Mr Starlight Read online

  The morning we left, people gathered on the corner of Ninevah Street to wave us off. Mam was coming with us, to see us on to the train, but Dilys never liked goodbyes. She said she’d stay behind and make a start on stripping the old wallpaper off Sel’s bedroom wall. ‘You won’t know it when you get back,’ she said. Dilys loved paperhanging.

  He said, ‘I’m not coming back.’

  Dilys said, ‘Oh, don’t say that.’

  Sel said, ‘Don’t worry. It won’t go to waste. Cled might be glad to move back upstairs.’

  He’d insisted on riding to the station in a taxi. ‘Stars don’t wait at bus stops,’ he said. And he was wearing sunglasses.

  Mam said, ‘I’ll leave you here, then,’ when we got to the barrier. ‘I won’t hang about.’

  She’d spotted Vera Muddimer and Joan Wagstaff. They were down on the platform with a big sign that said ‘Bon Voyage’ and Mam never liked competition. Still, it was hard to watch her walk away, all on her own. Sel was smiling and bouncing around, but I was having a few qualms myself.

  Vera said, ‘Cheer up, Cled. Or shall I go in your place? I can play “Good King Wenceslas” on the mouth organ.’

  It was raining as the train pulled out, but he kept his sunglasses on.

  I said, ‘Do you think Mam’s going to be all right?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t she be?’ he said.

  It was a Monday, as I recall. Monday we generally had cold meat and pickles, and a milk pudding to follow. Rice was my favourite, but I didn’t object to sago or tapioca, provided there was jam to go with it.

  I said, ‘I don’t know. Suddenly she’s all on her own. I keep thinking of her, dishing up one plate instead of three.’

  ‘It’s the natural course of things,’ he said. ‘All these years she’s groomed me for stardom and now I’m on my way. That’s more important to her than having to eat her tea on her own. Anyway, Teilo’ll probably turn up.’

  I’d seen pictures of the Queen Mary in the newspapers but nothing prepared you for walking out of the shed and seeing the curve of her bow towering over you. Her name alone must have been fifty feet long, and the sun had broken through, bouncing off the shine off her new demob paint. Glossy black and white, and her raked funnels dark orange. She was beautiful.

  Sel was eager to go aboard and sign on, but I persuaded him to wait with me a few minutes and watch all the comings and goings. A big fancy motor car was being lowered into the hold and two ratings were carrying vases of white chrysanthemums up the gangplank, floral arrangements taller than they were. There were crates stacked all over the dockside and a young Yank overheard us guessing what was in them. ‘Eleven thousand pounds of sugar,’ he said. ‘Twenty thousand bottles of beer. I see you’re new boys. What’s your trade?’

  He was Jim Ganey, Dining Room Waiter, First Class, and he had all the answers. ‘That automobile is the property of Lord Freddy Orr,’ he said. ‘He likes to while away the crossing losing at poker. And the chrysanthemums are for the Duke and Dukess. The ones you Brits ran out of town. I’ve sailed with them before and I can tell you, they always travel with a quantity of flowers.’ We were going to be sailing with the Windsors.

  Sel said, ‘How about that, Cled! I could be doing a Royal Command Performance sooner than I thought.’

  But Ganey said, ‘Don’t fool yourselves. Once their stateroom is fixed up to their liking they stay put, save theirselves the bother of getting pestered by nobodies.’

  I’d have liked to take a look around but there was a band call at six o’clock and we had three queues to join before we could go anywhere and the first one was to join the union.

  Sel said, ‘I’m not joining any bloody union.’ But it was that or go home and the representative didn’t appear to care which way he jumped as long as he made his mind up and stopped holding up the queue. It was a terrible shock to him, to be spoken to like that. There were all types signing on and Sel wasn’t accustomed to the rougher element. He couldn’t take his eyes off them.

  And then we got our quarters. A four-berth cabin, aft on R deck. Sel said, ‘There must be a mix-up. I should have my own cabin. I’m a vocalist.’

  ‘Intermission singer,’ the Ship’s Writer said. ‘R64. Next!’

  Sel went very quiet. At home he was accustomed to a room of his own, with his costumes hung on padded hangers and a lace mat on his bedside table. He was very particular about his bits and pieces. Mam mopped his lino twice a week and dusted where she could, but she never moved anything because he liked everything just so. If ever we went to our Dilys’s for tea he’d start tidying her spoon drawer.

  I said, ‘Cheer up, our kid. At least they’ve put us together.’ We were sharing with a bass player called Feifer and a drummer called Wilkie. Bunk beds and tin lockers, and two strangers watching every move you made. Feifer was a bad-tempered type, used to lie in his cot eating slices of raw onion, and Wilkie was plain light-fingered. My shaving set from Greely’s disappeared before we were out of sight of land. It was a good thing I was there, to show Sel the ropes and make sure nobody nicked his brilliantine.

  He said, ‘This is insulting. Where am I supposed to hang my suits?’

  I said, ‘We could be worse off. People like the greasers and the bellboys are ten to a billet.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Could be worse. That’s your way of looking at a situation, Cled. Could be better. Should be better. That’s my way of looking at things.’

  The night before a sailing was always organised chaos. Crew who turned up at the last minute, crew who didn’t turn up at all, companion ways like Piccadilly Circus, trolleys of liquor and cigarettes and linens being pushed along the working alleys. ‘Burma Road’ they called it down there. And all the while cargo being winched aboard. Three tons of butter, according to Jim Ganey. Fifty thousand pounds of spuds.

  We had a pep talk from Massie, the entertainments manager. ‘Punctuality, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Please remember to adjust your timepieces every night. And remember you’re here to do a job of work. Don’t venture into passenger areas. Don’t presume to fraternise with the clientele. Any questions?’

  I don’t think he expected any.

  ‘Yes,’ Sel said. ‘How about if the clientele try to fraternise with me?’

  ‘Mr Boff,’ he said, ‘I believe you’re engaged as a vocalist. This is no time to try being a comedian.’

  We piled down to the mess room for Beef à la Mode with three veg, cheese and biscuits and a choice of ice cream, then somebody set up a card school and a dartboard in the post room. You couldn’t have your usual recreational facilities the night before sailing or the night before docking. The social club was in the baggage area.

  Sel was sitting down the table from me, chatting to an older man with epaulettes on his shirt.

  I said, ‘Are you coming for a game of arrows?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve made other plans.’

  I heard somebody say, ‘Good lad. Keeping Mother happy. You’ll go far.’

  Sel’s new pal was Mess Room Steward Noel Carey, but everyone called him Mother and he took a shine to Sel right from the start. You need company if you’re below decks all the time. We musicians at least got to move about a bit, but Carey never went up for air. He led a lonely life, but Sel humoured him, and when Mother Carey had been humoured the door to the pantries would swing wide open. Once my guts had got accustomed to the way the ship rolled, I enjoyed a late supper, after showtime. Ham and eggs, or a flash-fried steak slapped between two slices of bread. All thanks to Sel’s cheery personality. But a ship’s crew is a close community. You need to go carefully. He said, ‘I’ll see you later. Noel’s got something he wants to show me.’

  I said to him later, ‘We only just got here, so take things steady. When you’re a newcomer you have to be careful not to tread on anybody’s toes.’

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘Whose toes?’

  I said, ‘That pantryman with the gappy teeth. After you went off to see Mr Ca
rey’s theatre programmes he said, “I wonder if he’s going to show him his etchings as well?” sarcastic like. I think I detected a note of envy.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ he said. ‘Envy’s something I’m going to have to get accustomed to. Listen, I had a look in one of the First Class staterooms. You get a three-piece suite, Cled, not just a bed. And a coffee table and a drinks cabinet. That’s the way to travel.’

  I said, ‘You’ll be getting the sack before we’ve even sailed. You heard what the boss said. No snooping off limits.’

  ‘I wasn’t snooping,’ he said. ‘Noel took me up and showed me around. It’s beautiful, Cled. Elegant. That’s what I’m going to have some day. A stateroom, with a pink leather settee and a telephone and a fresh bowl of fruit every morning.’

  ‘Shut yer yap, pretty boy,’ Feifer said. ‘Some of us is trying to sleep.’

  SIX

  There was no peace once the boilers were fired and the baggage lifts started up, but Sel lay on his bunk like the Queen of Sheba anyway, cucumber slices over his eyelids and curlers in his quiff. ‘Preparing to meet my public,’ he said. ‘You don’t get a second chance at first impressions.’

  I said, ‘Come upstairs with me. You’re the one with the open sesame. See if we can get near a rail. Watch for big names arriving on the dockside.’

  The word was Henry Ford was expected plus a Guinness millionaire, a mysterious star of the British stage and, of course, the Duke and Duchess.

  Wilkie said, ‘You won’t see them. They’ll come aboard from a launch once we’re under way.’

  But I went up anyway with a little Eyetie from the Tourist Class barber’s shop who knew a window we could watch from, and we had company. A girl called Ginger from the beauty parlour, very jolly with lovely knees. She let me light two smokes for her before she mentioned she had a fiancé.

  Her friend was quieter. Black wavy hair and skin so pale you could see the veins on her temples. Hazel. Not my usual type. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘There’s Lady Clackmannan.’

  But it was only Lady Clackmannan’s maid, down on the quayside supervising where the trunks were going.

  ‘Princess Olga,’ she said. ‘Mr Vansittart.’

  She was reeling off all these names, but they were just the servants down there. Hazel worked in the passenger laundry, so it was the maids and the valets she knew.

  I said, ‘Isn’t it boring down there, dhobi-ing? Never seeing daylight?’

  ‘It is not,’ she said. ‘Dhobi-ing! Cheeky beggar. What do you think I do? Bash shirts on rocks?’

  Ginger said, ‘Don’t bite his head off. He’s new.’

  Hazel said, ‘What’s your name, new boy?’

  ‘Cled Boff,’ I said. ‘Musician.’

  ‘Well, Cled Boff,’ she said. ‘I hope you’ll enjoy your work as much as I enjoy mine. I get to handle couture garments. They come to me when they need a delicate touch, see? Hopeless cases, that’s my speciality.’ She smiled at me. ‘And every stain tells a story,’ she said.

  Ginger shouted, ‘There’s Rex Harrison!’ And it was the actual man himself, climbing out of a taxi.

  Sel was still stretched out on his bunk, reading Tit Bits.

  I said, ‘I think I just got lucky.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ he said. ‘I hope she won’t be disappointed when she sees your love nest. I hope she likes the smell of second-hand onions. See any notables?’

  I said, ‘Rex Harrison. The Windsors’ pug dogs. And there’s a Princess Olga come aboard.’

  He sat up. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘What, tiara and everything?’

  I said, ‘No. Felt hat and an overcoat.’

  ‘Glad I didn’t stir myself, then,’ he said. ‘If I had a tiara I’d never leave home without it. I won the toss, by the way. I’m letting Tex do the big one tonight.’ Tex Lane was the other support singer and the two of them had to cover six spots a night. If you did the First Class Dining Room, you finished with the ten o’clock spot in Cabin Class. If you did a turn in Tourist, you opened the late show in First Class, the Starlight Club in the Veranda Grill priming the pump for the star vocalist.

  I said, ‘I thought you were gagging to play the Starlight Club?’

  ‘I am,’ he said, ‘but not the first night out. I want Tex Lane to go over the top first, let them see how mediocre he is. Suits me to warm up on the peasants. By tomorrow night I’ll be ready for anything.’

  He slipped in the back of the Grill after he’d finished his last spot for the night, although I didn’t see him. He must have blended in well, in his new dinner suit and a crisp new shirt. Not like Tex Lane with his frayed cuffs. But Sel wasn’t interested in Tex. Glorette Gilder was the one he was there to study, in her fishtail gown and her dangling earrings. ‘She’s nothing special.’ That was his verdict. ‘Wait till they see me in action.’

  But a warm-up only got seventeen minutes: ‘How High the Moon’, ‘Slow Boat to China’.

  I said, ‘I don’t see that you’ve got a lot of scope. You’re just there to air the room and Tex could hardly be heard tonight, for all the laughing and chattering. Nobody listens till the big name comes on. You’re supposed to sing your numbers plain vanilla. No chatting to the audience. No holding a lady’s hand.’

  ‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘We’ll see.’ That was when he started developing his trade mark wink.

  Of all the public rooms on board the Queen Mary the Veranda Grill was my favourite. It had a big curved window that looked out over the stern of the boat. Everything was cream and silver and mahogany, with soft pearly lighting and wide steps from the dining area to the dance floor, with thick black carpet and glass balustrades. I’ve played much bigger rooms since, and plenty of five star venues, but I’ve never seen anything to top it.

  We were an eleven-piece band under the baton of Lionel Truman and everyone had better know their play list. ‘Number twenty-four,’ he’d say, quiet but clear, and we’d go straight into ‘Tangerine’.

  Even now, if somebody says ‘Thirty-nine’ I think ‘Besame Mucho’.

  Sel opened his first night with ‘Blue Champagne’ and ‘Cruising Down the River’, and then he unbuttoned his jacket for ‘Moonlight Becomes You’ I don’t know if it was his silver cummerbund that got their attention but they piped down a lot more for him than they had for poor old Tex. He even got a little ripple of applause. ‘Thank you so much,’ he said.

  He wasn’t supposed to say anything. He was meant to finish his last song and clear off, but Sel never liked to be hurried. ‘Tonight was my Starlight Club debut,’ he said, ‘and you couldn’t have been a nicer audience.’

  I heard Glorette whisper, ‘Play me on.’ But Lionel Truman hesitated and as long as he hesitated Sel stayed out there.

  ‘Don’t forget,’ he said, ‘Thursday night is Gala Night. I’ll be here but it won’t be Gala night unless you’re here too.’

  Glorette was getting irate. ‘Play me on, you deaf old fucker,’ she kept whispering and eventually Lionel lifted his baton.

  But Sel still wasn’t finished. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘a warm welcome, please, for a lady who was playing the Veranda Grill while I was in short trousers. The one and only, the very fabulous, Miss Glorette Gilder.’

  SEVEN

  I didn’t see Hazel again till our last night at sea. After showtime I always went to the Pig and Whistle with the rest of the boys. It was nice to wind down with a cold beer and a game of cards, or a sing-song round the piano, but Hazel didn’t seem to socialise.

  ‘I haven’t had time to draw breath,’ she said, when I did run into her. ‘Pulled threads. Duck grease. You name it, I’ve had it this trip. Coty pancake on the neck of Mrs Vansittart’s beaded silk.’

  I said, ‘You want to be careful, cooped up with cleaning products.’ I told her about Sel’s episode with DabAway.

  She said, ‘I wouldn’t mind having a few visions myself. But I don’t use a lot of chemicals. Guess what I use to lift pancake make-up? A heel of stale bread. Never f
ails. See, I have to be careful. I can’t have my clients collapsing or going up in flames if somebody lights a stogie near them. Bread. That’s the answer. And a slow gentle rub.’ She brushed a bit of fluff off my shoulder.

  ‘Hello, hello, hello,’ I thought. ‘Cledwyn, your luck is in.’

  The question was where to take her. Last night out was cleanup night below decks so the place never went quiet. We went up on top to where you could have your dog walked by a bellboy. There wasn’t anybody about. She had a smell of soapsuds when I kissed her. It was lovely, after days of Feifer’s onion breath and Wilkie’s socks. I only got as far as unbuttoning her cardie, though.

  ‘That’s enough,’ she said. ‘You’ll be waking the dogs.’

  ‘Funny you’re Welsh,’ I said. ‘I’m hundred per cent Welsh myself.’

  She said, ‘Well, you don’t sound it. You sound Birmingham to me.’

  We got a two-day lay-over in New York.

  I said, ‘Got any plans, after we dock?’

  ‘Sleeping,’ she said.

  I said, ‘We could go dancing.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Perhaps another time. You go and enjoy yourself. There’s nothing like New York, especially the first time. And don’t bother going to bed tonight. The pilot comes aboard about four o’clock. You should bring Sel up here, watch the sun come up over the city.’

  I couldn’t persuade her to stay there with me.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m going to tidy my work table, soak my feet and go to sleep.’

  Playing hard to get.

  So I had to make do with Sel for company. We stood on the starboard side, like Hazel had said, and watched New York appear. First everything glowed red and then it turned pale green, and by the time we were coming into the pier, everything was sparkling in the sunshine. The whole place looked like it was made of glass.

  ‘I’ve arrived, Cled,’ he said. He was looking radiant for a person who wasn’t usually up before dinner time.

  ‘No, Sel,’ I said. ‘We’ve arrived.’