Family Chorus Page 10

  ‘Listen, dolly,’ he’d said amiably. ‘I’m talking to you for your own good. You’re a clever little girl and one of these days you’ll be a clever big girl. If you listen to me. You got a lot of personality, a lot of drive, but you ain’t going to get what you want in this world being noisy, you understand me? Making threats you don’t mean never gets you nowhere. If you’re going to make people do things your way you got to box clever. I showed you tonight what you can’t do. I like your sister Bessie. She’s a good woman, a gutena shumah, and I don’t like to see her unhappy. So I pulled your teeth out so you can’t nip her no more. But let me tell you, for the future — you want to get people to do things your way? Don’t shout. Box clever.’

  And he had got up and walked over to the door and she had lifted her chin and watched him go and then said, almost without thinking, ‘How?’

  ‘How what?’

  ‘Do what you said. Box clever.’

  ‘Ah,’ he’d said and grinned at her. ‘That’d be tellin’. It’s something everyone has to work out for themselves. You’ll find out how to get what you want, a kid looking like you do. Not beautiful, that’s you, but you’ve got more chein than a barrel-load of monkeys. Use it, and that’ll be boxing clever. Get what you want the quiet way, not the screaming way —’

  ‘I want to dance more instead of going to school,’ she said. ‘How do I do that?’

  ‘You think,’ he’d said promptly. ‘You don’t go screaming and nagging, you think. You smile and you say yes and then you think about what you can manage. Maybe you get ill a bit at school, hmm? Have to go early? Maybe you got to go get more exercise to feel better? Little things like that.’

  ‘They’ll ask Bessie,’ she’d said, but she was interested now, excited, too. She didn’t hate him any more as she had before. Now she felt his approval, his interest in her, and she warmed to it. ‘If I tell lies, they’ll ask Bessie and then they’ll get more mad at me. So will Bessie.’

  ‘Bessie, mad at you?’ he’d said and laughed. ‘That’ll be the day. Anyway, who said anything about telling lies? I never tell lies. I just make things happen the way I want them to happen. I tell myself — this is how I want it to be, so this is how it ought to be and so this is how it is — so when you think that way, and you know it’s true because you believe it, then everyone else does. You understand?’

  She stared at him, not moving, and he grinned again. ‘You will,’ he said. ‘One of these days you will. You want a lot? Then you got to work out first what it is you want, and believe it and then make it happen. That’s all there is to it. You’ll find out.’ And he had gone, closing the bedroom door behind him with a quiet snap, leaving her sitting on her bed staring after him.

  It had taken a good deal of time for her to understand what he’d been telling her, but eventually she began to, dimly, as she saw how much easier it was to coax Bessie to let her do what she wanted instead of trying to force her. It was so easy she was amazed she’d ever been a shouter. All she had to do was make a plan inside her head for what she wanted to happen. She wanted to spend the day at Madame Gansella’s house so that she could be there all the time that Alfie was there? Then all she had to do was imagine herself there, see it happening, see reasons for her being there, and then just explain them to Bessie — Madame Gansella had seemed to say that if she had extra practice time she might be able to have her own solo speciality number. And that was something she wanted, as much as Bessie wanted it too, she told Bessie, so it was worth putting up with all the extra work, even though it had to be Sunday, the only day they could usually be together. And Bessie had listened and been unhappy but hadn’t been able to argue back the way she would have if Lexie had shouted and nagged, instead of doing it Alex Lazar’s way and being reasonable and convinced about the good sense of what she was saying.

  And it had worked in the other direction too, making even Madama Gansella do things Lexie’s way. The story about practising to be in a speciality number of her own became so entrenched in her own mind that somehow she managed to transfer the dream to Madame G.’s mind, and when she had spent five consecutive Sundays working extra at Madame G.’s house, in the hot dusty attic that was labelled rather grandiosely the Dance Studio, Madame G. actually did give her a lead dance of her very own, with Alfie as her partner.

  She had thought about trying the trick with other things too. Like being a singer. That had been much more difficult; she had always had a true enough voice, could hit the notes easily enough, but it was a small voice without much power behind it. Until she had started to see herself inside her own head as a singer, saw herself being offered extra singing lessons, and Bessie paying for them — and somehow she managed it. She talked a little of her dream, just enough to prime Bessie and to interest Madame G. and made sure that both of them heard her practising scales all on her own — and above all kept on with the wanting, the determination to do it, lying in bed night after night thinking about it, and hoping and planning and hoping it. And one day Madame G. told Bessie she thought Lexie should have some singing lessons — and now she sang in the show. Not incredibly well, not all that powerfully, but well enough to be heard and with a sweetness of tone the audience seemed to like, for they applauded her a great deal. And she had chalked that on her private scoreboard as another success for what she now thought of as Alex Lazar’s way.

  And now, today, it had worked again. As soon as she had overheard Madame G. arranging with Alfie to go to the Empire Theatre in Mare Street this morning to make sure the bills had been put up properly, she had decided to spend the day with him. Five years of being with him most days at dance lessons, or sharing the phoney ‘amateur talent’ shows with him around North and East London, had done nothing to alter her admiration for him. He was still the most exciting person she could imagine being with, still the person she most wanted to impress, still the person she had in her mind’s eye when she went down the Lane to choose new clothes. Would Alfie like this or that or the other? Did it make her look old enough for him? Grown-up enough to be interesting? After all, he was seventeen now, a grown man, really. Not quite thirteen was very young compared with seventeen, but if she thought herself old she would be. And she had thought herself old and so made Bessie let her buy the sort of clothes she wanted, and this morning had thought herself out with Alfie all day, and so made Bessie agree. Not easy, for when it came to Alfie, Bessie was funny. Jealous a little, Lexie thought. But that couldn’t be helped. Lexie wanted to be with him and that was that.

  So she had coaxed and planned and hoped and wanted and now here she was, exactly where she had intended to be. Arm in arm with Alfie, the new Ambrose, walking down Mare Street on her way to the West End to spend the day with him. Not that he knew it was going to take all day, of course. But Lexie did, and that was what mattered. She was already forming the images in her mind, already seeing them both at the shoe shop and then having their dinners in a tea shop and then going to Oxford Street to look at the big stores. If she tried very hard indeed, she could make it all happen, just as she made everything else happen.

  8

  The shop was small and dark and crowded and smelled wonderful: new cloth from the boxes of shoes that lined the walls and the racks of ribbons that adorned the counter, and rosin, and cigar smoke, and patchouli drifting in waves from the voluble woman standing at the counter and chattering in very fast Italian with the man standing behind it and smoking the cigar, and charcoal braziers and hot chestnuts from the street outside, and sauces rich with herbs cooking in neighbouring restaurant kitchens. Lexie lifted her nose to it and took a deep breath and wanted to hug herself with excitement.

  The voluble woman took her package and went bustling out on a tidal wave of scent, and her place at the counter was taken by a lugubrious woman with a very pale face and dark eyes who greeted the man with the cigar in tones so deep and sad that she might have been announcing the end of the world. Ambrose caught Lexie’s eye and winked, and she wanted to giggle. But she
managed not to, and the pale woman launched herself into a great cascade of French, with which, to Lexie’s admiration, the man behind the counter seemed to have no difficulty, and the rest of the shop’s customers settled down to wait as patiently as they might for their turn.

  Not, Lexie decided, that it was at all difficult to wait patiently here. She had enjoyed the walk in the grey rain-threatening morning, making their way to Gamba’s shop through the tangle of Soho streets from the bus stop in Oxford Street at which they had alighted, loving the bustle and strangeness of it all. Heaven knew the East End was busy enough, and full of strange and interesting people, but this was a different sort of bustle, a different sort of strangeness. In the East End the bustle was born of desperation, of poverty and hunger and fear, but here it was different. Here in Soho people were sure of themselves, rushed about for pleasure rather than in anxiety, seemed to know they were going to be as well fed tomorrow as they were today, seemed to have no fear of displaying their foreignness. They chattered loudly in their French and Italian and Spanish and German, unlike the East End where people whose native tongues were Russian and Polish and Latvian stood with their heads close together and almost whispered as they talked, not wanting others to hear them, afraid they would be jeered at and despised.

  Maybe, Lexie had thought, as she and Ambrose picked their way over the tangle of rubbish dropped by the stallholders in Berwick Street market, maybe it’s all right to be a foreigner as long as you’re not a Jew as well. But the thought went away as swiftly as it had come, and she stared at the stalls piled high with exotic fruits and vegetables that glowed like jewels beneath the dull rainy sky, and at the stallholders in their wide-brimmed hats and leather trousers, and thought how much better a market it was than boring old Petticoat Lane, where the stallholders were all people she’d known all her life. There they only sat and plucked chickens in clouds of feathers, or sat with bagels threaded on long poles, crying their wares or haggling over heaps of secondhand clothes, but here was excitement and new sights and smells and she loved every bit of it.

  ‘Isn’t it romantic, Ambrose?’ she’d said, hugging his arm close to her. ‘Isn’t it all wonderful? I hate the East End. One day we’ll both be stars in a show over there —’ and she had jerked her head in the direction of Shaftesbury Avenue and its great glossy theatres, ‘ — and we’ll never have to go to the horrible East End again —’

  He looked down at her and made a face. ‘It’s not that different here to the East End, ducky, and never you think it. They’re all robbers and thieves wherever you go.’

  ‘Not everywhere!’ she had said, and sounded genuinely shocked. ‘Not here in the West End! People here have real class — I’m going to be here one day, you see if I don’t. It’s going to happen — I’ve made up my mind to it —’ And for a moment she’d actually considered telling him her secret, about her special way of making things happen, and then just in time bit her tongue. It wouldn’t work if she told people. Even Ambrose, who wasn’t really people, but Ambrose, the important one. It had to stay inside her head, her private way of getting what she wanted and had to have.

  It was still early, not quite eleven, and she’d tried her way again, just to prove to herself it worked. Tea and toast, she’d thought. Imagined it, all hot and dripping with butter, the scent of tea, a marble-topped table, with Ambrose sitting on the other side of it and smiling at her, and as they’d left Berwick Street behind them and crossed into Wardour Street had closed her eyes just for a moment to concentrate on the image. Just as he had said, ‘We’ve lots of time. There’s a tea shop over there — what about that nosh you said you’d stand me?’ and her eyes had flown open and she’d cried, ‘Oh, yes! Let’s.’ And almost danced across the street to the little Italian cafe Ambrose had seen, the tails on her muff swinging with her delight. It worked, it always worked!

  Now, standing in Mr Gamba’s delicious-smelling little shop in Dean Street, waiting for their turn to talk to the many-tongued Mr Gamba who was still chattering to the pale lady over a pair of cream satin slippers, she began to weave more images in her head. She wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to happen this afternoon: perhaps a visit to the shops in Oxford Street, strolling between the counters in the huge emporia, gazing at silks and satins and glass and silver and clocks and carpets and curtains, pretending to be setting up a home with Ambrose? Or would it be more fun to go to a matinée at the Alhambra in Leicester Square? To do that they’d need rather a lot of money and she hadn’t all that much, not now that she’d paid for her bus fare and the tea and toast for them both. Could she imagine Ambrose saying in a lordly fashion, ‘Come on, Lexie. I’ll take you to the theatre’?

  She closed her eyes to make the pictures come in her head and with it the wanting feeling inside — the hungry needing that was so much a part of the imagining — but it didn’t really work, somehow. There were things she could imagine, and some things she couldn’t, and Ambrose suggesting things was one of the difficult ones. Maybe she could persuade him to lend her some money and then suggest they go to the matinée and she’d pay — now, that was one that might work —

  The shop door tinkled as it opened, and the bell above it was sent swinging wildly on its spring. She opened her eyes to see the customer before them busily explaining to Mr Gamba what he wanted — this time speaking in loud German — and a newcomer waiting alongside them.

  The man who had come in was tall and thin, wearing a coat with the heaviest fur collar Lexie could ever remember seeing, and a bowler hat with the curliest of brims. His clothes, unlike Lexie’s and Ambrose’s, looked expensive — really good — and she felt a little stab of anger at the way his splendour dimmed theirs and felt her face stiffen as it always did when she was angry. He had very dark eyes and a luxuriant moustache that looked silky in the gleaming electric light that shone over the counter, and as she looked at him she saw him smile, but not at her. He’d caught Ambrose’s eye and she flicked her own glance at Ambrose to see he was smiling too.

  ‘Lovely morning!’ the man said to Ambrose.

  ‘Lovely, yes.’ He sounded a little odd, Lexie thought, and she glanced at him again. He seemed a little pink, and she was puzzled. Did he know this man? And if so why didn’t he say, ‘This is Lexie’, the way you’re supposed to when you meet people who don’t know each other, and you know them both?

  ‘Nice to see you again,’ the man said, and still didn’t look at Lexie.

  ‘Er — yes,’ Ambrose said. ‘Er — I mean, I don’t remember seeing you before anywhere —’

  ‘Oh, dear, am I so unremarkable?’ the man said, and laughed, an easy, soft laugh that sounded as though he practised it. ‘You’re in the business, surely? Like me? I’m in Hello Ragtime, you know. At the Hippodrome. Where are you working?’

  ‘We’re in Madame Gansella’s Juvenile Jollities. We’re the stars of it,’ Lexie said loudly, and the man with the moustache looked at her and raised his eyebrows slightly.

  ‘Really? Madame — yes, very nice, I’m sure. The important thing is that you’re working, isn’t it? I’ve been in Hello Ragtime for almost a year now — we’re having a marvellous run. Caught the show, have you?’ And he looked again at Ambrose, his eyes smiling.

  ‘No, not really,’ Ambrose said, and grinned suddenly. ‘Hardly likely to, either. We’re not exactly West End performers, are we?’

  ‘Well, give it time,’ the man said, and laughed again, that soft little sound. Ambrose seemed to copy it as he laughed too, and Lexie felt chilled and more angry than ever. It was as though she weren’t there and she said, again loudly, ‘We’re going on the road with our show. Starting soon, we are. London first and then we’re going to all sorts of places. Leeds and Manchester and all sorts —’

  ‘Yes,’ said the man, never taking his eyes from Ambrose. ‘As I say, great to be working. Number one tour, is it?’

  Ambrose went a little more pink. ‘Not that sort of tour,’ he mumbled. ‘We’re — it’s not like your sort of s
how, I mean. We’re going to the music halls and that. Start of the second half we are — run about thirty, forty minutes —’

  ‘Ah, I see!’ the man said. ‘Not legit stage at all — really, with your looks you could do better than that. And I dare say you’re a pretty dancer, hmm? Certainly got the build for it,’ and his eyes slid down Ambrose to his long legs.

  ‘So, who is next please?’ The last customer had gone and Mr Gamba was standing behind his counter with an impatient air. Ambrose said to the man with the moustache, ‘Oh! Yes — excuse me — got to pick up a parcel —’ and hurried across to the counter.

  ‘For Madame Gansella,’ he said. ‘You’ve got some things ready for her, she said, the girls’ shoes she ordered last week — here’s the docket —’ And Mr Gamba nodded and went away to the bowels of his shop, leaving the three of them waiting.

  At once the man in the moustache started his chatter again, wandering over to the counter to stand lounging beside Ambrose in such a way that Lexie couldn’t stand there too, not without pushing in in an obvious sort of way, and she didn’t think Ambrose would like that, for he was certainly showing every sign of being interested in the tall man’s conversation. She stood and watched them, glowering now, as he went on and on about how boring it was being in a long run and how the other chaps in the chorus could be really nasty sometimes when a fellow did well and attracted a bit of attention from the management, and she felt the pinch of coldness inside her grow and spread and tried to think again about how they would spend the afternoon when they had collected their parcel and were able to escape into the street.

  But somehow the images wouldn’t form in her mind, try as she might. All she could see were the two male backs standing in front of the counter, talking at each other about nonsensical things that didn’t matter. Who cared about the backstage gossip from the Hippodrome? She and Ambrose didn’t. Why did this horrible man keep on and on about it?