Forgotten Dreams (3 page)
‘Looked like temper to me,’ Kenny said shortly. ‘Tell you what, queen, we’ll go to the nearest shop for a tin of conny-onny and two ounces of Typhoo and take it straight back to the theatre. I knows women, I does: she’ll be sweet as apple pie once she’s got her gob round a cuppa tea.’
Lottie agreed that this would be sensible and the two children hurried to the corner shop to buy the tea and a tin of condensed milk. Then they returned to the theatre and went straight to the foyer. Kenny tapped loudly on the box office pass door, then thrust it open. ‘We brung you some conny-onny and some tea, Mrs Magic,’ he said in a loud and cheerful choice. ‘We guessed you’d be gaspin’ for a cuppa, but we’ll get on now and do the rest of the messages.’
‘Ah, you’re a good lad,’ Louella said gratefully. ‘I’d ask you to put the kettle on but Mrs Mulvaney arrived ten minutes ago so I dare say she’ll make a brew, and I’m about to close the box office anyway. You’d best go straight home with the rest of the shopping.’
‘All right, Mammy,’ Lottie said, as her mother shut and locked the box office window and came out of the pass door to close off the foyer. ‘Will – will you be coming home before the performance?’ She glanced at the clock which hung just over the door leading to the stalls. It was only half past three and the first house started at seven: plenty of time for Louella to get back to Victoria Court and fix them both a snack before they returned to the theatre together.
Louella cocked her head on one side, considering. ‘I suppose I’ll have to since you’ve got yourself in such a mess,’ she said, her voice softening. ‘Now off with you. If you’re home before me, queen, you can start the tea.’
‘Yes, all right, Mammy . . . I mean Louella,’ Lottie said as she and Kenny were pushed out of the foyer and on to the pavement. ‘What do you want for tea, though? There’s some cold mutton . . .’
‘That’ll do. Butter some bread and buy a piece of slab cake from Sample’s,’ Louella said, and the children heard the bolts being drawn across as they turned away, heading once more for St John’s market.
Lottie always went to the same stall since it was a well-known fact that if you shopped regularly with the same stallholder he or she was unlikely to risk losing custom by selling you inferior fruit or vegetables. Nellie Crabbe was a tiny wizened old lady with dyed ginger hair, a pair of enormous spectacles and a face wrinkled as a prune. Once she had been wardrobe mistress at the theatre but failing eyesight had led to her retirement and now she ran the greengrocery stall for her son, William, who farmed on the Wirral and provided her with excellent fruit and vegetables in season. Everyone in the theatre patronised her because they knew she would never cheat them and also from a sense of loyalty to one who had, in her time, worked well for them. When Louella did her own shopping, which was not often, she would not have dreamed of going to any other stall first, though if Mrs Crabbe had run out of a particular fruit or vegetable she would buy from another source, though she would make sure to do so where Mrs Crabbe could not see her.
For her part, Lottie did very well out of Mrs Crabbe for she personified the two loves of the old lady’s life, the theatre and little girls. Mrs Crabbe always made up Lottie’s order with meticulous honesty and then added little extras. At this time of year there might be a peach with a bruise on it, a handful of late blackcurrants or the fat, red dessert gooseberries, sweet and juice-filled, which Lottie and Kenny particularly loved. Later, there would be apples and pears, and when winter came an orange with a split in it, or a banana whose yellow skin was turning black, for William Crabbe bought from the wholesalers such fruit and vegetables as he could not grow on his own farm.
The children arrived at the stall and Lottie handed over her list. Mrs Crabbe pursed her lips and frowned down at the writing, then handed it back to her small customer. ‘Just you read it to me, my love; it’ll save time and reading small writing makes me eyes ache,’ she said. ‘And don’t forget, read out the heavy things first – spuds, drumhead cabbage and such – so’s they go into the bottom of your marketing bag and don’t crush the fruit.’ She chuckled softly. ‘I knows your mam of old; she don’t think logical, but there, that’s actresses for you.’
Lottie scanned the list, then began to read it in reverse order, thinking indulgently that Louella wrote her list in order of her own preference so that peaches entered her head long before mundane things like potatoes. When the list was completed, Mrs Crabbe selected a brown paper bag from the hooks behind her and regarded her stall. ‘Them grapes will be mush by tomorrer,’ she murmured, popping a bunch into the bag. ‘An’ them plums won’t go till Sat’day.’ She picked up two large Victoria plums, put them carefully beside the grapes, then named the sum which Lottie owed for the rest of her goods.
Lottie fished out her purse and paid up, beaming at her old friend. ‘You are kind to us, Mrs Crabbe,’ she said gratefully. ‘I wish I’d been in the theatre when you was, though Mrs Jones is very nice and hardly grumbled at all when I told her I’d growed out o’ me tutu an’ needed a new one. She made me a beauty, too,’ she added reminiscently.
Mrs Crabbe chuckled indulgently. ‘I trained that young woman so she’s bound to be capable,’ she remarked. Mrs Jones was Mrs Crabbe’s daughter and was in fact very good at her work, though Lottie would not have dreamed of saying so to the old lady. In fact, Mrs Crabbe had retired before Lottie was born, but Lottie knew what a formidable reputation the old lady had had for making costumes out of nothing, and at a moment’s notice.
Now, she consulted her list as soon as Mrs Crabbe moved to serve the next customer. ‘Not much more, Kenny,’ she informed her friend. ‘Most of it we can get on our way home.’ She dug a hand into the basket and produced the plums, and soon both children were eating the fruit, juice dribbling down their chins. ‘Don’t let me forget Mammy wanted some slab cake because it ain’t on the list, and she likes to cut little bits off the slab to dip into her tea.’ She glanced ahead of her. ‘Race you to Pringle’s.’
Louella usually enjoyed her stint in the box office, but today, she thought as she went to join Mrs Mulvaney in the green room, she could have done without it. And now, on top of her disagreement with Max, she would have to face up to the fact that her daughter was beginning to lose her teeth and might easily lose her appeal as well.
When she reached the green room, Mrs Mulvaney, who was responsible for the hiring and firing of usherettes and made tea for the cast, was not there, but the kettle was steaming gently on the paraffin stove, so Louella tipped tea into the big brown pot and let it brew for a few moments. Finally she poured herself a large mugful, flopped into an armchair and began to sip. She was still cross, however. She and Max had fallen out when he had suggested that she might begin to pay a fairer share of the rent of the house in Victoria Court – half, in fact – and she had reminded him, pretty sharply, that he earned more than she and the arrangement had always been that she should pay one-third and he two. After all, she pointed out, she kept the place clean, did the marketing and cooked the food, as well as keeping his stage clothes spotless and the paraphernalia of his magic act in tip-top condition. This included feeding two white rabbits and four white doves, though to be fair young Baz always looked after the animals and birds. He bought their food and the sawdust with which the cage floors were lined, but she had not mentioned this fact to Max, of course.
The argument had started soon after they had got up, when they were sitting in the kitchen, toasting rounds of bread and spreading the slices with strawberry jam. Usually they had porridge, but Louella had forgotten to buy milk or conny-onny the previous day, and Max liked his porridge creamy. Perhaps it had been that which had led to his grumbling that money seemed to go nowhere these days. ‘It’s not so bad for you because the management pays you pretty well for little Miss Lottie,’ he had observed. ‘What’s more, you don’t need no rabbits nor pigeons nor disappearin’ boxes to perform your act. I reckons it’s time we split the rent down the middle, ’cos there’s two of us an’ two of you and it ’ud be fairer all round.’
Louella had glanced at him expectantly, hoping to see a teasing smile cross that handsome face, but Max was staring at her challengingly, so she waded straight in on the offensive, listing all that she did in the house.
‘But it’s not you who cleans the place,’ Max pointed out. ‘Mrs Brocklehurst does that, as well as the washing and ironing, to say nothing of some cooking and any shopping that you and Lottie don’t have time for. And it’s me who usually pays her, remember.’
‘Ye-es, you usually do,’ Louella admitted unwillingly. ‘But that’s because it was your house for a couple of years before I moved in, and Mrs B has always worked for you. If you ask me . . .’
‘And it’s Baz who feeds and cleans the animals and birds, not you at all,’ Max continued remorselessly. ‘I’m telling you, Lou, it’s not fair and it’s time we sorted things out.’
Louella had jumped to her feet, realising that she had been unwise to claim to do so many jobs which were in fact done by other people. ‘You’re in a bad mood because you lost your bleedin’ shirt on the horse what one of your pals said was a dead cert,’ she announced firmly. They had been sitting on either side of the kitchen table, but then she had crossed the room and as Max had struggled out of his chair had flung herself at him, throwing her arms up round his neck, for he was a good deal taller than she. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know you back the horses and go to the races for relaxation,’ she said, pushing her head into the hollow of his shoulder. ‘But oh, Maxy, darling, I do pay more than my share of the housekeeping, you know I do. Don’t let’s quarrel. Suppose I pay all the housekeeping; would that do?’
Max had heaved a great sigh. ‘You know very well I’m not the sort of feller to check up on you when you tell me what the food has cost,’ he said, but to Louella’s relief he no longer sounded angry. ‘What’s wrong with paying half the rent, anyway? No, tell you what. You pay Mrs B for the work she does – the whole lot, mind – and we won’t argue over the rent.’
Louella had had to agree but she had not been at all pleased. She and Max had been together now for a year and this was the first time he had questioned her contribution to household expenses. Louella knew that many men would have expected her to hand over most of her earnings, so before she had moved in she had made it plain how things were to be. She was an independent woman with a child to bring up. One day, she would need money for her daughter’s schooling and so on, which meant she must have savings. Max had agreed to all her conditions, for apart from his work on the stage he was both lazy and easy-going, and he had been quite content, in the past, for Louella to manage their finances.
Now, sitting in the green room sipping her tea, Louella cursed the wretched horse, which had proved to be not a dead cert at all but had run as though it only had three legs. But for Flying Finish’s abysmal performance Max would never have dreamed of querying how she spent their money. Indeed, he would have shared his winnings with her, taken her somewhere exotic for a meal, and bought her a pretty necklace or some of the thin silver bangles which she wore in her stage act. However, Louella thought she had been lucky that Max had not asked to see the household bills. The arrangement was that she should purchase everything for the house and then split the price of such items down the middle. In fact, he usually paid somewhat more, and Louella salved her conscience by telling herself that Baz ate at least twice as much as Lottie, and that Max himself ate a great deal more than she. This was true but did not take into account the fact that Max thought fruit and salads were miserable fare, whereas she and Lottie ate masses of vegetables and fruit all the year round, even when the latter was expensive, as it was in winter.
Louella’s train of thought was interrupted as the green room door opened and several members of the cast entered. They surged into the room led by the comedian, Jack Russell, a small, sharp-faced man with bristly grey hair and shrewd twinkling brown eyes. Louella did not know if Jack Russell was his real name since it was a part of his act to bound on to the stage, yapping like an excited terrier, and his first line was always: ‘Well folks, was I named after the dog or was the dog named after me? C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, answers on a postcard and if youse wrong I’ll come down and nip your ankles!’
Just now, however, Jack’s mind was on other things. ‘Fee, fie, fo, fum,’ he boomed, pointing to the pot, ‘I smell tea in the auditorium. Who’s goin’ to pour Giant Jack a cup, eh?’
One of the chorus girls smiled at Jack and patted his bristly head. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said, beginning to get mugs down from the shelf. ‘Anyone else gasping for a cuppa?’
Lottie and Kenny completed their shopping in good time and tea was on the table when Louella arrived home. Her temper had clearly improved for she was singing as she entered the kitchen and smiled approvingly at her daughter as her eyes took in the tidy kitchen, the kettle steaming on the hob and the table neatly laid with cold mutton, bread and butter, and slab cake set out ready. ‘You are a good girl, my pet. I knew I could rely on you,’ she said, taking off her light jacket and fluffing out her hair with the gesture Lottie knew so well. ‘I’m sorry I was cross earlier, but Max and I had had a bit of a barney and I was still upset. You know how I am.’
Lottie smiled forgivingly at her parent; she did indeed know how Louella was. Up one minute and down the next, blowing first hot and then cold, tears turning to laughter in a moment, that was Louella, but of course it would not do to say so; instead she went over to the fire intending to make the tea but Louella forestalled her. ‘I’ll do that, pet, if you’ll run up to my room and fetch down my sewing box. There’s a hole in the knee of my fishnet tights which I’ll have to mend before I can go on stage again. Ah, I see you didn’t wait for me to get home but had a good wash and brushed out your hair.’ She finished pouring the hot water into the teapot, then swooped on Lottie and gave her a hug. ‘I won’t even ask if you got all my messages because I know you will have done so. Oh, you didn’t forget Max’s Woodbines, did you?’
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