Mr Starlight. Laurie Graham

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       NINE

      The thing about working on the Queen Mary was you didn’t really get to see the world. You got to see galleys and corridors and Wilkie’s scabby foot dangling down from the top bunk.

      Sel said, ‘I’m not sticking this much longer. There’s no scope.’

      I said, ‘Then do something about getting an agent. Next leg, when we get to New York, don’t run off like a dizzy kid.’

      ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Definitely next time. I’m not getting due recognition with this lot.’

      I said, ‘We’ll put our suits on. Decide on a couple of songs.’

      ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘“Some Enchanted Evening”. I see that becoming my signature tune.’

      I said, ‘And I think we should go back to being the Boff Brothers. Sel Boff, accompanied by Cled Boff, it sounds too complicated.’

      He said, ‘I don’t know. I might start being just “Selwyn”, you know? Like Hildegarde?’

      I said, ‘Then what would I be? I’m not being “Cledwyn”.’ I hated ‘Cledwyn’.

      ‘Quite right,’ he said. ‘It sounds like a boarding house. This Hazel? Are you two getting serious?’

      I didn’t have an answer to that. Sometimes, in the fruit store, I thought we were. Then I’d catch her chuckling with that pastry chef. ‘I’m a single woman,’ she’d say. ‘I can chuckle with anybody I choose.’

      I said, ‘Why? You interested?’

      ‘She’s nice,’ he said. ‘And it strikes me, if you’re serious about her you’ll probably want to stay put. There doesn’t seem much point in you trying out for agents if you’re contented where you are. See what I mean?’

      I said, ‘And who’s going to play for you if I don’t?’

      ‘I’ll find somebody,’ he said. ‘Don’t feel you have to throw up your chances with Hazel just to play for me. Accompanists are ten a penny, Cled.’

      The ruddy nerve of it. But it did make me wonder how I stood vis-à-vis Hazel. I said, ‘If I got a chance in America, would you come with me?’

      She said, ‘What kind of a chance?’

      I said, ‘With Sel. I’m a class instrumentalist, Hazel, as you’d know if you’d seen me in action with Gracie Fields. I don’t have to play in a ship’s band for ever more.’

      She said, ‘You only just started. And what would I do?’

      I said, ‘You’d find something. You could work in a dry cleaner’s.’

      She said, ‘But I’m happy here. Where? What dry cleaner’s?’

      I said, ‘We could get married.’

      ‘Oh, I don’t know, Cled,’ she said. ‘I’m in no hurry. I saw what my mam had to put up with all those years. Anyway, who’s going to give you this big chance in America? I’ll think about it if something happens and not before.’

      But on that trip two things happened. Mr and Mrs Hubert F. Conroy came aboard, on their way home from London where they’d been celebrating thirty-five years of marriage. And Glorette Gilder was quarantined with a temperature of 105° and a nasty rash.

      They asked Tex Lane to stand in first but as Tex himself admitted they were leaning on a weak reed. Being a front-liner is a high-pressure business. ‘Give it to the boy,’ he said. ‘He’s hungry for it.’

      And that was how Sel got his chance as featured vocalist, with two hours’ notice. He unpacked his gold suit and Hazel steamed the creases out of it and goffered the frills on his dress shirt; Mother Carey brought him a cheese omelette on a tray, and while Tex opened the batting in the Starlight Club, Sel lay on his bunk wearing nothing but his Y-fronts and a mud pack.

      He must have been nervous. I know I was. But he didn’t show it. He made his entrance cool as you like, strolled on, carrying a tea towel and two plates, deadpan face. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Who ordered the turbot?’

      Glorette used to just stand there, like she was propped up and daren’t move. A smoker’s voice and low-cut backs, they were her stock-in-trade. But Sel was a natural. Put him in front of a microphone and there was no stopping him. ‘Old Black Magic’, ‘If I Loved You’, ‘Beginning to See the Light’. ‘The Anniversary Waltz’, for Mr and Mrs Conroy. ‘A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes’, for ‘anyone who ever wished upon a star’ as he put it.

      It was nearly daybreak before they let him go and he was buzzing. ‘Eh, Cled, eh!’ He kept hugging me and thumping me on the back. ‘They loved me! And just wait till the next show. Tonight I’m really going to shake my feathers.’

      I said, ‘What if they let Glorette out of quarantine?’

      ‘Get down to the infirmary,’ he said. ‘Put a pillow over her face.’

      But there was no need. Glorette was out of action for the whole crossing and Sel saw this as his big chance. ‘Come upstairs with me,’ he said. ‘I’m going to need extra shirts.’ There was a branch of Austin Reed in First Class, but it was strictly off limits for us.

      I said, ‘Smile nicely at Hazel and she’ll freshen your things up between shows.’

      ‘I know she would,’ he said, ‘but that’s not the point. What kind of star wears the same shirt three nights in a row? Anyway, come on up, see how the other half lives. How we’ll be living.’

      There were stewards you had to get past. Tourist Class weren’t allowed into Cabin Class, Cabin weren’t allowed into First Class and crew weren’t allowed anywhere except in the line of duty. But Sel breezed us both through, greeted the gatekeepers like old friends, told them we were on urgent outfitting business for the Starlight Club.

      ‘Ask for George,’ one of them said. ‘He gets stuff brought back, already worn. He’ll fix you up with something.’

      He СКАЧАТЬ