Star Quality

by Pamela Evans

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

As history repeats itself, will a happy ending finally be achieved? In Star Quality, Pam Evans writes a heart-breaking, yet ultimately uplifting, saga of love and family spanning across two generations. Perfect for fans of Dilly Court and Sheila Newberry. Young Tess Trent works at Emerson's department store in London's West End, its affluence a far remove from her own ordinary, respectable home in Briar Park in Hammersmith. But unlike her parents, Tess does not believe the fine and beautiful things she sells each day will be beyond her reach for ever. The son of a Sheffield miner, Max Bentley wants to earn his living as a musician in a dance band in London. His parents are horrified. Meeting at a dance one Saturday night, Tess and Max are instantly attracted, and soon discover they share the same dreams. But Max's ambitions drive them apart. Feeling betrayed and desperate, Tess does her best to find fulfilment in marriage and her dream of opening a shop. Years later, Tess's nineteen-year-old daughter Judy falls in love with a musician. His name is Max Bentley... What readers are saying about Star Quality : 'A story with some very strong characters and an emphasis on family values. I loved it' 'Enjoyed every minute - five stars '

Release date: March 24, 2016

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 320

Sample

Business had finished for the day in the emporia of Oxford Street, and the homeward crush was in full swing when Tess Trent and her friend Nancy emerged from the staff door of Emerson’s department store. A smoky November mist shrouded the heaving tangle of humanity, the collective glow from the street lights, shop windows and headlamps rising in an amber cloud above the tall buildings.

Shivering, Tess pulled her coat collar up around her ears, the raw cold penetrating through to her bones, the mist smarting in her throat and creeping down to her chest. The weather soon paled into insignificance against the more pressing matter of getting to the station through the crowds, however. It was a fight for survival with no holds barred by some contenders, she thought, as Nancy was elbowed aside with such force her handbag fell to the ground, its owner almost losing her balance and joining it.

‘Of all the cheek!’ exploded Tess, as the culprit, a mountainous woman in mink, moved on without a second glance. Protective towards her unobtrusive friend, Tess retrieved her bag and eyed her with concern. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ said Nancy, but she was quite shaky as she took the bag from Tess and clutched it guardedly to her bosom.

‘Not so much as a word of apology from that bully of a woman,’ exclaimed Tess furiously. ‘Just who does she think she is, pushing and shoving like that?’

‘Leave it, Tess,’ urged Nancy, who cringed at even the mildest altercation. ‘There’s no need to make a fuss.’

But Tess was already weaving through the crowds, clutching her emerald green beret to her head, her long chestnut hair streaming behind her. ‘Excuse me,’ she said with characteristic valour, clapping a restraining hand on Mink Coat’s arm as she was about to climb into a taxi.

The woman swung round irritably. ‘Yes, what is it?’ she demanded in predictably arrogant tones.

‘You ought to be more careful,’ declared Tess, her green eyes blazing. ‘Do you realise you nearly knocked my friend over?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ barked the woman whose plump, ageing countenance beneath her fur hat was cracking under the strain of too much powder and rouge. Her eyebrows were boldly drawn and a large mouth was fashionably painted in dark red lipstick. ‘Now let go of my arm, I’m in a hurry.’

‘Aren’t we all?’ said Tess, a striking figure, tall and willowy with finely carved features and a glowing complexion. ‘But that doesn’t mean we can ride roughshod over other people. You could at least have stopped to say sorry.’

Mink Coat tutted. ‘Give my apologies to your friend if it will make you happy, dear,’ she said witheringly. ‘And tell her too, that jostling is inevitable in the rush hour. If she doesn’t like it, she should avoid travelling at this time.’

‘I’ll tell her no such thing,’ said Tess, further enraged by the woman’s effrontery in suggesting that Nancy was somehow to blame.

‘That is entirely up to you. Now let go of my arm before I call a policeman.’ She forcibly removed Tess’s hand and brushed her sleeve disdainfully, as though every objectionable substance in London had settled upon it through Tess’s agency. Then she heaved her huge form into the taxi, leaving Tess staring speechlessly after the cab as it nosed its way into the chaos of omnibuses, commercial vehicles and taxi cabs, horse traffic having been banned from this street three years ago in 1931.

Small, brown-haired Nancy had moved out of the way of the crowds and was waiting in a dress shop doorway, trying to blend inconspicuously into her surroundings, her ordinary appearance making this a feat of no great magnitude. ‘Honestly, Tess,’ she admonished, her cheeks flaming bashfully, ‘do you always have to make a scene? It’s so embarrassing.’

‘Better to be embarrassed than trampled on all your life,’ said Tess.

Moving with the masses, the two girls crossed the road at one of the new, official pedestrian crossings which had been installed earlier in the year in certain places where traffic was controlled by lights. ‘What did she say anyway? I bet she told you where to go.’

‘In so many words, yes,’ admitted Tess ruefully.

‘I don’t know why you let yourself get so worked up about things like that,’ said Nancy who was lacking in courage rather than heart. ‘It doesn’t do any good. I’d just as soon let it pass.’

‘Yeah, I know that,’ said Tess, her expressive eyes still burning with a lingering sense of injustice, ‘but it isn’t right to turn the other cheek all the time just to avoid drawing attention to yourself.’

‘I’m not the only one,’ said Nancy defensively. ‘Lots of people ignore that sort of thing rather than make a fuss.’

‘Mm, maybe they do, but that isn’t my way. During working hours the customer is always right and I’ll kowtow to them like a good ’un because that’s what I’m paid for. But I’m blowed if I’ll let people walk all over us in our own time. I couldn’t live with myself if I hadn’t said something just now, even if it did fall on deaf ears. You know me,’ she sighed, hugging her green velour coat closer to her against the raw chill.

‘I certainly do,’ said Nancy.

Indeed, she knew Tess very well for the two had been friends since their first day at Briar Park Infants School as five year olds. Now both eighteen, they were unlikely companions really. Tess was a fearless extravert while shy Nancy was content to live in her friend’s shadow. Whilst, inevitably, such a contrast in personalities occasionally caused conflict, it was mostly the strength of their friendship, for they were rarely in competition with each other. When Tess applied for a job at Emerson’s after leaving school, it seemed only natural for Nancy to do the same, though the management, wise to young girls’ penchant for chatter, had placed them in different departments. Tess was in the gift department, Nancy in kitchenware. Although the role of shop assistant rated low in the social structure, the shop’s prestige necessitated a certain standard of speech and deportment from all departmental staff, which meant both girls were accustomed to keeping an eye on their manners as well as their ‘h’s.

Outside the underground station two unemployed men were singing ‘Underneath the Arches’ to the crowds. They were wearing shabby overcoats with tom pockets and frayed edges, worn out woollen scarves around their necks and flat caps pulled well down. Both girls dropped a couple of pennies in the hat at the men’s feet. Tess never failed to feel moved by these poor unfortunates and today, being Friday and pay day, she was even more aware of her own blessings. Her wages were barely adequate but at least she had the self-respect which came from holding down a job and a little money in her purse after she’d paid her mother for her keep.

Surrounded by the affluence of the West End all day, young women from the working classes like Tess and Nancy, whose fathers were in work, might have been forgiven for feeling removed from the plight of the unemployed. Depression there certainly was, and Tess had heard that unemployment was rife in the coal, cotton and shipbuilding industries of the North, but for the working population of the South of England life was better than ever as the new light industries thrived and expanded. Tess had heard her father say it was the modern machinery in the factories they had to thank for a wide range of manufactured products, once considered luxuries, being brought within the reach of ordinary people through stores such as Woolworths with their claim to sell nothing over sixpence.

The girls took the tube to Hammersmith, then walked to the adjacent area of Briar Park, where they both lived, to save the bus fare as the mist had not developed into a full-blown fog. On the final leg of their journey they discussed the approaching weekend.

‘Shall we go to the pictures tomorrow night?’ asked Nancy. Whilst no great beauty, she was pleasant enough to look at with warm brown eyes set in a round face with neat little features. ‘There’s a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers on at the Odeon.’

‘Well, actually,’ said Tess thoughtfully, ‘Maurice Davidson from menswear collared me in the staff room at tea-break today. He was selling tickets for his father’s cricket club dance at the Community Hall in Hammersmith tomorrow night. He was in a panic because he still has a lot left on his hands – you know what a worrier Maurice is. I felt sorry for him and said we might take a couple off his hands. They are quite cheap, just a few pennies each, I think. Do you fancy going?’

Although Nancy much preferred the unchallenging entertainment of the cinema, she was not blind to the valuable possibilities of this alternative. Dances provided the opportunity to meet eligible men, and marriage was essential to a woman’s place in society. ‘Do you want to go, Tess?’ she asked.

‘It might be fun, but if you’d rather go to the flicks …’

‘Let’s toss for it.’

They stopped under a lamp-post and tossed a halfpenny coin. The dance won. They parted at the end of Nancy’s street, arranging to meet again in the morning for work. Neither was available for any sort of social activity that evening. As it was Friday, they both stayed home to attend to a vital weekly ritual …

Continuing on to her home in Park Street, coughing from the effect of the mist, Tess was warmed by the serried ranks of lit windows glowing cosily into the haze.

Architecturally, Briar Park was rather mixed, with some houses that dated back to the last century juxtaposed with many built since the war. Like most urban areas it contained a mixture of social classes, and Park Street was one of the more respectable streets in the lower class quarter, comprising a row of pebble-dashed terraced houses with slate roofs. The street had been built in the 1920s and its houses were rented out by a private landlord to ordinary people like the Trents, most of whom had jobs, albeit humble ones. Most of the residents here kept their houses clean, their gardens tidy, and guarded their privacy with net curtains at the windows. The small eponymous recreation ground at the end of the road, and the privet hedges edging the tiny front gardens gave the street an air of respectability, much to Tess’s mother’s delight.

Tess opened the front gate of number twenty-three and stepped lightly up the path, her mouth watering at the prospect of the fish in parsley sauce served with mashed potato that her mother always made for them on a Friday, with apple dumplings and custard to follow. There was a lighthearted weekend feeling to Friday evenings for Tess, even though she had to work all day on Saturday. But ever since she could remember Friday night had been bath and hairwash night Nothing, not fire nor flood nor the peculiar moods of the geyser, was allowed to interfere with this routine.

‘Don’t sit there all night, Tess. You’ve to bath and wash your hair in time to get it dry before bedtime,’ warned her mother, Mabel Trent. ‘You’ll catch yer death o’ cold if you go to bed with damp hair.’

‘All right Mum,’ said Tess who, having been raised with her mother’s habit of repeating such pearls of practical wisdom with monotonous regularity, was able to respond automatically while her thoughts remained elsewhere. The evening meal had been eaten and cleared away and she was sitting on the pouffe near the living-room fire by her mother’s armchair. On the other side of the hearth her father, Bill Trent, was seated in an armchair, smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper. Her mother’s knitting needles clicked rhythmically on a pullover she was making for Tess’s elder brother, twenty-one-year-old Eddie, who was upstairs getting ready to go out.

This was the room where the family ate their meals and took their leisure, the mausoleum of a best sitting room at the front of the house only being heated for use on special occasions. Keeping company with the bulky, beige brocade three-piece suite with embroidered antimacassars was a round dining table, currently adorned with a tan-coloured, plush cloth with tasselled edges as there was not a meal in progress. Light brown linoleum covered the floor and a dark brown rug sat by the fireplace over which hung an eight-sided mirror from chains attached to the picture rail. The firelight flickered over an iron coal scuttle and a brass-handled dust-pan and brush hooked on to a stand in the hearth.

A square wooden clock ticked loudly on the mantelpiece. It was surrounded by various ornaments, vases and nick-nacks. Behind her father’s chair there was a cream- and brown-fringed standard lamp by the sideboard on which stood the wireless, emitting the sounds of a xylophone rattling briskly through ‘Lover Come Back To Me’.

Perched as she was at an angle to the fire, the two sides of Tess’s body cooked and froze with equal intensity, causing her constantly to wriggle in pursuit of some sort of a balance. She was reminded of the icy horrors ahead in the bathroom, for these few glowing coals were the sole source of heating in the house.

‘It says here,’ said her father, peering over the top of his newspaper for a moment before reading aloud in the slow laborious manner of the poorly educated, ‘“Winston Churchill warned, in a speech to the Commons, that Britain’s weak defences could lead to her being tortured into absolute subjection in a war with Germany.”’

‘Oh, gawd, not another war,’ said Mabel, anxiously biting her lip and resting her knitting in her lap for a moment. She was a tall angular woman, matronly in appearance with short brown hair worn close to her head and trapped into total subservience by a hairnet. ‘Surely they won’t let that happen, not after last time?’

‘I bloomin’ well hope not,’ said Bill, who had known the misery of the trenches in the Great War. He looked back at the paper and read silently for a while before looking up. ‘Churchill wants the government to step up defence spending. He’s just bein’ cautious, that’s all.’

‘Thank gawd for that,’ said his wife, resuming work on the pullover.

A voice suddenly resounded through the house. ‘Mu-um, where are my clean socks?’ called Eddie from upstairs.

Mabel lowered her knitting thoughtfully. ‘Are they not in your drawer, son?’ she shouted in a heavenward direction.

‘No.’

‘That’s funny, I coulda sworn I put them away after I’d darned ’em. Just a minute.’ She scuttled over to the sideboard, took out the sewing basket and removed a bunch of grey woollen socks. ‘Take these upstairs to your brother please, Tess,’ she said, handing them to her daughter. ‘They’re mended ready for him.’

‘Why can’t he come down and get them?’ asked Tess, frowning.

‘Because you’re gonna take ’em upstairs to him, that’s why,’ said her mother firmly. It was no secret in the Trent household who was the favoured child, or which gender reigned supreme.

Since you didn’t argue with Mabel when she adopted that particular tone, Tess did as she was asked and delivered the socks by the simple expedient of throwing them at her brother who was hanging over the banisters on the landing. ‘Thanks, slave,’ he said, teasing her.

‘Blimin’ cheek,’ she said, with spirit but not malice because she was very fond of Eddie. ‘Mum might think she’s your servant, but I’m not.’

‘Mum likes looking after her family. You’ll be just the same when you get married and have kids.’ He grinned wickedly. ‘If you can find anyone daft enough to have you.’

For that he received a cautionary slap on the arm. ‘You won’t catch me running about after anyone like Mum does after you,’ she said. ‘She doesn’t wait on me like that.’

‘She respects the superior sex, that’s why.’ He laughed provocatively, turning and hurrying away into his room to avoid the physical retaliation he knew would come.

‘I won’t give you the satisfaction of rising to that remark,’ she said, following him to the open door of his room. ‘Since you only said it to annoy me.’

‘Now, would I do a thing like that to my little sister?’ he asked jokingly.

‘Yes.’

‘Younger sisters were created for brothers to tease,’ he informed her with a grin.

‘Heaven knows why brothers were created,’ she riposted. Such good-humoured banter between them was as natural as breathing and although Tess pretended to object, she rather enjoyed it. She leaned against the doorframe and changed the subject. ‘So where are you going tonight?’

‘The pictures.’

‘Who with?’

He grinned. ‘Now that would be telling, wouldn’t it?’

Tess ran her eye over her brother’s smart attire as he sat on the edge of his bed to put on his socks. He was wearing a navy blue pin stripe suit, a white shirt with a starched collar, and a dark blue tie with a bold stripe. He was clean-shaven, and his curly brown hair was neatly combed and generously oiled. Although he was a relentless tormentor, Tess found it difficult to be offended by him or jealous of his superior status with their mother, for he was so warmhearted and such good fun.

Even with the critical perception of a sister she could not deny that Eddie was handsome, being tall and well-built, with laughing brown eyes. He was a carpenter by trade and a hedonist by nature, frequenting London’s various palais de danses and clubs with his pals. His eye for a pretty girl was no secret and a succession of different ones had trailed through the house since he’d reached the age of puberty. Just recently, however, Tess had fancied that he had begun to look at Nancy with a fresh eye, though she couldn’t be sure.

‘You’re taking a girl, I bet,’ she laughed.

He tapped the end of his nose with his forefinger and said, ‘You mind your business and I’ll mind mine.’

‘You’d want to know who I was going out with if I had a date,’ she pointed out.

‘Too true I would, but that’s different,’ he said.

‘Because I’m a girl?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I wonder why it makes such a difference.’

‘It’s a man’s world.’

‘Why, though?’

‘I dunno, I didn’t invent the system, did I?’ he said. ‘It’s just the way things are, I s’pose.’

And this was later confirmed when he breezed into the living room on his way out, wearing a dark overcoat with a wide-brimmed trilby hat dipped roguishly down at the front.

Dad winked knowingly and said, ‘Have a good time, boy.’

Mabel scuttled off and got the clothes brush from the coat-stand in the hall and brushed his coat meticulously. ‘You’re a credit to us, son,’ she said proudly.

No questions were asked or curfew imposed for Eddie, as there would be for her tomorrow night when she went to the dance, Tess noticed. But, as Eddie said, it was just the way things were.

Having braved the arctic regions of the bathroom, scalding herself and almost passing out through sitting for too long in a tubful of uncomfortably hot water in an effort to keep the cold air at bay, Tess was back by the fire in her red woollen dressing gown, drying her hair, when promptly at nine o’clock her father stretched and said, ‘Oh, well, I think I’ll take a stroll down to the local for a pint, Mabel.’

Her needles paused momentarily, ‘Righto, dear,’ she said, the intonation in her voice belying the fact that this statement was as predictable as the chimes of Big Ben.

‘Shan’t be gone long,’ said Bill, rising from his chair, his solidly built frame clad in dark grey trousers worn with a brushed cotton check shirt and a grey woollen pullover. ‘I’ll bring yer a bottle of stout back, shall I?’

‘Ta, love, that’ll be nice.’

Although Tess was very fond of both her parents, their adherence to routine and inbred assumption that their station in life must always be a humble one occasionally irritated her. Paying the rent on time and being able to afford a Sunday roast was about the limit of their ambitions, whereas Tess could see no reason why there should not be something more for people like them. Unlike her parents, she did not automatically assume that the fine and beautiful things that she sold to other people all day must necessarily be beyond her reach forever. Who was to say what might happen in the future? Recalling the incident with Mink Coat, Tess knew that her mother would have been mortified to know that her daughter had had the audacity to stand up to someone in superior circumstances. In Mabel Trent’s opinion, ‘people like us’, as she put it, accepted their lot with dignity and didn’t aspire beyond the limited opportunities available to them within their own sphere.

Tess admonished herself for being critical, for her parents were entitled to their own opinions and had always done their very best for her and Eddie, despite terrible poverty when they were children. Tess thought the root of her dissent probably lay in the fact that she had reached an age when she needed her independence. Unfortunately, girls like her simply traded one kind of accountability for another, it simply wasn’t done to leave home for any other reason than to get married.

Her mother had instilled in Tess from an early age the premise that a woman’s place in the scheme of things was as wife and mother. Sons learned a trade for life; daughters took a job as a stop-gap until they found a husband to support them.

Sometimes Tess wondered what it was that had drawn her parents together for they had totally different personalities. Dad, who worked as a milkman for a local depot, was naturally gregarious, with a keen sense of humour. He enjoyed a pint and a game of darts at the local with his pals. He was a handsome man for his age, Tess thought, an older version of Eddie. At forty-two he was still in pretty good shape and had the same laughing brown eyes as his son, and a ruddy complexion from being out in all weathers. Although speckled with grey, his hair was still thick and curly. He tended to be portly around the middle but this didn’t detract from his roguish charm. He was more outwardly affectionate than her mother and Tess had always felt slightly closer to him.

Mother was overly serious, and preferred to stay at home in the evenings. Now, as Dad left the room to get ready to go out, Tess observed Mabel. The younger woman tried to imagine herself being content with her mother’s way of life when she herself reached the age of thirty-nine, and found it difficult. She was filled with compassion for the older woman. Although she was undoubtedly the mistress of all she surveyed within the home, for Dad never interfered in the running of the house or the upbringing of the children, she had no life whatsoever outside it.

Whereas Dad was instantly likeable, Mum appeared formidable to outsiders. Her personality was devoid of humour or gaiety. She kept to herself, was polite to the neighbours when she saw them in the street, but did not encourage them to visit. Tess wished she would sometimes let herself go and laugh from the heart and stomach, like her husband so often did.

‘I won’t be long,’ he said, reappearing with his hat and coat on and pecking his wife on the cheek.

‘See you later then,’ said Mabel vaguely.

‘Ta-ta Tess,’ he said, grinning and winking affectionately at his daughter across the room.

‘Ta-ta, Dad.’

Mabel turned the wireless up and Tess sat on the rug with her back to the fire, leaning her head back to dry her thick tresses. At least she was spared the bother of having to put curlers in, like Nancy did, for she had inherited her father’s wavy hair.

‘Don’t you make yourself sick now, sitting with your back to the fire like that, Tess,’ said her mother predictably.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll just stay like this for a little while to get the back a bit dry,’ she said, right on cue, for this was a dialogue she and her mother worked through every Friday. Continuing to observe Mabel as she knitted, her head cocked to one side listening to the comic capers of Arthur Askey who was now on the wireless, Tess thought that she had a nice homely face with neat features, a good bone structure and the same green eyes as her daughter. It was a pity she smiled so rarely.

‘Nancy and I are going to a dance at the Community Hall in Hammersmith tomorrow night,’ said Tess. ‘A cricket club do, a chap at work was selling tickets. His father is a member.’

‘Ooh, that sounds nice. There should be a decent crowd at something like that,’ said Mabel, looking up from her knitting.

Which loosely translated means she hopes I meet a reliable chap with a steady job who will court me and take me off her hands intact, Tess thought.

And that was exactly what Mabel was thinking. She studied her daughter as she leaned back on her elbows with her long wavy hair trailing out behind her, a glorious shade of chestnut in the undulating light from the fire. She was getting to be too pretty for her own good, and certainly for her mother’s peace of mind. The sooner she starts courting the better, thought Mabel. An unmarried daughter was a worry and no mistake. It would be a relief to see Tess safely married. And to someone with regular employment, if Mabel had anything to do with it. Love was all very well in its place but nothing destroyed romance quicker than poverty. Anyone who had lived on the dole knew that. A man with a steady job was more valuable than all the sweet talk in the world.

She herself knew only too well how easy it was for a girl to find herself in trouble, for Mabel had been single and carrying Eddie at the age of eighteen. Fortunately Bill had done the decent thing, but many women she had known had had their lives and chances of marriage wrecked as a result of a few moments of reckless passion.

Even in the most fanciful moment Mabel could not call her marriage to Bill a passionate love affair, or even a love affair at all. It was a miracle it had survived considering its unfavourable beginning, for they had had very little money and only one damp room for her and Bill and the baby to live in. Mabel was the daughter of a clerk and her narrow-minded parents had disapproved of her association with the son of a labourer even before she had got pregnant. Once that fact had become known they had disowned her completely. Somehow, though, Mabel and Bill had managed to forge something of a relationship within a marriage which, she knew, would never have happened but for the circumstances. They made the best of things and drifted into the habit of being together. Tess had been conceived during one of Bill’s leaves from the front.

After the war there had been insufficient work for unskilled labourers, and the Trents had known the misery of life on the dole for several years. Then Bill had got his job at the milk depot and they had been able to afford to rent this house, something for which Mabel was eternally grateful. Regular employment was of the utmost importance in her opinion, which was why they had encouraged Eddie to learn a trade. It might not guarantee a job but it certainly helped a man’s chances if he had some special skill to offer. Eddie’s carpentering expertise brought him good steady work in the building trade which was booming in London and surrounding areas at the moment.

Life was a serious business to Mabel. Her strict upbringing, and the shame she had subsequently brought on her parents, had scarred her deeply and robbed her of the ability to see the lighter side of life. She had been left with an overdeveloped, almost paranoid craving for respectability. She envied her husband his capacity for fun and ability to show affection. Having no such aptitude herself, she demonstrated her love for her family by looking after their everyday needs as best she knew how.

Maybe she did favour Eddie. That was because he had been her lovechild, her firstborn, conceived in the first flush of romance. Tess had been born into the sorrow of war and passion gone stale. Mabel hadn’t wanted another child but had loved her, even if not with quite the same ardour as she did Eddie.

‘There are some chocolate biscuits in the larder, Tess, you can fetch ’em in if yer like,’ she said, imbued with a sudden rush of affection for her daughter, simultaneous with a feeling of guilt for her partiality towards her son.

‘Ooh, ta, Mum,’ said Tess enthusiastically, sensing that she was being offered the first crack at the family’s favourite confectionery as some sort of recompense. ‘I’ll make us a cuppa tea to go with them, shall I?’

‘Go on then, love,’ said Mabel, ‘then while we drink it you must tell me about this dance you’re going to.’

Max Bentley’s landlady, Mrs Bailey, appeared in the hall of his lodging house as soon as he arrived home from his bus driving shift on Friday evening. ‘I hope you’re not on late turn tomorrow,’ she said, her eyes shining gleefully.

‘No, I’m not. But why the interest?’ He waited, a half smile hovering on his lips as he sensed good news.

‘Your mate Chas called in,’ she informed him, unable to hide her excitement for this polite and considerate young man, with his dark eyes and warm smile, had become her favourite lodger this last few months and she was almost as anxious for his musical career to take off as he was. ‘He said something about a band job for tomorrow night with the outfit he’s playing with. He said you’re to phone him for details.’

Mrs Bailey was a brassy middle-aged widow who had once been on the