Extract from “Just the Echo of a Sigh” by Jean Collen.
“Just the Echo of a Sigh” by Jean Collen
Read more at: JUST THE ECHO OF A SIGH by JEAN COLLEN
CHAPTER SIX
MARINA DUNBAR – 12 MARCH 1936
I had no engagements lined up for that particular Thursday so I decided to treat myself to the luxury of eating breakfast in my canopied brass bed instead of rising early to attend a rehearsal or prepare for a broadcast. My little cook-housekeeper, Annie, brought my breakfast in to me on the big silver tray my mother had given me when I left home. Annie had even managed to find a pink rose which she had placed in a small crystal glass to adorn the tray prettily. Annie was my own age and was most accomplished at running my Maida Vale flat to perfection. Being completely undomesticated myself I could never have managed without her. I could not bear to think of my first six months in London two years earlier when I had shared a tiny flat on the top floor of a dilapidated building in Earls Court with two fellow chorus girls, and had been forced to take my turn to do disgusting chores and even try my hand at cooking for the first time in my life. Never again, please!
Annie had folded the latest edition of The Stage and placed it neatly on my breakfast tray. I looked forward to mulling through the paper while I savoured my boiled eggs, toast and steaming hot coffee. It was always interesting to catch up with the latest fortunes or misfortunes of my stage colleagues, and, with a bit of luck, perhaps Malcolm Craig or I might feature prominently in its pages.
I was thankful that work had fallen so easily into my lap since I arrived in London. I had a pretty soprano voice, although it was no better than the voices of hundreds of other girls who converged on the capital to try their luck on the professional stage. Even before I met Malcolm and he started pulling some strings for me with his agent and the BBC, I was usually successful at auditions, not because I had the best voice in the crowd, but because of my good looks. Even a hard-bitten director found it hard to resist my blue-green eyes, my blonde hair and my perfect figure. I didn’t worry my head about the fact that I was taking work from plainer girls with better voices than mine for I knew that looks and personality were just as important as talent when one is appearing on the stage. Thank goodness I had now reached the point where I was offered plenty of work through my agent and was no longer obliged to join the ravenous herd at all those soul-destroying public auditions.
I felt very sorry for those people who had to resort to desperate adverts in The Stage to draw the attention of uncaring managements to their talents. “Gladys James, soubrette and dancer, available for pantomime…” The advert belied the fact that poor Gladys, Billie, Marie, or whoever, had spent their last few pounds putting the ad into the paper. If there was no immediate and positive response to it they would no longer be able to afford to pay their rent or scrape up enough money to catch the tube or bus to auditions. Eventually they would have no alternative but to trail back to some dreary town in the provinces and forget their dreams of a stage career.
The only blight on my horizon on that particular Thursday morning was that Malcolm was still married to soubrette, comedienne and dancer, Sally Bryant. By a nasty trick of fate he had married her a year before I met him. Please don’t think I approve of girls stealing other people’s husbands, but in our case Malcolm and I were meant to be together. It was just as simple as that – or so I thought in those days. Because Malcolm was married we rarely went out together in London as our faces were instantly recognisable to everyone who took the Radio Times or Radio Pictorial.
Malcolm had assured me over and over again, that he had made a mistake when he married Sally and that now he felt nothing more than affection for her, but I could not help but feel deeply jealous of her all the same. I was always afraid that perhaps he really cared far more about her than he had led me to believe. I hoped she would not make a terrible fuss, or worse still, name me as co-respondent, once she found out about me, for I had no intention of allowing adverse publicity to damage my burgeoning theatrical career. Some of my growing band of fans might disapprove of their ethereal heroine, who had been dubbed Radio’s Nightingale by a very discerning critic, breaking up the marriage of a popular tenor. Of course, in this day and age, nobody would even turn a hair about yet another theatrical divorce. It would simply be a titillating story in the gossip columns to give the nine-to-five brigade something to talk about at work, but in the thirties people were far more conventional and inclined to frown on marriages breaking up because a third party was involved. In those days wronged wives were even known to sue the co-respondent for alienating the affection of their husbands and they often won their cases.
Malcolm was a successful, almost famous tenor and never short of work, but although Sally had been on the stage since her teens, she still had to place one of those desperate ads in The Stage from time to time in an attempt to generate more work for herself. When I made the mistake of suggesting to Malcolm that perhaps Sally’s work was not up to standard if she had to resort to such a desperate move, Malcolm had defended her hotly, telling me that she was an original talent and one day everyone would recognise her true worth. Perhaps Malcolm really believed this, but in all the time she had been a pro she had never progressed beyond the round of provincial pantomimes and musical comedies, seaside concert-parties, after-dinner entertainments, and occasional broadcasts on radio and the fledgling TV service. I still remember how I had blushed with annoyance at the way he had reacted to my rather bitchy remarks about his wife, even though he was supposed to be mustering up the courage to tell her about me and get a divorce from her as quickly as possible.
My heart sank when I read the snippets in the Concert Artistes Association columns of The Stage when I discovered that Malcolm and Sally had been the after-dinner entertainers at a Masonic Ladies’ Night the previous week. I was surprised at the depth of my fury which quite spoilt my appetite for my leisurely breakfast. It was all wrong. It was me who should have been his wife. It should have been me doing joint engagements with him. I had a proper voice which would blend far better with his than Sally’s silly little untrained mezzo. Surely he realised that he was letting himself down by associating with her professionally? He told me that when they were first married they loved getting joint engagements because they had wanted to spend all their time together, but surely that didn’t apply any more now that I was on the scene?
I felt even more despondent when I came across yet another snippet. Malcolm and Sally had been guests at the wedding of a couple they had known when they were all pals together in Concert Party in Margate in 1933. He hadn’t told me they were going to the wedding together, or that he had sung Mendelssohn’s Be Thou Faithful unto Death at the wedding ceremony as a gift to the couple. A very inappropriate choice of solo under the present circumstances, I thought. On the day they were enjoying themselves at the wedding, I had been at home all by myself, unable to settle to anything, hoping that Malcolm might ring me up or even snatch an opportunity to come round to the flat for a while.
Although I had been engaged to several young men before I arrived in London and had tried out a few gauche kisses and awkward cuddles with the fiancé of the moment, I had never thought seriously of going to bed with any man until I met Malcolm and I didn’t like the idea that I was sharing him in that way with his wife. I was not really naive enough to imagine that he and Sally no longer slept together just because I was somewhere in the offing. In fact he told me that one of the main reasons he had married her was because she was “good in bed”. I could imagine exactly how he and Sally had rounded off their day after they arrived home from the reception, primed with drinks and the warm camaraderie they had enjoyed with their theatre friends.
The harsh ringing of the white telephone next to my bed interrupted my unhappy reverie. It was Malcolm.
“Sally has an after-dinner engagement out of town so she won’t be home tonight,” I heard him saying rather breathlessly, as though he didn’t have much time to spare on the telephone before Sally returned to the room.
There was a slight pause.
“Tell me you’re not booked up for the evening?”
“So you’re not doing yet another joint engagement with her this time?” I asked sharply. “I’ve just been reading all about your latest great success at the Masonic dinner in my copy of The Stage.”
I sensed his discomfiture. Had he really thought I wouldn’t hear about it?
“We were booked for that engagement months ago. I couldn’t get out of it,” he replied rather coldly.
“Maybe not, but you could have got out of going to the wedding with her on Saturday though,” I replied equally coldly. “Are you ever going to break it off with Sally? I’m fed up staying in this flat all by myself while you’re out enjoying yourself with your wife. Surely I’ve waited for you long enough. “
“We’ll talk when I see you tonight. You know this state of affairs won’t go on for much longer. You don’t really have to go out tonight, darling, do you?”
“No. You know very well – I only leave this flat when I have work to do or if I go shopping with Suzette or Madeleine. I spend most of my time waiting for you,” I said, my irritation melting somewhat. “Come round as soon as you can.”
“I’ll be there the moment Sally leaves for St Albans. I’m longing to see you.”
I let my copy of The Stage slip to the floor and hurried into the kitchen, still in my gown, to tell Annie to lay out a special cold supper for two and to change the sheets on my bed while I was bathing.
I was too excited to settle to anything now, although I really needed to polish up several new songs for a broadcast on Radio Luxembourg the following week. After my bath I stood naked in my bedroom, wondering what I would wear for the evening. I tried on my new silk hostess gown and looked at myself with some satisfaction in the full-length mirror of my wardrobe. The nipples of my small breasts were erect, clearly visible under the pliant blue-green silk. I was nearly faint at the thought of the bliss I would experience later in his arms.
