Ada Page 7

  I don’t think selling oysters would keep Irving in the style he’s accustomed to. When he’s at the Sydney Tiv, Kate sits in the box with Harry, and Irving makes secret hand movements. He signals at her how much he needs to borrow after the show to cover his gambling debts, which never seem to bother him a bit. He’d just rather not pawn his pearl tie-pin, or his ivory cane handle, or his silk ties.

  Speaking of which, Horace, that waistcoat of yours would frighten a cat. It’s liver-coloured, and that isn’t even nice in a liver. Oh, Horace, don’t take on. You don’t need to take your leave so early. I didn’t mean it about the waistcoat. That’s just my medicine talking. Is it really five o’clock? I haven’t a notion of where the afternoon went. Did I fall asleep again?

  It’s nice to have somebody to talk to. I seldom had visitors before you. When I think of all the packed coaches and railway carriages I’ve been in longing for everybody to shut up so I can read a book and get into another world. There’s a lot of propinquity in travelling, there is. That means close together, Horrie, all sorts packed in like fish in a wicker basket, chatting and making jokes and learning their lines and quite often, pardon my Portuguese, smelling quite as strong as fish in a basket. And then we’d be two or three in a bed at least, at the lodgings, I was usually in with Cissie and Lizzie but very often Alice, too.

  We galloped about in the later years with the double act of Bob Hall, the comic and Zeno the equilibrist, who used to top and tail until Zeno said he’d rather wake up to the horror viewing of Bob’s face than the dread smelling of his socks. So then they both put their head on the pillow and swore at each other when they weren’t snoring. I remember I used to hug myself with the luxury of a moment of solitude on the road, burying myself in a book to take myself somewhere else. And now I’d kill for a bit of company. Silly, isn’t it?

  It’s funny, but I can talk to you just as if you were a woman – now that’s a compliment, Horrie. I’ve always enjoyed the companionship of boys. I know you’re nineteen but you’re a boy to me. People try to come, but it’s a way out from town on the tram, and everyone has to get on with their own lives, don’t they? You, for instance, need to get home in time for your tea or your mother will be all concern. I bet you have a lovely mother, Horace. Is she a good homemaker? Always close by when you need her?

  If I were your mother, Horace, you’d want me to be safe and sound in her declining years, wouldn’t you? Don’t look so shocked. I’m not letting go of my hopes for that cottage. I’d ask you to stay on here but you know what there is for supper? Two runs round the table and a sniff of the spigot, that’s what.

  All right, all right. I think I can see what you’re really after. What of the terrible charges brought by Madam Marzella and her jury of trained cockatoos? Did I steal a husband, or a dance? Or hang the effort, both? And whatever else you’re beating around the bush about. Bring a scone next time, and I’ll tell you the lot.

  I’m obliged to you for bringing a little something for baggin-time, Horrie. That’s what we used to say in Lancashire, you know. It means teatime, when you have something in a bag. And rock cakes are a splendid addition to anybody’s morning, though I always think the name is dispiriting. Makes them sound like you’d have to dip them in your tea for hours before you can soften them up enough to get any purchase with your teeth, if you have any.

  It’s kind of you to come again, Horrie. You’re a credit to your family. Without further ado, though, it’s time to introduce Madam Marzella, though I have a notion you’ve met. I’ll show you a clipping I’ve kept in the album so I can swear at it from time to time. Presumably you’re interested in her poultry-instruction skills. There she is, covered in fowls as usual. I hope they’re all leaving messages on her sleeves. She was a one-woman gallery of vultures on a tree, waiting for a poorly victim; Marzella and her sharp-eyed birds, judge and jury. I know what she’s been saying about me, and I know why.

  You’d think it wouldn’t matter any more, now it’s likely I’ll never feel proper fettled again. But when I’m gone only my reputation will survive, and I’d rather Madam bloody Marzella, beg pardon, doesn’t get the last word on my character. I’d rather tell my own story, and I promise you Horrie, I’ll get there.

  Harry Rickards always made the most of introducing Marzella, he loved a torrent of words. ‘And now, my friends and fancies, please give her a warm welcome upon her entrance. You know you want to. The Tivoli Theatre is proud to present the proprietrix of perfect parrots, Madame Marrrrzella, with those bizarrely blithe birds in her fanfaronade of feathered mummers and a panoply of puzzling pigeons!’ The curtain behind him would swish away, and there she would be, just like in the picture.

  Madam Marzella looked like a wool bale trussed into a corset. Her ship’s prow of a bosom would be encased in a dark-green gown with mouldy-looking chartreuse sequins down the front. She’d stand there like an aged, haughty, human perch, and wait for the gasps and chatter. Her hair was always glossy and suspiciously dark and she had a lot of it. I’ll give her that.

  All at once, ten birds would rise off her arms and dart directly at the balcony of the dress circle, wheel about and fly back in formation to alight on her outstretched arms again. The macaw on one hand would be holding a grey cap, swinging from his beak. And then came a paid voice from the gods: ‘’Ere! Who’s got me ’at?!’

  Or sometimes the curtains would swish away to reveal Marzella posing amid all the ornate stands, cages and perches covered in coloured fairy lights. Still to come was the parrot shipwreck with organza waves and lighthouse with sunrise effects produced by her husband, the electrics specialist, Professor Maximilian Ludwig Rozenbaum (Max Rose on the bill). There were sulphur-crested cockatoo acrobatics, and a funeral for a bird killed by a tiny cannonball, hauled off by budgerigar ambulance. A raven hurled itself through a few flaming hoops. A galah furiously pedalled his tiny bicycle the length of the dress-circle railing, with a parrot upside down on each handlebar.

  We got Madam Marzella offside early in our first tour so she was bound to do me a bad turn when she could. When we first arrived in Australia we were on the same bill somewhere. Adelaide, or Sydney. Can’t recall, now. We’d arrived at the dressing-room door a moment before Marzella. The room already had some stray vaudevillians in it, but we hadn’t been introduced. Madame came through the door bosom first, with her giant bustle aft. Aft, I said.

  She pointed dramatically at a tall man jack-knifed onto a stool in the corner with his knees pointing up at the ceiling. ‘This one,’ Marzella hissed in her Prussian accent, tugging on the sleeve of the theatre manager who was stumbling in her wake. ‘This man is a . . . how do you word it? A Molly-Ellen!’ The man on the stool paused mid-roll of his tobacco, raised his eyebrows, stood up and leaned against the wall. He held his cigarette in one hand and sealed it with a lick. He inspected his work with deep-set, dark eyes and ran a hand through his long, tousled hair. He was still in his costume, a comedy kilt with a doormat and a paintbrush as a sporran.

  Little Cissie’s eyes went wide. ‘Ooh, what’s a Molly-Ellen?’ she piped.

  ‘Never you mind,’ said Marzella.

  ‘Is it like a Mary Ellen, or a Molly, because that’s just a boy who doesn’t want a lady friend?’ Cissie asked, as she pirouetted on the spot and came to a pose, pointing dramatically at Madam Marzella.

  ‘Oh, this is disgusting, you must give him the marching orders!’ she said to the manager, who was pinching the bridge of his nose so he didn’t laugh at Cissie.

  ‘This bloke’s my best serio-comic singer,’ he protested.

  ‘I have heard the talk. And I saw him with a young man in the paint room,’ said Madam Marzella.

  ‘Not the paint room!’ said Jim. ‘Next you’ll be telling us there was paints!’

  Madam Marzella ploughed on. ‘And he’ll sully the morals of the children.’ She began to gesture about the room, and stopped.

  Lizzie, by then about twelve, looked up from calmly tuning the mandolin. ‘My
morals are quite all right, thank you,’ she said rather squashingly. Wee Woodhead’s One Man Band junior sat cross-legged between his father’s feet, whittling a small stick with a slightly outsized cutlass. Cissie continued to balance on one leg with her hands on her hips, and sang ‘Bosh and tosh, makes a splosh’.

  Marzella glared at the tall man in the corner. ‘Either he must go or I shall go, and it is I and my birds they have come to see.’

  ‘But you are going,’ pleaded the manager. ‘Tomorrow is the end of your run.’

  ‘Then I will be forced to bring the police to your door!’ she finished, dramatically.

  The man in the corner looked a little paler. He rose to his full-out, give-you-a-start six-feet-two, opened his mouth and said nothing. A skinny cigarette dangled from his bottom lip. He picked up his carpet bag from the floor.

  ‘You see? He cannot deny it,’ said Madam Marzella, pointing at him with a dismissive jerk of her chin.

  Still in my skipping costume, I trotted over to the stranger. ‘Oh, my darling!’ I said. ‘Let me give you a big smewch!’ I threw myself on him from a standing start, my skirts all frothing so that only his head poked out of the top. I grinned at the manager, and addressed myself to Madam. ‘Mrs Marzipan or whatever yer name is, some old blobmouth has been telling you some terrible idle gossip. This here is my dearly loved affianced gentleman . . . erm . . .’

  ‘Bob,’ he supplied in a foghorn Yorkshire voice that bounced around the bare brick walls and made Lizzie jump. ‘Robert Bell. My darling.’

  ‘Fancy that, we’re all Bells here, it seems,’ said Jim.

  ‘What a co-inky-dense,’ said Cissie. ‘Would you like some cake? I would and we don’t have any.’

  Bob laughed. ‘That’s often the way,’ he said.

  ‘Oh my poor cakeless darling,’ I said wibbling my head about and showing the white of my eyes. ‘I shall find some for you, Bill!’

  ‘Bob,’ he reminded me.

  ‘Madam Marzella, if his young lady is prepared to vouch for her fiancé,’ said the theatre manager, who was pinching his nose very hard, ‘we shall take this no further. You must have been mistaken. It can be quite dim when you’re peering into the paint room’.

  Madam Marzella, made a sound somewhere between a harrumph and catarrh, and wheeled herself out of the room.

  There was a pause. ‘What a STINKER!’ shouted Cissie.

  After that Madam Marzella had it in for us, especially me. But I gained a pal in Bob, and we’ve been writing silly postcards to each other for twenty years or thereabouts. See that flat bundle tied up with the scarlet ribbon, at the back of the album? I might have been in love with him for a while but there was no advantage to be had there. Alice joked we already had a tall Northern Mr Bell in the family with ridiculous long legs and a baritone. Bob can do Irish, Scottish, and any new song you fancy. A man’s man? Well, that’s one way of putting it.

  It was years before I knew what all the sorts were, mind you. Girls who liked girls, girls who pretended to be boys on stage but liked girls – or boys. Men who dressed as ladies but liked girls, and men who didn’t dress as ladies who liked other men. There’s no point in trying to arrange yourself a shocked face, Horace. If you want to make a life among theatricals you’ll have to take people as you find them: it saves time. There’s room for all sorts in the theatre, it’s one of its chief charms. You can be anybody you like. The idea of Molly-Ellens came as far less of a shock to me than what I discovered men and women got themselves up to.

  In those days we were busy all the hours God tossed us, and it was Lillie May who ended up telling me about marital relations, and I think she may have had some of the details wrong, she’d never had any maritals neither. She seemed to think it had something to do with standing up in the bath. You could have knocked me into the river with a goosefeather. I had heard the jokes about babies and men but hadn’t quite put it all together.

  This is not easy to discuss with a young man, Horrie, I don’t mind telling you, but you’re the one who posed the question of my character and if I’m to clear the air you’ll have to listen to the lot. Perhaps what with all the stories you must hear about theatrical types, you’ve already heard it all. But I can tell you, it all came as the most tremendous shock to me. It was years later that I found a chap could be whispering kindly compliments to you in the paint room and the next you’ve got half a costume round your ears and a nasty pain and no real notion of the mechanics of the matter. I would imagine.

  Back then I asked Alice if Lillie May had things the right way round and she told me what she did with Jim to make the babies and how she didn’t any more, if she could help it, and I could hardly speak for at least three days in a row. I have never been more horrified in my life. Alice said it was usually terrible the first few times and after that as dull as anything, a man got onto you and squashed you about, sometimes gave you a kiss, and then grunted and poked at you between your legs while you waited for it to be over. Sometimes there was slobbering. I had never heard anything more disgusting except eating eels, I do beg your pardon. I know some people quite like it but they need their heads read. Eels, I mean. And when you think of the cost. Babies and shame. Or both.

  Any road, Alice said it was the sort of thing men would do to girls if they got a chance, which was one of the reasons we had to keep the girls with us. I only found out years later it can happen to boys too, if they didn’t have somebody to look out for them. And don’t think it’s due to blokes like Bob and his agreeable companions, neither, because in point of fact it tends to be clergy and unassailable married pillars of society. If you hear the phrase ‘he’s above reproach’, get yourself out the nearest window is my advice. It’s a nasty world for some, Horace. It’s a good job we’re here and able to set the world to rights if only they’d let us, eh?

  In my private thoughts I noted that it suited the Bells to have three spinsters – me, Lizzie and Cissie – with the troupe as helpers and performers. It was hard enough for girls to meet anyone except itinerant theatricals and those infrequently and fleetingly. Attachments could form, and a girl was never disabused by reality if she had to go on to another town. She might be constantly disappointed. Or she could be left to hold an absent gent in her golden memory, having never smelled his socks.

  I’ve had more parrots in my life than gentleman friends, to be candid, and going by the stories some girls tell, I may have had the best of the bargain. I had admirers, of course. You do seem rather intent on this line of inquiry, Horrie. Are you a romantic at heart? When I left Lancashire I was keen on any amount of excitement but in the end I learned that drama is best kept on the stage and in the yellow-covered novels. I don’t fancy living it.

  But live it we did, me as well, and all when we got off the boat in Australia. We all went off like a box of firecrackers to be honest. I drank sherry in the dress-circle bar, while Alice always went home early to the girls. But there was nothing between Jim and me then. I’ve been everything to him: sister, apprentice, wife. The only thing I haven’t been to anyone is mother – you can park that facial expression of yours, Horace. There was no place for excitement like Melbourne before the financial workings of the state introduced themselves to Mr Crapper, so of course we was out and about all hours and kicking up our heels in red stockings. Boom times makes for boom behaviours, let’s say. And if we laughed a bit loud and put on a little extra rouge it helped us forget for a bit who we’d left behind, then that’s a reason and not an excuse if you ask me, and you did, so there.

  Mornings you’d find us waking up bit by bit at Parer’s Crystal Café at the top end of Bourke Street. In Melbourne we customarily lodged over at the Victoria Coffee Palace Hotel behind the Town Hall, or in leaner times at the White Hart Inn. But we’d stagger up to Parer’s for breakfast because it had luxury you could get amongst: even if you couldn’t afford to stay there you could go to the café. They wouldn’t bother you if you made a sixpence pot of tea last an hour. Parer’s was the cen
tre of Melbourne in her prime, and when we arrived it became our elevenses HQ.

  If you wandered out its back door to the lav, you could stand in the yard and look into the upstairs windows of Kreitmayer’s Waxworks next door and see Heaven knows what horror or who – Jack the Ripper with an arm off, Princess Alice having her stolen hairpins replaced, or Lola Montez being remade into Napoleon.

  Kreitmayer’s had a stage on the ground floor where wax Queen Victoria and the bushranger gangs stared at the audience from the glass cases on the side. Have you heard of Doc Rowe? He’s the magician who eventually married our Cissie: he performed at Kreitmayer’s with Madame Abomah the Giantess. Doc says he used to borrow the boots and waistcoat off the wax Ned Kelly to wear out to the saloons of a night. It was all right as long as he managed to get them back on Ned before nine o’clock the next day.

  Before your time, I know. The city in 1888 was like being in a whirling ballroom of life. If you wasn’t impressed by Melbourne in the boom time you were unconscious. We’d sashay down to Hosie’s Turkish baths and get ourselves scrubbed and polished, and then waltz up to Parer’s Crystal Café to see what there was to be seen, aside from us. The Crystal Café was passing new then – a fountain ringed with flowers, the walls covered in mirrors so everything in the room, including you, repeated forever into the distance. I loved the little knots of comfy settees and the round marble tables. We didn’t go in the billiard room at the back, which usually had men and smoke and language billowing out of it.