After the Cabaret by Hilary Bailey Read Free Book Online Page A

don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ and she was off, her high heels clattering over the marble floor.
    In Shaftesbury Avenue, Sally went to Victor Kane’s office below which was a small shop selling umbrellas and walking sticks. She went into the tall building, climbed a flight of stairs and went through a door with a frosted-glass window on which was painted
Victor Kane, Theatrical Representative
.
    A well made-up woman with dyed blonde hair in corrugated waves sat behind a desk knitting a jersey in a complicated Fair Isle pattern.
    She glanced up at Sally, then the phone rang. She placed her knitting carefully on the desk and answered it. ‘No, sorry, Bobby. Nothing today. It’s the war. Will you ring tomorrow, darling? Good, that’s good. Toodle-oo.’
    She looked at Sally again. Once more the phone rang. She picked it up. ‘Hello, Mrs Kane. Yes, Mrs Kane. I’m putting you through, Mrs Kane.’
    Immediately there was a burst of speech from behind the door leading off from the office. The woman picked up her knitting.
    â€˜Can you help me, darling—’ Sally began.
    The male voice beyond the office door grew louder and wilder. ‘Mrs Kane’s got herself in a shocking state about the war,’ the woman confided. ‘That’s what it’s about. Well, don’t just stand there. Advance and state your case.’
    â€˜I’m looking for a job,’ said Sally. ‘Cabaret, revue, that sort of thing – Lola Laine sent me. We’re opening in a club in September.’
    â€˜I know,’ said the woman. The man’s voice went on and on. Then came an impatient shout and the door was flung open to reveal a portly figure in a green waistcoat, with an unlit cigar in his hand. Victor Kane looked shaken. ‘I’m volunteering! I’m joining up,’ he declared. ‘You’ll hold the fort for me while I’m gone, won’t you, Yvonne?’
    â€˜You don’t want to do that, Victor,’ she told him. ‘You’d make a rotten soldier.’
    â€˜Well, I can’t stand any more of this,’ he said. ‘Will you do it – keep the business running?’
    â€˜You’ll have to draw up a document,’ she told him. ‘I can’t have Mrs Kane interfering all the time.’
    â€˜What about pleading with me? “Don’t go, Victor, don’t go and get killed.’”
    â€˜You’ll survive,’ she said, unsympathetically.
    He went out.
    â€˜Will he do it?’ asked Sally.
    â€˜I shouldn’t think so. He’ll stop off at the Café Royal on the way to join up and that’ll be that for the day. Mind you, he’s very wrought up. Mrs Kane’s got relatives in Poland and she’s saying they’ll all be killed. Jewish,’ Yvonne mouthed at Sally. ‘She’s driving him mad.’ She flipped open a card index, then copied something on to a piece of paper, which she handed to Sally. ‘You’re in luck.
Pull Up Your Socks
has just lost a soubrette to the Army. If you get the job come back here and sign on with the agency. That okey-doke with you?’ The phone was ringing again. She picked it up. ‘He just went out. I’m not sure where he’s gone, Mrs Kane. No, I haven’t seen the paper today.’ She covered the receiver with her hand and said to Sally, ‘For God’s sake, clean yourself up a bit before you go. You look as if you’ve just got out of bed.’
    Sally did an audition on a dusty stage, to a piano accompaniment played by the theatre manager, who happened to be in the building at the time. She sang a song popularised by Gertrude Lawrence, ‘The Physician’, lightening, as far as possible, a voice too low and husky for the music. ‘See your legs, dear?’ came the weary request from the producer’s nephew, who had been the only other person there, apart from the manager, when Sally