Mr Starlight

I was demobbed early in 1946 and not long after I arrived home Sel got called up to do his National Service. He had to report to a recruitment station in Acocks Green.

Mam said, ‘This government seems determined to rob me of a son.’

I said, ‘They’ll never take Sel. One look at him and they’ll send him home.’

‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘He’s a fine-looking boy.’

He was tall and well-built, but there was that soft girlie side to him too. I couldn’t see him clambering up and over a cargo net. He didn’t have the musculature for it. I couldn’t see him getting stuck in to bayonet practice. And neither could he. ‘I’m not letting them cut my hair,’ he said. ‘I’m going to tell them I’m a pacifist.’ So he went off to Acocks Green, whistling and smelling of talc and expecting to be back in five minutes, but he was gone all day and when he did turn up he looked like a bulldog chewing on a wasp. ‘Fat lot you know,’ he said. ‘I’ve only gone and got into the RAF.’

Now, there was a lot of competition for the air force. Nobody just walked, especially not a boy who didn’t have the right attitude.

I said, ‘You can’t have done. You’ve misunderstood.’

‘No I haven’t,’ he said. ‘They asked for anybody who’d passed their School Certificate and there was only me and one other, so they said we were both in. Now what am I going to do? I don’t want to fly aeroplanes. I want to work on my singing career.’

Mam said, ‘Go back and tell them you’re musical. Tell them you’re willing to serve in a concert party.’

I said, ‘This is National Service, Mam, not Take Your Pick.’

‘Then he can be a bandsman,’ she said, ‘like you. I’ll write to them.’

I said, ‘He can’t play anything.’

She said, ‘He can play the triangle. You don’t need to be Paderewski to be an air force bandsman.’

He said, ‘But I don’t want to be a bandsman. I’m going to be a singer.’

Dilys said, ‘The RAF does have a nice uniform, Sel. Anyway, perhaps it won’t come to it.’

But it did come to it. Well, it did and it didn’t. He got his papers to go to RAF Padgate for basic training. He left on the Friday while I was at work and by Tuesday night he was back home, medically exempt due to ‘Weak Back and Nervous Temperament’ and whistling again. He walked straight back into his job in the payroll office at the ice cream factory, Uncle Teilo got us some club bookings and we all settled down again.

Sel practised his singing in front of the dressing-table mirror and I kept up to date with the hit parade. A song didn’t have to be aired many times before I had it committed to memory, and we were known around the circuit for offering a good mix of old and new. I began trying my hand at composition too and, although I didn’t receive a lot of encouragement, I’d say many of my early efforts have stood the test of time: ‘Gnat on the Windscreen of Life’, ‘Knee Deep in Love’, which I wrote for Renée when we started courting, ‘You Pulled the Chain on Me’, written after she called things off.

Renée had a look of Rita Hayworth about her and she was my first experience with the fair sex. Mam didn’t like her, but Mam never got along with other ladies. She’d chat for hours with Mr Edkins next door, laughing and joking, but the minute Mrs E poked her head out she ’d turn frosty. And she was the same with any girl I looked at. ‘Too full of herself,’ she’d say. Or, ‘All kid gloves and no drawers.’

Me and Renée had to do what courting we could in the back row of the Gaumont, so after six months I asked her to marry me, in the hope of moving things along in the bedroom department. After we got engaged Mam had to allow her in the house, begrudging as she was. It looked like being a long haul, saving up for our bits and pieces, but at least we could be in out of the cold. At least we didn’t always have to have fish and chips and a cuddle in the bus shelter. We even had full-scale relations, just the once, when Mam was getting over pleurisy and went to stay at Aunty Gwenny’s.

But then Sel had to open his mouth and ruin everything. ‘Mam,’ he said. ‘I reckon there’s a spring gone in the front-room couch.’

‘Why?’ she said. ‘Have you been going in there, wearing it out?’

‘Not me,’ he said. ‘But Cled did, and when he lay on top of Renée it didn’t half make a noise.’

It was all very well for him. He hadn’t matured to that degree yet. His idea of having a good time with a girl was meeting Vera Muddimer for the Shoppers’ Lunch in Lewis’s. He thought it was highly amusing when Mam said I’d have to move out if I was going to treat the place as a knocking shop. But I couldn’t move out. We didn’t have enough in our savings account, and after that Renée wouldn’t show her face in Ninevah Street. ‘I’ve got needs, Cled,’ she said. ‘So you’ll have to decide. Is it me or your mam?’

I said, ‘If you’ll just be patient. Another twelve months and we’ll be set up.’

But she suddenly got it into her head to leave Greely’s and be a bus conductress, five pounds a week, free uniform and half-price travel. And then, well, the writing was on the wall. A bus conductress has men hopping on and off all day long. It was really no job for an engaged person who was having second thoughts.

FOUR

After Sel had recuperated from his suit poisoning Uncle Teilo was keen to get us bookings for our comeback season, but His Numps wouldn’t apply himself to it. ‘Time to move on,’ he said.

Uncle Teilo said, ‘Oh yes? Where to? Has Norman Hewitt been talking to you?’ Norman was another big fixer in Birmingham. Sel just laughed.

I said, ‘Well, I think I should be kept in the picture.’

‘Look, Cled,’ he said. ‘We’ve been a good team, but we’ve got different plans. I’m a pro and you’re playing for pin money. And you can’t say I didn’t warn you.’ It was that business with the lady in white.

I said, ‘You don’t have to go to America to branch out, you know. We could travel further afield, do some private functions. Sutton. Lichfield. We could get a little motor.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m going to America. I’ve outgrown this place.’

I said, ‘Please yourself. I’ll go solo. You’re not the only one with a following, you know. I’ll always find a welcome at the Birmingham Welsh.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘In that case you won’t get your knickers in a knot if I go my own way, under new management.’

Dilys said, ‘Don’t worry, Cled. Perhaps it won’t come to it. America might not want him.’

But when Sel set his heart on something he always got it. Like that painting by numbers kit he pestered Mam for when he was nine. Like that old clock covered with cherubs he outbid everybody for at a big auction. Ugly bloody thing, supposed to have belonged to some French nob and he paid thousands for it.

So he went off on one of his jaunts to London and came home with a pair of patent leather boots and a promise of work through the Ted Sibley Agency, Representation for International Artistes.

Uncle Teilo had popped round to put a new flex on Mam’s iron and we were all sitting having tea when Sel walked in. ‘I’ve done it!’ he said. ‘Ted Sibley signed me on the spot. He had to admit it wasn’t every day an act like me walked through his door.’

I said, ‘When are you leaving?’

‘When the right opportunity opens up,’ he said. ‘See, Cled, you don’t just leap at the first thing you’re offered. You have to know where you want to get to, and then you have to have a plan and everything you do has to fit in with it. It’s no use jumping on a bus going to Walsall and then complaining it never took you to Kidderminster.’

I said, ‘Thanks for the tip, big shot. So what’s it to be? Broadway? Hollywood?’

‘The top,’ he said. ‘That’s the only destination that interests me.’

‘That’s the ticket, Selwyn!’ Mam said. ‘I always knew you’d go far.’ She didn’t show any signs of being grief-stricken.

Uncle Teilo said, ‘Some tin hut in Africa, that’s where he’ll end up. Concert parties in Umbongo Land. Ted Sibley! After all I’ve done for you. You could be playing the Aston Hippodrome in a year or two if you stick with me.’

‘No, Teilo,’ Mam said. ‘He has to move on, same as I did from Pentrefoelas. People who’ve got any gumption always do. You’re never appreciated in your own backyard.’

I said, ‘Well, I’ll be staying on your books, Teilo. As a matter of fact I’ve got a few ideas of my own. I might look around for a bass player and a drummer. Maybe a little vocalist too. A nice little songstress who’s easy on the eye. The Cled Boff Combo. We’ll be playing some of my own material.’

‘Oh yes?’ he said.

A bit of enthusiasm would have been nice.

Dilys didn’t like the sound of Sel’s plans. She said, ‘Who is this Ted Sibley anyway? Sel’s too young and trusting to sign papers for going overseas.’

Of course, Sel always brought out the protective side in women. They always worried about him and ruffled his hair and cut his toast into soldiers. I put a lot of it down to his dimples.

She said, ‘Will you go with him, Cled? Make sure he doesn’t get double crossed?’

I said, ‘I’m not giving up my prospects to play nursemaid to him.’

Mam said, ‘You don’t have any prospects.’

Sel said, ‘I’ll be all right, Dilys. I’m twenty-one. I’ve got my wits about me. And I’ve got talent. All I have to do now is share the good news with the rest of the world, specially those Americans. They’re going to wonder what hit them.’

I watched Mam’s face. ‘And there’s the difference’, she said to Uncle Teilo, ‘between an artiste who starts on the clubs and an artiste who stays on the clubs.’

Dilys said, ‘Well, I still think Cled should go with him.’

‘Cled won’t go anywhere,’ Mam said. ‘He’s a stay-at-home.’

Sel said, ‘Look, if you want to try your luck too, Cled, I’ve no objections. Go and see Ted Sibley. If you’ve got what it takes he’ll sign you, if you haven’t he won’t. And you’re well thought of at Greely’s. Let’s face it, stardom isn’t for everybody. But whatever you do, don’t any of you worry about me. I’m on my way and I don’t need a babysitter.’

He was so full of himself and all he had was a pack of promises, not a single paying engagement in the book. I was the one getting enquiries from Wednesbury Oddfellows and the Sluice and Penstock Social. I thought, ‘I’ll show the ruddy lot of you.’

I took a day’s holiday and went down to London to see this Ted Sibley. It caused quite a flutter in the Trimming Shop. I had to promise to send them a picture postcard, even though I was only gone for the day. Sel insisted on coming with me.

I said, ‘You’re the one supposed to need nannying.’ I’d been to London before. I’d been through on a troop train. I said, ‘Got you worried, have I? Think Ted Sibley might recognise who’s the real musician in the family?’

‘Ah, come on, Cled,’ he said. ‘Don’t be like that. Don’t let’s fall out. We’ve both got something to offer. You’re a good steady instrumentalist. I’ve got that added vital ingredient.’

We went to a cafeteria and he put away two eggs on toast and a pot of tea. I couldn’t manage a thing; I was so churned up with nerves. I’d never had to audition for strangers very much, with Uncle Teilo having so much pull.

Sel said, ‘Here’s my advice. Forget you’re trying out for Ted Sibley. Pretend you’re at home. Enjoy yourself. Pretend you’re playing for Dilys and Arthur. And look at it this way, if it doesn’t pan out, at least you’re a skilled car seat finisher. You’ll never starve.’

I played ‘Lazy Bones’ and ‘Nice Work’. It was a good piano, but I wasn’t up to my usual mark. Ted Sibley had the habit of narrowing his eyes while he was listening, giving the impression he was in pain, or falling asleep.

I said, ‘I’m better with an audience.’

‘You should be so lucky,’ he said. Then he threw me a play list and told me to show him what I could do on trumpet. That was when I hit my stride. I gave him ‘Blue Orchids’ and ‘Night and Day’ and my own arrangement of ‘Little Brown Jug’, mood perfect, note perfect, even though I was in a bit of a haze. I think it had been caused by a beverage called a Rusty Nail, bought me by Sel to help settle my stomach. Anyway, Sibley stubbed out his cigarette and said, ‘Yeah, you’ll do. I’ll put you on my books. You understand what’s involved? You’ll have to have a medical. You have to be willing to travel. You single, Cled? No encumbrances?’

I was between romances as it happened. I said, ‘Is that it, then? When do I start?’

‘As soon as I need a trumpeter,’ he said. ‘Are there any more of you at home? Any other Boff talent I should know about? No chorus girls? Sax players?’

Ted Sibley did a lot of business with the shipping lines and he was looking for a tenor sax for a sailing to Ceylon and some high-kickers for a variety show going to South Africa. There was no telling where an international entertainer could end up. ‘And Sel,’ he said, ‘I’m still waiting for a photo of you in a normal suit. Single vent, no spangles, remember? I can’t sell you as a supporting vocalist if you look like something off a flying trapeze.’

‘I’ll get it done tomorrow, Ted,’ he said, and then he winked at me. ‘I’ll wear something from Hepworth’s Mr Normal Collection and just let my natural incandescence shine through.’

He didn’t appear to notice he’d had a ticking off. He’d received so little criticism in life I’m not sure he always recognised it when he heard it. And it never crossed his mind that things might not go his way. All he could see was that house with the swimming pool waiting for him at the end of the rainbow.

We went back to the cafeteria and I had my first breakfast of the day and Sel had his second.

I said, ‘I’ll have to give Greely’s a week’s notice.’

‘Yeah?’ he said.

I said, ‘Renée used to say I didn’t have enough get-up-and-go. I’ve a good mind to go round to the Midland Red depot tonight and see what she’s got to say for herself now.’

‘Yeah?’ he said.

I said, ‘Where is Ceylon, exactly?’

‘Don’t know,’ he said, ‘and don’t care. The only boat I’m getting on is one going to New York.’

I said, ‘It might be nice to see some other places first. World travel is bound to give a man a certain something. It can’t help but give you more pull with the ladies.’

‘Yeah?’ he said.

He had several girls keen on him at that time, including his old school pal Vera Muddimer, but he didn’t seem inclined to make the kind of move they were hoping for. He knew the facts of life. I’d filled him in on all that. You pick up those kinds of things when you do military service, but of course that was an experience that had passed him by.

I said, ‘Don’t you like Vera?’

‘I love Vera,’ he said.

I said, ‘Then how come you haven’t got round to kissing her yet?’

He said, ‘I kiss her all the time.’

I said, ‘I don’t mean on the hand. That’s just fooling around. I mean kissing. On the lips.’

‘Bleeah!’ he said. ‘Germs!’

He was an oddity.

‘Cled,’ he said, ‘I hope you’re not expecting us to get booked for the same engagements? Just because we’re family doesn’t mean we’re joined at the neck. Ted’s business is getting the best he can for his artistes. He can’t be ruled by sentiment.’

I didn’t have any expectations. Once we were back in Ninevah Street it all seemed like a dream and anyway, I didn’t want to prejudice my position at Greely’s. I said to Mam, ‘Nothing may come of it. Sel talks as though it’s in the bag, but it’s not.’

But Mam said, ‘Of course it is. You’ll probably get a letter tomorrow.’

Uncle Teilo wasn’t so impressed. ‘Chugging back and forth on some tub,’ he said. ‘What if you get seasick?’

Mam said, ‘They won’t get seasick. They went on pleasure pedalos in Cannon Hill Park and they were as right as ninepence.’

Sel said, ‘Yes. And anyway, I might only have to chug forth. Some millionaire impresario might come aboard and discover me. Then I’ll be down that gangplank and on my way, first trip.’

No letter came the next day, nor even the next week, even though Sel had sent in a plain vanilla photo as instructed.

I said, ‘Looks like Ted Sibley was all talk. How about going back with Teilo? Put a bit of jingle in our pockets?’

‘Not me,’ he said. ‘You go back with Teilo.’

But Uncle Teilo had got the hump.

When I asked him if he had anything for me he said, ‘Back from your world travels already? That didn’t last long. Well, I’ve got all the solo pianists I need just now, Cledwyn. I’ve got Winnie Skerritt and a nice steady boy from Coleshill, who knows which side his bread is buttered. So I’m afraid I can’t help you at the moment.’

I said to Sel, ‘Brilliant. We appear to have lost our shirts on Ted Sibley and now Teilo’s turned funny.’

‘Ask me,’ he said, ‘you’re better off staying at Greely’s. Clock in, clock out, pick up your wages every Friday. See if Norman Hewitt can get you something. But let’s face it, Cled, you haven’t got the balls for real show business.’

Then I came home from work the following Monday and there was a letter waiting for me, propped up in front of the mantelpiece.

Mam was banging about in the kitchen.

I said, ‘Well?’

‘Well what?’ she said.

I said, ‘Did Sel get New York?’

‘He’ll get his tomorrow,’ she said. ‘They send notices to bands-men first, then the soloists’ letters get posted the day after.’

Sel was out, eating Kunzel cakes with Vera Muddimer and pretending not to be bothered that he hadn’t heard anything.

When I was on the early shift Mam always kept my dinner for me till I came in, hot enough to take the roof off your mouth, but it was stone cold by the time I’d finished looking at that letter. Six transatlantic sailings with Cunard, subject to a medical examination. Contract renewable subject to my giving satisfaction. Terms of employment enclosed.

I said, ‘I’ve done it, Mam. I’ve got a job playing trumpet on the Queen Mary. I’ve ruddy well done it!’

‘Now, Cledwyn,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you crowing and upsetting your brother. It’s very hard on his nerves, all this waiting.’

‘I’m not bothered,’ he said, when he eventually turned up. ‘You need nerves of steel in this business and I’ve got them.’

Mam said, ‘You’ve got a very generous spirit, Selwyn. You deserve every success.’

Of course, he made sure she was out of earshot before he said anything else to me, whispering, trying to needle me. ‘You’ll only be a bandsman,’ he said. ‘You won’t get your name on the programme. And you’ll be kipping down in the depths,’ he said, ‘Down with the rats. If the boat sinks you won’t stand a chance. You’d better start practising “Nearer My God to Thee”.’

Then Mrs Edkins came in to borrow a shilling for the gas meter.

I said, ‘I’m sailing to New York, Mrs E.’

‘Subject to medical examination,’ Mam said.

Mrs E said, ‘I didn’t know you had it in you, Cledwyn. Now won’t it be a caution if Selwyn never gets a letter and you have to go without him?’

‘No,’ Mam said, ‘it won’t be a caution, it’ll be a clerical error. Now take your shilling, Connie Edkins, and stop bringing on Selwyn’s nervous tension.’

Of course, he did get a letter. It came the next day, offering him the same sailings I was on, as intermission singer. By the time I got home he’d been to the post office to draw money out and gone to Man about Birmingham to buy a blazer and two pairs of strides. ‘Hello, sailor,’ he said, when he saw me. ‘Splice the mainbrace!’

He was back in a good humour. ‘What did they say at Greely’s?’

I hadn’t actually got round to telling them. It was a big step, giving up my security and when it came to it, that morning, I’d had some doubts about going through with it. I’d proved I was a match for Sel and that was what mattered to me.

We had seven days to consider and send the papers back, and it was a funny thing made me do it in the end. They’d just brought something in at Greely’s called time and motion studies, which was a man with a clipboard, writing down every move you made including when you went to answer a call of nature. It was in the interests of greater efficiency and nobody liked it. Stan Walley, our shop steward, reckoned it was a Trojan horse got up by management, looking for ways to lay people off. I wasn’t a big union man myself but Stan turned out to be right and I’ve often wondered whether I’d have got the chop, if I’d stayed long enough to find out. As it was, something in me snapped that morning. Clicking his ballpoint pen, getting under my feet.

I said, ‘I’ve been offered work on a transatlantic luxury liner so you can stick that stopwatch up your arse.’

And that was that. I signed on the dotted line and then we waited to get our medicals. Arthur and Dilys thought I’d been hasty, giving my notice at Greely’s. Dilys said, ‘Sel failed for the RAF. What if he fails this time? You surely won’t go without him?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe I will.’

But Sel’s weak back was of no concern to the Cunard doctor. We both passed A1 and when we came out on to the Marylebone Road it was still only half past twelve. We had the rest of the day ahead of us. The rest of our lives.

He said, ‘I’m going round the shops. Are you coming?’ He wanted to buy some sparkling cuff links and once Sel started shopping you could be there till they were cashing up and putting the lights out.

I said, ‘No. I think I’ll wend my way to a Corner House for cod and chips. I might go to the pictures.’

‘That’s the spirit,’ he said. ‘You go your way and I’ll go mine. I’ll see you at home.’

I saw William Holden and Broderick Crawford in something and then I went on to a very saucy peepshow, so it was nearly nine o’clock before I got back to Ninevah Street.

‘Where’s Selwyn?’ Mam wanted to know.

It was past midnight when he came creeping past my door, new shoes squeaking.

I said, ‘You’re in trouble with Mam.’

‘No he’s not,’ she shouted. ‘You’re in trouble, for losing your brother.’

‘It’s all right, Mam,’ he said. ‘I made myself scarce so Cled could go to an opium den.’

‘As long as you’re safe,’ she said. ‘Now get up to bed.’

He was hanging about in my doorway.

I said, ‘Get your cuff links?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘And I had sex.’

I said, ‘You did not.’

‘Yes, I did,’ he said. ‘Did you?’

I said, ‘No. I didn’t feel like it. Where did you have it?’

‘Not saying,’ he said.

Not saying because it hadn’t happened.

I said, ‘You’re a bloody liar, Boff.’

He went off to bed laughing.

‘I’m in the mood for love’ – I could hear him whistling while he was putting his pyjamas on.

FIVE

I had a right royal send-off from Greely’s. They’d had a whip round and they presented me with a travelling shaving compendium and a card signed by everyone in the Trimming Shop. One of the bosses even came down from the top floor to shake me by the hand.

I said to Stan, ‘See, they are human after all.’

‘That’s because you’re leaving,’ he said. ‘Think what you’re saving them in severance pay.’

Our first sailing was mid-April and we had to be aboard twenty-four hours before departure. There was a lot to do, packing our valises, saying our farewells, and we were quite the celebrities in Saltley those last few days. Mam sent me round to Jewkes’s to buy her a hairnet and Mr Jewkes got so carried away, surmising how much money we’d be earning, after stoppages, he took the last hairnet off the card and then put it back in the window, empty. I always remembered that.

And then Mrs Edkins yoo-hooed me from the doorway of Spooner’s the butchers, wanting me to go in so she could show me off to all the ladies who were queuing for their meat. ‘This is Annie Boff’s other boy,’ she said. ‘I’ve known them both since they were babs, and now young Selwyn’s going to America to be a star, and he’s taking Cledwyn here along with him. Isn’t that nice?’