LITMIR.BIZ

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floor. That was at the beginning of the time. Then they moved upstairs, but at the time I’m talking of they were in the attic. There were two rooms, with a little gas-stove in one of them and a sink out in the passage. The windows of the rooms looked out over the parapet, which is one of the features of all the houses in our street. It’s a big yellow stucco parapet that finishes the roof off and makes the houses look like great slabs of margarine on a Sainsbury counter.

      I don’t think I ever really got to know Frank until I had him in the house. Louie I seemed to know less. Every now and again I’d recognise the dear old girl she really was and I’d see a spark of the old spirit, the old friendliness that had made me love her all my life. But for the most part she was on guard against me. She wouldn’t let me get near her. She was always defensive, always frightened.

      Frank was mad. I came to that conclusion when he gave the Peeler Ventriloquist Act’s parrot a great lump of bacon and killed it, and Louie and I were at our wits’ end covering the business up.

      It’s difficult to explain why I should have found that so enlightening, but it wasn’t done through, ignorance and it wasn’t done as a joke, and it wasn’t even done out of maliciousness, because he had nothing against the Peeler pair except that they were living; in the rooms he used to have. But it was done out of a desire to be powerful, if you see what I mean, and after that I knew he was dangerous.

      I find myself skipping the story of Louie and Frank in between that time we had a row at the Palladium and the time they finally gravitated to my attic. It’s because it’s an old story and a tragic story, the same old miserable story that any one-time star who hasn’t saved can tell you.

      There were more rows, less good performances, changes in the public taste, hard times and worst of all, a dreadful moment when her old spirit came back and she gave ’em the affection that she used to give ’em, gasping and exhausted and fighting as she was and they didn’t want it any more. And there were empty seats and perhaps even a catcall or so from the gods.

      There were other things too: unpleasant interviews with managers who didn’t even know the names of predecessors who’d been more than half in love with her.

      And all the time there was Frank, making it worse. He’d always done silly things, but being wild with a lot of money is funny and being wild with no money is criminal.

      He was never in jail. She kept him out of that somehow. Now and again she got a little engagement. At those times I had my hands full with him. If he could get down to the theatre he’d make a scene. He couldn’t help it; he just wanted to be in the picture, like a silly hysterical woman.

      He was never drunk, or at least only very rarely and then only when it suited his purpose and he fancied himself doing the Garrick act. Then he’d knock her about. It looks incredible now I’ve written it down. You remember Louie Lester: can you see any man knocking her about? But he did. I’ve had the doctor in to clean up a black eye before now.

      As the years went on it got worse—worse for me, I mean. She’d always had hell’s delight with him, I imagine. But he became an old man of the sea. They couldn’t pay me very much at first and they paid me less and less until they paid me nothing at all. Time and again I’d lose my temper and threaten to throw him out, and then he’d laugh at me.

      ‘If I go Louie goes,’ he’d say. ‘Can you see her, Polly, sitting under the Adelphi Arches?’

      I couldn’t, but I could see him sitting there and her singing in the street until she could bring him something, like a poor old mother wagtail with an obscene, bald red cuckoo tucked up in her nest.

      So they stayed. Times had been difficult in the theatrical profession. They still are. People have still got to live but they don’t live so well, and there are too many real business people in the boarding-house line to make it all jam for old women like me, who don’t know how to count every halfpenny and haven’t learnt how to be mean.

      He began to affect my business. I haven’t brought myself to tell you his worse fault; I don’t know how to describe it without making him sound a lunatic, which he wasn’t. If he’d been certifiable I’d have had him done long ago, whatever Louie said.

      He used to swank. But it wasn’t only that; lots of people swank, especially old pros. But he did it with a sort of frenzy. A man couldn’t open his mouth and mention anything clever or remarkable that he or anyone else had done without my lord piping up with a tale of how he’d done the same thing much better.

      There wasn’t an actress you could mention he hadn’t either slept with or taught her her job. There wasn’t a manager who hadn’t borrowed money from him. All of it lies, silly lies, lies everybody saw through. He used to get on people’s nerves and I found I was getting my house full of foreigners who couldn’t understand him.

      When he couldn’t get satisfaction that way he’d do tricks, make out he could walk tight ropes and jump on to the ledges of tables. I used to think he’d kill himself and hope he would.

      Louie never deserted him. She used to get cross and I’d hear her pleading with him and sometimes snapping at him. But she’d never do anything definite. She’d never frighten him. She’d never turn him out of the house, even for half an hour.

      He lost her all her old pals, some of them useful There were folks who’d retired and gone down to live in the country who’d have been glad to put her up for a week or so, but they couldn’t stomach Frank and you couldn’t blame them.

      She kept her health wonderfully. You only get a vital personality like that when there’s an iron constitution behind it, and it’s a miracle to me what a real constitution will stand. He’d exhaust her, beat her, jag her nerves to ribbons, and she’d come up again, a ghost of herself but still ready for punishment.

      I gave up trying to plead with her after the first year. She was never angry, only obstinate. She’d never leave him.

      They’d been in the attic over a year and things were terrible. It was two years since Louie had had a shop and then it was in some dirty little unheard-of hall on the south coast. Frank had gone down there and after the management had had a dose of him, if she’d filled every seat in the house it wouldn’t have got her a return booking. And she hadn’t filled every seat by a long chalk.

      Things were bad with me too. I’d mortgaged the place for more than it was worth and got rid of one of my little girls. Money wasn’t coming in. I didn’t see what I was going to do.

      Then one day, just when it looked as though we’d all be in the street, young Harry Ferris came round to see me. Just walked into the kitchen without ringing the bell, and although I hadn’t seen him since he was at school I recognised him; he was so like his Dad. It was all I could do to prevent myself from crying all over him, and that’s not the way to treat any manager even if you’re sixteen, much less sixty.

      He was a nice boy, much quieter and more the gentleman than his father, and he called me Miss Oliver. But he was none the worse for that and he sat down at the kitchen table and talked to me. I soon saw what he was after.

      They were trying to revive the old music hall at the New Imperial and he wanted Louie.

      ‘There’s a chance for her, Miss Oliver,’ he said. ‘A real chance. She could sing all those old songs of—Lord’s, was it?’

      ‘Lorn,’ I said, and I thought of him, the first time he’d come into my mind for years. Poor Lorn! He was just one of the good things Louie threw away.

      ‘Lorn, was it?’ said my visitor. ‘Oh, well … anyway you know the songs. I’m not promising anything, but if she did go over big—and she might; there’s a great revival in this old hearty stuff just now—well, there’d be a good long run. There’s only one thing I’m afraid of, though.’

      He hesitated and I knew why he’d come to me and not gone straight to Louie, and I saw Frank for what he was for the first time in my life. He wasn’t a man at all; he was a vice, a vice of Louie’s.

      ‘It’s

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