Twenty-four hours before the curtain rang up on ‘Looby,’ there was a queue forming for the pit and gallery. A Leon Low production was always an excitement. With Leon Low you could be certain of getting so much for your money. Lavish was an inadequate word to use in connection with him, he needed a new one coined specially for him. His entertainments never presented one or two stars, but a Great Bear and Milky Way of them, and never a star on the wane, but always stars at their brightest or in the ascendant. It was said of Leon Low that no new actor or actress could make a success overnight, but he had them signed up before breakfast the next morning. It was what he called giving new talent a ‘break.’ He seldom had the right parts for the new talent, so mis-casting frequently broke them for ever, but he never noticed failures, he had a gift for seeing nothing but success. He had an all-observing international eye. He never put on a show without a foreign find to display. An exquisite body from Mexico, a wonderful tenor voice picked up in an Italian gutter, a gipsy dancer from Spain, the loveliest legs in the world from Java, nothing missed him, he signed them all on, and somehow squeezed them into his next production. He had another trait peculiarly endearing to his public, he never used a makeshift if it was possible to get hold of the real thing. Should he show a mountain-side it might be made of cardboard, but at least you could be sure that the edelweiss were honest flowers, and you could read in your paper how many of them the real goat had tried to eat. When he needed waterfalls, not only were they falls of real water, but all his fans, who read their theatre gossip columns, knew exactly how many tons of water were used per night, and how far it dropped, and how the overflow was carried away. If food had to be eaten in a Leon Low production, no miserable banana appeared pretending to be fish, but an honest-to-God four-course dinner was eaten in front of the audience, each one of whom could, had they read their papers, have known what was on the menu and to please which member of the cast each dish was chosen. When it came to matters of dress and décor he stood alone. He had an excellent flair himself in these matters, but he used it only to make suggestions to the brilliant witty people he got round him. Frequently, to the serious critic, the mounting of the Low shows was the one bright spot in a tedious evening.
‘Looby’ had all the ingredients which had carried previous shows to success. The dresses and décor were in the hands of Derek Dauncey, a man whose sex life had its only outlet in designing for the stage, and quite a lot of the dresses gave just that impression. For realism the waltz number, ‘There’s a Rainbow Tying my Heart to Yours,’ had a real rainbow. No coloured beams of light thrown across the stage, but a rainbow was to be made just as heaven made rainbows. In the flies there was to be a large revolving sun throwing its rays on to a sheet of falling water from which would reflect a great natural arc across the stage. It was no wonder the public were faithful to a man who could give them real things like that. Helen Day, who had sung her way into thousands of hearts, had the leading role. She played the Princess who stole her soldier lover from little Looby the peasant girl, stole, that is to say, to the extent of singing to him, and with him, ‘There’s a Rainbow Tying my Heart to Yours’ three times during the evening as well as various other numbers in his praise, including one to her massed regiments assembled outside the palace gates. Bobby Kite was the soldier. Bobby had not long reached front rank, but the moment he reached it he had become just ‘Bobby’ to a vast public. He had blue eyes with just the right sort of twinkle, a figure like a Greek god, and a shy smile which made all his fans gasp, ‘Isn’t he sweet.’ Incidentally he had a really fine singing voice. The comedian was Billy Brooks. Billy had, for several years, been such a draw on the halls that when he was on the programme no other star turn was needed, he filled the place by himself and could be supported by the second-rate. The figure L.L. had to pay to lure him into ‘Looby’ meant that he could not afford one bad week throughout the run. The lesser non-singing parts, Looby’s parents and a Grand Duke and Duchess, were given to well-known straight actors and actresses. These people brought to their few scenes such sincerity that it was as if an east wind blew through the sensuous atmosphere, but their appearances were so short that before they had time to annoy, they were gone, and the audience enjoying what followed the better for the titillation of reality. For foreign finds there were a Nubian whose contortions must make any but the most hard-boiled feel sick, and a dancer from Peru whose stomach muscles were advertised as having amazed the entire medical profession. But, of course, the star discovery was L.L.’s amazing find ‘Virginia.’ The name sparkled in coloured lights over the door, and it pleased the public to see it there; they had heard such a lot about the girl, they almost felt they knew her.
Before seven the cast began to arrive. Helen Day was the first, she always arranged to arrive just before the gallery doors opened so that she could give her girls a smile and a word. She was lying back in her car, her face a blank until it turned into the back street leading to the stage door, then she sat up wreathed in smiles. She had almost to push her way through the crowd, there was so much handkerchief-waving, and small presents and cries of ‘Good luck, Miss Day,’ ‘Make a big success to-night, Miss Day.’ She gave time to them all, she knew just how much remembering the names of her chief adorers was worth, how it made their hearts glow to hear her say, “Thank you, Elsie, I always count on your black cats to bring me luck.” “Hullo, Maisie, my sprig of white heather? Bless you.” How later, sitting on the intolerably hard benches which was all the theatre provided for her most faithful followers, Elsie and Maisie would forget the fatigue of their long hours of waiting in the knowledge that they would see the goddess who had remembered their names and even kissed them, and would have a chance to lengthen, if only by a fragment, the enormous round of applause which would greet her entrance. In the shelter of the hall, she greeted Edwards the doorkeeper with a mechanical smile, then hurried up the stairs. Her dressing-room was full of flowers, but she did not see them. She shut the door, then huddled into an armchair shaking as if she had malaria, and retching until the perspiration stood in beads on her forehead. Her dresser gave one look at her, then hurriedly poured a few drops out of a medicine bottle into a glass of water, and came over and knelt beside her patting her hand.
“Now, dear. Now. You haven’t done this lately. Drink some of this,”
Helen spoke in gasps through her rattling teeth.
“I know. It’s the new girl, I think. Inexperienced people always have made me nervous. Oh God! I must be sick.”
The dresser lifted the glass to her lips.
“No, dear, you won’t be. It’s just this retching, it’ll go off, it always does. Come on, drink down your medicine and you’ll be fine in five minutes.”
There was a tap on the door and Ferdie put his head round.
“Just come to wish you luck, Helen.” He looked at her and raised his eyebrows. He took the glass from the dresser. “Come on, old girl, drink this or I’ll force your mouth open and pour it down.”
Little by little as the medicine took effect, the shivers and nausea died away. Helen looked up and smiled feebly.
“Sorry, Ferdie, you shouldn’t have come in then, I haven’t done this for ages, I hoped I’d outgrown it.”
Ferdie got up.
“I should take it easy a bit before you make up. It’s Virginia, I suppose?” She nodded. “How can you be so stupid? That girl would do her stuff if the theatre fell down. You ought to have to try and be God and make a real rainbow with a real sun and real water, then you would have something to worry about. So long, I’ll be seeing you.”
Bobby Kite came hurrying up the passage with a large box under his arm.
“Miss Virginia in yet?” he asked Roberts, his dresser.
“No, Mr. Kite, I don’t think so, her door’s open and Mrs. Jones is standing in the passage.”
“Well, take this box along to her and tell her it’s roses for Miss Virginia,” he blushed, “and pretend to open a bundle of telegrams. Oh, and tell her to put them in water on the dressing-table.”
Roberts closed the door and took the box down the passage. He winked as he gave them to Mrs. Jones.
“To be put in water on the dressing-table,” he jerked his head back at Bobby’s door. “We’ve fallen for your royalty.”
Mrs. Jones sniffed.
“Royal is as royal does, Mr. Roberts.”
Virginia arrived after the gallery had gone in, but there were a few people standing round the stage door. They nudged and ‘Ooh’d’ and ‘Ah’d’ as she went by, but they were not sure enough of her from her pictures to address her by name. She swept by Edwards with an imperial nod and went up to her dressing-room. Mrs. Jones had finished arranging the roses.
“Good evening, Miss Virginia. Mr. Kite sent these in for you.”
Flossie looked at the roses, and at L.L.’s magnificent basket of flowers on the floor, and to Myra’s and Mouse’s handsome bouquets in the basin, and smiled, and then spotted a little pot of white heather with a silver bow standing on the dressing-table. It had a letter attached; her mouth turned down at the corners, she guessed whom it was from even before she opened the envelope.
Dear Floss this is just to wish you every success to-night dear Miss Shane having kindly written to explain how you could not get tickets for the first night which I quite understand hoping to see you to-morrow as Miss Shane said you thought of coming your losing Mum. This bit of white heather is for luck.
Flossie tore up the letter and threw it in the paper basket.
“Dresser,” she said, as she sat down at her dressing-table, “would you like that pot of heather? I don’t want it.”
Gloria Grieve bounded in at the stage door.
“Good evening, Edwards. Virginia in?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Not looking ill, I suppose?”
“No, miss. I don’t think you’ll be going on tonight.”
She leant through the hatch to him, her red curls falling over her face.
“Are you a religious man, Edwards?”
“Why, miss?”
“Because if you are, I thought perhaps you’d pray for a little accident, nothing awful, just a sprained ankle would do. I’m very good as Looby.”
Edwards grinned.
“You’ll get your chance one day.”
She moved away, her step less bounding than when she had come in.
“I’ve said that for nearly five years.”
“Overture and beginners, please.”
Even in the understudy’s room that call brought a shiver.
“Good luck, Helen. Good luck, Bobby. Good luck, Virginia.”
The stage manager stepped over to the chorus who were waiting in a line for their first entrance.
“Keep it going, girls, and don’t let the boy have to call any of you twice; you’re practically in the nude, so no good telling me you couldn’t manage the change.” He looked at his watch, went back to the prompt corner. “Clear, please.” He pressed a button. The house lights dimmed, the conductor raised his baton, the stage lights went up. He pressed another button, and the curtain rose.
The curtain fell on the first act. Jim smiled at Mouse and Jasmine.
“Fine, isn’t it? My word, Mouse, the Virgin Queen’s a peach.”
Jasmine got up.
“I call her frightful. Let’s go and smoke. Circe, that’s what she ought to be called. One day she’ll turn you into a pig, Mouse, you better be careful.”
Mouse followed her outside.
“You must admit she’s beautiful.”
Jasmine ignored the cameras gathering round her, as ‘One of the loveliest of this year’s Debs’ and then as ‘One of the most attractive of the young marrieds’ and finally as ‘Lady Menton, one of our smartest hostesses’; she was used to cameras.
“Beautiful?” She stammered slightly, a way she had when she was thinking while she spoke, “I don’t think beautiful’s like that. You’re beautiful, Mouse. What she’s got isn’t beauty.”
Mouse flushed, it was unlike Jasmine to pay compliments.
“Beautiful or not, she looked a treat in that dress,” Jim broke in.
Mouse looked at Jasmine, they both smiled. The dress had been such a masterpiece, so veiling, and yet so revealing in the few places that mattered.
“I should think,” Jasmine stammered, “that Derek Dauncey had one of his most successful love affairs with that frock.”
George Fall and Eric Barr, theatrical critics, gave each other a look which meant “What about one?” They fought for a couple of whiskies and sodas and carried them to a corner of the bar. George looked at Eric.
“What d you think about it?”
Eric looked at his drink.
“You know L.L. really is a remarkable fellow. Every time he puts on a show I say to myself, ‘Can’t let him get away with his muck this time,’ and then I go home and write ‘Leon Low has done it again.’”
“That’s right,” George agreed. “You can’t help it; sitting through one of his productions is just a way of getting tight. The girls are butes, the music’s pure syrup, you get completely maudlin, and then on bounds a genius like Billy Brooks who’d make a corpse laugh, and by the time you write the thing up you’re not responsible. All the same I don’t think he can get away with his little bit of royal sex appeal.”
Eric stared at him.
“Man, you’ve never swallowed that bait? Oh dear, dear, dear, it’s a shame how they fool our poor innocent critics.”
“Isn’t she royal?”
“Just as royal as you’d expect, born at the back of a greengrocer’s shop in the Fordham Road, S.E.”
“But those are adopted parents, I heard.”
“Go on, tell me the whole story, not forgetting the convent. I’ll believe you.”
“Where’d the rumour start then? Myra?”
“Course.”
“Fordham Road. Greengrocer. I’ll give the kid a write up then, I like to see somebody who begins nowhere get a break.”
It was in the last act when dressed in white and rose-pink, with a flower trailing from one hand, and innocence and sweetness in every line of her, singing with Bobby, ‘Little Girl Loves Little Boy,’ that the audience completely took Flossie to their hearts. She had been told to look down at first and then, as the song progressed, slowly to raise her eyes to Bobby. She had been raising her eyes just like that all her life, she could not do it wrong. “Delicious, isn’t she?” said the stalls. “Breeding always tells.” “I would like to know who the father was,” sighed the pit; “wouldn’t he be proud if he could see her now.” The dress circle whispered behind its hand: “Can you see whom she’s like? Just that same fascinating smile. Of course that’s who it is.” The gallery, past speech, gurgled: “Isn’t she sweet! Don’t she and Bobby make a lovely pair.”
L.L. brought a crowd of people round afterwards. He introduced them. “This is Virginia,” with a slight, carefully rehearsed air of deference. Flossie, well trained by Mouse, smiled and thanked for compliments with an aloof air which was perfect.
L.L. went outside and found Ferdie.
“We’ve done it, boy. The girl’s got ’em all by the short hairs.”
Ferdie looked depressed.
“That’s right. But this royal stuff’s getting me down. I go to her room to say ‘Well done,’ and raise my arm to slap her backside, and only just in time I remember and kiss her hand instead. Tiring, that’s what it is.”