The cheering was almost deafening. As Helen McCoy, now atop the bill at the Queen’s Palace, took her bows, every single person in the house was on his or her feet.
Helen scanned the stalls below, then, to everyone’s amazement, walked down the little side stairs at the end of the stage, went to a boy in the first row, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Ronald Layton flushed red like a beet.
“Ronnie,” Helen said sweetly, “you come backstage to my dressing room. I have some Cadbury for you.”
“Oh yes, Helen! Thank you,” Ronald cried.
Nanny Hawkins smiled and put her hand on his shoulder. Some of the nearby audience members looked jealous; others patted him on the back joyfully—he’d been kissed by the Piccadilly Lilly and thus turned into a talisman. Ronald felt very grown-up. To be paid attention by adults! It was a wondrous thing. In his world, children were invisible.
Helen skipped up the stairs and gave another wave before disappearing into the wings. Her dressing room, which she shared with no one, was filled with flowers of every description. So brilliant were the colors that she might have been in the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew.
Mildred, her former lady’s maid from Suttonfield and now personal assistant, helped her out of her feathery white satin gown and carefully removed the tiara from her chestnut-brown hair. Helen had been offered ten pounds for a lock of that hair but had indignantly refused the gentleman.
“Your ladyship, will you be wanting your black gown for tonight’s party?”
Helen had given up her efforts to get Mildred to call her by her first name. It wasn’t proper, Mildred always said firmly, and she wouldn’t do it. Now, to Helen’s dismay, other variety hall performers were calling her “your ladyship” too.
“No, I’ll have the lavender gown, please, Mildred,” Helen said, applying a blob of Pond’s Extract to her cheek. As she wiped away her makeup, she asked, “Do you think ‘I Would Like to Marry You’ came off well tonight, Mildred?”
“It’s not my favorite song, but you sang it in a very sweet way, m’lady. I’d perhaps add in another one, though.”
Mildred never hesitated to give her frank opinion of her mistress’s performances. Helen liked that. A singer needed one person to be honest with them, instead of kissing their bum, like a lot of performers’ so-called friends.
“‘Goodbye, Sweetheart, Goodbye’?” she offered, raising an eyebrow.
“Now, that’s the ticket, m’lady.”
Having finished her toilette, Helen and Mildred made their way down the corridor toward the stage door. Ahead, a familiar female voice was lifted in outrage.
“You bloody shite, if you ever plant applauders in the house again, you’ll never set foot on a stage in England, Ireland, Scotland, or anywhere else on God’s green earth.”
Cissie and the stage manager, Wilding, had Clive St. Clair, the Superb Card Trickster, backed up against the corridor wall.
“I’d never do such a thing,” wailed St. Clair.
“Bollocks. No one’s cheered that loudly for your act in years. I know a plant when I see one, my boy,” said Wilding.
Helen and Mildred exchanged a significant glance. Sometimes, when an act’s popularity faded, the performer would pay people to cheer extra loudly—usually a quid, plus admission. Six paid applauders clapping and cheering could lead the rest of the audience to join in.
The trick worked the other way too, Helen knew. Some performers would pay people to heckle competing acts in other theatres to drive them out of business. All the Queen’s Palace artistes knew that Bimba Bamba, the magician, had arranged for plants to boo his rival, Voldor, at the Majestic in Islington.
“Remember, mate, you’ve been warned,” growled Cissie. But her expression turned from hateful to happy when she spied Helen. “Hello there, luv. I’ve wonderful news. We want you to move over to the Metro.”
Helen could hardly contain her joy; she beamed enormously at Cissie and squeezed Mildred’s hand. The Metropolitan Royal Theatre off Leicester Square, the circuit’s flagship theatre, could seat almost four thousand. Playing there was every performer’s dream. In less than six months as a professional, she had made it.
And to think, she thought wryly, she owed it all to Lionel Glenn’s wife, who’d forced her husband to attend a society recital, raising money for Boer War veterans. Helen—or Gladys, as she was then known—had volunteered to do a song, and Glenn had almost fallen off his chair when he heard her beautiful soprano voice singing “The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery.” By dogged persistence, over the course of a year, he’d persuaded her to go onstage.
“Oh, Mrs. Mapes, when do I start?”
“The first of next month, ducks. We’ll talk about the details later,” said Cissie and turned her attention back to St. Clair, who was still cringing against the wall.
Outside the stage door, as usual, many gentlemen in evening dress were milling about. When they saw Helen, they all started talking at once.
“Miss McCoy, would you do me the honor of supper tonight?”
“Miss McCoy, my carriage is at your disposal.”
Laughing sweetly, Helen started to explain about her evening engagement. But she stopped abruptly; beyond the circle of men was a figure, standing in the shadows of the alley: an elegantly dressed woman, with a veil covering her face.
Helen stormed through her ring of admirers, straight toward the figure.
“Mother, what are you doing here?” she gasped.
Without lifting her veil, the woman replied, “Gladys, my dear, please stop this at once and come home to Suttonfield. Your poor father will take you back, I swear it.”
Helen lifted the veil and looked into the cornflower-blue eyes she had inherited.
“Mother, I’ve made my decision. I want a career on the stage. I’m good at what I do, and I’m proud of my talent. I’m not chucking it all for the sake of the family name.”
“You must come home,” her mother said, clutching desperately at the lapels of her daughter’s coat. “Your father rages every minute about the disgrace you’ve brought upon us. He’s gone crazy, I fear.”
“He’ll recover in time, Mother. There are worse things that can happen,” Helen said airily. “It’s not like I had a child out of wedlock with a servant.”
“Never even think of such a thing,” shrieked her mother.
“Mother, you should come one night and hear me sing,” Helen said earnestly, pressing her cheek against her mother’s. “I would ever so much like that.”
A horrified look came over her mother’s face. “Your father would kill me dead with his pheasant shotgun if I ever set foot in a place like this.”
“It’s a theatre, Mother, not a knocking shop.”
“The theatre is the Haymarket for Shakespeare with Beerbohm Tree, not people in bowlers and red-check suits singing lewd songs.”
Helen smiled but held firm. “I’ve made up my mind, Mother. We should have tea sometime. For now, I must go.”
And with that, the Piccadilly Lily walked down the alley to her carriage, leaving her mother, a forlorn little figure in the circle of dim light thrown off by the light pole.