The Songbird (51 page)

‘Can I try these?' she asked, picking up both wigs.

‘Yes, darlin',' the woman said, her mouth full of pins. ‘There's a mirror in the cubicle. Be wiv you in a minute.'

Poppy closed the cubicle curtain and took off her scarf, then screwed her hair into a tight bun on the top of her head and put on the black wig. She gasped. Transformation! She teased her fingers through the ringlets. It was thin hair, not like her own, but it was shiny and from a distance . . . from a distance, she breathed. No-one would know me.

She kept it on and handed the shopkeeper one shilling and sixpence for it, which was the price on the ticket. ‘I'll take this one,' she said. ‘The red one doesn't suit me.'

‘Righty-ho.' The woman put the money in her pocket. ‘The red one's a better quality,' she added. ‘But if you're 'appy with that? It suits you,' she said. ‘Fair, are you?'

Poppy nodded and made her escape, back the way she had come. She took a breath on coming to the alleyway and impulsively went down it towards the tavern. I need to earn some money, she thought, but more than anything I need a chance to think about my future: to make up my mind about what to do. Here is an opportunity right in front of me. The landlord was still outside, this time with a yard brush in his hand, sweeping the doorstep.

‘Yes?' he said abruptly as Poppy approached him. Then he glanced at her again, and added, ‘What can I do fer you, miss?'

Poppy cleared her throat. ‘I, erm, I'm looking for work. Just to tide me over, you know,' she said. ‘I wondered if you had anything? I've worked as an assistant in a grocery shop and in a café,' she went on. ‘Or I can clean.'

He sniffed. ‘Yer don't look like a cleaner to me. Where're you from?'

‘I'm – I'm from the north. I came looking for work as a seamstress, but there doesn't seem to be any. I've spent all my money.' She continued with her white lie. ‘I can't go home until I've made enough for the train fare.'

‘Huh,' he said. ‘So you'd not be stoppin' long?'

‘Depends,' she said. ‘I might.'

‘Well it just so happens that I do need somebody.' He leaned on the brush and stared at her. ‘You'd 'ave to live in. I want somebody to clean the place every morning and serve in the tavern every night.'

‘I'm used to getting up early,' she told him, 'and working at night,' and she considered that serving ale couldn't be much different from serving coffee.

‘All right.' He leaned the brush against the wall. ‘I'll try you. But if you're no good then you're out! Understood?'

‘Yes, thank you, Mr Black.'

‘'Ow do you know me name?' he barked.

‘Oh! Everybody round here knows you,' she said nervously.

He gave a grim laugh. ‘And they didn't put you off?'

She shook her head. ‘I really need the work.'

‘What's your name?' he grunted.

‘P-Paula,' she stammered. ‘Paula Ma— Mason.'

Black was dictatorial, brusque and domineering. He shouted at everyone, from his customers at the Pit Stop and his neurotic wife, to the lad who worked in the cellars and attended the hydraulic beer engines which brought up the beer into the saloon. He'd led Poppy into the tavern, which was dark and low-ceilinged and reeked of tobacco smoke. There was only one room and that had a bar counter, long wooden tables and rough deal benches, so that the customers sat side by side to drink their ale or gin and play dominoes. On one side of the room was a hearth with a fire burning and opposite was an upright piano with sheet music on the stand.

‘Who plays the piano?' Poppy had asked tentatively.

‘Anybody who can bash out a few notes,' he'd said curtly. ‘Can you play?'

‘A bit,' she'd answered and followed him up to the room which was to be hers. It was at the top of the building, small, cold and damp, without a fireplace to warm it. There was a narrow iron bedstead and a wooden chest of drawers with a jug and washbowl. A towel rail stood empty.

‘Ask my wife if you need anyfink,' he'd said, and then, glancing at her, remarked, ‘I expect you're used to somefink better, ain't yer? Come down in the world?'

She'd only nodded, and then asked him what her duties were. Now she was into her third week and her hands were sore with washing glasses and tables. She swept and washed the saloon floor, scrubbed the doorstep and cleaned the windows, for Black was quite particular about the cleanliness of the place. But she didn't mind; the fact that she was kept so busy meant that she didn't think too often about Charlie and his betrayal. When she did think of him she was sunk into misery.

What she had objected to were the impertinent comments she had endured on her first night serving the customers. Because everyone sat at the long tables, it was her duty to go up and down with jugs of beer, and the difficulty wasn't in leaning over the customers and pouring without splashing, but in avoiding the wandering hands of many of the men, who fumbled with her skirt and bodice and made various suggestions. She had complained to the landlord and told him she wouldn't put up with it, and he had immediately warned everybody that if they did anything untoward, they would be banned from the hostelry. ‘This isn't Dora,' he'd bellowed. ‘She didn't mind, but this wench does.' And sheepishly they had listened and complied.

The postcards were sent off to her father, Dan, Mrs Bennett and the Marinos telling them not to worry about her, she would come back when she was ready. On the day she posted them, she had passed the costumiers where she had purchased the wig, and on seeing the shop was empty she had gone in to look at the sheet music.

‘Take what you want, darlin',' the woman had said. ‘I'm sellin' off the old stuff at a ha'penny a sheet, but there's some new music there as well that's just come in.'

Poppy had bought several song sheets which looked interesting – not to sing, she told herself, but just to familiarize herself with the words and the music; she sat down now on her bed with the printed sheet music for ‘Greensleeves', which had been published by Schott and Company. She was looking for the arranger's name, for although it was a very old song, various adaptations had been made of it. Hah, she breathed.
Marino.
You've followed me here, Anthony. She folded it up and put it in her apron pocket and went downstairs.

There was just one old man in the saloon and he was asleep at one of the tables, his head cradled in his arms and a tankard of ale in front of him. The landlord was nowhere to be seen, and Poppy sidled over to the piano. She had heard it being played, very badly, by several of the customers, mostly in burlesque style. The tone was quite mellow, though the instrument was in need of tuning. She wasn't a pianist, but she could play a few chords and pick out a harmony, and had a good ear. She took the sheet for ‘Greensleeves' from her pocket and saw that she had inadvertently picked up another song sheet with it. She read through it and her pulse quickened.

‘Anthony again,' she whispered, seeing his name at the bottom of the sheet. She noticed how he had written ‘
affettuoso
' and ‘
amoroso
' above some of the notes. ‘With feeling,' she murmured, remembering her piano lessons. ‘Lovingly!'

Poppy glanced round again. The old man was snoring. She sat down on the stool, lifted the piano lid, placed the music on the stand and with the lightest of touches and the softest of voices began to play and sing.

Poppy bent her head as her tears fell. Anthony's words and music always touched her emotions. She groped in her pocket for a handkerchief to blow her nose and was suddenly aware of other people. The old man was sitting up and both the landlord and his wife were standing in the doorway to the living quarters. He had his arms folded in front of him, and she was fiddling with a corner of the apron she always wore.

‘I'm sorry,' Poppy began, but Black interrupted her as the old man began to clap.

‘That was good,' the landlord said. ‘Do you know any more?'

‘Erm . . .' Embarrassed that they should see her cry, she swallowed away her tears. ‘I've got an arrangement of “Greensleeves” here.'

Black nodded. ‘Let's ‘ear it then.'

She began again. This at least was very familiar to her, for she had sung it often before. But she sang it low and huskily and not in her usual style. Not because she thought they would recognize her voice – she didn't think they were the type to frequent concert halls or theatre – but because she was so choked with emotion.

‘Loverly,' Mrs Black said. ‘Really loverly, dearie.'

Mr Black nodded. ‘Yers, very good, but don't yer know somefink jolly? Everybody'll be going 'ome in tears if you only sing them sorts o' songs.'

Poppy rose to her feet. ‘I didn't intend them to be heard by anyone,' she said hastily. ‘I was – well, just trying them out.'

‘Ooh, but you've got a loverly voice,' Mrs Black proclaimed. ‘Hasn't she, 'enery? Got a loverly voice! You oughta be on the stage, dearie. Shouldn't she, 'enery? Shouldn't she be on the stage?'

‘All right, you silly old bat,' Henry Black bellowed. ‘Gerroff back to the kitchen. I'll talk to 'er. ‘Now listen,' he said to Poppy, and the old man came closer to hear what he was going to say. ‘You've got a good voice, and if you sing 'ere, I'll up your money another bob a week. 'ow does that sound?'

‘I'm not sure that I want to sing,' she said, looking wistfully at the piano.

‘I'll get it tuned. Pianner, I mean.' His brow creased and he pressed his lips together. ‘Go on then, one and six, but that's my final offer.'

‘Make it two bob,' the old man piped up. ‘She'd be worth it,' he added as Black glared at him. ‘You don't often 'ear a voice like 'ers. Not round 'ere, anyway.' He leaned towards Poppy. ‘I don't suppose you know any of our Marie's songs, do you?'

She confessed that she did, and hid a smile at the landlord's offer, as only a short while ago she had been earning so much more. Perhaps I might sing, she thought. There would only be the regulars at the Pit Stop to hear her; no-one from the theatre world would ever come to this hostelry. They were all working people who drank here, those earning a pittance and struggling to keep out of poverty. Why shouldn't they hear a different kind of music?

‘All right,' she said. ‘I'll sing some of the music hall songs as long as I can sing some of my own choosing as well.'

‘Done!' Black said. ‘Start tonight. But now get on with cleaning them winders. They're covered with cobwebs.'

If she'd thought she would have a respite from cleaning, she was mistaken. He still expected her to do the same work as before, except that halfway through the evening he would signal to her to stop serving the customers and go to the piano. She sang the music hall songs and the customers joined in with great gusto and then she sang her own choice. She sang ‘Pretty May', which everyone loved and hummed along with, then followed it with ‘Forever True'.

Two weeks on, the hostelry was packed every night as word got round that there was a new singer performing at the Pit Stop.

Poppy took care not to stretch her voice; she sang the love songs low and huskily, her tone sad and full of longing, and the women listening would wistfully stroke their cheeks with rough fingers and cast downward glances at each other, whilst the men would shuffle uncomfortably and then reach for their glasses or tankards and take a hasty swallow.

Poppy had got into the habit of calling in at the costumier's, for there were new song sheets arriving regularly. The woman there, whose name was Betsy, would wave her in if she was passing by.

‘You're that singer at the Pit Stop, ain't you?' she said one day. ‘You oughta go on the halls. You're as good as I've ever heard. Here,' she said. ‘Some young fella just brought these in. He's trying to make a living with his songwriting. He's taking these all over town. I bought them thinking of you.'

Poppy held her breath for a second. Not Anthony come back to England? Automatically she looked for the name of the songwriter, but the name wasn't his. T. Martin. Not anyone she had heard of, and the music was handwritten, not published. But the songs were the kind she liked to sing, so she bought them at sixpence a sheet.