Tiger Ragtime (32 page)

‘It couldn’t have lasted, Micah. Tony and Ron are off to Argentina the day after tomorrow.’

‘Not you?’

‘No.’ Jed looked at his wife. ‘The captain didn’t want any crew over forty on his boat.’

‘That’s tough,’ Micah sympathised.

‘Vic the beer, who runs the pub in our street, hasn’t been too well lately and I do the odd shift to cover for him.’

‘Not that the odd shift pays the rent but a little is better than nothing,’ Bessie broke in. ‘And word’s got out that Jed is a passable barman. Once trade picks up in the dockside pubs more landlords might send work Jed’s way.’

‘It could be a while before the pub trade gets back to what it was a couple of years ago,’ Micah said cautiously.

‘We’ll just have to tighten our belts a bit more. It’s been easier since our Kristina has started working for you full-time along with our Jamie, Edyth. And it’s not all bad news. The boys are growing up into quite a handful. They’re steady enough compared to some but they’re at an age where it helps to have their father around to keep an eye on them. And that goes double for our Jamie,’ Bessie said emphatically.

‘He’s a good delivery boy.’ Edyth felt duty-bound to come to Jamie’s defence.

‘And an argumentative son,’ Bessie added.

‘When push comes to shove, family is everything, even when everyone’s quarrelling.’ Jed cleared some of the champagne glasses so the waiter could set the beer on the table.

‘It certainly is,’ Harry agreed.

‘And if you don’t go to sea with Tony and Ron you’ll be on hand to keep an eye on Judy as well as your own children,’ Micah reminded.

‘She’s nineteen. I had been married three years and had three children when I was her age,’ Bessie said tartly.

‘I was married at eighteen,’ Edyth said. ‘And after the disaster that was my marriage, perhaps it’s just as well that Judy’s uncle is staying around to keep an eye on her.’

When Freddie hauled the third crate of champagne on to the table in the staff rest room, Judy and Mandy slipped away.

‘I must be getting old,’ Mandy yawned when she followed Judy into her dressing room. ‘Only four in the morning and I’m ready to leave a party.’

‘You and me both.’ Judy closed the door.

‘You have an excuse for being tired; you’ve been rehearsing all hours this week.’

‘And you’ve been arranging my clothes.’

‘As they were delivered in pristine condition and covered with calico, all I had to do was make a note of which was which on the covers, hang them on rails and set out your make-up.’ Mandy opened a drawer in the dressing table, removed a sheet and shook it out on the floor. ‘In the middle, please.’

Judy obediently kicked off her heeled shoes and stood in the centre. Mandy took a large paper bag from the dressing-table drawer. ‘This is just in case. We don’t want to get greasepaint on the frock.’ She slid the bag over Judy’s head, unbuttoned the back of the frock and slipped the sleeves from Judy’s arms. Judy wriggled out of the gown and stepped clear of it. While Mandy checked the frock for perfume and make-up stains Judy reached for her plain black cotton button-through dress. ‘All this gown needs is an airing and a pressing before it’s hung away. I’ll do both on Tuesday.’ Mandy hung the dress on a rail inside the door of the walk-in wardrobe. ‘You should take some of these flowers home. The club won’t be open again for two days and they’ll soon die in this heat.’

Judy looked around the room. ‘I’ll take the red roses, the violets and the white roses. You take the mixed roses and lilies.’

‘I didn’t earn them.’

‘Edyth’s living room is very small. As it is I’ll have to break up the roses and divide them between my aunts.’

‘If you’re sure.’ Mandy buried her head in a bouquet and inhaled the scent.

‘Miss King.’

‘Come in, Freddie.’ Judy had made friends with Freddie during the last week when she had spent every day rehearsing with the orchestra. She had discovered that beneath his rough exterior he could be a kind and gentle man.

‘Boss sent me to drive Miss Mandy home to Grangetown.’

‘Thank you, Freddie,’ Mandy said gratefully. ‘I couldn’t walk a step.’

‘You could drop me off on the way, Freddie,’ Judy suggested.

‘The boss is coming to see you, Miss Judy. He’s talking to a man who has a radio show. They want you to go on it.’

‘What did I tell you?’ Mandy picked up her handbag. ‘You’re on your way to the top, kiddo.’

‘Thanks, Mandy, and not just for saying that.’ Judy gave her a hug.

‘Then for what?’

‘Calming me down and getting me on-stage in one piece.’ Judy pushed the largest bouquet into her arms. Mandy winked at her. ‘Be nice to the radio producer. See you on Tuesday.’

Hoping Aled wouldn’t be long, Judy looked at her flowers again and re-read David’s card. Replacing it in the envelope, she pushed it into her handbag and opened the door of her walk-in wardrobe. The rows of evening gowns, day frocks, and fur coats hung shrouded like ghosts on the rail. On a shelf was the jewellery box that Aled had packed with expensive, well-designed pieces of glittering paste.

She had everything a rising singer could want and more. But she felt most peculiar. Flat – and somehow empty.

‘Freddie and Mandy left the door open so I guessed you’d already changed.’

She turned. Aled was standing in the doorway behind her. ‘Freddie said you were with someone from radio.’

‘He’s gone off with one of the chorus girls. I’ve arranged for us to have lunch with him on Monday – tomorrow.’

‘I suppose it is, although Sunday hasn’t dawned yet.’

‘There was another reason I wanted to keep you here.’

Aled removed a small box from his pocket and handed it her. ‘Go on, open it.’

She lifted the lid on an exquisite pair of glittering gold and diamond drop earrings.

‘They’re not paste. That’s real gold and real diamonds. I thought you’d like to have something more permanent than flowers to remind you of tonight.’

‘Thank you seems inadequate. I was just looking at all the clothes and –’ She stopped mid-sentence and brushed her cheek. She couldn’t believe it when she lifted her hand away. It was wet. ‘I have nothing to cry about.’

‘Except sheer bloody weariness,’ he said. ‘Sorry, that just slipped out. I’ve spent too much time around builders lately.’

‘It did go all right tonight, didn’t it?’

‘You’re asking me, after three standing ovations, each of which lasted a full five minutes?’

‘We’re in Tiger Bay. My home territory. That’s just my neighbours being kind.’

‘Not many of your neighbours could afford the few tickets that were sold after the invitations went out. The standing ovations came from the crache, not the natives.’

‘What if I never give another performance like that again? What if my voice goes and I …’

‘What if you turn into a frog overnight? What if the sea rises and drowns Butetown? What if the world ends?’ He laughed. ‘Want a final glass of champagne? It might help you sleep.’

‘No, thank you, I’ve had enough champagne. I’m too tired to think, yet I know that once I lie down I won’t be able to sleep. I feel … restless …edgy …’

‘You don’t have to wait for Freddie to drive you home. I could walk you.’

‘I’d like that,’ she said gratefully. ‘Just what I need. Fresh air and the smell of the sea.’

‘It’s the wrong way, but I could walk you down to the docks before you go back to the baker’s.’

‘Please.’ She looked again at the earrings nestling on their bed of dark blue velvet. ‘They’re too grand for this frock.’

‘They are,’ he agreed. ‘Put them in your handbag and wear them to lunch on Monday. You’ve got the key I gave you to the club safe?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wear one of the smart day frocks – the black one might be best, and the fur cape. You don’t want the radio producer to think you don’t know how to dress.’

‘In case he thinks he can get me cheap. One of Mandy’s maxims,’ she explained when he looked puzzled.

‘Mandy’s right.’

‘She knows everything there is to know about show business.’ She lifted her old mac from the back of the door.

‘If you took the fur cape you wouldn’t have to come back for it.’

‘I’d still have to come back for the frock. And it’s a warm night. Too warm for furs. Besides, the cape is worth more than a year’s wages to most people down here. I wouldn’t blame someone for hitting us over the head to steal it. The pawn money would keep a family of twelve for six months.’

‘So you’re not going to enjoy wearing the furs?’

‘To the right place perhaps, like the Windsor on Monday.’

‘If you’re that concerned about wearing them around the Bay I’d better send Freddie to pick you up.’

‘If you do, people will think I’m flaunting your car as well as the cape.’

‘So, you can’t win with your neighbours. Is that what you’re saying?’

‘I doubt many of the women will consider the clothes you’ve bought for me as being of more benefit to the club than me.’

‘But you’ll wear them?’

‘When it’s appropriate and I’m on club business,’ she said, remembering her conversation with Micah.

‘Some women would enjoy showing off fine clothes and fur coats in front of their friends and neighbours.’

‘I’m not “some women”.’

‘So I’ve discovered.’ He took his cigar case from his pocket and lit one as they left the club. ‘Last chance: home, or to the sea?’ he checked.

‘The sea.’ She looked up at the sky, the soft grey light of dawn heralded a new day, but the ghost of the full moon still hung low overhead, silvery pale and misty although the stars had faded.

They walked on down Bute Street in silence, passing sailors, Chinese gamblers, and tarts clinging to the arms of the last customers of their night as they steered them back to their rooms. When they reached the end of the street they turned left towards the Pier Head and West Dock.

Judy folded up the collar of her coat against the breeze blowing in from the sea.

‘I sense the first chill of autumn.’ Aled drew on his cigar for the last time and tossed it into the water.

‘The cold will be welcome after the heat of this summer.’

‘I’ll remind you that you said that next January. And I guarantee you’ll have no qualms about wearing your fur coat then, if we decide to take an early-morning walk to the sea.’

She stood and stared at the giant hulls of the ships berthed in the Bay. ‘When I was small I used to spend hours down here, wondering where the ships had been, where they were going, and trying to imagine all the things they had seen.’

‘After spending time in various ports of the world, I think perhaps it’s just as well that you couldn’t imagine half of the things they’d seen,’ he said dryly.

‘Like that.’ She indicated a group of sailors lying slumped on the pavement with their backs to the wall of the building behind them, empty bottles strewn round their feet.

‘There are drunks and poverty in every port in the world; they attract the dross from miles around. Anyone capable of walking to one will, in the hope of making money, either working on board a ship or,’ he glanced at an underdressed, over-painted woman who would never see middle age again, ‘on the sailors.’

‘My grandmother tried to teach me to ignore the seedy side.’ Judy looked towards the West Dock and the Norwegian Church. Even at that hour, the sound of singing emanated from the building.

‘Micah Holsten must be holding a service.’

‘That’s an alcohol-fuelled sea shanty, not a hymn.’ She smiled. ‘Micah never refuses admittance to anyone, especially not to those who haven’t the price of a bed in a doss house. His chairs aren’t that comfortable, but they’re under a roof and cleaner than the pavement.’

‘Ready for bed now?’

She took one last look at the ships and realised that she was suddenly and desperately tired. ‘No matter what problems I had when I was growing up, I believed that if I could get on one of those and sail away, I would leave all my worries behind. I remember telling Uncle Jed how I felt and he said that no matter how far someone sails, they take their troubles with them.’

‘He was right,’ Aled agreed.

‘Did you take your troubles with you when you left here?’

‘Who told you that I used to live on the Bay?’

‘Everyone knows. I didn’t realise it was a secret.’

‘It’s not. I left when I was a boy because my mother died. As I didn’t have any other relatives my only problem was poverty. I thought the cure for that lay in the colonies, or so I must have been told on one of the rare days I attended school.’

‘You made a fortune.’

‘Not in the colonies.’ He looked back up Bute Street. ‘I never thought when I left that I’d be able to come back and book a suite in the Windsor.’

‘You never went into the hotel when you lived here?’

‘Did you before I took you?’ he asked.

She laughed. ‘I couldn’t have afforded a cup of coffee in there. And that’s supposing they would have served me.’

‘The closest I got to the Windsor when I was a boy was to stand outside and offer to shine the porter’s shoes. Nine times out of ten he chased me off.’

‘Is the same man on the door now?’ she asked curiously.

‘He’s old enough, but if he is, he doesn’t remember me, and I certainly don’t recall him.’ He offered her his arm and they began to walk back up Bute Street. ‘It’s odd coming back here after so many years.’ He looked around. ‘Large and imposing as the buildings are, they look smaller than when I left. Perhaps I should have just taken a look at the place and moved on.’

‘Do you regret investing all your money in the club?’

‘No, and I didn’t invest it all,’ he corrected her. ‘Walking down here at this time of day reminds me of the times I used to crawl out of bed and go to Penniless Point to look for work in the hope of earning enough money to buy breakfast. It makes me feel twelve years old again.’

‘You can’t mean that after tonight.’

‘Yes, I can.’

‘After the club opening and everything else?’

‘How grown-up do you feel?’ he asked her.

‘Not very,’ she admitted. ‘After Mandy helped me dress, did my hair and make-up, I looked in the mirror and felt as though I was playing dressing up.’