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

arrived. She raised her skirt to reveal her last pair of silk stockings.
    He called her down into the stalls. ‘Can you start tonight?The conductor’s got the music. You’ll have to go over to Camden Town to get it from him. And don’t expect the show to last, the way things are.’
    â€˜I won’t,’ she promised him.
    In Camden Town she stood on a doorstep looking down a dusty passageway, which contained an old pram. The conductor’s wife, a harassed woman in a floral pinafore, gave her the music. Then she took another bus and headed across the river for Kennington, where her friends, Spanish exiles Ricardo and Antonia, agreed to put her up on the couch in their flat.
    From then until July Sally, in an electric blue evening dress borrowed from Vi in exchange for Vi’s use, when required, of the pink suit, did six shows a week, and a Wednesday matinèe, in
Pull Up Your Socks
– ‘witty, farouche, gossamer-light’, read the notice outside the theatre. She sang two numbers, one bitter-sweet, ‘
It was forever, you told me on Monday, but eternity ended that day
’ and one madly gay, ‘
Dance the tango through the night, Tango, fandango, till early light
’ Then she got the last bus back to Kennington.
    She spent her afternoons in the cramped South London flat on correspondence for the local Communist Party. On Saturdays she sold the
Daily Worker
outside Piccadilly Circus underground station.
    When the show closed Sally borrowed ten shillings here and there in order to eat and help out with Ricardo and Antonia’s rent until September.
    There had never been any doubt in Cora’s mind that, war or no war, La Vie en Rose – or the Pink Urinal asit was cruelly christened by the Pontifex Street crowd – must open in September, and only in September, when the better sort of people returned to town. The date of the opening was fixed for the seventh.

Chapter 14
    Greg was impressed by his first sight of Bruno’s shop on the bottom floor of a low house at the smarter end of Portobello Road. It stood on a corner, beside a cobbled mews at the end of which were two garages that must once have been stables. The shop had large windows on two sides, overlooking the street and the mews. The windows gleamed; the paint was trim; above the shop the name ‘Lowenthal’ was painted in gold letters.
    Inside stood small items of furniture, an early Victorian upholstered chair, a rosewood table. Old china and silver had been placed on various surfaces.
    As Greg approached, a thick-set man and a tall, pale girl in jeans were unloading a kneehole desk from a van in the mews. Bruno stood nearby, watching. When he saw Greg he said, ‘Good. I’ve booked a table at a restaurant in Hyde Park, but first I must see this done.’ The man and the girl carried the desk past them, into the shop. ‘Hurry up, Fiona,’ Bruno said. ‘I want the van moved so I canget my car out.’ He and Greg watched as the pair, having disposed of the desk, returned to the van and started to unload a large tall-boy. They began to move it towards the shop. ‘No!’ cried Bruno. ‘In the workshop! What did I tell you before?’ They turned and carried the tall-boy to the end of the mews. ‘No one remembers what you say,’ Bruno grumbled. Finally, they were finished, but before the van moved off Bruno said to the young woman, ‘I’m going to have lunch, Fiona. Be careful. No accidents, not like last time.’
    â€˜Yes, Bruno,’ she said meekly.
    They walked to the garages at the back of the mews. One was obviously used as a workshop and storage area. Bruno opened the door to the other and revealed an antique more impressive to Greg than all the rest, a gleaming black Wolseley, all fresh paint and chrome, dating from some time in the 1950s.
    â€˜Mr Lowenthal,’ he said respectfully. ‘What a car!’
    â€˜I used to dream of