All That Glitters by Catrin Collier Page B

Monty, the show’s comedian muttered to Chuckles. ‘If it was Haydn who was playing up, I could understand it. After all, the poor sod’s been rehearsing revue all morning.’
    ‘The way she’s carrying on, anyone would think Babs was the bloody star of this show.’
    ‘As opposed to you, Helen?’ Chuckles suggested drily, turning to the tall, dark girl who stood behind him.
    ‘You said it, Chuckles, not me.’
    ‘Well, star or not, as you’re here you can run through the Avenue routine with Haydn and Max.’
    Haydn managed to summon up more energy as Helen walked into the centre of the room. Dressed in a skirt cut higher and a bodice even lower than those of Babs, she exuded sex. And with her make-up-free face and open smile, it was a cleaner, healthier sex than the titivating, astringently perfumed eroticism that the girls of the Revue radiated. Max joined them, carrying three canes. He tossed one to Haydn, the other to Helen. Chuckles nodded to the pianist, who hit the opening notes. He chanted, ‘One, two, three, go.’
    ‘We would drive up the avenue …’ Chuckles beat time to the music then screamed, ‘Stop!’ Trained by endless fraught rehearsals, all three froze. ‘Max, you’re the shortest, you go in front. Helen, you next. Haydn, bring up the rear. That’s it, and again … one two three …’
    ‘Chuckles is a bloody slave-driver,’ Babs said as she came back with her ice cream. Eating it one-handed, she took off her shoes and rubbed her feet. ‘Him with his, “one more time, one more time”. I’ll have no feet or voice left by the time this show actually opens.’
    ‘Then Helen had better rehearse lead, and you second fiddle,’ Mousie Summers, the ‘head’ chorus girl sniped.
    ‘I suppose you’d prefer it if I was out altogether, so you could be promoted to second fiddle?’ Used to giving as good as she got, Babs mimicked Mousie’s bitchy tone perfectly.
    ‘Well, if you’re giving up …’
    ‘One dusting of talcum powder and I’ll be back on form. Don’t worry your pretty head about me, Mousie.’
    ‘That one’s a cow,’ Harriet, the youngest of the chorus girls declared as Babs left in search of a drink.
    ‘Aren’t we all when we set our sights on a higher rung in this bloody business,’ Freda the oldest and most cynical of the girls observed.
    ‘Full chorus for Avenue!’ Chuckles yelled, carried away by the momentum of the music.
    ‘That’s us.’ Mousie stubbed out the cigarette she’d lit up in defiance of the No Smoking signs beneath the toe of her tap shoe. Freda clamped her hands on Mousie’s waist, Harriet did the same, and as the piano belted out the refrain they shuffled behind Haydn, Helen and Max, three in a snake of twenty toe-tapping, singing girls, all of them desperately trying to look as though they hadn’t a care in the world.
    ‘No! No! No! Call yourself chorus girls!’ Chuckles stamped his foot so hard he hurt his ankle. Hopping and swearing, he took his anger out on the hapless dancers.
    ‘Haydn, Max, Helen take a break. You deserve better than this row of dancing bears at your back. Now …’
    Glad to be out of the spotlight for five minutes, Haydn slipped out through the door and made his way across the theatre to the bar. He glanced up at the clock. Three o’clock. Half an hour left of Variety rehearsals, if he was lucky, none involving him, then an hour and a half’s break before the curtain went up on the first of the two Revue performances. Another eight hours before he could walk home, and he was on his knees now. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know what rehearsing was like. Why, oh why had he agreed to open in the Variety?
    Money! the little nagging voice at the back of his head sang out. It had been barely six months since he’d left home. He’d sent half his wages to his mother until his father had written and told him to stop because they no longer needed it. After that he’d been able to keep himself in style, or at