All That Glitters (38 page)

‘What I do, and the friends I choose to do it with are no concern of yours, Babs.’

‘Friends! Is that what you are with that little nobody?’

‘Lay off the hair shirt, it doesn’t suit you. It was good between us while it lasted. Let’s leave it at that.’ He was conscious of using the same hackneyed lines he’d spoken to Rusty. Was that a sign that he was now more a native of the theatrical world than the normal? What would come next? Speaking only scripted lines? Hugs and kisses all round, and calling everyone ‘Sweetheart’ or ‘Darling’, like Chuckles did when he couldn’t remember their names?

‘That wasn’t what you said to me that first afternoon after rehearsals, or the Sunday you dragged me into the bushes in the park.’

‘We lunched in the New Inn.’

‘After you got what you wanted. I haven’t forgotten it, even if you have. If you felt then that it had been “good between us while it lasted” why did you take my knickers off?’

He felt conscience-stricken and ashamed. What could he say to her? That he’d been bored and she’d been an attractive diversion? That Rusty wasn’t enough for him? That he’d wanted to show off his collection of girls to the town? Every one of those replies would have held a certain amount of truth.

‘What was I to you?’ Cold anger was now liberally laced with tears of righteous indignation. ‘If you’d left me for Helen I wouldn’t have liked it, but I could have consoled myself with the thought that she had longer legs, bigger tits, a nicer bum and glossier hair than me. But Jane …’

‘We’re friends, not lovers. Perhaps I’m tired of playing around, Babs. Have you thought of that?’

‘Tired of playing around? Tired of sleeping around, you mean! Not you, Haydn. I may be a chorus girl, I may make my living out of showing off as much of my body as the Lord Chamberlain will allow, but please, give me credit for some intelligence. I’ve slept with you. Night after night for six weeks. And here …’

‘Keep your voice down,’ he pleaded, sensing an unnatural silence outside the door.

‘Why the hell should I when you’re spinning me lies? Me, who’s given you everything a girl has to give, and now when I could be carrying your baby …’ She slumped dramatically to the floor and burst into noisy, theatrical wails.

He stared at her in horror, remembering his father; his parents’ sterile marriage.

‘That’s shut you up, hasn’t it? What have you got to say about “it was good while it lasted” now?’

‘Are you pregnant?’ His voice was leaden.

‘Serve you bloody well right if I am.’

‘Babs …’

‘I’m not some stupid country bumpkin. I know enough to make you pay all right. Every last penny it’s going to cost me to raise your bastard, and every penny I would have earned on stage while I’m carrying it. I’ve got talent. Ask around, everyone says so. I was destined for great things before this happened. Chuckles wanted me for the West End. And now it’s all gone out of the window …’

The tears came again. He shut the door, and held her in his arms. All the while he stroked her hair, and murmured trite, meaningless reassurances, he breathed in the smell of her powder and the harsh, astringent scent she was wearing and wondered how he could have been so stupid as to fall for the oldest trick in the book.

‘Five-minute call for Mr Powell! Five-minute call for Mr Haydn Powell! Five-minute call for Miss Bradley!’

He looked into the mirror, seeing Babs and himself – together. Her greasepaint smeared on to his costume shirt; his rouge was smudged. He had to repair his make-up, tell her to do the same. Then they had to go out on stage. Smile. Perform. Put on a show. Afterwards they’d have to talk, and make decisions. What was the worst possible scenario? That he’d marry her and live out the rest of his life in some crazy theatrical production of her making, where there’d be no audience other than themselves. He shuddered at the thought.

‘Haydn …’

She was calmer. But he wasn’t egotistical enough to believe that it was anything he’d done. The five-minute call had a sobering effect on every professional.

‘We have to get ready.’

‘And after the show?’

‘We’ll talk.’

‘Promise?’

‘I promise.’

She left, he returned to his make-up mirror and set about layering on the gloss. And the worst that could happen if he refused to marry her? She would take him to court and sue him for maintenance for herself and the child. He’d have to economise, set aside a portion of whatever he earned each week for his baby. His son – or daughter! He suddenly saw beyond the concept to the being he had unwittingly created. A child he had given the worst possible start in life. A mother he didn’t even like, let alone love.

‘Well?’ Jenny looked apprehensively at her father as he walked into the shop and shook the rain from his coat.

‘Five bob a week.’

‘You managed to knock Mrs Edwards down, then?’

‘It wasn’t difficult. She was just trying it on.’ He opened the door into the hallway, slid his soaking umbrella into the stand, and hung his hat and coat on the end hook, away from all the others. The weather had taken a turn for the worse. Rain had begun to teem down late that afternoon at a rate that made up for the six-week drought, and showed no sign of abating. Puddles had collected in the potholes on the hill and Harry’s shoes and socks were completely sodden. ‘You can move in right away. Her son leaves on the early train tomorrow for Cardiff. She said you can bring your own furniture, but as the place is furnished already I thought you’d probably want to leave it for a while.’

‘It would be more sensible to move in and use Mrs Edwards’s furniture, wouldn’t it?’

‘To start off with, I think so.’

‘Eventually of course, when we get a place of our own, we’ll have to buy things.’ Her heart beat faster as she remembered the previous night, the anger etched into Eddie’s face. Had he returned to his family and told them what a sham his marriage had turned out to be? Would he talk to her, much less allow her to persuade him to move into Mrs Edwards’s house? He’d suggested she look for a place, but had he meant it? And then this morning … She shuddered, unwilling to even consider the consequences of calling Eddie by his brother’s name. She had to see him, persuade him to move in with her, and quickly. Then she would show everyone how she could be the perfect wife. She didn’t think who exactly the ‘everyone’ she wanted to show, were.

‘You do want to live with Eddie, don’t you Jenny?’

‘Of course, Dad.’ She crossed her fingers behind her back.

‘It’s not just your way of trying to get back at your mother after the fuss she created last night and this morning? Because if it is …’ his voice trailed away awkwardly as embarrassment set in.

‘I wanted to marry him, Dad. We’ve just had a sticky beginning, that’s all.’

He cleared his throat, thinking back to his own wedding night. The one and only night he had slept with his wife, with disastrous consequences that had dogged the whole of his married life. The only good thing that had come out of the entire bitter, humiliating experience had been Jenny. He couldn’t help wondering if a similar situation now existed between his daughter and her husband. The prospect was too miserable to contemplate. It didn’t have to be like that between a man and a woman. He knew because there’d been others who’d been more of a wife to him than his own, especially Megan Powell, William and Diana’s mother. Perhaps that’s why he had such a soft spot for Eddie.

‘Dad,’ Jenny took his arm. ‘It was just Mam last night banging on the wall, that’s all. And this morning, it was just a stupid misunderstanding.’

‘You sure?’

‘I’m sure. When we have our own place we’ll be all right. I’ll go up to Graig Avenue and see Eddie now. Tell him to go to Leyshon Street tomorrow after work. She did say we could move in straight away?’

‘Tonight, but I told her tomorrow will do. I’ll carry your cases up for you.’

‘It will be all right, you’ll see,’ she reassured him, trying not to think of the look on Eddie’s face when she’d woken that morning.

‘Here, Eddie, take a look at these.’ Glan Richards walked to the corner of the gym where Eddie was skipping at high speed.

‘What you selling now?’ Eddie asked warily. Glan rarely offered anyone a free look at anything.

‘Something that a newly married man like you needs to give him inspiration.’

‘I don’t need inspiration.’

‘No? Then what you doing down here, wearing yourself out when you’ve a corker like Jenny keeping your bed warm at home?’

‘That’s enough!’ Joey Rees shouted. He’d been too far away to hear exactly what Glan had said to Eddie, but he knew his protégé well enough to read the change of expression on his face. Another word to Eddie, and Glan would be wearing his smile on the wrong side of his head, and he preferred to keep his boy’s talents for the ring. ‘This a gym or a gossip shop? Eddie, you’ve had enough for one night. Go home and thank Jenny for sparing you. Tell her that if she keeps you at this fitness level she’ll be spending that South African boy’s purse at the end of next month.’

Joey watched Eddie hang up the rope and sling a towel around his neck. Was it his imagination, or was the boy off colour? He’d certainly been troubled about something last night. Perhaps it was Jenny. Marriage took a bit of getting used to, and he hadn’t helped by being so hard on him. He’d pushed Eddie to the limit from the minute he’d walked in.

‘See you same time tomorrow, Joey.’

‘Make it a bit later if you like. We’ve got plenty of time before the big fight.’

‘Just trying to make sure I win.’

‘You will.’

Eddie followed Glan into the changing room. Making a beeline for the back, Glan was soon surrounded by a huddle of boys, who pored over the postcards he handed out with a suitable appreciative chorus of sniggers and titters. Ignoring them, Eddie went straight to his locker. He’d grown out of pin-ups when he was sixteen, probably as the result of exposure to the real thing.

‘Take a look?’ Glan shouted above the sea of heads.

‘No thanks, I’m going to wash.’ Eddie went to the men’s room. Filling a sink with cold water he splashed it over his face, then delved into his American cloth bag for the metal soap-dish that contained his own bar of Lifebuoy soap. The soap in the gym was dark green, multi-purpose washing soap that Joey bought in bulk from the laundry suppliers. It stank of grease and carbolic, a heavy cloying smell that lingered on the skin for days. Stripping down to his underpants, he washed himself and put on his trousers. Looking over his shoulder to check no one was watching, he took a small bottle of men’s cologne out of his bag. Not thinking about why he was doing it, he tossed drops liberally over his neck and chest, hiding the bottle before buttoning on his shirt. He Vaselined his hair and walked to the mirror to check his appearance, in case – just in case – Jenny was waiting to waylay him as he walked up the hill, so she could see what she’d turned down for Haydn. Pushing his kit into his bag he returned to the locker room to put on his socks and shoes. The crowd in the corner had grown, as had the noise they were making.

‘I haven’t seen this one before.’

‘She’s just a kid.’

‘Tell you what, I wouldn’t mind finding a kid like that in my bed.’

‘Go on, you dirty old man. She only looks about twelve.’

‘Look at those eyes. Twelve or not, she knows what’s what.’

‘And what she’s got may be small, but it’s all there.’

‘Come on Eddie, a look will cost you nothing,’ Glan coaxed. Eddie had a good job as well as boxing purses, which meant that he had more money to splash around than most of the gym’s patrons. Although Glan had never actually sold him anything, he lived in hope. He held up a stack of postcards. ‘Merv’s latest.’

‘And you’re flogging them at a quid for twelve.’

‘Tell you what,’ Glan walked over to Eddie’s locker and whispered, ‘seeing as how it’s you, and your need is greater than most, just being married and all, I’ll knock off my commission. Seventeen and six. How’s that for a bargain between mates?’

‘It’s great to know what friendship’s worth, especially when Merv gives you five bob in the pound.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because he offered me the job first.’

‘You can at least take a look.’

‘That’s a girl from the Revue,’ one of the boys shouted excitedly. ‘I saw her on stage.’ He thrust a pile of postcards into Eddie’s hands. ‘That one there, look.’

Eddie did just that. There was something familiar about the peroxide blonde. Stage right, on a pedestal? He cast his mind back to the Town Hall and the blue-lit stage, thick with billowing smoke. For once Glan’s sales pitch had hit somewhere near the truth. The girls were new. Merv must have persuaded the Revue nudes to pose for him when they were in town.

He flicked through the cards in a tired, desultory fashion. Jenny with her natural beauty had far more to offer than the overblown, over-made-up blonde – but then, he had to remind himself, that had been the old, pre-marriage Jenny. And no photograph had ever had the same effect on him as a glimpse of the real thing. A silk-clad knee, or a button undone half-way down a blouse with the promise of more to come, had more power to excite him than a full-length nude, even the live ones on stage in the Town Hall. He handed the cards back to the boy who’d given them to him.

‘You’ve got to see this one. Just look at the hair.’

‘It’s not the hair I’m interested in.’

‘That’s a wig. They were all wearing them in that scene in the Revue.’

The boy pressed another card on Eddie. It featured a different girl: shorter, smaller, and thinner than the last, although her face was still covered with a mask-like layer of make-up. Her lips were drawn into a cute bow, her eyebrows arched into fine lines. But there was something else. Something in the face that reminded him of someone. Someone he knew … He looked again. Half child, half woman; small breasts, much smaller than Jenny’s, he noted, taking satisfaction from the fact.

‘She has that effect on you, doesn’t she?’ Glan nudged. ‘Makes you want to look, and keep on looking. Though I’m not sure why. She hasn’t got as much to offer as the other two. Must be the eyes, I suppose. She seems to be looking straight at you. All I know is I wouldn’t mind a couple of hours alone with her.’