“You’d be up against it otherwise, losing your passport. They’d never let you on the plane tomorrow.”
“Then it was lucky. No, I only had about ten pounds with me, less the theater ticket and what I spent for dinner. Maybe seven pounds. I don’t suppose there’s any chance I’ll get it back.”
The woman shook her head. “Not unless a bobby caught them right in the act, and of course they didn’t. If it’s only the seven pounds and nothing else is involved, I wouldn’t ring up the police if I were you. More trouble than it’s worth, really. They won’t catch the rogues, and they’ll only ask you dozens of questions and make you look at photographs. I know a woman friend of mine had a burglar into her rooms, took a coat and some jewelry, and of course she had to report it for the insurance. Said it was barely worth it, though she did collect from the insurance company. But all the questions they asked, and you do want to get your sleep and be on your plane in the morning. Poor child, what a way to spend your last night in London! What will you think of our city?”
When Ellen finished her tea, she said that she really ought to be going back to her hotel, and the woman insisted on walking with her. “I’m sure I’ll be all right,” she said, but the woman said that she wanted a bit of fresh air anyway and that Ellen no doubt had her nerves on edge and shouldn’t be walking in the dark by herself. They walked the two blocks together, and Ellen let herself in with her key and went up to her room.
She was tired but knew she would be unable to fall asleep right away. She opened a fresh pack of American cigarettes, lit one, drew deeply on it, and set it down in a small triangular ashtray that carried an advertisement for Guinness Stout. She got her suitcase from the closet, propped it open on the bed, and began packing. All the guide books had emphasized the advisability of traveling light, and she had taken their advice, taking a bare minimum of clothes and fitting everything into a single suitcase. Even so she had had to pay extra charges on the airplane for her guitar and her tape recorder.
Her packing completed, she sat down in the Victorian armchair and went through her purse. What a stroke of luck it had been, taking the smaller bag to the theater and neglecting to transfer the passport and health certificate and traveler’s checks! She still had everything she needed, including her ticket to Dublin and her other tickets, one from Shannon to Berlin and another from Berlin back to New York.
Guiltily, she lit a second cigarette from the butt of the first and sat back, smoking nervously. It was only natural, she thought; she was still shaky from the purse snatching — and at the time it had seemed that they might be after far more than her near-empty purse. She blew out a cloud of smoke, and her eyes followed it on its way to the ceiling. When she finished the cigarette she sat back in the chair and closed her eyes and thought about the odd combination of events that had brought her to London...
It had begun with a fearfully official envelope with DEPARTMENT OF STATE in its upper lefthand corner. The letter inside explained that she had been selected to represent the United States at the Third International Festival of Folk Music and Dancing, to be held in West Berlin during the second week of October. While she would receive no fee for her performance, the United States Government would be pleased to reimburse her for first-class air passage to and from Berlin, and the West German Government would provide her with food and lodging during the week of the festival. She would be required to accept or reject the invitation within ten days and to submit to the State Department, in triplicate, a tentative program of ten songs that she would be prepared to perform during the festival competition.
The invitation had thrilled her. While other events were considerably more important in the world of folk music, the Berlin festival was internationally recognized and carried a certain amount of prestige. And she would be going to it as one of the American representatives. The honor of having been selected would benefit her professionally, and the chance to travel was even more exciting. She wrote back at once, submitting a detailed program of the songs she would sing and expressing her delight at having been chosen.
Her agent was as happy as she was. “This is a big break for you, Ellen,” he told her. “You’ve been getting nothing but small stuff, the minor folk-music clubs in the Village, a couple of concerts, college campus dates. Your albums are good, and Folklore is happy with them, but it’s no secret that they’re setting no sales records. This’ll give us a good publicity hook. Don’t kid yourself — all it amounts to is that you got on a list that the cultural exchange people in Washington are using. But I ought to be able to get you some good bookings on the strength of it.” He pursed his lips, regarding her thoughtfully. “Do you just want to hop to Berlin and back? Or would you like to make a trip out of it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll see,” he said.
And he showed her what he meant. With nothing more than the State Department invitation to back him up, he had gone to Folklore Records and persuaded them to pick up the tab for a few weeks in England and Ireland. “They’ve done very well with Irish ballads lately,” he told her. “They’ll pay your expenses to travel through Ireland gathering material. Go right through the country, stop in the small towns, take your tape recorder, and get yourself some fresh material. When you come back you’ll have enough for an album, and they’ll go for the album. Maybe even two albums...”
“And I could record some material by native singers,” she suggested. “They might want that for their Ethnic series. Ballads in Gaelic. I could...”
He smiled. “You’re getting the idea now. That’s not all. You’ll go to London first. I’m pretty sure I can book you into a pair of concerts there. The pay won’t be the best in the world, but it should more than cover your expenses. And then when you come back we’ll have a lot of selling points to back you up with. ‘Ellen Cameron, recently returned from a tour of Western Europe with triumphal appearances in London and Berlin, performing her repertoire of folk ballads unearthed in the hamlets of Western Ireland.’ You’ll get a Town Hall booking out of that one, and possibly even Carnegie, though I wouldn’t guarantee it.”
“It sounds fantastic.”
He grinned. “You see what it is, Ellen? It isn’t enough to be good. You’re a good singer, your voice is smooth and strong and you handle it well, and it’s a fact that your guitar playing is a good two hundred percent better than it was two years ago. But that’s not enough. They have to know you, they have to know your name and your face and what you’ve done and who you are. Once you start to establish yourself, everything you do helps everything else. Your albums bring people to the concerts, and your concerts help sell record albums, and suddenly you begin to make it. It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, but time is something you have plenty of, a young kid like you, and this trip could be a big help to you.”
“I can hardly wait. How long would I be gone altogether?”
“Say a week in London and two or three weeks in Ireland. Then a week in Berlin and then home. So figure a month altogether.”
“It sounds heavenly.”
“Don’t expect luxury, unless you’ve got money of your own stashed away. Do you?”
She thought of the years since college, the years of working at odd jobs, picking up a little money at concerts, occasional payments for recording sessions. It was remarkable that she had managed to stay out of debt. She had never been able to set any money aside.