The Lights of London (5 page)

Facing the audience stood a table, which might once have been described as grand, where Mr Tompkins, the Chairman, sat surrounded by the assorted paraphernalia of his profession.

Despite the moth-eaten appearance of his evening dress that barely stretched across his bulky frame, and his shirt collar that added to the flush of his booze-reddened cheeks, Mr Tompkins presided over events with a great show of exaggerated dignity. Actually, his excessively dramatic use of the items set out on the table before him was more to do with hiding his customary inebriation than with professional pride. The objects he used with such flourish were a mirror, to keep an eye on
the acts going on behind him; a clock to enable him to time the turns – with three shows a night, it was important to keep things moving – and, most essential with a rowdy hall such as the Old Black Dog, a gavel to keep order.

During the evening’s first and second shows the Chairman had had to put his gavel to frequent use and, from the reaction to the opening turn of this, the third show – an elderly woman with a clever, if incredibly dull, paper-tearing routine – it looked as though this house wouldn’t be much different.

The cacophony from the assembled dock workers, costermongers, labourers and the occasional well-dressed toff was deafening. And, as if that weren’t enough, there were the added shrieks and hoots coming from the men’s sweethearts, wives and even their babies. When the young feller-me-lads at the back of the hall started
their
hollering and whistling it was complete bedlam.

And it wasn’t only the noise. There was also the smell of the place: a mingling of the noxious stink of cheap scent, the pong of fried-fish suppers that had been smuggled in under copious skirts and top coats, and some underlying rancidness that Mr Tompkins was not keen even to begin to identify. When combined they made the atmosphere almost overwhelming. If it wasn’t for his need of a regular pay-packet to satisfy his taste for rum and the impossibility, with his reputation, of his ever finding employment elsewhere, there was no way on earth that Mr Tompkins would have wanted to stay in such a hell-hole.

The audience were soon baying for the first act to be dragged off and for the next one to begin. A boisterous response was only to be expected at the halls, but when the word had spread that the décor of the Old Black Dog
matched the standard of the turns, the whole point of going to this tatty theatre in Rosemary Lane was that you could see the worst rubbish this side of the Aldgate Pump. In other words, you only went there to have a good laugh, a few drinks and to leave early enough to seek out some proper entertainment, either at another hall, or with one of the bargain-priced brides who frequented that part of the East End.

This, however, would have been a revelation to Jack Fisher; he honestly could not understand where he was going wrong. He pulled off his battered felt hat and shook his head, making his thick red hair flop into his eyes.

Whatever was he going to do? It had started so well. In fact, for the first few days he had had to turn customers away, they were that full, and they had all stayed to the end, drinking like fish and almost fighting to hand over every penny of their hard-earned wages. But something had gone wrong and now the punters just wouldn’t stay for the whole evening, and that meant the bar takings had plummeted. If they fell any lower he wouldn’t be able to pay the acts. And then …

It didn’t bear thinking about.

He scanned the room, trying to see what the problem was and what he could do to sort it out. It looked the part all right. Well, he thought it did. Not that he’d seen that many music-halls, just those first fantastic places he had visited as a lad when his father had taken him, as a wondrous treat, all the way to Blackpool when he was a boy. Those were the ones that had fired his dreams. Then there were the ones he had seen since his arrival in London. But they hadn’t had this problem.

He looked about the room, frowning, trying to see. Maybe it was something about the building.

When Jack had first come down from the north-east
and had taken over the Old Black Dog the place had been unused – save by a flock of pigeons and a whole community of rats – for almost a generation and, despite the money he had spent on trying to conceal its recent past, its downward spiral from a once grand building to a cheap riverside tavern could be seen all too clearly.

Originally built as a fine house befitting the status of a wealthy spice merchant, the building had been forcibly sold off after a notorious scandal had ruined the disgraced owner. He had been found out in a swindle, which involved a gentleman from Lloyd’s and a disputed claim over whether or not the good ship
Marie Thérèse
had actually sunk off the islands of Bermuda, or, as had eventually been proved, the merchant had worked a scam. Although anchored safely downriver from the Wapping Basin, and with a fresh coat of paint and a brand new nameplate declaring it to be the more prosaically entitled
Saucy Sue
, the merchant still failed to disguise its true identity from the wily insurance investigators, who had been promised handsome commissions if they verified that a sting had been intended.

The building had then been bought by a timber-trading Scandinavian gentleman, whose wife’s sister and family lived in nearby Wellclose Square. But the area had gradually become more run down – and dangerous – and the trader, his family and his in-laws had moved lock, stock and barrel to the more pleasant and safer areas close to the open fields of Rotherhithe.

Old Mary Fishguts – a woman so known because of her years of hair-splitting, penny-pinching trading with the local fleet and their pungent catches – had had no such qualms about living in Rosemary Lane when she had retired from fishmongering.

She had sunk her substantial, if stinking, nest egg into
converting the once genteel home into a rip-roaring alehouse, frequented by the roughneck seamen of all colours and all nations, every one of them eager to pass the accumulated earnings from their trips around the seven seas straight across the counter into Mary’s smelly grasp.

There was no discrimination about who would be served as far as Mary Fishguts was concerned. She’d rob anyone blind.

She’d then expanded her empire by turning the high-ceilinged upstairs rooms that had previously been her living quarters into a venue for entertainments other than the usual drinking and carousing that went on down below. Keeping most of the rooms intact, she decorated them with a startling mix of cheap oriental fabrics and furnishings – all bought from Chinese and Lascar seamen down at the nearby docks, eager for extra money to spend on their shore leave, much of it, ironically, at Mary Fishguts’s establishment – lending the place a truly exotic feel. There, in the upstairs of the Old Black Dog, Mary created for very little money what was supposedly a hotel catering for gentlemen – as if a gentleman would choose to spend the night in such a place. But, with the added draw of the specialist entertainment laid on by Mary – namely a highly popular combination of private bars, bawdy theatrical turns and a lush bordello – it soon became a widely acclaimed venue for men from all sorts of backgrounds, the only condition of entry being their preparedness to part with their money. With the final genius touch of introducing hot meat pies into the equation, Mary Fishguts was on to a sure-fire earner that made her into a rich woman.

When old Mary was eventually called to the great counting house in the sky, the Dog, along with its
special upstairs diversions, was closed down, while her similarly avaricious offspring squabbled bitterly over entitlement to the place. Finally, after the supposedly accidental drowning of one of the brothers in the Thames and a series of blood-curdling threats among the remaining siblings, it was agreed that the place should be sold off and the money shared out equally, but by then the building was in a state of grisly disrepair.

Their greed had cost Mary’s children dear, but it had given Jack Fisher a chance that he had always believed would one day be more than just a boyhood dream. As far as he was concerned, the broken windows, rotting door frames and crumbling sills didn’t make the Old Black Dog a hazard to life and limb, they made it an affordable reality rather than an unattainable fantasy, which he set about repairing with the zeal of a convert, which in fact he was – in geographical terms at least.

Having arrived from the north-east of England a little over three months ago, with a bag of coins in his hand, with Rex, his elderly but fierce-looking mongrel by his side and a determination in his heart to escape from the life in the coal pits that had killed his father, Jack Fisher had decided that London and the run-down tavern would be his salvation.

As soon as the drinkers who had come to try the newly opened place had put his establishment into profit – a small profit, admittedly, but still there to be counted at the end of every day – Jack decided it was time to fulfil his ambition. And so, without a further thought, he’d sunk every last farthing he had, plus as much energy, into converting the upstairs of the Old Black Dog into a music-hall. He would have the best house in the East End and make his fortune.

Unfortunately, being brought up in a pit village
hadn’t given Jack the sort of experience he needed for a career in the entertainment industry.

Of course, the new venture had only been going for a few weeks, but it should have been doing better than it was. In fact, he might as well have tried barking at a knot, so little use were his efforts to keep the crowds happy.

But where was he going wrong? People came along all right, and they seemed to be really enjoying themselves. For a while. And then they left.

Why?

The organisation was a little sloppy, he had to admit, what with the turns sometimes arriving late and Mr Tompkins usually being a bit the worse for wear, but he always did his job in the end and he was cheap. No, it was something else. But what?

As Buggy fought his way back upstairs, with a foaming two-quart jug of porter, a stoneware flask of gin and a couple of glasses clutched to his chest, Teezer’s mood was reaching boiling point. He had been made to wait and Teezer hated waiting. Buggy had taken longer than anyone else Teezer could have thought of, longer than anyone had a right to. All he’d had to do was fetch a few drinks. What was wrong with the man? Mind you, the Chairman, the bloke who was meant to be organising the turns, was nearly as bad. The start of the third show was a good twenty minutes late, then they’d hooked off the first five acts almost straight away, they were that bad, but at least they had provided some sort of entertainment.

So where was the next turn? What was going on? They’d even got the young bloke with the dodgy arm to turn the lights back up. What was the world coming to? That’s what Teezer wanted to know.

It was like that ingrate he’d fished out of the drink. What a mug he’d been, bothering with her. He looked down at his slime-smeared trousers. They were actually no dirtier than usual, but as far as Teezer was concerned the girl who’d had the cheek to refuse his advances had ruined a fine garment. Why hadn’t he just left the stupid tart to drown? That’s what the likes of her deserved.

Buggy reached the table and set down the drinks with a whistle of relief. ‘Thank Gawd for that, it’s like a madhouse on them stairs, people coming and going and …’

‘Shut up, Buggy.’ Teezer took a long pull of porter and wiped his sleeve across his mouth. ‘If ever I get hold of that long streak of piss I’ll show her what for.’

‘Who’s that, Teeze? What long streak …’

‘I said shut it, Bugs. Look, the gasman’s about to dim the glims again, they must have found the next turn somewhere.’

‘Probably in the lav, eh, Teeze?’

Archie, the gasman in question, reached up and pulled the chain that controlled the supply to the huge, ornate gasolier – an uncharacteristically whimsical purchase made by the previous owner, Mary Fishguts, that had pride of place in the room – and the theatre was plunged back into expectant semi-darkness.

He then turned up the limelights along the front of the little stage and hissed at a battered-looking woman swaying tipsily in the wings, ‘Come on, Milly, you’re on. Before they get nasty. They’ve waited long enough already.’

‘Eh?’ she called, surprised to hear herself being addressed.

Archie lifted his chin towards the Chairman who was stabbing his thumb at the card he’d placed on the little wooden easel on his desk proclaiming that ‘Lovely
Milly and her Musical Moments’ was about to entertain them. ‘You’re on!’

Milly lurched on to the stage and staggered about a bit, then turned and faced the audience. She squinted into the darkness, seemingly unaware of what was going on, but then the piano struck up the opening chords of her song and it was as though Milly had been lit up like one of the new electric advertising signs.

In a slow, strangulated bar-singer’s warble, made more horrible by her inebriation, she threw out her arms and began:

‘All your tomorrows were ye-e-e-esterda-a-a-ayaah,

You gave up your a-a-a-11 for go-o-o-old-ah.

You traded your graces,

For satins and laces,

And no-o-o-ow y-ooooo-ou are old-ah!’

Milly’s voice was too much for the audience. The cheye-eyeking, laughter and raspberries began before she’d even finished the first line, let alone the whole song. The noise from the audience grew louder and louder, until they were drowning out the singer – if she could be called that – entirely.

Well-aimed gobbets pinged into the spittoons, and rotten fruit, peanut shells and orange peel bounced off the stage and the unfortunate performer as the lads at the back began to pelt her.

‘Gerroff!’ they yelled. ‘Go on, gerroff out of it!’

‘Yeah, go on! Gerrtcha!’

Some of them were on their feet.

‘Come on. Let’s go down to Pickett’s,’ sneered a big blond seaman, on the table next to Buggy’s and Teezer’s. ‘They have proper turns on down there. They ain’t even got a minstrel show here.

Buggy thought that Pickett’s sounded tempting.
‘What d’you reckon, Teeze, shall we go and all?’