Shirley (17 page)

Inside the restaurant champagne was drunk until the luncheon that Sullivan had arranged was ready to be served. The family sat down at a large round table, talking animatedly and Sullivan suddenly felt like an intruder. He decided not to join them.

The formal handing over of the cheque for the Rainbow Club took place on the stage of the New Theatre at the end of the second house on Monday. Later that week Shirley went back to the Rainbow Club in Tiger Bay. ‘I only left here about three years ago,’ she told the children, ‘but it seems such a long time ago now.’ Perhaps she remembered that night when she stood outside the Freeman’s house shouting up to a window ‘Iris! Open up. We’re going to London. We’ve been discovered.’

SHIRLEY CAME BACK
from Wales ready for anything. The homecoming had been more wonderful than she had ever imagined. At the Rainbow Club where she used to dance and sing as a kid, she’d been fêted like a princess. Not only had the children loved her, but all of Tiger Bay seemed to be squashed in that small hall to hear her sing. She’d worn her stage dress, the oyster silk covered with pearls and a big puff of tulle round the bottom. They were so proud of her that she cried when she went on stage, but inside she felt as happy and excited as if she were at the London Palladium singing before the Queen. When it was over young Neil Sinclair from Frances Street had handed her a beautiful bouquet of flowers. Talk about a perfect homecoming. It had been magic.

Even Leslie Grade couldn’t put a damper on her high spirits when he told Sullivan to ease up. ‘Stop calling her a star,’ Grade admonished, ‘in my eyes she’s still a beginner. Now if I can get her somewhere top-notch like the London
Hippodrome and you can keep the house filled, then we’ll see. Forget the Café de Paris. Just show me that she won’t flop in bigtime London.’

That didn’t bother Shirley, she knew she could fill the London Hippodrome. They had to wait for that two weeks Leslie Grade had promised to come along, but Sullivan had another tour worked out, this time in Europe. The only shadow on Shirley’s horizon was Pepe Davies’ attitude towards her. She enjoyed living with his family, but he always made such a fuss when she went away on tour. And he didn’t seem to understand that she needed to be taken out at night after the show. Rehearsing all day then performing in cabaret was hard work, especially when one had to pack up every few days and move and on to the next city. She deserved some fun now and then. If only Pepe wasn’t so jealous. She knew Sullivan would say ‘Serve you right’ if she asked his advice.

While she was in Cardiff her old friend Annis Abraham, who had a nightclub in Cardiff, told her about a special cure for acne his sister had discovered in Egypt. Shirley’s skin had always worried her, so if Sullivan was arranging quick tours to Scandinavia, Belgium and Monte Carlo, why not one to Cairo as well? ‘Cairo!’ cried Sullivan when Shirley brought up the idea of a tour to Egypt. ‘We’ve been kicked out of the Suez Canal. They don’t even like us over there. We’re going to Belgium anyway.’

Shirley enjoyed the European tour. Berry, Sullivan’s partner, and his wife Sylvia went with Shirley to Belgium. Sylvia always remembered one particular nightclub owner’s enthusiasm for Shirley’s performance. ‘I’ve never heard
anyone like her,’ he told Sylvia. ‘As soon as she starts singing, the customers sit up. She’s electric.’

The two girls had fun together, even giggling at the strange toilets where an old woman gave them each one sheet of toilet paper and where the men walked in too. Sylvia found Shirley as young and unspoilt as ever, but realised that Sullivan was still very tough with her. He demanded that Shirley give her best at every performance, which, indeed, she did, but he would blow up her ego one week, then deflate it the next. ‘There is a difference between a star and Miss Shirley Bassey,’ he would say. ‘It is about one thousand pounds a week. Remember that, so no more tantrums until you’re earning a lot more money.’

Shirley was a girl full of spirit and Sylvia was sure that one of these days she’d explode and tell Sullivan to go to hell for good.

One of Shirley’s bookings was at the Sporting Club in Monte Carlo. It was always an honour to be asked to sing at a charity gala, but not always a pleasure to entertain the spoilt international set. A fortune was always spent on the flowers, the guests always wore their most exclusive couture gowns and finest diamonds, but their manners were appalling. They came to look at each other and gossip.

Sullivan had been warned that these events were often a case of ‘take the money and run’, because the audience didn’t give a damn who was singing. But he knew that Shirley, young and inexperienced, would think that the rudeness of this particular audience meant that she had failed to please.

The manager of the club told Sullivan, ‘You must warn your singer that her name, Shirley Bassey, is unknown here.
She won’t go down well. No one does. Even Marlene Dietrich was ignored. Complete silence!’

‘She’ll be very hurt,’ said Sullivan. ‘It’s her first time here.’

‘Then tell her a little lie, that because the Sporting Club is open to the sea the applause floats away.’

Back in her dressing room Shirley was on top of the world. She had met the son of a Greek millionaire who had a yacht in the harbour. He was in the audience and she was seeing him after the show.

The stage was built high and Shirley could not easily see what the audience were doing at their flower bedecked tables – ignoring her while they ate, drank and talked. At the end of Shirley’s performance the applause was negligible. Afterwards she said to Sullivan, ‘You were quite right, the applause does float out to the sea.’

It didn’t matter because Shirley went on to sing at another nightclub for the next seven days where she was a great success. The Sea Club as it was called, was somewhat downmarket. It was partly in the open air and a big tree grew right in the middle of the club floor. At the Sea Club everyone was crazy about Shirley, and Shirley was crazy about her new Greek boyfriend.

Bernard Hall, ‘Balls’, came back from a tour with his twelve beautiful English girl dancers and someone said to him, ‘Did you know that Shirley Bassey was here? She stayed at that little hotel on the hill.’ He drove up to ask the owner of the hotel about Shirley. He felt sad that he had missed her, but that was how it was in show business. He was packing up to go back to Paris for the winter and disbanding his troupe of girls. At the end of the season he
found them exhausting and he was glad to be going solo again in the Parisian boîtes.

Noël Coward, who came to Paris often, loved to hear about Bernard’s experiences on tour. ‘I have to act like their mother,’ Bernard would tell him in exasperation. ‘They even ask me to go out and buy their damned Tampax.’ Noël wrote a novella about Bernard and his girls, and it was published under the title
Me and My Girls
.

In London autumn had arrived and Leslie Grade said he was not only booking Shirley into the London Hippodrome, he was backing the show. ‘She had better be good,’ he told Sullivan. He pointed out that even some of the world’s biggest stars could come unstuck when they took a chance at London’s theatreland.

Sullivan and Shirley quarrelled over the tight gold lamé dress he wanted her to wear. She wanted something lacy and full. Sullivan was right and he won. He also thought that the first half of Leslie Grade’s show was tacky, the acts not good enough, but Leslie Grade naturally disagreed, and overruled him. Grade also thought that Sullivan’s idea of a giant oyster shell from which Shirley would emerge was ostentatious. ‘It will never work,’ he said. But Sullivan had his way on that one, and it did work. As always, Shirley rose to the occasion and made a spectacular entrance through the clouds of pink chiffon that veiled the oyster shell. A reviewer next day wrote, ‘The magic of her hands, her vibrant throbbing voice. She looked like a dream. A new star was born. I saw it happen.’ At the end of two weeks Shirley Bassey had conquered London as top of the bill at the London Hippodrome. She was not yet twenty-one years old.

Shirley was going out to Australia to work at the Tivoli Theatre in Sydney as soon as her next engagement at a Mayfair nightclub was over. However, Michael Sullivan, who’d had a chest complaint, decided to leave earlier, not only for the beneficial sunshine but also to arrange advance publicity and get the giant oyster shell built. Her act would be exactly the same as the one they had presented at the London Hippodrome.

Michael’s carefully laid plans were upset when he received a worrying telephone call from a lady in Bayswater. He’d been concerned about Shirley’s private life for some time, ever since they’d returned from America in fact. Her living with the Davies family in Bayswater obviously had its advantages, and they were a nice family, but there was the young and lovesick Pepe. He did not accept the relationship was over and that Shirley had men lining up in droves to take her out.

Mrs Davies telephoned Sullivan to explain that she had asked Shirley to leave, and as he was her manager would he please find her accommodation elsewhere. Her son found it hard to cope with Shirley going on dates with other men. From her tone, he understood that there had been some trouble.

Sullivan booked Shirley into the Cumberland Hotel at Marble Arch, just a short taxi ride away from the Bagatelle, the nightclub off Berkeley Square where she would be appearing. It was a good hotel, moderately priced, and Shirley was duly settled into room 5XK.

With Shirley organised, Michael prepared to leave for Australia as planned. Two days before his departure, he attended band call at the Bagatelle, to find Shirley far from
happy. She complained that the music was all wrong, and she wanted the pianist changed. Michael calmed her down, but he felt very uneasy. As it happened, Shirley’s stint at the Bagatelle did turn out to be successful and before he wished her goodbye to catch his plane to Sydney, Sullivan asked her to be sure to get in touch with Berry and Sylvia if she needed help of any kind. Shirley agreed that Berry would act as her manager in Michael’s absence. He reminded her that ‘the boys’ (her dressmakers) had promised to deliver her new dress on time, and he told her to have a good rest on the Sunday before she took the plane. He’d be waiting for her at Sydney airport.

In the early hours of Monday, 10 November 1957, the strident ring of the bedside telephone woke Sylvia Clarke at her home in Reigate. She switched on the light and picked up the receiver. Who on earth could be calling at this time of night? A man’s voice said, ‘I’ve got some bad news for you. Shirley Bassey has been murdered.’

Sylvia came awake with a jolt. ‘What are you talking about? Who are you? Where are you?’

‘I’m there,’ said the man. ‘They’re inside you see. I heard the gun-shot. But the music keeps playing. It’s Frank Sinatra’s “Swinging Affair.”’

Berry, who had woken up and taken one look at his wife’s stricken face, took the receiver from her. ‘Who’s there?’ he cried, but the line went dead. The phone rang again almost immediately. This time it was the police. They wanted to know if they were speaking to Mr Leonard Beresford Clarke, the partner of Mr Michael Sullivan?

‘What’s happened?’ Berry was getting agitated. ‘Has Shirley been hurt?’

The policeman hesitated. ‘It’s a difficult situation. The young man has barricaded the door. Do you know this boy? His name is Terence Clyde Davies?’ Berry looked at Sylvia as he repeated the name.

‘It’s Pepe, the boy who crashed his car. Shirley’s been living with his family. Is it true what that man said? Is Shirley dead?’

Berry continued his urgent questions to the police and finally put the receiver down.

‘Pepe’s got a gun. He’s holding Shirley prisoner in a room at the Cumberland. They’re trying to prevent him from killing her. His father’s on the way over to try and get her out. And you say this Pepe is just a boy. My God!’

Sylvia never forgot that terrible night, waiting to know whether Shirley was dead or alive.

Sullivan was roused in Sydney. The British
Daily Telegraph
was ringing their Sydney office. ‘Get Sullivan. Tell him Shirley Bassey’s in a shooting but we don’t know how bad it is yet.’ A shocked Sullivan hurried to the
Telegraph
office and spent a sleepless night there, waiting for the tape machines to flash out news. Nothing happened, the telephone lines were blocked.

Meanwhile, a terrified Shirley Bassey was suffering much more than either Berry or Sullivan. She was trapped in her room at the Cumberland with a crazed boy who held a loaded gun to her stomach and said he was going to kill her. She knew the gun really was loaded because he had already blasted the telephone to pieces.

Shirley described it afterwards, ‘It was Sunday night. I
came back from the cinema with my friend Peter Quinton. We went up to my room because I had to wait for the delivery of the green dress I was taking on my tour. It was special, there was a lovely stole embroidered with emeralds, they weren’t real but they shone marvellously.’

The phone rang while she and Peter were chatting. She knew who it was at once. Pepe! ‘I’ve got some flowers for you, Ma’am,’ he said in a fake American accent intended to confuse her. ‘What’s your room number please?’

‘How come you deliver flowers at midnight?’ Shirley asked. ‘Take them back to your mother in Bayswater.’ She put the phone down.

Peter Quinton knew all about this ex-boyfriend. As far as Shirley was concerned it was a love affair that was over long ago. She was still friends with Pepe’s sister, but he had to understand that she didn’t want to see him any more. The year before when he was in hospital after the car crash he had asked her to marry him. She didn’t take it seriously, but she said yes because the doctor told her not to upset him. Now the relationship was over once and for all, and she wished he’d leave her alone. And Shirley was leaving for Australia the next day. She asked Peter not to open the door to anyone unless he knew who was there.

While she was in the bathroom, Peter opened the door to the ‘two boys’ bringing the green gown. It was admired, and Shirley started packing it into her big blue travelling trunk. There was another knock and one of the boys innocently answered it.