“Hey! These ’ere’s the pews out of the old Primitive Chapel.”
“Sorry ah! We’n come ter hear t’ parson.”
Theme for endless jokes. And the Pleasure Palace was christened, in some lucky stroke, Houghton’s Endeavour, a reference to that particular Chapel effort called the Christian Endeavour, where Alvina and Miss Pinnegar both figured.
“Wheer art off, Sorry?”
“Lumley.”
“Houghton’s Endeavour?”
“Ah.”
“Rotten.”
So, when one laconic young collier accosted another. But we anticipate.
Mr. May had worked hard to get a program for the first week. His pictures were: The Human Bird, which turned out to be a skiing film from Norway, purely descriptive; The Pancake, a humorous film: and then his grand serial: The Silent Grip. And then, for Turns, his first item was Miss Poppy Traherne, a lady in innumerable petticoats, who could whirl herself into anything you like, from an arum lily in green stockings to a rainbow and a Catherine wheel and a cup-and-saucer: marvellous, was Miss Poppy Traherne. The next turn was The Baxter Brothers, who ran up and down each other’s backs and up and down each other’s front, and stood on each other’s heads and on their own heads, and perched for a moment on each other’s shoulders, as if each of them was a flight of stairs with a landing, and the three of them were three flights, three storeys up, the top flight continually running down and becoming the bottom flight, while the middle flight collapsed and became a horizontal corridor.
Alvina had to open the performance by playing an overture called “Welcome All”: a ridiculous piece. She was excited and unhappy. On the Monday morning there was a rehearsal, Mr. May conducting. She played “Welcome All,” and then took the thumbed sheets which Miss Poppy Traherne carried with her. Miss Poppy was rather exacting. As she whirled her skirts she kept saying: “A little faster, please”—“A little slower”—in a rather haughty, official voice that was somewhat muffled by the swim of her drapery. “Can you give it expression?” she cried, as she got the arum lily in full blow, and there was a sound of real ecstasy in her tones. But why she should have called “Stronger! Stronger!” as she came into being as a cup and saucer, Alvina could not imagine: unless Miss Poppy was fancying herself a strong cup of tea.
However, she subsided into her mere self, panted frantically, and then, in a hoarse voice, demanded if she was in the bare front of the show. She scorned to count “Welcome All.” Mr. May said Yes. She was the first item. Whereupon she began to raise a dust. Mr. Houghton said, hurriedly interposing, that he meant to make a little opening speech. Miss Poppy eyed him as if he were a cuckoo-clock, and she had to wait till he’d finished cuckooing. Then she said:
“That’s not every night. There’s six nights to a week.” James was properly snubbed. It ended by Mr. May metamorphizing himself into a pug dog: he said he had got the “costoom” in his bag: and doing a lump-of-sugar scene with one of the Baxter Brothers, as a brief first item. Miss Poppy’s professional virginity was thus saved from outrage.
At the back of the stage there was half-a-yard of curtain screening the two dressing-rooms, ladies and gents. In her spare time Alvina sat in the ladies’ dressing room, or in its lower doorway, for there was not room right inside. She watched the ladies making up—she gave some slight assistance. She saw the men’s feet, in their shabby pumps, on the other side of the curtain, and she heard the men’s gruff voices. Often a slangy conversation was carried on through the curtain—for most of the turns were acquainted with each other: very affable before each other’s faces, very sniffy behind each other’s backs.
Poor Alvina was in a state of bewilderment. She was extremely nice—oh, much too nice with the female turns. They treated her with a sort of offhand friendliness, and they snubbed and patronized her and were a little spiteful with her because Mr. May treated her with attention and deference. She felt bewildered, a little excited, and as if she was not herself.
The first evening actually came. Her father had produced a pink crêpe de Chine blouse and a back-comb massed with brilliants—both of which she refused to wear. She stuck to her black blouse and black shirt, and her simple hairdressing. Mr. May said “Of cauce! She wasn’t intended to attract attention to herself.” Miss Pinnegar actually walked down the hill with her, and began to cry when she saw the ox-blood red erection, with its gas-flares in front. It was the first time she had seen it. She went on with Alvina to the little stage door at the back, and up the steps into the scrap of dressing-room. But she fled out again from the sight of Miss Poppy in her yellow hair and green knickers with green-lace frills. Poor Miss Pinnegar! She stood outside on the trodden grass behind the Band of Hope, and really cried. Luckily she had put a veil on.
She went valiantly round to the front entrance, and climbed the steps. The crowd was just coming. There was James’s face peeping inside the little ticket-window.
“One!” he said officially, pushing out the ticket. And then he recognized her. “Oh,” he said, “You’re not going to pay.”
“Yes I
