Ellie (39 page)

They were arm in arm, in spangled costumes and feathered head-dresses. She knew now that this picture had been taken just days after Polly met Miles.

‘I’ll make you proud of me,’ Ellie whispered, kissing each of the two smiling faces that meant so much to her. ‘I’ll pay you both back for all the love and care you showed me. Just watch.’

Chapter Fourteen

Ambrose Dingle abruptly stopped playing the piano halfway through the number. Ellie halted her dance and peered down anxiously into the gloom of the orchestra pit. It was so quiet in the empty theatre that her panting sounded like a traction engine. She felt certain she’d failed miserably.

‘That’s it.’ He looked up at her. ‘I’ve seen enough. Come down here, I want to talk to you.’

Ellie was confused by Mr Dingle. It was two weeks since he saw her act at the club. Last night he’d appeared again, nodded to her and then gone into Jimbo’s office. He remained in there for some two hours and when he did finally come out, he ordered her to meet him at the Phoenix at ten in the morning.

Jimbo was very terse after Dingle left, so much so Ellie didn’t dare ask any questions. She wondered if they’d fallen out about her.

The cleaners were still working when she arrived at the Phoenix this morning. One of them ushered her into the stalls and informed her Mr Dingle was discussing something with the manager.

She sat waiting for an hour, and it seemed like three, especially as it was so dark. She could hear the cleaners chatting as they swept out the gallery, but no one came in to speak to her.

She admired the splendid painted ceiling, noted every chip in the gilt cherubs on the boxes, and counted how many of the red plush seats had torn upholstery. She wondered if she dared climb up on to the stage and peer behind the curtain. The theatre smelt horrid, of stale cigarette smoke and mildew mingled with disinfectant, and she wondered if Mr Dingle had forgotten about her and gone home.

When the safety curtain suddenly creaked up, she jumped. The red velvet curtains swung back and Dingle came down the steps at the side of the stage. He barely looked at her, made no attempt to put her at her ease, just handed her one page of a typewritten script and told her to get up on the stage and read it to him.

She had no time to do more than scan quickly through it and she felt angry that he hadn’t had the good manners even to apologise for keeping her waiting so long. But her anger at least banished her nerves.

The script was a soliloquy, spoken by a cockney woman deserted by her husband, who had left her with four children.

Ellie felt she read it quite well. For the past two weeks she’d been waiting anxiously for a response to her letter to Charley. Now she felt he would never contact her again, so the anguish of the abandoned woman was easy to identify with. Mr Dingle made no comment when she finished. Instead, he sat down at the piano in the orchestra pit, began to play a number from
The Quaker Girl
and told her to forget singing it, just to dance.

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 stocking 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.