to sour things between you and your little girlfriend.’

Her injured air and patronising tone infuriated Haydn. ‘She’s not my “little girlfriend”. She lodges in my father’s house.’

‘Really?’

‘Is that the only damned word showgirls know?’

‘My God, you do love her!’

‘What I do, or don’t do, is none of your damned business.’ He ran down to the door, hesitated when he remembered he had left his coat in his dressing room, then decided he could do without it for one-night.

‘You don’t know everything about sweet innocent Jane,’ Mandy mocked as he opened the door.

‘What do you mean?’ he looked back at her. She was leaning against the wall, smiling maliciously.

‘You’ll find out in time.’ She held up her empty glass. ‘I need more of this.’

‘Mandy!’

Ignoring him she walked away, her heels tapping in time to the melody of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ echoing from the auditorium. ‘You don’t know everything about sweet innocent Jane?’ Sometimes it seemed to Haydn as though the whole world knew more about Jane Jones than he did.

Mandy didn’t go back to the theatre. Instead she went to the dressing room. Taking an envelope from her handbag, she scrawled ‘Love Mandy’ across the outside before slipping into Haydn’s room. She switched on the light and looked around. The shelf was too obvious. Then she saw the coat hanging on the back of the door.

Haydn caught up with Jane under the railway bridge.

‘You didn’t have to leave early.’

‘I didn’t, it was breaking up.’

‘Not so I noticed.’

‘The manager realised he’d got to the end of the champagne supplied by the Revue company and was paying for it himself.’

She laughed.

‘You don’t do anywhere near enough of that.’

‘What?’

‘Laugh.’

‘I suppose I haven’t had much practice.’

‘Tough being an orphan?’

She gave him a hard look and he realised he’d hurt her unduly sensitive pride, yet again.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. It’s probably the drink talking, not me. My sister’s invited you to her birthday party tomorrow.’

‘I can’t go to your sister’s birthday party.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s a family occasion … it’s …’

‘She asked me to bring you because she wants you there. You live with us, I’m afraid that means you have to suffer our “family occasions” whether you want to or not.’

‘I’d rather not go on sufferance.’

‘She couldn’t bear the thought of you staying in the house all alone. And we can’t have Bethan being upset on her birthday, can we? Especially in her condition.’

‘She’s going to have a baby?’

‘I hope so, otherwise she’s carrying a lot of weight for nothing.’

‘That’s a charming thing to say.’

‘That’s the drink again. I didn’t mean it. We’re all hoping it will work out this time. It’s not her first. She lost a little boy last winter.’

‘Is that why she wants another?’

Her reaction seemed odd to Haydn. He looked keenly at her, not knowing anything about a world where pregnancy was regarded as a disgrace and the harbinger of a woman’s downfall. Or that Jane had never met anyone in her short life who’d actually wanted a baby and looked forward to its arrival as a joyful event.

‘Do come. We can walk up Penycoedcae Hill together. If the weather’s the same as today it will be glorious.’

‘I haven’t got her a present.’

‘Get her one in the post office in Leyshon Street tomorrow morning.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like a bar of chocolate.’

‘Would that be all right?

‘Of course. Have you ever been to a party before?’ he asked.

‘Not before tonight.’

‘I mean a family party. A birthday party.’

She shook her head.

‘It’s not much different to a family meal. Noisier, that’s all.’

‘You’re sure she wants me to come?’

‘I’m sure.’ He tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow, and held on to her fingers. She was such an odd, confusing mixture of avaricious acquisitiveness and naivety. It had to be curiosity, and nothing more, that was driving him to get to the bottom of whatever had made her that way.

Although Jane had no mending to do the following morning she was up at her usual time. The cast of the Revue were leaving on the nine o’clock train out of Pontypridd. She’d decided to go down to the station to say goodbye to Mandy and Judy, the first real friends she felt she’d made other than Phyllis. She stopped off, not at the post office, as Haydn had advocated, but at Griffiths’ shop, and spent ten minutes choosing between the relative merits of different bars of chocolate before settling on bars of Fry’s Five Boys for Mandy and Judy and a shilling box of chocolates for Bethan.

‘Someone’s birthday?’ Jenny asked, as Jane untied the handkerchief she kept her money in.

‘Yes.’

‘Then you’ll be wanting a card.’ Jenny pushed a box of birthday postcards towards her.

Jane glanced at the clock and realised she only had ten minutes to get to the station. ‘I can’t stop now. Will you be open in half an hour?’

‘Where are you going in such a hurry?’

Jane didn’t stop to answer. She rushed out through the door and down the hill. She could hear the train steaming on the platform overhead as she bought her penny platform ticket. The station was crowded with men who’d come to wave the girls off. Bewildered, she looked around at the sea of capped and straw-boatered heads. Fighting her way to the edge of the platform she looked up and down the train. Two porters were stowing the enormous wickerwork baskets that held the props into the guard’s van. Norman and Billy were helping Rusty into a first-class carriage. Lower down the train, she spotted a group of girls clustered in front of the third-class carriages, Mandy and Judy among them. She started running, then stopped in her tracks. Haydn was walking up the steps holding a bunch of red roses. He passed by without seeing her and made his way to the first-class carriages, halting in front of the one Norman had helped Rusty into.

‘Jane, don’t tell me you’ve come to see us off?’ Mandy cried, pulling out a handkerchief and dabbing her eyes with it. ‘God, I hate goodbyes.’

‘Me too.’ Judy purloined Mandy’s handkerchief.

‘I bought you both some chocolate for the journey.’ Jane pushed the bag into Mandy’s hands. ‘It’s Fry’s, the kind you like.’

‘Don’t! You’re going to have me crying in a moment.’

‘I didn’t mean to upset you. You’ve both been so good to me.’

‘And you to us.’ Judy hugged her. ‘What are we going to do without you to mend our stockings?’

Billy, who’d spotted Jane from the first-class section, walked down the train. Winking at her from the open door, he said, ‘If ever you get tired of being an usherette, write to me and I’ll take you on as a comic’s assistant.’