Chrissie's Children (16 page)

‘Sophie . . .’ She paused then for a moment, panicking. She hadn’t thought of this. Impossible to use her own name, so . . .

The secretary prompted, ‘Sophie . . .?’

‘Nightingale,’ and wondered if he would recognise that one, if he remembered her grandmother, Vesta Nightingale.

He did not. He wrote down the name carefully, his tongue following the pen: ‘Sophie Night-in-gale.’ Then he asked, ‘And what d’you do?’

‘I sing.’

He wrote that down, too, then told Sophie, ‘Righto, lass. See Billy – he’s the piano man on the stage – then get yourself a drink and find a seat.’

The hall looked enormous to Sophie and was already nearly full of members and their wives. Billy was short, fat and had a stool with a cushion on it to lift him high enough to play the scarred
upright piano. He was playing when Sophie climbed up the steps at the side and stepped on to the stage. She bent to say, ‘The entertainments secretary said I should see you.’

‘In the competition?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I’m a singer.’

‘What are you singing?’

Sophie laid her music on the empty stand before him and Billy played on with one hand while lifting a pint glass of beer from the top of the piano. He drank a quarter of the contents then
replaced the glass. He gave the music a cursory glance then grinned at her. ‘Right y’are, I know that one. I’ll be ready when you are.’

Sophie smiled weakly and got down from the stage, away from the stares from scores of curious eyes. She found a seat close by the steps and tried to look poised and used to this business. A
woman hurrying past with an empty tray checked in her waddling stride and asked, ‘Can I get you owt, pet?’

She looked kindly, and old enough to be Sophie’s grandmother. Sophie clutched at this little bit of friendship and said, ‘I’d like a lemonade, please.’ Then she worried
if she would have enough to pay for it. She did, just, when the waitress brought it on a tray filled with pints of beer. Sophie sipped it and told herself it would have to last.

The contest got under way, the secretary pulling names out of a hat, and as each name was called its owner climbed on to the stage and gave his or her performance. There were comedians, an
accordionist, two baritones and a tenor. There was one other girl singer, announced as Mollie Gates. She was in her mid-twenties and obviously known already, because she was applauded as she came
to the stage and waved to friends in the audience, confident and smiling. She sang and Sophie watched and listened, immersed in the performances. She thought coolly that this girl was good, but she
herself was better.

Then came the moment when the secretary announced, ‘Sophie Nightingale!’ and she was climbing the steps on legs that seemed to wobble, then teetering across the stage on her high
heels to stand at the microphone. Billy played the opening chords and she took a breath, then turned to him to say, ‘That’s too high.’

Billy stopped his playing, fingered a key then started again, eyebrows raised in a question. Sophie nodded gratefully and he winked at her. Sophie faced the stares from the packed hall, but she
had prepared herself for this. She picked out a face at the back of the room and saw without surprise that it was the young man who had brought her into the club, now standing by the long bar.
Sophie sang to him.

Peter Robinson had just finished his training under Joe Nolan’s tutelage. He listened open mouthed as the girl on stage sang. He thought that she seemed to be singing to him, then told
himself that it was just his imagination. But she was
good
!

He did not notice a slight, dark-haired girl only a yard away from him.

Sarah Tennant had come through to the bar with a tray of clean glasses. The singing caught her attention first and then she froze as she saw the girl on stage. She whispered to herself,
‘Oh, my God! Miss Sophie! And in her mother’s dress!’ She had seen Chrissie wearing it only a few days before. But then she watched and listened.

Sophie relished the applause as she took her bow, and it accompanied her back to her seat. She waited, excited, until the secretary consulted the judges scattered around the room and then
announced, ‘The winner is . . . Mollie Gates.’ There was polite applause but also a rumbling of discontent. The secretary peered out at them unhappily and went on, ‘The runner-up
is Sophie Nightingale.’ That was greeted with cheers and hammering on tables. ‘Now I’ll call on the winner to give us an encore.’

Mollie Gates obliged and was again politely applauded. Sophie waited until she had left the stage and then quickly took her place, whispered in Billy’s ear and faced her audience. Billy
began to play and the secretary came hurrying over. ‘Here! Now then, lass, it’s only the winner that gives an encore.’ But Sophie was already singing: ‘It’s A Sin To
Tell A Lie’ and the crowd cheered her on, then fell silent and listened, and cheered her again at the end. The secretary retired sheepishly, muttering, ‘Young lasses think they can do
as they like . . .’ Mollie Gates was red faced and furious.

Sophie thanked Billy and left the stage knowing she had won a moral victory. Then she put a hand to her mouth as she saw Sarah Tennant watching from behind the bar. Their eyes met then Sarah
turned away and went out through a door.

Sophie collected her prize of ten shillings from the secretary and then made for the bar. Peter Robinson met her there and said, somewhat awed, ‘You were great. You should have won. All
the fellers round here thought so.’ He jerked his head sideways at the men lined up along the bar.

Sophie laughed, the excitement still flushing her cheeks. She pressed the folded ten-shilling note into his hand, surreptitiously to preserve his male dignity, and asked, ‘Will you get
that changed for me? Buy us a drink apiece.’

‘Aye.’ Peter was glad to take the money. Nearly all his small wage as a labourer was swallowed by the upkeep of the two rooms that made up the family home, and supporting his mother
and brother. ‘Wait here.’ He pushed his way through to the bar.

Sophie glanced around her, and did not see the face she sought, but then the waitress who had brought her lemonade came out of the crowd round the bar carrying a tray of drinks. Sophie asked
her, ‘Can you tell me where I’ll find a girl called Sarah Tennant? I saw her behind the bar a minute ago but she isn’t there now.’

‘Sarah will be washing glasses at the back – in the little room there.’ The motherly woman pointed. ‘Go through that door to the passage, then in the door on the right
and you’ll find her.’

Sophie found Sarah working over a huge sink of soapy water filled with glasses. She said, ‘I didn’t know you worked here.’

Sarah sighed and admitted, ‘I’m not supposed to. The law says I should only work a certain number of hours and I put them in at the hotel. I do this to make a bit of extra
money.’ She appealed to Sophie: ‘You won’t let on to Mrs Ballantyne, will you?’

‘No.’ Sophie looked around the bare little room, walls dripping with condensation from the steaming sink. ‘How long do you work in here?’

‘Seven till ten, six nights a week.’

‘Doing this all the time?’

‘Sometimes in the week when business is slack and there aren’t many glasses I do a bit of cleaning or odd jobs like that.’

And that’s after a day’s work at the hotel, Sophie thought. She said, ‘I won’t tell Mother – provided you don’t. Will you keep quiet about me singing here
tonight?’

‘Oh, yes, Miss Sophie,’ Sarah agreed willingly.

Sophie squeezed her arm and said, ‘Righto, then.’

She returned to the bar and found Peter waiting with a lemonade and a half-pint of beer, looking about for her. She apologised. ‘Sorry. I thought I’d be back before you
were.’

He said quickly, ‘That’s all right,’ then he furtively pressed her change into her hand. They sat down at a table and he said, ‘I haven’t seen you in here
before.’

Sophie grinned at him. ‘I haven’t been in here before. I suppose you’re a regular.’

‘Oh, aye. Not in this bar, mind.’ He could only afford an occasional beer.

‘Where, then?’

With that encouragement he told her about the boxing club and Joe Nolan. Then when Sophie pressed him he told her about his job. ‘I work at Ballantyne’s. To tell you the truth I was
taken on by the old man himself – Mr Ballantyne.’

Sophie’s lips twitched, wondering how her father would react to being the ‘old man’. ‘Really?’

‘Aye. I was asking the foreman for a job – he’s a feller called Gallagher, a right—’ He stopped then. ‘Well, anyway, Gallagher wasn’t having any of it
but Ballantyne came out of the office and said, “Take him on.”’ He told her of the hardships of the work and the rough humour, of the differing characters in the gang in which he
worked. ‘They’re a good set o’ lads, bar Gallagher and McNally.’

Sophie asked, ‘Do you all hate those two?’

‘No. It’s just me. Some o’ the other fellers don’t like them although they all get along in the yard. But I know something they don’t.’

‘What’s that?’

He wouldn’t tell her, knowing that if Gallagher found out his secret he would try to shut Peter’s mouth. Peter remembered Harry Henderson’s still and twisted body where it had
fallen from the staging.

Sophie was attracted by this young man, who was not handsome nor well dressed but had an open, honest face that was sombre now.

He shrugged and grinned, embarrassed, and tried to change the subject. ‘Never mind. Where do you work?’

Sophie sidestepped the question. ‘Over the bridge.’ That was barely true – so far as she worked at all it was in her school on the other side of the river. However, it implied
she had a job somewhere in the town and Peter took it to mean just that, as she knew he would. She glanced at her watch and stood up. ‘I’ll have to be getting home.’

Peter said, ‘That’s a nice watch.’ He stared at it on her wrist. No working girl could afford a watch like that.

Sophie said quickly, ‘My father gave it to me last Christmas.’ That was true.

Peter grinned. ‘He must have had a winner up or got a club out.’ They were the only sources of large sums of money so far as he knew: a win on the horses or a five-pound or ten-pound
voucher obtained from a store, spent there and repaid with interest spread over several months.

Sophie understood about the horses but was baffled by the reference to a club. When her parents made a purchase they paid cash or had it charged to their account at the shop. She smiled brightly
and said, ‘That’s right.’ Sophie moved towards the door and Peter went with her.

He offered, ‘I’ll see you home.’

‘No! Thanks, but it’s away over the water.’ She saw his disappointment and didn’t want to leave anyway but knew she had to. ‘Could you come as far as the
tram?’

Outside the streets glittered wetly in the light of the lamps. Sophie pulled on her raincoat, bulky with her other clothes crammed into the pockets. She and Peter hurried through the dark
streets, some still cobbled, others black tarmacadam. The wind off the sea drove a fine drizzle at their backs. They came to the Wheatsheaf, a pub that stood on a junction where three tram routes
met, and Peter said, ‘Stand in here.’ He pulled her into a shop doorway where they were out of the worst of the rain. ‘What tram do you want?’

Sophie replied, still evasive, ‘Any that goes over the bridge.’

‘Where do you live, then?’

Sophie could not answer that, sensed that if he found out who she was he would break off the young and fragile relationship. She did not want that. She was still excited by her success that
night and the whole adventure. She saw her tram come rocking around the bend in the road, clanking over the maze of points. A shift of the wind sent the rain driving into their shelter and their
faces. Sophie stopped Peter’s questions by throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him on the mouth. Then she broke away and ran for her tram.

Peter followed her for a few strides, but the tram was already moving again, Sophie swinging up on to the platform beside the conductor. Peter saw her face turned towards him, laughing, and saw
her wave a hand, heard her call, ‘See you here next week! Eight o’clock!’

‘Aye!’ he shouted, then walked home jauntily.

‘Goodnight, Sarah.’ Chrissie Ballantyne said it quietly but startled the girl as she entered the hotel by the back door.

‘Oh! Goodnight, Mrs Ballantyne.’ Sarah flushed as she shook the rain from her hair, embarrassed at being found entering so late. She headed for the stairs that would take her to her
room, praying that Mrs Ballantyne would not ask where she had been.

Chrissie did not. She guessed that Sarah had been working somewhere, remembered how she herself had worked when she was Sarah’s age. Besides, she reasoned, she was not the child’s
guardian. Having said that, however, she would keep an eye on the girl and if it looked as though she was doing too much, then that would be the time to spell out the law.

Chrissie had dined at her new Ballantyne Hotel and worked late there, partly as there was work to be done but mainly because Jack was still away and would be for another week or more. Before she
left that evening Chrissie walked through the building, savouring again the pride in completing it in such a short time, looking it over lovingly. So she had happened to be around when Sarah
Tennant returned.

Now she went on to the yard at the back and climbed into the driving seat of the Ford. The wipers swept the rain from the windscreen as she drove home to the Ballantyne house in Ashbrooke. There
she found Sophie, scrubbed clean of make-up and curled up in bed, listening dreamy eyed to music on her radio and recalling her triumph on stage – and Peter Robinson.

Chrissie smiled and said, ‘Hello.’

Sophie waggled long fingers at her. ‘Hello, Mummy.’ Then the fingers went back to tapping out the beat.

Chrissie asked, ‘Was it a good picture?’

Sophie remembered the excuse she had given earlier, that she was going to the cinema. Now she said neutrally, ‘Mm!’

Chrissie could not help comparing Sophie’s childhood with that of her own. ‘When I was your age I was a housekeeper, cooking and cleaning, at the Frigate,’ she mused. Before
that, at fourteen, she had cooked and cleaned for a household of eight working men.