Behind the footlights the entertainers went through their repertoire without attracting much interest from the bar. Conversations animated by gin were altogether too distracting. So, too, were warm waves of perfume, jostlings and giggles. A stiff-lipped ventriloquist and his dummy were no match for a whiff of Paris at one’s shoulder and the flutter of eyelashes brushed with lamp-black. Like everyone around them, the detectives shouted in appreciation whenever the ballet appeared, and crashed their pewter-pots on the bar-counter each time a dancer flung a leg higher than her companions; authenticity demanded it. But by mid-evening the shimmering fumes above the footlights increasingly set the performers apart from the audience. That, at least, was what Thackeray supposed after five pints of Kop’s, though the cigar smoke and gin vapours closer to hand may have played a part. Whatever the cause, it was devilishly difficult to concentrate. His memory was unaccountably slow, too. He knew the words of all the choruses, but for some reason they came from him a little late. People were beginning to move away from him.
‘It’s a disappointing show, ain’t it, Sarge?’ he confided to Cribb. ‘We might have paid five bob for a blooming box, too. I wouldn’t give twopence for this lot.’
‘Music hall’s more than a list of performers, Thackeray. It’s everything around you,’ the sergeant lectured him, wiping the ale from his chin. ‘Your kidney-pies and conversation are just as vital to it as that fellow up there making a mess of Dear Old Pals. D’you think your gallery boys and their donahs are particular about whether they’re watching acrobats or animals or ruddy clog-dancers? They’ll pelt ’em with oranges if they’re no good, but that’s all part of the enjoyment. They’re just as pleased to see ’em on the bill next time so they can pelt ’em again. It’s participation that counts. Look at ’em in the middle there. Worthy shopmen and clerks decked out in their dress- suits and sitting at the guinea tables. That’s what they call “high ton”. Next week they’ll be back in the gallery, but they’ve lived like swells tonight. They’re not disappointed in the show.’
Thackeray sipped his drink in silence. There never was much point in arguing with Cribb, least of all during one of his homilies. Mercifully there was an interruption, a woman’s voice from behind them: ‘Good evening, gentlemen. I seem to remember an arrangement between us.’
‘Indeed!’ said Cribb, turning about. The sauce of some of these madams left him speechless. That was just as well on this occasion, because the speaker was Miss Ellen Blake. The rebuke on his lips dropped clean away like the Tay Bridge.
‘I was merely suggesting that you might like to see behind the scenes’ she said, smiling. ‘I hope I make myself clear. In half an hour I must leave for the Grampian. I’m no longer first on the bill, you know, so there is just time, if you are still interested.’ Wrapped in a black opera-cape trimmed with fur, she had a freshness of appearance that quite eclipsed the perfumed and powdered company around her.
‘Nothing would please us better,’ said Cribb.
‘We will go through the canteen, then.’ She led them towards the stage. Thackeray fully in control of his movements, but wishing that the slope of the promenade were not quite so steep. On the stage, a black-faced comedian in an ancient grey hat was talking in monotone, a theatrical plain-chant. ‘There is nothing like a wife. I say to all of you, young and old, get a wife, anybody’s wife. Marry, marry early and marry often. Get a wife, marry and have children. Bring ’em up, bring ’em all up and in your old age they’ll repay you by bringing you down.’ To the left of the orchestra-pit there was a door. They descended a spiral flight of iron steps and ventured beneath the stage.
After the brilliance upstairs, the canteen was shadowy, illuminated by four feeble gas-burners with orange shades. Drinks were being served from a semicircular bar to soldiers in uniform, who took them to wooden benches where young women sat.
‘It serves as a green-room,’ Miss Blake explained. ‘Those are the ballet-girls in the grey waterproof cloaks. Do you see their white slippers and tights? They are mostly the figurantes, who can’t dance a bit. They’re paid about fifteen shillings a week, so they’re very pleased to be bought champagne. The soldiers are their friends, nearly all of them officers in the Household troops. The girls come down here between dances. We shall go up the staircase on the opposite side.’
They emerged in the wings in time to see the comedian take his bow to desultory applause. A pale woman with a pair of cockatoos on her arm prepared to take his place. Thackeray was standing directly under the lime- boy’s perch, and had to brush down his jacket, which was peppered with white dust.
‘If you’ll come this way,’ said Miss Blake, ‘I can show you one of the dresssing-rooms. In many small halls they have to manage with two, but Papa has six. The ballet girls are all downstairs, I think, so we can look into their room without embarrassment.’
As they followed Miss Blake along a narrow passage between a scene dock and a collection of property- baskets, Cribb unexpectedly stooped to tie a shoe-lace. Thackeray blundered into him and only avoided pitching forward over Cribb’s back by snatching at a dustsheet to his right. ‘Well done,’ muttered the sergeant. ‘Cover ’em up again quick.’ Under the sheet a pile of barrels was revealed, freshly varnished. The name ‘G. Bellotti’ was clearly inscribed on the top one in pink enamel. There was a positive swagger in Cribb’s gait as he marched ahead.
Miss Blake approached a door marked Ladies’ Dressing Room. Gentlemen Strictly Not Admitted, pushed it open fractionally, peered inside and then beckoned conspiratorially. They stepped into a narrow room, some forty feet in length, divided by a clothes-line, over which the day-garments of the ballet were draped, drab gowns of serge and kersey, and cambric chemises, fraying and stained at the hem from use in London streets. Cheap scent lingered in the room, but the reek of clothes was stronger. A row of shelving round the walls at a height of three feet served as dressing-tables, with tarnished pieces of mirror, candles, hair brushes and pots of grease to indicate each girl’s territory. A few had beer-crates for stools. Corsets, garters and stockings littered the stone floor. Thackeray cleared his throat.
‘Does it surprise you?’ Miss Blake asked. ‘When you see them on the stage in their tinsel and tissue you probably don’t imagine them slinking back to their lodgings in these rags. It surprises their officer-friends at the end of the evening, I can tell you. There isn’t much glamour about them then, poor things.’
‘You said that the figurantes got fifteen shillings a week,’ said Cribb. ‘What does your father pay the better dancers?’
‘The coryphees? Thirty shillings if they’re in the front row, and that’s generous by music hall standards. Out of that they provide their own shoes and tights. You can’t buy a pair of silk tights for less than ten shillings.’ Miss Blake took Cribb’s arm. ‘Come and see what they use for making up their faces.’ She picked up a jar from the shelf. ‘Powdered chalk as a base, with rouge. A penny cake of Indian ink. A packet of Armenian blue. Fuller’s earth to dust off with.’
‘Then what is the burnt newspaper for?’ asked Cribb.
‘For lining and shading the face. Some of them also burn a candle against a porcelain bowl and use the brown deposit for an eye-shadow. Don’t look so shocked, gentlemen. It all comes off afterwards with butcher’s lard. It’s a cheap recipe for beauty, you must admit. Sometimes I look at the so-called fallen women who parade in the promenade where I met you and I find myself hating them, Sergeant. Hating them for their expensive perfumes and lacquered lips and rows of jewels, while these poor creatures have to darn their tights and patch their clothes and sit downstairs with soldiers if they want to be treated with consideration. Try telling them that virtue is rewarded as they stand shivering in the street tonight, watching those Jezebels being handed into carriages.’
Impassioned outbursts from young women about social matters were becoming fashionable, but one hardly expected such arguments from the singer of Fresh as the New-Mown Hay. Even the young Salvationist had not spoken with half the fervour of Ellen Blake.
‘There’s only one way to change things, Miss,’ said Cribb, ‘and that’s to persuade your father not to admit unaccompanied females to his hall. But in my estimation that’s the next step to bankruptcy. They’re trying to run the old Victoria across the river on temperance lines, and I hear they’re playing to half-empty houses. The fact is that when a hall closes, the ballet-girls lose their jobs, while the women of the other sort simply move on to the Casinos and the Cremorne and such places.’
Miss Blake re-arranged the cosmetics on the shelf. ‘There is really no question of my father discouraging such women from the Paragon. If I have a conscience about what happens here, Sergeant, I can assure you I did not inherit it from Papa.’
‘Well if it’s any consolation, Miss, Thackeray and I see a rare amount of the seamier side of London life in our profession, and there aren’t many of your promenaders that’ll escape the poorhouse or the river, I can tell you. Remember their faces as they strut up and down in your father’s hall. One of these days you’ll see the same faces looking down at you from the threepenny gallery at the Grampian—’
