Bruno turned away from the mike to hand it over to Melissa, whose eyes had started to sparkle under the spotlights. It looked as if this was going to be an emotional evening for us all.
The night was a very special one. Bruno brought in a few outside singers and bands to perform simple sing-a-long songs of peace and hope, with Bob Marley, Dylan and John Lennon numbers a-plenty. Mel, dressed in Dietrich
Blue Angel
style, contributed a hot and raunchy rendition of
Lili Marlene
with no clever and dirty re-writings of lyrics either, for once out of respect for the occasion.
We all had our own solo striptease sets between the other acts, until the finale for the evening which saw all of us on stage for the first time since my arrival for a
Moulin
Rouge
-style chorus line, complete with 19th-century skirts, petticoats and bodices. As well as bright red satin knickers, which Bruno had assured us were ‘one size fits all’ but which Svetlana had never stopped complaining about being too tight during our rehearsals (and expecting that something which fitted Petra, would also look good on Svetlana, was stretching credulity – and knickers elastic – just a bit too far).
“Buy your own then, dammit, and quit moaning!” Mel had yelled at her, and that was the last we heard of the matter. Until now, when the stretching necks and the pop-eyes in the first few rows revealed that she hadn’t bothered to wear any at all. And since she could kick higher than all of us, she succeeded in giving everyone a sneak preview of what was supposed to be our big climax when we’d pulled all the clothes off each other at the end.
As it turned out, half of us couldn’t remember our directions in the heat of the moment, it having been a very long, hot, and emotional night for everyone. So what had actually been a really carefully-planned exercise in mutual disrobing ended up bordering on farce, with everyone grabbing everyone else’s skirts, camisoles, corsets and panties in a free-for-all to see who could get stripped off the quickest.
But the crowd didn’t mind, and the net result was exactly what we (and they) had all wanted anyway – a gang of naked chicks all in a line, showing off everything to raucous applause. We took a bow as the house band struck up, and slowly, gradually, the club began to empty. I glanced around at the crumpled lace, linen and satin fallout which covered the stage.
“That could have gone more to plan,” I sighed.
“Hey, we got there, didn’t we?” Mel said, and hung her arms around my neck and Gloria’s.
“But some of us just always gotta do things
their
way,” Gloria said with a sly look aside at Svetlana. The Russian just waggled her tongue in response, and left the rest of us to it.
We watched the crowd leave, many of them waving at us, applauding as they went, thanking us for a great show and a good night. I heaved a long, deep sigh as I stood there, bathed in the warm lights of victory.
“Good gig, girls,” Mel told us as she went backstage and slapped each of our asses in turn, followed swiftly by Olivia who was asking something about champagne.
And as the bar emptied, and a cooling draught began to sweep up around us from the front doors, one face was left lingering at the front of the stage, looking up at me. Silent, curious, yet demanding of my attention as though waiting for me to come down and join her.
A face I had some trouble recognizing at first, it was so out of place, like a portrait cut from a magazine and stuck on an incongruous background scene. I screwed up my eyes, trying to focus clearly and understand exactly what I was looking at. A woman in her late forties, long reddish-brown hair centre-parted, flowing over a pale belted raincoat.
And then I fell to my knees in horror, covering myself up as best I could with the remains of my outfit.
“Oh my...” I stammered, flushing redder and hotter than I ever had in all my life. I could barely breathe out the words I was trying to say, my pulse was hammering so hard. This was too surreal. It could not be happening. Not to me, not tonight, or any night. “My God. Uhh...
Mother
?”
Even as I spoke the words, they seemed so ridiculous, so unreal. And yet there was no denying their truth.
She just looked up at me, her stare probing me, probably trying to confirm that it really was me.
“What are
you
doing here?” I gasped, still expecting, or praying, that the strange woman who looked a bit like my mother would laugh and tell me I’d mistaken her for someone else.
“Looking for you,” she said, her voice betraying no anger or sorrow, shock or disgust. She had already judged me, of course.
“How did you...I mean...”
“I heard little things, from people I know. Saw little things. Wondered if the shreds of rumors I overheard were true, so I decided to come along and see for myself. I had to know. I knew if I’d asked you on the telephone you would never have told me, so I had to catch you in the act, as it were.”
“See you backstage for the champagne,” Gloria sang behind me, and slapped me on the shoulder. “Bring your mom too, if you like. She looks like she’s still a bit of a goer. Know what I mean?”
I could hear the wicked grin as she skipped off into the wings, leaving me alone on a spotlight stage facing the one person in the world I had always prayed and hoped would never see me there.
Well, at least she hadn’t knocked on my door and seen what an untidy heap I lived in. Small mercies.
She leaned herself against the stage front and nodded to the departed Gloria. “Well, she’s very perceptive, your friend,” she said, although I didn’t comprehend her meaning.
I crouched down lower, folding myself in two so she wouldn’t see me anymore as I now was. Not that it wasn’t already too late for that, of course – just that speaking to your mother while stark naked apart from a pair of ankle boots isn’t something that’s easily done.
“Uh?” I gurgled. This couldn’t be – shouldn’t be – happening.
“This is the kind of thing I always hoped you’d never get involved in,” she said, and I closed my eyes, knowing the usual lecture was about to start. Every time the same – every time I spoke of my hopes and dreams of having some kind of exciting career, of singing, dancing, modeling – she was there to put me down and throw rose thorns under my feet. Now, no doubt, I’d get yelled at in front of everyone and told to come home, stop being a whore and that I was going to go to college to study bakery. At which point I’d make it clear that I was a woman, not a girl any more, and that I had my own life.
“I’m sorry you could never have known your father,” she said with a longing glance back out into the main bar.
“Well, you said he had to flee back to Eastern Berlin when the Reds put their bloody wall up,” I reminded her. “He couldn’t bear to be apart from his family, and they needed him. Shit happens, eh.”
She shrugged, and smiled. “I’m glad you remember that story. Because that was all it ever was.”
“What?”
“I used to do exactly what you’re doing now, dear. And I knew him for one night, and one night only, when I was twenty-one years old. But it was the most wonderful night I’d ever experienced. He was in the American army, and just passing through – this city, this continent, and my life.
“And when I had you, of course – I wasn’t really able to work any more. A body has a hard time recovering from childbirth, so I had to find a less demanding job. And all this time, I thought I could have protected you from this, but now I see you’re just like me. You want to be looked at, admired. You want to entertain, to tease, to arouse and inspire fantasies and dreams.
“Well, that’s all fine. Just think twice about making any big decisions that might soil your dream. Because once you’ve made them, there’s no going back. Remember that. The only thing worse than not reaching your dream, is reaching it and then losing it. That’s why I tried to keep your feet on the ground and your head out of the clouds, dear – so you’d never suffer the pain I went through of giving up the life I loved and had always craved.”
Those words hit me like a punch in the gut, and I felt all the anger, the heartache and pain from when Honey left all over again. For Honey
had
been a dream to me, and I had thrown her away.
She wiped away something glistening from her eye, like a loose sequin from one of Olivia’s dresses. “By the way, you looked magnificent up there. You’ve turned into one hell of a woman. And now it all seems so worthwhile.”
And for the first time since I could ever remember, I saw my mother smile at me, a genuine, warm, slightly sad but overwhelmingly
proud
smile. I leant over the front of the stage and threw my arms around her.
“Mother...
thank you
.”
I knelt there for a ridiculous length of time, sobbing down the front of her blouse until my knees grew red and numb against the hard wooden boards.
“I’d better go,” she whispered into my neck. “My taxi’s waiting.”
She drew herself away from me and I watched her walk beneath the red lights of the Klub, swishing and striding with the confidence of one who knew that venue intimately. I was still staring long after the outer doors had swung shut behind her, when I felt a soft touch on my shoulder.
“Everything okay, darling?” Olivia asked me.
I nodded dumbly and choked up some tears from my throat.
“Yeah. It’s all okay. Let’s get wasted.”
I gave her my hand and I arose stiffly, creaking, my knees complaining. She led me backstage and I could already smell the champagne.
ACT III
THE ‘90S
Chapter Eleven
Naughty Nineties
And so the ‘80s rolled in to the ‘90s, and again we found ourselves having to put up with another shift in culture, attitudes, social mores and new musical styles. We didn’t much like any of the new sounds we heard on the radio now, and in a way our determination to continue with the traditional Kitty Klub jazz themes was a gesture of defiance against the unappealing, manufactured stuff which clogged up the airwaves.
And for the second time, at the start of ‘93, Petra walked out on us all, citing some kind of family business she had to attend to. We were sorry to see her go, and at least were able to throw a half-decent leaving party for her this time, but even through the smiles and the drinks, I knew she wouldn’t be back. Since her return, her mood had remained in a different place. She had no longer been the Queen of the Jazz Age, but had filled her routines with a more modern – or even, post-modern – kind of angst. She had dumped all her flashy, sequined clothes, hats and boas, and adopted a darker, heavier look – much like I had done, but with less real understanding of what she was doing, or why; almost as though she was trying to work some kind of negative influence out of her system. Svetlana had made a career out of angry outbursts on stage, but Svetlana was a tough-minded dame who exhibited none of the frailties or problems that had plagued Petra for so long.
But with her leaving, we were forced to consider the very real possibility that the rest of us should be following her out of the Klub for good, also. After all, it had been nearly fifteen years since I had started there, and all the others were older than me by at least a couple of years. Already I was in my mid-thirties, and it suddenly occurred to me that I was having a Mrs. Groenenberg moment: what was I doing with my life? Where were my opportunities? What was my future? In the light of dawn, it seemed as though Honey and Petra had actually done the smart thing, and gotten out while they still had a decent chance at making it somewhere else. For the rest of us left behind, it seemed as though that decision would be a lot harder to make, the longer time went on.
It wasn’t just us. Bruno had begun to lose interest in the business side, and was spending less and less time among us, becoming more reclusive. It was a memorable bombshell of a day when he called us into a Klub Hug one mid-week afternoon and announced in a somewhat strained voice,
“This is it, ladies. Consider me now retired.”
He stood at the bar with his tanned face split lengthways in a sad grin. His hair was greyer now, his sideburns thinner and the lines around his eyes more obvious – but he was still the same old Bruno I remembered from that weak-kneed, bladder-bursting day when I wobbled and shimmed very badly to Blondie, pulled off my mother’s old hand-knitted cardigan, and somehow convinced him to employ me. Come to think of it, as I looked closer, I wondered if he’d put on a bit more weight around the middle, and his fingers did look rather chubbier now as he held his cigar between them.
“I have such great memories, and have shared so many wonderful experiences with everybody here, and many who aren’t. And I’ll take those memories with me wherever I go, and for as long as I have the ability to remember.”
It only occurred to me then that I had no idea if Bruno was married. If he had family. Or even what his full name was. It just hadn’t seemed important: Bruno was Bruno, that was it. He was the only one, unique in his position and in himself as our hirer, our impresario, our friend, our big brother, our – my thoughts hesitated, as I considered the next fact – our collective
father
. That ingredient missing from my life for so long, which I had somehow compensated a little for by being one of his Kits. Perhaps that had been the magical paste which had bound us together for so long; perhaps we were all of us orphans in our own way, gathered under the wing of Bruno, collected and nurtured by his loving, caring hand. The hand which had never once fondled any of us out of turn, pulled up a skirt or pulled down a G-string. The comforting parental hand which had always been that of a perfect gentleman, which handed out gifts and rewards, passed around drinks and well-earned pay packets. Our benefactor, our leader, our best buddy, all in one robust, gently grinning, warm and approachable body.
Nobody spoke, but lips were sucked and eyes downcast. We had all known it was coming, and we would respect his decision without tearful wailing, and other gross displays of sentiment – at least, at this stage – but it wouldn’t make the parting any easier.
“What are you going to do?” Mel asked, the first to find her voice, and the one who would have known for longest of his intentions.