Ellie felt awkward and inhibited being so unprepared – she wasn’t even wearing shoes suitable for dancing. The empty theatre was spooky and her feet made the most terrible noise on the bare boards.
She assumed he was now going to tell her she wasn’t good enough. As she walked down the steps she had a good mind to give him a mouthful.
‘Sit down there,’ he said curtly, gesturing a few seats away from him. Then he turned towards her, silently studying her.
Ellie dropped her eyes to her lap, feeling foolish now and wishing she hadn’t come. Even the angry words that had been on her lips a moment ago dried up.
‘Ellie,’ he said after a lengthy pause. ‘You are a natural actress, you have an agreeable voice and you move well. You have a long way to go before you’ll be a musical comedy star. But I believe you have the raw material necessary.’
Ellie’s head jerked round in surprise. ‘You do?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You seem surprised.’
Ellie shrugged her shoulders. It sounded very much as if he was going to add, ‘Come back in a few years.’
‘I wasn’t prepared today,’ she said in her defence. ‘I can do better.’
Mr Dingle wasn’t like other men, but she couldn’t put a finger on why. He had no discernible accent, but the rather stilted, slow way he spoke suggested he could be trying to conceal his origins. His clothes were arty – she’d noticed he wore purple socks – but she put that down to his profession. His fingers were long and tapered, the nails carefully manicured, almost feminine, yet she sensed he was strong and muscular beneath that cream-coloured linen jacket. But it wasn’t his physical appearance that made her curious about him, so much as his manner. For some reason she felt he was playing a part, that in time she might find the real Ambrose Dingle was quite different.
‘I’m sure you can do better,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I purposely didn’t give you time to prepare, so I could judge your ability to improvise. From what I’ve seen this morning I’m satisfied you can handle the part.’
Ellie’s eyes shone. Had he been more effusive, she would have been suspicious of him; it was enough for now that she’d scraped by. ‘I’m prepared to work hard,’ she said, so excited she was trembling.
‘You’ll have to,’ he said drily, his pale blue eyes chilling. ‘Performing in a theatre is a great deal different to singing in a cellar club, your voice has to reach the back row of the balcony and you’ll need to learn discipline when working with seasoned professionals. But I’m prepared to give you a chance.’
‘Thank you sir,’ she said humbly. ‘I won’t let you down.’
Ambrose rarely praised girls he was auditioning; he found they put far more effort into their performance if he kept them at arm’s length. In fact he had felt the hairs on the back of his head rise while Ellie was reading the soliloquy, a sure sign as far as he was concerned that she had something special. Not only did she manage the best cockney accent he’d heard in years, but she had captured the correct emotions of fear, anger and betrayal. She had stage presence, something he couldn’t teach if he spent twenty years with a would-be actor. Her looks too were the kind that improved with age. Today she was another very pretty girl, but by her late twenties she’d be an outstandingly beautiful woman.
‘Your cockney accent was excellent.’ He smiled for the first time and it made him almost handsome. ‘I just hope you’ll be able to manage Irish, French and other ones equally well.’
Ellie was just about to say she was good at cockney because she was one, when she realised this was unnecessary. If he didn’t know, it meant she could reinvent herself if she wished. ‘I ’ave, ’ow you say? A good ear,’ she said in her best French maid’s voice, smiling demurely.
He laughed, the first time she’d heard it, and it was a rich bellow that, like his smile, made him nicer. ‘I can’t put you on the bill as “Ellie”,’ he said, in a warmer voice. ‘It creates nothing but an image of a cockney sparrow. What’s it short for? Eleanor?’
‘Helena,’ Ellie said.
‘Helena,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Helena Forester, now that’s got a nice ring to it. You could be French, Greek or anything with such a name.’
‘Fine.’ Ellie smiled, knowing Polly would have approved. ‘What will I be doing in the show?’
‘I’m hoping to get Tommy Trinder as our star,’ Ambrose went on, speaking maddeningly slowly. ‘I have a magician lined up and an excellent tenor, Riccardo De Marco, but I also have an actor called Edward Manning who I intend to pair you with in a sketch. I also want you to do a singing spot with my dancing girls.’
Ellie digested this, a little perturbed at the thought of working in tandem with a man. ‘Is the sketch funny?’ she asked.
Ambrose gave her an odd look. ‘How funny it is will depend on you,’ he said. ‘Edward will be playing a typically British upper-class idiotic gentleman. You will be a cheeky, seductive maid. The laughs will come from his inability to see what’s going on, and all the innuendoes. I have a copy of the script here.’ He reached down and pulled out a sheaf of papers from his briefcase. ‘Tonight I want you to learn it carefully and tomorrow you can start rehearsing it with Edward. I shall meet you outside here at nine in the morning, sharp. I’ve booked a room above a pub nearby where I’ll rehearse you for a couple of days.’
‘What about everyone else?’ Ellie asked tentatively.
‘The dancers will be arriving in a day or two when their current venue closes. I have a larger rehearsal room booked for then. The other acts don’t need to be here until just a few days before we open. But before we go any further, Ellie, I must get you to sign a contract with me.’
Again he delved into his briefcase and brought out a document.
‘This is standard procedure,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘A mere formality, as I’ll be paying your wages, not Mr Jameson. All my girls sign with me. It means you can’t up and leave in the middle of a show, and prevents anyone poaching you away from me. Us producers would have a tough time of it if we payed you during rehearsals and you then decided to take off and join another show at the last minute.’
‘That sounds fair enough,’ Ellie smiled in agreement. ‘How much are you going to pay me, though?’
‘Four quid a week,’ he said.
Ellie was startled more by his slang than by the offer of ten bob more a week than she earned now. Throughout their conversation he had been so correct. She looked at him and smirked. ‘Four quid sounds fine,’ she replied and had the satisfaction of seeing him blush. ‘Where do I sign?’
It was too dark to read it, so she just took his pen and signed Helena Forester with a flourish where he indicated.
‘What about the club?’ she asked. ‘Will Jimbo still expect me to sing there?’
‘I’ve told him you won’t be in any more. With rehearsals during the morning, matinée and working the whole evening, you’ll have no time for anything more.’
‘What about tonight, though?’ Ellie looked quizzically at Ambrose. She hadn’t expected to end her Blue Moon days quite so abruptly.
‘Tonight you’ll get to bed early, after you’ve learnt that script,’ he smiled almost paternally. ‘Now run along, go and sit in the park and get some fresh air. It’s your last day of freedom.’
Ellie sat in Leicester Square in the spring sunshine, reading the script, and her estimation of Ambrose Dingle rose another peg or two. It was absolutely perfect for her and she knew as long as this actor Edward Manning was in step with her it could be hilarious.
It was in the tradition of most farces. A somewhat naïve gentleman, complete with monocle, is shown to his room at a weekend country house party by a cheeky cockney maid. He is clearly a little excited about what promises to be a ripping weekend. While she unpacks his suitcase he boasts of his shooting and riding prowess. The maid pretends not to understand much of what he is saying, turning every statement into something saucy and getting him hot under the collar with glimpses of her cleavage and sto
cking tops. Finally she has him on all fours on the floor, as he desperately tries to explain a point about riding, while she sits astride his back brandishing his riding crop. The sketch ends with the gong for dinner, when she disappears leaving him totally confused.
Ellie was laughing aloud by the time she’d finished the script. It was silly and vulgar, but very funny, and all at once she was jolted painfully back to thoughts of Charley and his mother.
It was their sort of humour. Ellie could imagine acting it out to them in the kitchen of Coburgh Street. A wave of desolation washed over her. The letter she’d written Charley hadn’t changed anything. He hadn’t called round. He just didn’t want her any more.
There were crowds of people about, office girls in groups sitting on the grass eating sandwiches, shoppers pausing in the square for a rest, a bunch of sailors kicking a football about and eyeing up the girls. A stop-me-and-buy-one ice-cream man, the first she’d seen for five years, was doing a brisk trade with choc ices at 9d each. A couple of young lads with grubby faces, both wearing placards round their necks with the message, ‘Be ready for Victory’, were selling small hand-held Union Jacks out of a suitcase.
So much optimism suddenly. Just a week ago people had been crying in the streets about President Roosevelt’s death. Two weeks before that they’d been sighing over the huge casualties in both the Smithfield Market and Whitechapel rockets attacks. But there had been no rockets since the one in Orpington right at the end of March and the news was that all the rocket bases in Germany were now destroyed. Council workers were out putting back bulbs in street lamps, the shelters in underground stations were closed for good and the bunks removed for ever. Everywhere people were tidying up, removing sandbags, stripping tape off their windows; even the London pubs were getting in stocks of gin, whisky and beer, ready for Victory Day when it came.
Ellie got up and walked back to her room, clutching the script under her arm. She was going to be optimistic too, never mind about Charley. As Marleen always used to say, ‘There’s as many men in the world as there are fish in the sea, and they aren’t so hard to catch.’
‘Look out the window, Edward!’ Ambrose roared out. ‘Don’t look round at Ellie as you say your line. It’s for the audience to laugh at what she’s doing, not you.’
The room above the Fighting Cocks was bare except for a few chairs, tables and a piano. Ambrose had arranged the chairs in the position the bedroom furniture would be in on the real stage.
To Ellie, Edward Manning was the Hon Charles De Witt: he didn’t have to act. Young, tall and slender, with a plummy, upper-class accent, he wore his grey flannels and blazer with precisely the right air of a man who’d never done a hand’s turn in his life.
Ambrose had introduced Edward to Ellie outside the Phoenix and then they’d come straight to Percy Street, off Tottenham Court Road, and begun rehearsing. There was no time to talk and Edward’s stiff manner suggested he had no desire to. Now it was almost four in the afternoon and aside from a ten-minute break when the landlord had brought them up corned beef sandwiches and tea, they had been working at the sketch non-stop.
‘Gosh! I believe that’s Phoebe Bonhill,’ Edward said, looking out of the pretend window. ‘How absolutely topping, such a sweet gel.’
While Edward was speaking his line, Ellie was lifting up a pair of underpants from a couple of chairs, which were standing in for the bed. She held them aloft, putting her finger through the hole in the front and wiggling it about suggestively.
‘I say, Ruby.’ Edward turned back towards Ellie. ‘I can unpack my underwear myself.’
‘I’m sure you can, sir,’ Ellie said in a strong cockney voice, rolling her eyes suggestively. ‘But it’s ever so much nicer when someone does it for you.’
This time they went right through the sketch, without Ambrose stopping them once.
‘Much better,’ he said as they finished, and for the first time that day he looked pleased. ‘That’s enough for one day. Be here again at nine tomorrow. Ellie, bring your practice clothes too – I shall be running through your song.’
Ambrose hailed a cab as they came out of the Fighting Cocks, leaped in and was off without a backward glance.
‘I wish the public houses were open,’ Edward said. ‘I could murder a gin and tonic.’
There was something wistful about his remark. Ellie had a feeling it wasn’t so much that he wanted drink, but company.
‘A cup of tea and a sit down would suit me,’ she said. She realised from his manner that he probably wanted male company, but she was curious enough about him to risk a brush-off. ‘Fancy joining me?’
Although Edward’s speech and manner were typically British, he looked German. His hair were white blond, eyes icy-blue and he had an exceptionally fine bone structure and glowing skin. Over their lunchtime sandwich she had forgotten herself and called him Lord Haw Haw. His only real flaw, apart from his starchy manner, was a weak and petulant mouth. She thought perhaps he had been spoilt as a child, but he had laughed at being called Lord Haw Haw, so he obviously did have a sense of humour.
‘Topping,’ he said with a smile. She couldn’t be certain whether he was still being Charles De Witt, or whether he normally spoke like that.
Sonny’s was closest, a grubby little café just off Tottenham Court Road. Edward looked a bit concerned about the stained and peeling oilcloth on the tables and hesitated before sitting down.
There were no other customers. A glass dome on the counter held two rock buns and a blackboard hanging on the wall had the scrawled message, ‘No sosages. But bacen.’
‘I hope you didn’t want a sausage,’ Ellie giggled. ‘I think it might be dangerous to eat one here anyway.’
‘Perhaps it might be better to go somewhere else,’ Edward said nervously. A large tabby cat sitting up by the tea urn was looking at him balefully with half-closed eyes. ‘There doesn’t seem to be anyone serving.’
As he spoke, a woman in a flowery, none too clean pinny and a turban-style headscarf appeared before them, a cigarette dangling between her lips, and muttered something unintelligible.
Edward looked askance at Ellie.
‘She said, “What’ll you have?”’ Ellie interpreted, amused by his shocked expression.
‘A pot of tea for two, please,’ Edward said. ‘Do you have any toasted teacakes?’
Again an unintelligible reply, and the woman turned and walked away.
‘What is it?’ Edward asked indignantly. ‘What did she say?’
‘She said, “We only do mugs of tea, and what’cha think this is, bleedin’ Lyons Corner House. I’ll get you toast.”’ Ellie spluttered with laughter.
‘Tell me about you, Ellie?’ Edward asked her, fixing her with his cool blue eyes. ‘Have you been an actress long? You’re frightfully good. I found it terribly hard not to laugh at you today.’
Ellie was a little in awe of him: he seemed experienced and she was very much aware of the huge divide between their backgrounds. But his flattery and interest warmed her, and she started to tell him about the Blue Moon and her ambitions. Perhaps they could be friends.
‘I say! Do you think she’s gone all the way to China?’ Edward asked, when ten minutes later the tea still hadn’t arrived.
‘She’s probably brewing it up in a bucket out the back,’ Ellie giggled. ‘But we’d better not complain, she might poison us.’
To Ellie, such cafés were perfectly acceptable. People had grown weary in the last year of cleaning up after bombs, of broken windows, food shortages and the bitter, cold winter. She could laugh at such slovenliness, because she sympathised with the reasons behind it.
‘You are a hoot,’ he said. ‘Most girls I know wouldn’t dream of coming in a place like this.’
At that point the woman came back. She slammed down the two mugs of tea with one hand, the toast with the other. Ellie realised she’d heard Edward’s remark.
‘Ninepence,’ she snapped. ‘And it’s real butter an’ all. You do
n’t get nothin’ but marge in fancy places.’
‘Topping.’ Edward at least had the grace to blush as he hastily paid up.
Once the woman was out of earshot, Ellie thought she ought to put Edward straight. ‘I always eat in places like this,’ she said quietly. ‘I can’t afford to go anywhere else. I suppose you’ve got rich folks?’
‘Well, sort of.’ He looked a little uncomfortable. ‘Well, actually they’re dead Ellie. They were killed in a motoring accident in France back in thirty-two. My grandmother was my guardian until I came of age.’
With just those few lines Ellie got a clear picture. A boy who had all the advantages of a good education and money, but no family life. ‘I’m an orphan too.’ She put one hand on his, tentatively. ‘It’s tough sometimes, isn’t it?’
She saw a warmth creep into his eyes and knew then they were going to be friends.
‘I’m usually scared of girls,’ he admitted with a tight little laugh. ‘I’m twenty-two, but I was in a blue funk coming up here this morning. Don’t know what to say to them, you see.’
‘We’re just people,’ Ellie said, removing her hand from his and munching into the toast. ‘And this is butter!’
They stayed in the café for almost an hour. She learned his grandmother lived in Wiltshire, that he was in a sanatorium in Austria when his parents were killed and that afterwards he had a private tutor at his grandmother’s until he had caught up enough to be sent to boarding-school.
‘I hated every moment of it,’ he said with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘Except for when we put on plays. I always played women’s parts, but I didn’t mind that too much. I made up my mind to be an actor and I suppose I was lucky really that the war was on and there was such a shortage of men in the theatre.’