Mr Starlight. Laurie Graham

Чтение книги онлайн.

       FOUR

      After Sel had recuperated from his suit poisoning Uncle Teilo was keen to get us bookings for our comeback season, but His Numps wouldn’t apply himself to it. ‘Time to move on,’ he said.

      Uncle Teilo said, ‘Oh yes? Where to? Has Norman Hewitt been talking to you?’ Norman was another big fixer in Birmingham. Sel just laughed.

      I said, ‘Well, I think I should be kept in the picture.’

      ‘Look, Cled,’ he said. ‘We’ve been a good team, but we’ve got different plans. I’m a pro and you’re playing for pin money. And you can’t say I didn’t warn you.’ It was that business with the lady in white.

      I said, ‘You don’t have to go to America to branch out, you know. We could travel further afield, do some private functions. Sutton. Lichfield. We could get a little motor.’

      ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m going to America. I’ve outgrown this place.’

      I said, ‘Please yourself. I’ll go solo. You’re not the only one with a following, you know. I’ll always find a welcome at the Birmingham Welsh.’

      ‘Good,’ he said. ‘In that case you won’t get your knickers in a knot if I go my own way, under new management.’

      Dilys said, ‘Don’t worry, Cled. Perhaps it won’t come to it. America might not want him.’

      But when Sel set his heart on something he always got it. Like that painting by numbers kit he pestered Mam for when he was nine. Like that old clock covered with cherubs he outbid everybody for at a big auction. Ugly bloody thing, supposed to have belonged to some French nob and he paid thousands for it.

      So he went off on one of his jaunts to London and came home with a pair of patent leather boots and a promise of work through the Ted Sibley Agency, Representation for International Artistes.

      Uncle Teilo had popped round to put a new flex on Mam’s iron and we were all sitting having tea when Sel walked in. ‘I’ve done it!’ he said. ‘Ted Sibley signed me on the spot. He had to admit it wasn’t every day an act like me walked through his door.’

      I said, ‘When are you leaving?’

      ‘When the right opportunity opens up,’ he said. ‘See, Cled, you don’t just leap at the first thing you’re offered. You have to know where you want to get to, and then you have to have a plan and everything you do has to fit in with it. It’s no use jumping on a bus going to Walsall and then complaining it never took you to Kidderminster.’

      I said, ‘Thanks for the tip, big shot. So what’s it to be? Broadway? Hollywood?’

      ‘The top,’ he said. ‘That’s the only destination that interests me.’

      ‘That’s the ticket, Selwyn!’ Mam said. ‘I always knew you’d go far.’ She didn’t show any signs of being grief-stricken.

      Uncle Teilo said, ‘Some tin hut in Africa, that’s where he’ll end up. Concert parties in Umbongo Land. Ted Sibley! After all I’ve done for you. You could be playing the Aston Hippodrome in a year or two if you stick with me.’

      ‘No, Teilo,’ Mam said. ‘He has to move on, same as I did from Pentrefoelas. People who’ve got any gumption always do. You’re never appreciated in your own backyard.’

      I said, ‘Well, I’ll be staying on your books, Teilo. As a matter of fact I’ve got a few ideas of my own. I might look around for a bass player and a drummer. Maybe a little vocalist too. A nice little songstress who’s easy on the eye. The Cled Boff Combo. We’ll be playing some of my own material.’

      ‘Oh yes?’ he said.

      A bit of enthusiasm would have been nice.

      Dilys didn’t like the sound of Sel’s plans. She said, ‘Who is this Ted Sibley anyway? Sel’s too young and trusting to sign papers for going overseas.’

      Of course, Sel always brought out the protective side in women. They always worried about him and ruffled his hair and cut his toast into soldiers. I put a lot of it down to his dimples.

      She said, ‘Will you go with him, Cled? Make sure he doesn’t get double crossed?’

      I said, ‘I’m not giving up my prospects to play nursemaid to him.’

      Mam said, ‘You don’t have any prospects.’

      Sel said, ‘I’ll be all right, Dilys. I’m twenty-one. I’ve got my wits about me. And I’ve got talent. All I have to do now is share the good news with the rest of the world, specially those Americans. They’re going to wonder what hit them.’

      I watched Mam’s face. ‘And there’s the difference’, she said to Uncle Teilo, ‘between an artiste who starts on the clubs and an artiste who stays on the clubs.’

      Dilys СКАЧАТЬ