The Blackpool Highflyer

The first thing I noticed was the Elasticated Man eating a chop. He wore thick trousers and no coat; white shirt with collar open at the neck. Clive saw him but paid him no attention. He was looking all about for Grace and Marie.

It was a long, low room with no curtains. The Promenade – and the occasional speeding hansom – could be seen through windows on one side, and the sea beyond. There were benches and tables running along beneath the sea window. In the middle of the room was a billiard table, like a peaceful green field. There wasn't much to say it catered to the show business: just one poster showing acrobatic cyclists.

When Grace and Marie walked in, they were no longer pixies, of course, but ladies of the world in quite good dresses, carrying straw hats. My first thought was: They are not as beautiful in life as they are on stage. But still they are beautiful.

Clive was ahead of me, talking to them, and then he was walking back with the two of them following. 'We came up here by train, yes,' he was saying. 'As a matter of fact, we were driving the train!'

'Get away!' said Grace or Marie. 'Both of you?'

Clive gave me an extra big grin – he was coming over all unnatural for the benefit of these doxies.

'It takes two, yes,' he said, 'but no need to go into the mechanical details. Would you take a drink?'

Two minutes later we were all sitting down on the sea side of the room. Grace and Marie had glasses of punch; they asked what we were drinking, and Clive said, 'This stuff is "Plain", which would never do for bonny lasses like yourselves.'

It made me quite ill to listen to this talk.

On stage Grace and Marie had been all eyes (and legs, of course), but now you got their noses too. Grace's was a long nose but a good one – a whole story with a beginning, a middle and an end. Marie's nose was sharp, and she had a face that was round and sharp, like a vole's. With her dark, mischievous eyes, she reminded me of the wife, and I liked her best. I wondered how it would sound for a man to say to his wife: 'I went off with the one that reminded me of you, dear.' I supposed it had been done, and said.

We had barely started on our drink when Marie said to Grace: 'There's your bill-topper.'

I looked up. 'Monsieur Maurice,' I said.

'Which one was he?' said Clive.

'He has the walking figure and the drinking figure,' said Grace.

'No,' said Marie, 'the drinking's out now.'

'Is it? He was giving them Champagne Charlie until last year.'

'Oh he's had them all,' said Marie, looking across at me; 'multi-dolls.' 'Wasn't he giving the eye test shena a while ago?' asked Grace.

'Read the writing on that wall!' Marie suddenly commanded.

'What wall?' said Grace, and they both laughed.

I guessed this was part of Monsieur Maurice's turn – the one that I had walked out of in Halifax. But Clive was looking cheesed-off at all this shop talk.

'It's a bit like the two of us,' he whispered to me, 'going on about steam pressure.'

'Why don't we do that?' I said, finishing my glass of Plain. Well, I was canned by now.

'The Boer War!' said Marie. 'What a blessing that was to us all.'

'How could a war help two singing pixies?' said Clive, a bit crossly.

'You could play all the service towns, you see,' said Grace, and I could see she was a little gone on Clive.

'Broken hearts being in favour, you see,' Grace continued.

'So the sad songs went,' said Marie.

'Went where?' said Clive.

'What kind of turn plays the Seashell?' I asked the two of them.

'You know Marie Lloyd?' she said.

'Yes,' I said.

'Well, she's never played here.'

They both laughed.

'Little Titch?' I said.

'Getaway,' said Marie. 'Little Titch is far too big for this place.'

The ventriloquist, Monsieur Maurice, walked across just then. 'I will not mince the fact, ladies -' he began, addressing Marie and Grace. Then he looked at Clive and myself and stopped. His beard rocked as his mouth came to a quite definite close. His beard was very sharp, the moustache was very wide – it was like a music-hall turn in itself. Marie said: 'These gentlemen are from the railways.'

At this, the ventriloquist looked all about him; as if he wanted to start a whole other conversation with a whole other lot of people. But with the drink in me, I was at him straight away.

'I liked the walking business' I said, 'how's it done?'

He looked away. 'Wouldn't do to say exactly how it's done' he muttered, looking over towards the bar. 'Champagne,' he said to himself, and he went off. With his over-theatrical face, he looked like one of his figures: a waxwork gone live.

'Will Monsieur Maurice be bringing a bottle over, do you think?' I asked Grace and Marie. I had never tasted Champagne, and meant to do so. It had been wanting at our little wedding down in London, in the supper room of the Waterloo pub, as Dad had more than once pointed out on the day.

'His real name is Morris Connell' said Marie, 'and, no, he will not be bringing a bottle over here if past history is anything to go by.'

'How long have you known him?' I asked.

'Since the first of the Seaside Surprises,' said Grace. She turned to Marie: 'When was the first of the season?'

'Oh, early,' said Marie. 'April-time wasn't it?'

'We've all been back here every two or three weeks for the one-week runs ever since,' added Grace.

'All the same turns?'

'Yes. That's how it works with the Seaside Surprises.'

'Nothing very surprising about it,' said Marie, 'when you come to think of it.'

So that was how Monsieur Maurice had come to be in Blackpool, then in Halifax, and now back in Blackpool. I looked over to the bar, and he was standing there eyeing me.

'The one-week runs that you have here… They always begin on Mondays, do they?' I asked Grace.

'Mondays' she said, 'that's it.'

'And does that fellow live here in Blackpool?' I said, nodding towards Monsieur Maurice.

'He has digs here' she said, 'but he has a lodge in Preston as well.'

I remembered that I'd also seen his name in Scarborough, and mentioned this.

'Yes' said Gracie, 'he's often at the Floral Hall there.'

Monsieur Maurice was walking back towards us carrying one glass of iced Champagne. As he sat down, he looked at me for a while longer, then he turned to Grace and continued his shop talk: 'Two whistles down the speaking tube to say you're on, and that's to the star room, so the question is: what's become of the call boy?' Shaking his head, he continued: 'I don't know… Half-pay for matinees, and my expenses going on just as usual.'

'What did you think of the two of us tonight?' Grace asked him, and I could tell that as long as he was at the table, all remarks would have to be addressed to him. You could tell he wasn't keen to think of Grace and Marie at all, but he seemed to put his mind to it for a second, after which he said: 'You two must decide if you are to be stars or specialities.'

'Well nobody wants to be a speciality,' said Grace.

'It's why we've brought in the new closer', said Marie, 'with the drumming.'

'That was the best bit of all,' Clive put in, 'the way you shook those… you know… bells.'

'I felt it suffered rather from a want of daintiness,' said Monsieur Maurice.

'It got a good hand,' said Grace.

'Especially from me,' said Clive.

Monsieur Maurice turned around just as a new man entered the room. 'People will always clap for decency's sake,' he said. 'Now there's somebody whose performance I must commend,' he went on, standing up and walking over to the new fellow.

'There's twenty vents on the sands,' said Grace, as Monsieur Maurice moved off, 'and they're all better than him.'

'Why does he top the bill then?' said Clive.