Open Writing

Jenny strode down the corridor purposefully towards box seven where she paused, moved the curtain slightly and peered inside at the young man who glared at the stage where Pedro And His Dancing Dogs And Amazing Monkey were being less than chivalrously received. No wonder. It was a lousy act and Pedro was dying on his arse.

The young man's face was heavy with drink and close to the belligerent stage. If anyone was foolish enough to tap him too soon, he would prove a handful. She heard Tommy approaching and stepped aside. They exchanged a nod and Tommy went through the curtain with the tray.

"Here we are, sir. Best in the house."

Jenny carried on towards the stage. A gent, whose charm seemed to be confined to his yellow waistcoat, stepped out of another box and smiled in delight at this surprise encounter. Beyond him, near to the steps that led down backstage, his associate was standing. There was a hole in the wooden wall here and he was urinating through it out into the night.

She made a distinction between gentlemen and gents. The latter were a breed of Johnny Hopefuls striving to ape the real gentry. They might be anything from clerks on a bender to devious dealers a few pounds ahead of the law. These were of the devious kind.
"Well, well, well," said the gent. "A nightingale in captivity."

She smiled with the sweet innocence she had perfected and said, "A nightingale with a song to sing, sir." She curtsied. "I'll sing it just for you."

He put out his hand as she attempted to walk past and said, "A moment, sweet nightingale." He was unsteady and his speech slurred. "A moment for a kiss, I beseech you." His hand began to circle her waist.

"But sir, you would not compromise me, would you?"

"Compromise? 'pon my soul, no." He sniggered and felt in his waistcoat and produced a coin. "How about a shilling's worth?"

He was referring to a popular song that she sang about an innocent young maid seeking work, called Willing For A Shilling.

The gent's friend had finished at the hole and turned towards them, fumbling with flaps and buttons.

"What's happening?" he said, and his face brightened when he saw Jenny.

"A whole shilling, sir?" said Jenny, taking it from him, and dropping it on the floor between the two men. "Oh dear. What I would do for a shilling, but it has gone."

"No, it's here," said her inebriated suitor, bending unsteadily to retrieve it. His companion also leaned forward to help and Jenny, resting her hand on his back, pushed the two of them together, causing them to tumble to the planking.

Children, really, she thought, as she stepped past. Big, daft, selfish, bloody children.

She went down the steps and backstage.

Pedro, his dogs and monkey, left to a sparsity of handclaps and a selection of hisses and boos.

"By 'eck, lass, but they're a hard bloody lot tonight," he said, his greasepaint running with sweat.

A fire eater who was dressed as a noble savage was sitting on a three legged stool in the far wings, smoking a clay pipe. His partner, a lady in distressed pink tights whose figure had seen better days and who had a doleful and careworn look, sat on a basket nearby, eating a meat pie.

The next act, a standing jumper from Stafford, waited while Ebby Burke, proprietor, showman and performer, introduced him to the restless crowd with extravagant promise. Ebby sat at a small table that was on a drop platform to one side of the stage. During a performance he would often face the audience whilst watching the act over his shoulder in a looking glass.

"He does go on," said the jumper's assistant, a young man who carried a basket of eggs.
"It's his job to go on," said the jumper. He wore ordinary working clothes and boots, a heavy waxed moustache and a dignified expression. He waited patiently, confident in his own ability.

Jenny had watched his first spot and marvelled at the height and distance he could attain by jumping from a standing start, without run-up or propulsion. She had heard he could do a two footed jump onto the eggs and off again without breaking a one.

The five piece orchestra struck up a jaunty tune, and the jumper went on. The boy stayed in the wings, still nervous. Burke slipped from behind the table and came backstage for a break.

"He's a good 'un, Ebby," said Jenny. "A crowd pleaser."

Burke was a small, chubby man dressed elegantly but with a cultivated air of careless intoxication. In his own act, his hat was forever falling off and his cane forever slipping across the stage to cause him to lose his balance.

"He might well be, but he buggers up my finale," he said, without malice.

The little man always rounded off the night with his speciality: the rousing Day At The Races in which he turned a standing somersault at the end of each chorus.

"They'll still love you, and you know it," she said. "Artisan and artist. They know the difference."

On cue, the young lad took his basket of eggs on stage.

"They know bugger nothing, as a Romanian friend of mine once said. As a knife thrower, he was a great philosopher." They laughed and watched the jumper doing impressive feats to appreciative applause. "Not a bad crowd," he commented.

"You must be rattling in tin."

"And you, Jenny? Making plenty?"

"What, me, sir?" she said, with wide eyes. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

Burke laughed and put an affectionate arm around her shoulders.

"Just be careful, that's all," he said. "Have you thought about what I said?"

"I'm still thinking."

Burke had offered to write her an introduction to theatrical friends in London. He knew how she augmented her wages and was no moralist. Jenny knew he liked her and had told her she had the talent to do better.

London, he said, embraced anything or anyone that was new and fresh but if she stayed here too long she would be neither. Her voice would earn her a living in London, but, he told her, she had the talent to make the transition to the legitimate theatre, and, if she chose to continue the other calling, that often seemed complimentary to being an actress, there was a damn sight more money to be made in the capital.

"Don't take too long making up your mind," he said. "Time does not stand still."

She stared at the noble savage smoking his pipe.

"I know what you mean."

Burke whispered, "He's done the lot. Circus, tent shows. Been a potentate, a Chinese and a blackman. You might not think it, but Delilah used to be a real beauty. She did not always have a face like a slapped arse." His eyes warned her. "Time does not stand still, Jenny. You have to make the best of what you've got, when you've got it. Think on."

"I will."

The impresario produced a silver hip flask from which he took a pull of brandy. She wondered how many times a night he refilled it. Sometimes, his comedy act of inebriation was particularly real.

Jenny watched in admiration as the man from Stafford did the apparently impossible by jumping across the stage and touching a row of eggs with his boots before continuing the second half of the jump. The applause doubled when he picked up the eggs and broke two of them on the head of the grinning boy.

Burke went back behind his table as the standing jumper left the stage, milked more applause and introduced Jenny with his usual extravagance.

"A nightingale from our own valleys, a demure young lady of delight whose voice was borrowed from an angel, a girl to gallivant the imagination ..." His tone exhorted expectations and brought an aaahh from the pit. Now his voice dropped to impart a confidence. "An innocent lass of perfect form to tempt the most jaded of gentlemen." The audience bayed approval and many nodded at the boxes that lined the side of the auditorium where such jaded gentlemen were seated.

Burke, doing what he did best, which was work his public, spread quivering arms as he neared the end of his peroration.

"My lords, ladies and gentlemen," he said stridently, and the mob in the pit brayed with laughter, "and those deceivers among you whose matrimonial partners believe you to be attending a meeting of charitable works." More laughter and knowing looks at the boxes. "Friends, patrons and countrymen, lend me your eyes and ears and senses, for the return on stage of that darling child we would all love to crush to our bosom, our own, our very own, Singing Jenny."

Jenny skipped on stage, eyes sparkling, smile innocent and paused to give Burke a kiss on the cheek, which raised groans of jealousy from the pit.

He whispered in her ear, "Follow that."

The orchestra played a sentimental song and she swayed childishly as she sang in a clear sweet voice and the full house fell almost silent to listen attentively, with the only noise that of the waiters carrying drinks and the distant throng at the bar.

While she sang, she looked beyond the lamps that lined the front of the stage, and saw that the young drunken man was still in box seven. She finished and curtsied at the applause and the orchestra began to play a more cheeky tune that went with lyrics of dubious double meanings which she performed with the wide-eyed innocence that was her trademark and twirls that spun her skirts and displayed her legs that were encased in the flimsiest full-length white cotton drawers. By the time she neared the end, the audience were anticipating the cartwheels she did across the stage, and the cheers as she did them made the wooden building shake.

Jenny left blowing kisses and waving and, in the wings, Burke said, "No encore or you'll bring the house down."

The feeling of success filled her and she could not stop smiling even though she knew her success was confined to a backwater theatre; even though she knew there would be requests and offers from jaded gentlemen in boxes.

Burke seemed to sense her mixed emotions.

"Think on," he said.

He went back on stage and three waiters approached her with offers from the boxes. Tommy was one of them.

"Well?" she said.

"Gentleman in number seven. Also the two gents in number nine. The one in the yellow waistcoat said he paid a deposit."

He said it without expression as if it was of no concern to him whether or not a deposit had actually been paid or for what services.

The other waiters also carried the cards of their clients but Jenny sent them away with apologies and promises of next time.

To Tommy, she said, "Tell number nine I'm busy." Tommy did not move and waited expectantly. "Well?"

"Is that it?" he said, looking into the palm of his empty hand.
"For now, you can make do with what number seven gave you, for I'm sure he gave you something." Tommy's face twitched and she laughed. "And I'll see you right later."

He shrugged, unconcerned at being rebuffed, and went ahead of her up the steps to the corridor. Jenny followed.

The gent with the yellow waistcoat was standing just inside the entrance to his box in some expectancy. She smiled and laughed and, as he bowed, moved swiftly past, leaving Tommy to explain, and went into box seven. The young man got to his feet slowly and eyed her appreciatively.

"Your servant, ma'am," he said, with less than total sincerity.

Jenny smiled, lowered her eyes, and curtsied.

"Sir." Her body straightened and she glanced into his face, with apparent shyness. "You have me at a disadvantage?"

"Forgive me. My name is ..."

The curtain behind her was pulled aside and a hand grabbed her shoulder, causing her to half turn. The yellow waist-coated gent glared at her with indignation, behind him, his friend swayed. Both held canes like weapons.

"Look here," said the gent. "We had an understanding."

"The misunderstanding is entirely yours, sir," she said, tugging at his arm. "Remove your hand."

"You trollope," said the gent, anger darkening his face. His grip tightened.

"The lady told you to remove your hand." The young man had taken a step to her side and seemed to have shed his drunkeness. "Remove it."

"We'll match his cash," said the gent, but he relinquished his grip on her shoulder and Jenny stepped sideways. "And you can have two for the price of one, you lucky trollope."

He sneered and his friend began to grin, happy at the odds and his associate's wit. Jenny wondered if Tommy had accepted more than he should from them on her behalf and made promises he knew she would not keep.

The young man took another step forward, his hand rising swiftly from beneath his coat, and he hit yellow waistcoat on the head, causing his immediate collapse. His friend stared open mouthed until he, too, was hit on the side of the head and also fell unconscious to the floor.

"As I was saying, ma'am, my name is Robert Dyce." As he bowed, he replaced the handgun he had so swiftly used as a club, into the holster at his belt. He stared at the bodies reflectively and, the action complete, the alcohol seeped back into his brain. "I take it they are not particular friends?"

"They are not." She put out a hand to steady him as he swayed. "Perhaps this might be a good time to leave," she said.

His eyes were fast becoming glazed.

"Perhaps you are right."

He coughed, gulped and leaned out into the corridor whilst holding onto the wooden frame of the box, and retched upon the prone body of the gent in the yellow waistcoat.

"Time to go, Robert Dyce," she said, and, taking his arm, guided him backstage and the quiet way out.

**

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