Nameless by Jessie Keane Read Free Book Online

feathers. There were pretty girls, tall boys with painted eyes. Ruby stared around, open-mouthed. Vi’s Mary-Jane shoes beat out a tattoo on the wooden floorboards as she surged ahead. She shot down a set of stairs with Ruby trailing behind.
    ‘We’re open from midday to ten fifty at night. Continuous performances, five or six a day, one right after the other,’ Vi threw back over her shoulder.
    ‘Apart from during raids,’ said Ruby.
    ‘No, we don’t close. Fuck Hitler. We never close. Below street level, see. Safe as houses.’ She came to a halt. Ruby could hear a girl singing ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs’, and an accompanying piano. Vi shushed her, putting one manicured finger to her lips, and they edged forward until they were standing in the wings.
    ‘Look,’ Vi whispered in her ear.
    Ruby looked. The lights out on the stage were dazzling. There was a dark-haired girl in a pink satin evening gown lounging against a grand piano, singing her heart out. In the background there were massive empty gold-filigreed frames, four of them, each one in darkness. And then the lights changed.
    ‘Oh!’ burst out Ruby.
    ‘Shhh!’
    One by one the frames were illuminated, revealing the ‘tableaux’ within – four bare-breasted beauties depicted as Britannia, Liberty, Hope and Glory.
    ‘They mustn’t move,’ hissed Vi to Ruby. ‘That’s the only thing. Not a muscle. Or Lord Cromer goes straight off his head.’
    Ruby was dumbstruck with shock. Surely Vi didn’t expect her to do that ?
    Finally she found her voice. ‘But you said dancing .’
    Vi turned her head and looked at her. ‘We do have dancers. But be honest – you that good a dancer?’
    Ruby wasn’t. She shook her head miserably.
    ‘Sing?’
    Again the headshake.
    ‘There you go. But you’ve got a bloody good body, and Liberty there – that’s Jenny – she’s going off to marry her forces sweetheart soon, so there’ll be a vacancy. Ah!’ Vi was staring across the stage towards the wings on the other side. ‘There’s Mr Van Damm now, he’s the manager – you’ll love him. Mrs Henderson’s the owner, she’s here all the time, you’ll love her too. It’s like one big happy family. We’ll go round the back and I’ll introduce you.’
    Oh Jesus , thought Ruby.
    But she was doing it, wasn’t she? She was breaking free, breaking out. And right now, stupidly, she couldn’t help wondering what her mother would have made of it all.

11
     
    1922
    ‘What the fucking hell . . . ?’ asked Ted.
    Ted and Alicia were sitting by the empty hearth. It was a warm summer’s night. Too hot to go to bed yet, although it was late. The kids were asleep upstairs, the day’s exhausting shop-work done. It was nice to just sit, and rest.
    Only . . . there was this noise going on out in the street.
    ‘Where’s that coming from?’ asked Ted, getting to his feet.
    Alicia stood up too, feeling a prickle on the hairs at the back of her neck. Together, they walked through the house and out onto the front step. The street was dark, no one about: out here, the sound was much louder.
    The shimmering notes of the trumpet seemed to twine like golden ribbons around the still evening air.
    ‘Coming from over there,’ said Ted, pointing to the bed and breakfast opposite.
    Alicia shivered. She was entranced by the sound. It was him, she reckoned. Leroy. Playing his songs to the night. She could see an open window on the first floor of the house. The room beyond was in darkness. But she knew it was him.
    She glanced at Ted. He hated music, although he had indulged her by buying the gramophone for her birthday. He didn’t indulge her much. Sometimes she played her records on it, just things like Richard Tauber, serious stuff, nothing like this. Ted always moaned about the noise and she always, in the end, switched it off.
    That was marriage, her old ma had told her: give and take. But Ted seemed to do most of the taking, and she all the giving. Since the kids had come