point of view. The place had probably not been cleaned in the meantime, but in the dim lighting you couldn’t tell.
Harry’s turn at the bar coincided with a scabrous punchline about a lunatic and a lesbian. Harry ordered a pint of Ruddles from a barmaid with dyed blonde hair that was dirty brown at the roots. Large spiky hoops hung from her ears like offensive weapons. Her blouse was cut low, her fingers were heavy with rings. As she took Harry’s money, she stared over his shoulder.
“Froggy, at last! Where were you?”
A small man jostled past Harry, catching his elbow and causing him to spill some of the beer that the blonde had poured a moment before. Without a sideways glance or an apology, the newcomer said in squeaky indignation, “Had things to see to, didn’t I?”
“The boss was chasing after you. As soon as he turned up, her ladyship threw a fit. God knows why, he wasn’t back as late as he said he would be. Anyway, you should have been here at half nine, so if he’s searching for someone to kick, you’re favourite.”
The man had protruding eyes and a forehead wrinkled as if with the effort of years spent making up excuses. It was a petty rogue’s face, of the sort Harry encountered every day of his working life. Standing by his shoulder, Harry caught a whiff of a foul smell, distinctive even in the Ferry’s murky atmosphere.
After a pause for thought the man said, “Anyone asks, Myra’s been took sick. They’ve rushed her into hospital and I’m only just back from the Royal. Okay, Shirelle?”
The barmaid shrugged. A bulging eye twinkled at her as a new line of self-defence evidently occurred to the man. “And I’ll keep me mouth shut about yer job at the Apollo. Promise.”
Shirelle tossed her blond mane in contempt. The earrings jangled with menace, but she spoke resignedly. “All right, I’ll cover for you. Now sod off.”
The small man blew her a kiss and shoved back through the crowd, vanishing from view. Liz still had not turned up. Harry spotted a trio of young girls slinking through the double doors at the other side of the concert hall. Off to the disco. Liz loved to dance and it occurred to him that she might be jiving the night away. He followed the girls downstairs. On the dance floor half a dozen women were swaying to the beat thudding from head-high speakers in each corner of the room. The dancers gazed into space, while the strobes painted them in ever- changing colours. Liz was not amongst them. Harry took a long draught from his glass and went back upstairs, in time to hear Russ Jericho wind up his act with a mumbled platitude about a terrific audience. The applause was patchy and Harry didn’t join in.
A compere in a black velvet suit with flecks of dandruff sprinkled like snowflakes around the shoulders strutted on to the stage. As he gabbled about the quality of the entertainment, more people gravitated towards the bar. Harry scanned their faces in the hope of seeing Liz. No luck.
He turned to the man standing next to him, a stocky figure sales-rep smart in jacket and tie, and said, “I’m looking for a woman. Tall, dark, she… ”
The man interrupted him with an ironic wink. “Aren’t we all, pal, aren’t we all?”
Harry finished his drink in silence. Where was she? The old frustration at her thoughtlessness began to burn within him: had she stood him up? For all he knew, she might be at the Demi-Monde or Huskisson’s with some new bloke she’d just picked up. Of course, he should blame himself for succumbing to the temptation of her note like an addict craving for another fix.
“Well, that’s enough from me,” said the compere and a slurred voice from the audience bellowed assent. “Now is the moment you’ve all been waiting for. The highlight of our show, our very own hit recording artiste.” He rolled off the last word with a Gallic flourish before rising to a new crescendo: “Yes, ladies and gentlemen. The enchanting. The talented. The lovely. The one and only — Miss Angie O’Hare!”
The keyboard player and drummer in the background burst into life with a Lennon and McCartney number. The people at the tables started clapping and someone cheered. A woman swept on to the stage, microphone in hand, singing about all the lonely people.
For Harry, her sound belonged to the distant past and the pop music of his youth when once or twice she had made it to the lower reaches of the record charts. Sixties ballads had always appealed to him and he still had an Angie O’Hare album somewhere at home. The song brought Brenda Rixton back to mind. Lack of companionship must cause her to contrive their regular meetings in the corridor or lift at Empire Dock. Where the lonely people all come from, he thought, matters less than where they find to go. And, suddenly, he felt Liz’s failure to turn up as keenly as a nettle sting.
Angie O’Hare took a bow and as her head rose again, for a second he fancied that he saw a glimpse of sadness in her sapphire eyes, as though she too identified with the lyric. But within moments he realised that he must have been mistaken, for a smile of triumph spread across her face as she said, “Thank you all so very much,” and started talking about the next number that she was going to sing. Feeling cheated, Harry reached for a cigarette and looked away once more.
The drinkers’ queue had thinned and he traced a path towards the serving blonde. She was lying to a tall, tanned man in a slickly tailored dinner jacket whom Harry took to be the manager.
“Froggy? He only arrived half an hour ago, poor lamb. His wife’s sick and they’ve whipped her into the Royal. He shouldn’t really have come at all, but he didn’t want to let you down.”
“Do me a favour.” The man tugged at the ends of his dark moustache. His mind seemed to be elsewhere, but you could tell from the gesture that he thought himself handsome. Even the barmaid, concentrating on her trivial deceit, let her eyes linger on her boss a little longer than necessary before she spoke again.
“Honest,” she insisted, “you only have to ask him. But mind what you say, he’s been under a lot of pressure lately.”
Worthy of an Oscar, Harry thought. He coughed and shuffled, drawing attention to the fiver in his hand. Ignoring him, the manager said, “He’ll be under more pressure if I find that he’s been spinning me a yarn.” But he turned away as he spoke.
After being served, Harry stayed by the counter, sipping the beer and telling himself that Liz would not be coming now. Why she had bothered to summon him here was anyone’s guess. It would have made more sense to listen to Jim’s advice and steer clear, but where Liz was concerned, logic was as scarce as love in a brothel. Today had been reminiscent of their marriage as a whole, as he twitched at the end of whatever strings she cared to pull.
From the stage, Angie O’Hare was crooning the chorus of Don’t Make Me Over. He looked around the concert room. Everywhere, men and women were pairing off, like chess players easing through a well-tried opening game. Through the crowd, he could see the man called Froggy deep in conversation with a customer who had his back to Harry. Spinning another tall story, no doubt. But then the customer’s girlfriend, a sulky blonde with a tart’s wiggle, interrupted them and drew her man aside. Froggy resumed his desultory collection of disused glasses, casting a surreptitious glance at the manager as he did so. Harry saw the little man relax visibly as he spotted his boss at the rear of the room, standing with arms folded, looking abstractedly towards the stage.
Angie was in full flow: no matter how many times she had wrapped herself around the lyric, she still managed to give it everything. Harry could vaguely remember fancying her when she was in her prime. Women had been a mystery to him then. Come to that, they still were. But tonight, in a shimmering silk dress slashed from the waist and with her auburn hair fashionably frizzed, she looked as good as ever. There was a strength there, a sense of power, that he found as attractive as the curves of her body. Unexpectedly, he experienced his first stirrings of desire for her that he could recall since long-ago schooldays and when the number spiralled to its climax, he found himself applauding with the rest of the Ferry crowd.
Breathing hard, she inclined her head in acknowledgment, and this time Harry could detect no hint of anguish in her eyes. Softly, she said, “Tonight is very special for me, so I’d like to dedicate this next song to the man in my life.” She sent a secret smile into the sea of faces. “I sang it to him on the night we met. It means so much to me — and, I hope, to you.”
Absurdly, it was as if for Harry the words had broken a momentary spell when Liz was forgotten and for an instant the singer was in tune with him. The keyboard player struck up with the opening chords of The Look of Love and Harry started to edge towards the door. Liz would not be seen in the Ferry Club tonight.
On the way out he felt a hand brush against his leg. He glanced round and found himself looking at the grinning face of a woman in an unflattering tight red frock. She might have been any age between twenty and forty. Her freckled face was as used as an old bus ticket and somehow familiar.
