Mr Starlight. Laurie Graham
after showtime. Ham and eggs, or a flash-fried steak slapped between two slices of bread. All thanks to Sel’s cheery personality. But a ship’s crew is a close community. You need to go carefully. He said, ‘I’ll see you later. Noel’s got something he wants to show me.’
I said to him later, ‘We only just got here, so take things steady. When you’re a newcomer you have to be careful not to tread on anybody’s toes.’
‘What?’ he said. ‘Whose toes?’
I said, ‘That pantryman with the gappy teeth. After you went off to see Mr Carey’s theatre programmes he said, “I wonder if he’s going to show him his etchings as well?” sarcastic like. I think I detected a note of envy.’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ he said. ‘Envy’s something I’m going to have to get accustomed to. Listen, I had a look in one of the First Class staterooms. You get a three-piece suite, Cled, not just a bed. And a coffee table and a drinks cabinet. That’s the way to travel.’
I said, ‘You’ll be getting the sack before we’ve even sailed. You heard what the boss said. No snooping off limits.’
‘I wasn’t snooping,’ he said. ‘Noel took me up and showed me around. It’s beautiful, Cled. Elegant. That’s what I’m going to have some day. A stateroom, with a pink leather settee and a telephone and a fresh bowl of fruit every morning.’
‘Shut yer yap, pretty boy,’ Feifer said. ‘Some of us is trying to sleep.’
There was no peace once the boilers were fired and the baggage lifts started up, but Sel lay on his bunk like the Queen of Sheba anyway, cucumber slices over his eyelids and curlers in his quiff. ‘Preparing to meet my public,’ he said. ‘You don’t get a second chance at first impressions.’
I said, ‘Come upstairs with me. You’re the one with the open sesame. See if we can get near a rail. Watch for big names arriving on the dockside.’
The word was Henry Ford was expected plus a Guinness millionaire, a mysterious star of the British stage and, of course, the Duke and Duchess.
Wilkie said, ‘You won’t see them. They’ll come aboard from a launch once we’re under way.’
But I went up anyway with a little Eyetie from the Tourist Class barber’s shop who knew a window we could watch from, and we had company. A girl called Ginger from the beauty parlour, very jolly with lovely knees. She let me light two smokes for her before she mentioned she had a fiancé.
Her friend was quieter. Black wavy hair and skin so pale you could see the veins on her temples. Hazel. Not my usual type. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘There’s Lady Clackmannan.’
But it was only Lady Clackmannan’s maid, down on the quayside supervising where the trunks were going.
‘Princess Olga,’ she said. ‘Mr Vansittart.’
She was reeling off all these names, but they were just the servants down there. Hazel worked in the passenger laundry, so it was the maids and the valets she knew.
I said, ‘Isn’t it boring down there, dhobi-ing? Never seeing daylight?’
‘It is not,’ she said. ‘Dhobi-ing! Cheeky beggar. What do you think I do? Bash shirts on rocks?’
Ginger said, ‘Don’t bite his head off. He’s new.’
Hazel said, ‘What’s your name, new boy?’
‘Cled Boff,’ I said. ‘Musician.’
‘Well, Cled Boff,’ she said. ‘I hope you’ll enjoy your work as much as I enjoy mine. I get to handle couture garments. They come to me when they need a delicate touch, see? Hopeless cases, that’s my speciality.’ She smiled at me. ‘And every stain tells a story,’ she said.
Ginger shouted, ‘There’s Rex Harrison!’ And it was the actual man himself, climbing out of a taxi.
Sel was still stretched out on his bunk, reading Tit Bits.
I said, ‘I think I just got lucky.’
‘Oh yeah?’ he said. ‘I hope she won’t be disappointed when she sees your love nest. I hope she likes the smell of second-hand onions. See any notables?’
I said, ‘Rex Harrison. The Windsors’ pug dogs. And there’s a Princess Olga come aboard.’
He sat up. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘What, tiara and everything?’
I said, ‘No. Felt hat and an overcoat.’
‘Glad I didn’t stir myself, then,’ he said. ‘If I had a tiara I’d never leave home without it. I won the toss, by the way. I’m letting Tex do the big one tonight.’ Tex Lane was the other support singer and the two of them had to cover six spots a night. If you did the First Class Dining Room, you finished with the ten o’clock spot in Cabin Class. If you did a turn in Tourist, you opened the late show in First Class, the Starlight Club in the Veranda Grill priming the pump for the star vocalist.
I said, ‘I thought you were gagging to play the Starlight Club?’
‘I am,’ he said, ‘but not the first night out. I want Tex Lane to go over the top first, let them see how mediocre he is. Suits me to warm up on the peasants. By tomorrow night I’ll be ready for anything.’
He slipped in the back of the Grill after he’d finished his last spot for the night, although I didn’t see him. He must have blended in well, in his new dinner suit and a crisp new shirt. Not like Tex Lane with his frayed cuffs. But Sel wasn’t interested in Tex. Glorette Gilder was the one he was there to study, in her fishtail gown and her dangling earrings. ‘She’s nothing special.’ That was his verdict. ‘Wait till they see me in action.’
But a warm-up only got seventeen minutes: ‘How High the Moon’, ‘Slow Boat to China’.
I said, ‘I don’t see that you’ve got a lot of scope. You’re just there to air the room and Tex could hardly be heard tonight, for all the laughing and chattering. Nobody listens till the big name comes on. You’re supposed to sing your numbers plain vanilla. No chatting to the audience. No holding a lady’s hand.’
‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘We’ll see.’ That was when he started developing his trade mark wink.
Of all the public rooms on board the Queen Mary the Veranda Grill was my favourite. It had a big curved window that looked out over the stern of the boat. Everything was cream and silver and mahogany, with soft pearly lighting and wide steps from the dining area to the dance floor, with thick black carpet and glass balustrades. I’ve played much bigger rooms since, and plenty of five star venues, but I’ve never seen anything to top it.
We were an eleven-piece band under the baton of Lionel Truman and everyone had better know their play list. ‘Number twenty-four,’ he’d say, quiet but clear, and we’d go straight into ‘Tangerine’.
Even now, if somebody says ‘Thirty-nine’ I think ‘Besame Mucho’.
Sel opened his first night with ‘Blue Champagne’ and ‘Cruising Down the River’, and then he unbuttoned his jacket for ‘Moonlight Becomes You’ I don’t know if it was his silver cummerbund that got their attention but they piped down a lot more for him than they had for poor old Tex. He even got a little ripple of applause. ‘Thank you so much,’ he said.
He wasn’t supposed to say anything. He was meant to finish his last song and clear off, but Sel never liked to be hurried. ‘Tonight was my Starlight Club debut,’ he said, ‘and you couldn’t have been a nicer audience.’
I heard Glorette whisper, ‘Play me on.’ But Lionel Truman hesitated and as long as he hesitated Sel stayed out there.
‘Don’t