Mr Starlight. Laurie Graham
That didn’t last long. Well, I’ve got all the solo pianists I need just now, Cledwyn. I’ve got Winnie Skerritt and a nice steady boy from Coleshill, who knows which side his bread is buttered. So I’m afraid I can’t help you at the moment.’
I said to Sel, ‘Brilliant. We appear to have lost our shirts on Ted Sibley and now Teilo’s turned funny.’
‘Ask me,’ he said, ‘you’re better off staying at Greely’s. Clock in, clock out, pick up your wages every Friday. See if Norman Hewitt can get you something. But let’s face it, Cled, you haven’t got the balls for real show business.’
Then I came home from work the following Monday and there was a letter waiting for me, propped up in front of the mantelpiece.
Mam was banging about in the kitchen.
I said, ‘Well?’
‘Well what?’ she said.
I said, ‘Did Sel get New York?’
‘He’ll get his tomorrow,’ she said. ‘They send notices to bands-men first, then the soloists’ letters get posted the day after.’
Sel was out, eating Kunzel cakes with Vera Muddimer and pretending not to be bothered that he hadn’t heard anything.
When I was on the early shift Mam always kept my dinner for me till I came in, hot enough to take the roof off your mouth, but it was stone cold by the time I’d finished looking at that letter. Six transatlantic sailings with Cunard, subject to a medical examination. Contract renewable subject to my giving satisfaction. Terms of employment enclosed.
I said, ‘I’ve done it, Mam. I’ve got a job playing trumpet on the Queen Mary. I’ve ruddy well done it!’
‘Now, Cledwyn,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you crowing and upsetting your brother. It’s very hard on his nerves, all this waiting.’
‘I’m not bothered,’ he said, when he eventually turned up. ‘You need nerves of steel in this business and I’ve got them.’
Mam said, ‘You’ve got a very generous spirit, Selwyn. You deserve every success.’
Of course, he made sure she was out of earshot before he said anything else to me, whispering, trying to needle me. ‘You’ll only be a bandsman,’ he said. ‘You won’t get your name on the programme. And you’ll be kipping down in the depths,’ he said, ‘Down with the rats. If the boat sinks you won’t stand a chance. You’d better start practising “Nearer My God to Thee”.’
Then Mrs Edkins came in to borrow a shilling for the gas meter.
I said, ‘I’m sailing to New York, Mrs E.’
‘Subject to medical examination,’ Mam said.
Mrs E said, ‘I didn’t know you had it in you, Cledwyn. Now won’t it be a caution if Selwyn never gets a letter and you have to go without him?’
‘No,’ Mam said, ‘it won’t be a caution, it’ll be a clerical error. Now take your shilling, Connie Edkins, and stop bringing on Selwyn’s nervous tension.’
Of course, he did get a letter. It came the next day, offering him the same sailings I was on, as intermission singer. By the time I got home he’d been to the post office to draw money out and gone to Man about Birmingham to buy a blazer and two pairs of strides. ‘Hello, sailor,’ he said, when he saw me. ‘Splice the mainbrace!’
He was back in a good humour. ‘What did they say at Greely’s?’
I hadn’t actually got round to telling them. It was a big step, giving up my security and when it came to it, that morning, I’d had some doubts about going through with it. I’d proved I was a match for Sel and that was what mattered to me.
We had seven days to consider and send the papers back, and it was a funny thing made me do it in the end. They’d just brought something in at Greely’s called time and motion studies, which was a man with a clipboard, writing down every move you made including when you went to answer a call of nature. It was in the interests of greater efficiency and nobody liked it. Stan Walley, our shop steward, reckoned it was a Trojan horse got up by management, looking for ways to lay people off. I wasn’t a big union man myself but Stan turned out to be right and I’ve often wondered whether I’d have got the chop, if I’d stayed long enough to find out. As it was, something in me snapped that morning. Clicking his ballpoint pen, getting under my feet.
I said, ‘I’ve been offered work on a transatlantic luxury liner so you can stick that stopwatch up your arse.’
And that was that. I signed on the dotted line and then we waited to get our medicals. Arthur and Dilys thought I’d been hasty, giving my notice at Greely’s. Dilys said, ‘Sel failed for the RAF. What if he fails this time? You surely won’t go without him?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe I will.’
But Sel’s weak back was of no concern to the Cunard doctor. We both passed A1 and when we came out on to the Marylebone Road it was still only half past twelve. We had the rest of the day ahead of us. The rest of our lives.
He said, ‘I’m going round the shops. Are you coming?’ He wanted to buy some sparkling cuff links and once Sel started shopping you could be there till they were cashing up and putting the lights out.
I said, ‘No. I think I’ll wend my way to a Corner House for cod and chips. I might go to the pictures.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ he said. ‘You go your way and I’ll go mine. I’ll see you at home.’
I saw William Holden and Broderick Crawford in something and then I went on to a very saucy peepshow, so it was nearly nine o’clock before I got back to Ninevah Street.
‘Where’s Selwyn?’ Mam wanted to know.
It was past midnight when he came creeping past my door, new shoes squeaking.
I said, ‘You’re in trouble with Mam.’
‘No he’s not,’ she shouted. ‘You’re in trouble, for losing your brother.’
‘It’s all right, Mam,’ he said. ‘I made myself scarce so Cled could go to an opium den.’
‘As long as you’re safe,’ she said. ‘Now get up to bed.’
He was hanging about in my doorway.
I said, ‘Get your cuff links?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘And I had sex.’
I said, ‘You did not.’
‘Yes, I did,’ he said. ‘Did you?’
I said, ‘No. I didn’t feel like it. Where did you have it?’
‘Not saying,’ he said.
Not saying because it hadn’t happened.
I said, ‘You’re a bloody liar, Boff.’
He went off to bed laughing.
‘I’m in the mood for love’ – I could hear him whistling while he was putting his pyjamas on.
I had a right royal send-off from Greely’s. They’d had a whip round and they presented me with a travelling shaving compendium and a card signed by everyone in the Trimming Shop. One of the bosses even came down from the top floor to shake me by the hand.
I said to Stan, ‘See, they are human after all.’
‘That’s because you’re leaving,’ he said. ‘Think what you’re saving them in severance pay.’
Our first sailing was mid-April and we had to be