Evie finally took off her engagement ring. It had been another case of the show must go on. In the days when his quips were free in coming Jack had cracked that they were engaged to do the summer season, they didn’t have to get engaged to each other too. Though clearly they had. The engagement ring, with its single sparkling gem, was even a visible complement—tiny but visible—to her silvery costume. How would it have looked if she’d taken it off before the show came to an end? And it was, like any such ring, a guarantee. If it all worked out, and surely it would, they would get married that September when the show closed and take a honeymoon—preferably not in Brighton.
Or perhaps Evie had hoped that by carrying on wearing the ring the whole thing might revert to what it had been. Everything might be redeemed. She hadn’t given it back to Ronnie. Ronnie hadn’t asked for it back. He hadn’t said anything. Let the ring itself decide.
One day that September, after the show had finished and after the police had said she was free to leave Brighton, she did the obvious thing. She went to the end of the pier, took off the ring and threw it in the sea. She never told Jack. Even then she’d thought, without knowing how her life would turn out, that doing this with the ring might somehow have brought everything back. Might even have brought Ronnie back.
• • •
It was a regular seaside holiday show. Variety. Anything from acrobats to the up-and-coming Rockabye Boys to the no longer up-and-coming yet ample Doris Lane, sometimes known as the ‘Mistress of Melody’, sometimes (in cheeky reference to one of her rivals) as the ‘Forces Fiancée’. Anything from jugglers and plate-spinners to ‘Lord Archibald’, who came on holding a large teddy bear—‘hand up its arse’ as Jack put it—which he would talk to, and the teddy bear would talk back with a considerable gift for repartee. Throughout that season they would hold conversations on the unfolding state of the world—what Macmillan should have said to Eisenhower and so on. On occasion they might even ‘become’ Macmillan and Eisenhower, or Khrushchev and de Gaulle. It was the funniest thing, a teddy bear talking like General de Gaulle.
But it was all held together by Jack as compere. The impression was that it was his show. They came to be taken under his wing and it wouldn’t have been the same without him. Your pal for the night, your host with the most. Off stage he’d say he was just the oil in the wheels—the oilier the better. But it was no small task.
He was Jack Robinson in those days, as in ‘before you can say’. Some patter, some gags, some of them smutty, a bit of singing, some dancing, some tapping of his heels. He did the introductions and links, but also a few numbers of his own and always appeared at the end to wind up the show and do his farewell routine.
The important thing was to send them all out with their holiday mood endorsed, feeling they’d had their money’s worth, they’d had a good time, making them even feel they might sing and dance a bit themselves. For many of them, an evening at the pier show was the highlight.
‘And so, folks, this is your old mate Jack Robinson saying goodnight and sweet dreams, whoever she is. And here’s a little song to see you on your way. I think you know which one it is. Maestro—if you please!
When the red, red robin . . .’
If the audience felt so moved, they might sing along. Or when they went out, to the lights and the sound and smell of the sea again, they might indeed find themselves, as they strolled with happy feet along the boards, singing in their heads, or even out loud, snatches of that song.
I’m just a kid again doing what I did again!
It was August 1959.
• • •
When Ronnie and Evie moved to final spot, pipping even the Rockabye Boys, Jack’s goodnight routine became, in more ways than one, a little trickier. Why had Ronnie and Evie moved to final spot? Because, while the show must go on, there was another theatrical law that said: save till last anything that might be hard to follow. But not to have had Jack’s closing number would have been unthinkable, even changed the nature of the show. So on he would come, after all the applause for Ronnie and Evie had died away, having to adapt his farewell patter. He would have his hands raised and pressed together, as if having shared the applause, or in prayerful salute. He would get out his white handkerchief to mop his brow. He would put a sly twist on his having been upstaged.
‘Well didn’t I tell you, boys and girls, didn’t I say? Now all you’ve got is me. Back down to earth, eh?’
He would drape the handkerchief over his hand and shake it, as if giving it commands. He would turn to the audience and shrug.
The note of clownish companionship was struck. They were in his palm again. It was a skill. Even in those days you could see the man was not just good looks and greasepaint.
Eddie Costello, who was to go on to write for the News of the World, would always claim he’d seen it, even if at the time it was Ronnie and Evie he’d picked out.
In the dressing room Ronnie and Evie, turning back into their normal selves, might hear the band striking up and the audience singing along with Jack. They would not sing along themselves. They might not even speak to each other. Or they might try to. The audience who had seen
