Tiger Ragtime (22 page)

‘The same to you, and I hope yours are all about me.’ She watched him walk away, opened the door and stepped into her kitchen. She had her hard-won independence, but sometimes – and always late in the evening since Judy had started working in the New Theatre – she found it very lonely.

Two days later, David stood back and watched George Powell inspect the skirting board he had fixed to the newly plastered wall on the ground floor of the old Sea Breeze.

‘You haven’t done a bad job of these joints.’ George ran his fingers over the corners. ‘Not bad at all.’

David frowned, despite Jed King’s encouraging smile, he took George’s ‘haven’t done a bad job’ as an insult. ‘You can start first thing tomorrow morning.’ George Powell rose stiffly to his feet and straightened his back. ‘I could start right away,’ David offered eagerly, angry with himself for sleeping away most of the first full day he’d spent ashore.

‘All the jobs have been allocated for the day. Tomorrow you can begin work on the skirting boards on the second floor, cutting and fixing. If you do a good job on those, I’ll move you on to the banisters. There are enough of those to keep you and every other carpenter here busy until the day we complete.’ George looked up at the ceiling. The centre had been torn out of the building to the roof and all the rooms on the ground floor, except the lavatories and offices, had been knocked into one large space. The three floors on all four sides rose in tiers around the perimeter, supported by scaffolding. To their right, the scaffolding had been replaced by columns, and workmen were tearing down the supporting walls that were no longer needed.

‘Fifty per cent of the floor area on the first, second and third floors has gone to create that high ceiling. Mr James has ordered four electric chandeliers from Waterford. They’ll be the largest I’ve ever seen and bright enough to illuminate the ground floor and the mezzanine areas on the floors above. They’re coming in next week from Ireland. This is going to be some building when it’s finished,’ George said proudly.

‘It looks like a big chapel to me,’ David commented with more honesty than tact.

George laughed. ‘I’ll have to tell Mr James that one. If it’s a chapel he’s creating, it’ll be a temple to gambling and drinking.’

‘What time do you want me here in the morning?’ David asked.

‘Six o’clock, Micah did say you weren’t a time-served apprentice.’

‘I’m experienced but I haven’t completed an apprenticeship.’ David would have liked to have given him a different answer but he knew his age was against him.

‘I pay my carpenters five shillings a day, my labourers three. I’ll pay you whatever I think you’re worth – somewhere between the two – after you’ve put in a full day’s work, all right?’

Needing the job, David nodded agreement. ‘Yes.’

‘Twelve-hour shift, six in the morning until six at night, half an hour for dinner at twelve and two ten-minute tea breaks at ten and three. If you don’t bring your own food, we can put in an order with Goldman’s the baker’s for you and dock it from your wages at the end of the week. Pay day is Friday. You’ll get whatever you’re owed then. If you haven’t any tools, book them in and out with your foreman, any losses have to be paid for and I’ll take those out of your wages too.’

‘Thank you, Mr Powell.’ David shook hands with the man.

A shout of ‘Watch out!’ preceded a wall crashing down from the first floor.

David ducked out through the door and walked past the scaffolding and tarpaulins that shrouded the front of the building. He looked at the watch that Mary and Harry had given him, thought of home, then remembered it was no longer ‘home’. He had walked away from the farm. And the last thing he could do was return there and admit to Mary and Harry that he was a failure who was a useless sailor.

Feeling very alone, he debated what to do. He could go and see Edyth but judging by the length of the queue outside her baker’s shop she was busy. He could return to Helga Brown’s house, but when he had left, she and Ruth had been cleaning the house from top to bottom and he’d have nowhere to sit. Judy wouldn’t be working in the bakery, but he suspected that she’d probably be sleeping after performing in the theatre. That left Gertie.

He smiled, it wasn’t Monday morning, but it was early on a Thursday. She shouldn’t have that many other callers at this time of day. He felt in his inside pocket for his wallet. He’d taken one of the pound notes from his locked suitcase. He hoped it would buy him all the time he wanted for the week. But much as he liked Gertie and wanted to see her again, he sensed it would be prudent to change the note into silver before he went looking for her.

‘The young man who thought I was Harry Evans, I believe.’ David looked up to see Aled James. Dressed in a starched white shirt and collar, beige tie, cream linen suit and panama hat, he was better turned out than the bankers heading down into Mount Stuart Square. ‘Do you remember talking to me on the day of the carnival?’ he asked when David didn’t answer.

David was intimidated by Aled’s air of authority but he would never have admitted it to Aled or anyone else. ‘Yes, I do and in those clothes you look even more like Harry Evans.’

‘And how do you know Harry Evans?’

‘Why do you want to know?’ David asked warily with a countryman’s innate distrust of strangers.

‘Because I know him too. We used to be friends when we were boys,’ Aled said, straying into the realms of fantasy.

‘Harry is married to my sister.’

Aled looked at the tarpaulin-shrouded doorway behind David. ‘You’ve been in the old Sea Breeze?’

‘How do you know?’

‘I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but you have dust on the shoulders of your suit.’

David glanced at his jacket and tried to brush it off with the flat of his hand but it clung stubbornly to the cloth and all he succeeded in doing was smudging it. ‘I was looking for a job.’

‘Did you find one?’

‘I start work tomorrow.’

‘I’m surprised that you don’t work for Harry in one of his shops.’

‘I don’t want to work for Harry,’ David answered quickly, too quickly he realised when he saw the expression on Aled’s face.

‘So, you want to be independent, Mr Harry Evans’s brother-in-law.’ Aled offered David his hand. ‘I’m Aled James. George Powell is converting the Sea Breeze for me.’

‘I didn’t know.’ Impressed, David shook Aled’s hand.

‘What do you intend to do once the conversion is finished?’

‘I’ll find something.’ David hoped he sounded more confident than he felt.

‘I’m looking for likely young men to work in the Ragtime.’

‘What’s a ragtime?’

‘It’s what I’m calling this club when it’s finished, the Tiger Ragtime.’

‘Doing what?’ David asked.

‘I have a few different jobs going.’ Aled glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve an appointment shortly, but if you’re interested I can spare half an hour now. We could have a drink in the Packet and talk about it.’

Trying to look as though it wasn’t the first time he’d been asked to have a drink in the middle of the day, David said, ‘I don’t mind if I do.’

‘Judy, this is a surprise, and a timely one. I’ve been wrestling with the mission’s accounts and they don’t look good. Too many waffles being eaten and not enough contributions coming in to pay for the eggs and flour.’ Micah left his desk and walked out in the hallway of the mission to meet her. ‘But I don’t doubt there’s enough eggs and flour here now for me to offer you a waffle lunch.’

‘No thank you, Pastor Holsten, I’m having lunch with Mr James in the Windsor at one.’

‘Coffee, then?’

‘That would be nice.’ A burst of laughter echoed down the stairs and she said, ‘Could we drink it in your office?’

‘Of course, I’ll bring it down, make yourself at home.’ When Micah returned a few minutes later Judy had hung the jacket of her beige linen suit on the back of the visitor’s chair and was sitting, beating time with her finger as she read a song score.

‘Do you ever stop working?’ He set the tray on the desk.

‘Mr James and I have been planning out my act for when the club opens. This is “Just a Crazy Song”. It’s brand new, I think he must have either brought the score over with him from America or bought it from one of the seamen here.’

‘Did he tell you that he’s invited me, along with your uncles, aunts, and Edyth to the opening night of the Tiger Ragtime?’

‘Yes, you will come?’

‘Unless I’m shanghaied.’ He poured two cups of coffee and handed her one before returning to his chair behind his desk. ‘Help yourself to milk and sugar.’

‘Thank you.’

She took her time, sugaring her coffee, pouring milk into it and stirring it but he didn’t try to hurry her. It was obvious something was bothering her and after what Edyth had said about the way Aled James made her feel, he wondered if Judy was also afraid of the man.

‘It’s about the contract I signed with Mr James,’ she said finally.

‘You’re sorry you signed it?’ Micah asked in concern. He recalled the solicitor warning him that although the contract was a good one it was watertight. If Judy didn’t perform for any reason other than illness Aled could sue her for every penny she had. Tony had raised a laugh by pointing out that the only pennies Judy was likely to have when
Peter Pan
finished in the New Theatre, were the ones Aled James paid her.

‘No, of course not,’ Judy said quickly. ‘It’s about the clothes.’

‘Clothes?’ Micah looked at her blankly. ‘The stage costumes.’

‘Oh yes, I remember, Aled James has to pay for them. And that’s a problem?’

‘We went to Gwilym James the day before yesterday and he bought me twenty evening gowns. They were so expensive they didn’t even have price tags.’

‘It’s his club, Judy. He wants his singer to look her best. Did he choose them?’

‘With Edyth’s mother and the supervisor’s help.’

‘You don’t like them?’

‘Any girl in her right mind would like them.’

‘They’re too revealing?’ he asked, remembering Jed King’s reservations.

‘Not at all, although one is fairly low cut.’

Micah waited, there was obviously more, but he was a patient man, and he wanted Judy to tell him in her own words without prompting. After he’d watched two minutes tick by on his wristwatch, he ventured, ‘You don’t want the clothes?’

‘I don’t mind the evening gowns. Mr James explained that I have to look well groomed because I’ll be representing his club.’

‘A glamorous club does need a glamorous star. But if it’s not the frocks, Judy, what is it?’

‘He wants to buy me a whole new wardrobe, not just evening gowns, but day frocks, suits, accessories – and fur coats. I’m meeting him for lunch now because he’s arranged for us to go back to Gwilym James. He even told the supervisor to select some fur coats for me to choose from. He insists I need three –’

‘Three!’ Micah interrupted her mid-flow.

‘A short one for day wear, a long one for evening wear and an elbow-length cape for summer.’ She picked up her coffee cup and saucer. Micah could see she was nervous from the way her hand shook.

‘Most girls would jump through hoops for three fur coats.’

‘I don’t want Mr James buying me one, let alone three. Evening gowns I can understand, but not day clothes. He even asked the supervisor to open an account for me so I can go in and chose new underwear.’

‘Have you talked to Edyth about this?’

‘No, she’s been so busy in the bakery since the workmen started converting the club that she has hardly any free time. Besides, nine times out of ten when I come home from the theatre, she’s in bed and she gets up hours before me.’

‘What about your uncles?’

‘They’re working such long hours in the Sea Breeze, I don’t like bothering them.’

‘As I said, most girls would love the idea of having a whole new wardrobe bought for them,’ he pointed out mildly.

‘Girls like Anna Hughes, you mean.’

‘So, that’s it. You feel like a kept woman.’

Her green eyes flashed angrily. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Judy, no one who knows you would ever mention you and Anna Hughes in the same breath,’ he said swiftly.

‘What’s the difference? Aled James is spending a fortune on me and showering me with expensive things that I could never afford to buy in exactly the same way that Anna Hughes’s customers pay her and buy her things to …’

‘Has Aled James ever tried to kiss you?’

‘No?’

‘Has he ever suggested anything inappropriate?’

‘No.’

‘So all he’s done so far is give you twenty evening gowns and the promise of a new wardrobe.’

‘He hasn’t given me anything yet. He asked the supervisor to hold on to everything until my dressing room in the club is finished. Then he wants everything sent there.’

‘And there you have your answer,’ he said in relief. ‘He’s not giving you anything that you won’t wear either in the club or outside when you’re travelling to and from the club or out on club business. All you have to do is keep everything he gives you in your dressing room, except for the outfit you wear back and forth to work. That way, all the clothes remain his property. When you’re not working you can wear your own clothes. Just regard this wardrobe he’s buying you as your uniform.’

‘A uniform is what I’d be wearing if I was a waitress or a chambermaid.’

‘There’s no difference, Judy. You’re working for the man and he’s telling you what you can and can’t wear. That’s a uniform. And if, at end of the contract, you want to walk away from him and the club, leave all the clothes there and no one can possibly think of you as a kept woman.’

She thought about what he’d said for a moment. ‘That sounds like common sense, Pastor Holsten.’

‘That’s because it is, and don’t you think it’s time you started calling me Micah? You’re not thirteen any more.’

‘All right, Micah. It sounds like common sense apart from the expense. Fur coats and evening gowns cost a fortune.’

‘Which Aled James is spending for the benefit of his club.’

‘That’s what he said when I told him that I didn’t want fur coats.’

‘Then he and I are in agreement. Think about it, Judy, if you don’t get to keep the clothes in your home then you can hardly count them as yours.’