Mr Starlight. Laurie Graham
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Название: Mr Starlight
Автор: Laurie Graham
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
isbn: 9780007389087
isbn:
It isn’t just the look of a new place that can muddle you. It’s the smell of it and the noise. Steam leaking out of the ground and trains rumbling under your feet. Hot dogs and coffee and car horns tooting for the littlest thing. Even the girls were different: brighter and cheekier-looking, swinging along in their shiny nylons. The boys said they could point me in the direction of a bit of business if that was what I fancied, but I was contented just to look. Where the ladies are concerned I’ve never believed in paying for a thing when you might get offered it for free. I bought a little bottle of Evening in Paris scent in Macy’s department store. If Hazel was willing to play ball it was hers. If not, there’d be others. Scent never goes to waste.
‘The theatres,’ I said. ‘That’s what I want to see.’
And I wasn’t disappointed. Mary Martin was appearing in South Pacific at the Majestic, Carol Channing was in Kiss Me Kate at the Mansfield and Brigadoon was playing at the Ziegfeld. But the biggest thrill was Radio City Music Hall with pictures outside of all those high-kicking lovelies and Sold Out stickers across the Frank Sinatra posters. It made me realise what a fall Sel was heading for. It was one thing to be the toast of the Nechells Non-Political, but something else to come to a place like New York and think he could ever be a match for the big boys. We finished up in a club on 52nd Street called the Three Deuces listening to the great Art Tatum. I hadn’t realised he was black till I saw him in person. When I look back on my first time in New York that’s what I think of: seeing black people. And the meatball sandwiches, so big you needed both hands and dripping with gravy. And the adverts that lit up in Times Square. There was one that made smoke rings from a cigarette, and one that looked just like a waterfall, only it was all done with light bulbs.
I never did find out how Sel had passed his time. All I know is sign-on time was nearly up and he hadn’t appeared.
I said to Massie, ‘I won’t be able to sail without my brother.’
‘Entirely up to you, Mr Boff,’ he said. ‘But you’ll be leaving without your papers.’
Then he rolled in, with two days’ beard and a package under his arm.
I said, ‘Dilys was right. You’re not safe on your own.’
It struck me, seeing him unshaved, how much he looked like our dad.
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ he said. ‘What’s your grouse?’
I said, ‘Try any agents?’
‘Fuck agents,’ he said.
Two days in the company of E deck types and that was how he was talking.
I said, ‘Well, you’d better buck up. If you go on tonight looking like you do now, you’ll be out of a job. You make Tex Lane look dew-fresh.’
‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘And fuck you too.’
But Sel could always turn himself around for an audience. By seven o’clock he was shaved and shampooed, and ready to give them ‘They All Laughed’ in First Class cocktails. He was wearing his latest purchase: a white tuxedo with a black satin shawl collar.
I said, ‘How much did that set you back?’
‘It’s an investment,’ he said. ‘Look like a star, you’re halfway to being a star.’
He looked like a Latin American bandleader to me.
I wished Uncle Teilo could have been there to see us, ‘chugging back and forth on some tub’ as he’d put it. The Queen Mary was no tub. She was a floating palace. You could go to the pictures, in a proper cinema with flip-up seats, or play ping-pong, or keep fit in the gymnasium, riding on a bicycle that was nailed to the floor. You could get a shave and have your nails buffed, send a telegram, get your trousers mended. There were even churches: a normal one and a Jewish one. And there was plenty of entertainment: a band, a string trio and two feature pianists, four showcase ballroom dancers, and Sel and Tex and Glorette. It must have been a headache if you were a passenger, deciding how to fill the days. I’d have been worried there wasn’t enough time to sample everything.
It was different for us, of course. I enjoyed the work. Lionel Truman led a good band and I liked the camaraderie of it, but when you weren’t working you were very cooped up and five days at sea could seem longer than five days in Saltley. It was very gloomy below decks. The walls were painted dark-green up to the dado. You needed the lights on all the time and you could never get away from the vibration of the turbines and the smell of cooking and machine oil and men’s socks. Tempers were liable to get frayed, as they did between Sel and Mess Room Steward Carey.
Carey was a man who got very attached to people and if he liked you he expected to monopolise you. So when Sel went down to G deck one afternoon, taking up the offer of being shown around by one of the firemen, Carey got overexcited and fetched a knife from the galley. ‘Guided tours, is it!’ he shouted. ‘I know their game!’
Hazel was on her break. We were having a cup of tea.
‘I’ll kill him,’ Carey was shouting. ‘I’ll kill them both!’
He’d been at the cooking brandy. You could smell it on him.
I said, ‘God Almighty, Hazel, I’d better run and warn Sel.’
But there were three hundred yards of boiler rooms and he could have been anywhere. I didn’t like it down there. I never liked the idea of all that steam being pent up.
Hazel had fetched two big kitchen porters in case assistance was required, but Carey had shut himself in his cabin in the meanwhile and was promising to do himself an injury, and as everybody seemed to be ignoring him I surmised it wasn’t the first time this had occurred.
I said, ‘I couldn’t find Sel.’
‘Shaft alley,’ somebody said. ‘That’s where he’ll be.’
I said, ‘I don’t know where that is.’
Everybody laughed.
Hazel said, ‘Pay no attention, Cled. And don’t worry about Mother. You couldn’t cut hot butter with that knife he was brandishing.’
I said, ‘I get the impression Carey isn’t a family man. I suppose things can get out of proportion when you don’t have a home life. It’s a shame he’s gone off the deep end, though. He’s been very fatherly to Sel.’
Hazel said, ‘I don’t know about that. Ask me, half the crew belongs in the madhouse.’
She’d put a saucer over my teacup, to keep it warm while I was searching for Sel. It’s funny the little things that make you fall for a girl.
I said, ‘Are you going to let me take you dancing when we get to Southampton?’
‘Maybe,’ she said.
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