Mr Starlight. Laurie Graham

the way he’s lit up this crowd …’ This wasn’t the Nechells Non-Political. This was Lord and Lady Delacourt, and Aly Kahn, plus a very big name in suet.

      We didn’t go to bed. We never did before a New York docking. Mother Carey made us smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, and then we went up to the dog deck to watch the pilot take us through the Narrows. There was the kind of mist you get before a hot day so they blasted the foghorn a few times, bottom A. I loved the sound of it.

      I said, ‘So today we go looking for an agent.’

      ‘Correct,’ he said. ‘Hubert sees me in musical shows for family audiences. Hubert’s got contacts in Los Angeles.’

      Hubert Conroy giving him this inflated opinion of himself didn’t help Sel strike the right attitude when we went to sign off. Glorette Gilder had got a clean bill of health for the next sailing.

      Massie said, ‘You can put your iridescent garments back in mothballs, Selwyn.’

      Sel said, ‘You’re not having her back, after the way I performed?’

      Massie said, ‘Of course I am. Glorette is our featured vocalist.’

      Sel said, ‘You’re out of your mind.’

      But as Massie said, Sel had only ever been a stand-in. And he’d been paid extra.

      Sel said, ‘What about the paying public? Why don’t you ask them who they’d rather see?’

      Massie said, ‘Do you mean the passengers who just disembarked, or the passengers who’ll be arriving on Thursday, expecting to be entertained by Miss Gilder?’

      I said, ‘Leave it, Sel. You’ve got your bonus.’

      ‘Mind your own!’ he said. ‘And you want to wise up, Massie. Call yourself an entertainments manager? You wouldn’t recognise entertainment if it flew in wearing a leopard-skin jockstrap. I’ve had offers from California, you’ll be interested to hear.’

      Massie said, ‘That’s neither here nor there. Miss Gilder has a contract.’

      ‘Well,’ Sel said, ‘now we all know which old lizard is sucking your dick.’

      Massie sacked him on the spot. Ripped up his discharge book. ‘I’ll not delay you a moment longer, Mr Boff,’ he said. ‘I’m sure California is impatient to have you.’

      Sel stormed off, left me with everybody staring at me. They’d all been earwigging, of course.

      I found him in the cabin, sitting on his valise, trying to fasten it. ‘Don’t start,’ he said.

      I said, ‘Nice work. You’re out of a job, out of a bed for the night and you’ll be out of money by tomorrow the way you spend it. You haven’t got the sense you were born with.’

      ‘No?’ he said. ‘Well, I’ve got no regrets neither. I’m ready to move on. Onward and upward.’

      I said, ‘Don’t you move in any direction. You’re to wait here while I see to a bit of business.’

      ‘Just don’t go crawling to Massie,’ he shouted after me, ‘because I wouldn’t take his poxy job back if he came in here on his knees.’

      But it was Hazel I had to see.

      I thought, ‘Well, this isn’t quite how I planned it, but why not? She’s a pretty little thing, hard worker, not averse to a roll in the Ripening Room.’

      I intended asking her to come with me. We could have got engaged, set ourselves up in America. She’d have been handy to have around with Sel, too. He was more likely to listen to her. But there he was, when I got to her billet, leaning in her doorway chatting her up, still in his whites. That ruddy pastry chef.