the grandmother of popular music’s most unpopular manager had scurried into the calm of the manager’s office and was lifting her Plymouth gin from the filing cabinet. There was a knock at the door and Judy popped her head round. ‘Can we come in? It’s terrifying what’s going on out there.’
‘Quick and shut the door.’ Geraldine Phipps knew Miss Dimont well, and liked her. She’d even got out her scrapbook once to show her the snaps from when she was a Gaiety Girl.
‘What on earth is going on?’ Judy shouted as she introduced Valentine. ‘It sounds like the Blitz.’
‘Strange how potent cheap music is,’ quoted Mrs Phipps, who had entirely ditched her reservations about Danny and the boys now she could see they were box-office gold. ‘According to Gavin, when the fans are finally let through the doors they will tear the seats out. Thank the Lord I renewed the insurance.’
‘It’s a terrible din,’ said Valentine.
‘You’re supposed to like it,’ said Judy crisply. ‘It’s your age group. Myself, I prefer Michael Holliday.’
Mrs Phipps was lighting a cigarette to help the gin down. ‘Heaven knows what the town will make of it,’ she said happily. ‘We had Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson the year before last. All very sophisticated – and look, they’re in the Top Ten now! Why can’t these greasy-haired fellows be more like them?’
‘I think that’s the point about them,’ said Miss Dimont, and another wave of joyous squealing erupted as the auditorium doors burst open and the Gadarene horde swept in.
‘So, Geraldine,’ said Miss Dimont, ‘I have to write something for the paper. Obviously, we can’t ignore this mass hysteria – I mean, Temple Regis can never have seen anything like it. Where have they all come from?’
‘St Saviour’s Convent, a lot of them.’
‘But … that’s a boarding school. For young ladies!’
‘Precisely,’ said Geraldine Phipps. ‘I sent a nicely worded invitation to Mother Superior – an old friend, don’t you know – and here they are. Shocking, isn’t it?’ But the smile on her lips suggested a remarkable absence of shock, convent girls being what they are.
‘So you probably “condemn this unbridled behaviour”,’ said Miss Dimont, using that old journalist’s trick of putting words into the interviewee’s mouth (Mrs Phipps said, I really have to condemn this unbridled behaviour when in fact all she’d done was answer the question with a simple yes).
‘Not a bit, my dear. In fact, I have come to the view that I positively encourage it.’
‘Can I say that?’
‘But of course. Gavin has assured me that all over the country the floodgates have opened to allow in this rock and roll, as they call it, and they are unlikely to shut any time soon. I want to encourage more of this bad behaviour.’
Miss Dimont was scribbling in her notebook.
‘My dear, I first set foot on the stage nearly fifty years ago,’ she went on, waving her gin glass gently. ‘We wore long dresses and frilly underpinnings. We smiled coyly and threw as many double-entendres as we could at the audience.
‘In those days, such things could drive men wild, and when I was a Gaiety Girl they would do the most extraordinary things – one climbed in my dressing-room window. On the third floor! One sent fourteen wedding rings, one each day for a fortnight, in the hope of getting me into bed if not into church. One did a thing far too rude for me to describe. And quite often, too.
‘Is this so very different? They’re noisier, yes. And it’s the girls now, not the boys, making the running. But the young have always craved sensation, and this is what we have today.’
Judy’s pen sailed across the page. This was supposed to be Valentine’s story, but she couldn’t resist – Mrs Phipps was priceless!
‘Aren’t you worried about them wrecking the theatre?’
‘My dear, if they do, the publicity will pay for it. These fellows are here for six weeks and we are already in profit.’
‘The lads themselves seem so surly,’ said Miss Dimont. ‘I caught a glimpse of them as I came in.’
‘I expect Gavin has got them on short rations. A well-known ploy in our business for keeping your workforce hard at it. They perform much better when they’re hungry.’
‘Good Lord!’ laughed Judy, ‘I didn’t know you had it in you, Geraldine! You’re far better at running this place than old Ray, er, Mr Cattermole.’
‘For continuity’s sake and for the health of my bank balance, I shall be running the Pavilion this season,’ purred the miraculous Mrs P. ‘Of course I have Gavin here to call on should I need assistance.’
And no Ray Cattermole to dip his hand into the takings, thought Miss Dimont. But any subsequent musings were wiped away by a sudden and frightening cacophony not unlike a bull entering a china shop without bothering to knock. It was Danny Trouble and The Urge making their debut in summer season at the Pavilion Theatre, Temple Regis, with their latest offering, ‘Schoolgirl Crush’.
Mrs Phipps poured herself another of Plymouth’s finest and serenely produced some earplugs.
Judy and Valentine were reunited in Beryl’s café just along the promenade. It was late but both were exhilarated by the day’s events.
‘Hoped I’d find you here,’ said Valentine, his face pink with excitement. ‘I went and had a wander backstage but I didn’t want to end the day without thanking you for all your help. I already feel as though I’ve been here for half a lifetime.’
‘Well, quite an interesting day,’ agreed Judy. ‘Heaven knows what Mr Rhys will make of it, but I’d favour writing positively about this beat group thing. No point in denying the future if, indeed, that is what it is.’
‘From what you say he may find that hard to accept.’
‘He’s always had a way of looking backwards rather than forwards. I think it’s because of all those old dinosaurs he mixes with in that club of his. They were all grown men long before the War. They cling to the past, want to turn the clock back to the summer of ’39.’
‘No point in trying to go back,’ said Valentine. ‘Because in life they’re always rolling up the carpet behind you.’
He looked rather sad as he said it, and Judy asked, gently, ‘Yes?’
‘Look, we hardly know each other. On the other hand, we share a desk and I very much hope I shall be on the Riviera Express for a long time to come,’ said Valentine. ‘I may as well come clean.’
Oh dear, thought Miss Dimont, thinking of Mulligatawny and her supper, I hope this isn’t going to take all night. I shouldn’t have inquired.
‘I’m grateful to be here,’ said Valentine, looking out to sea. ‘Very. Life to date has not been entirely kind. I hadn’t realised when I applied for the job that this – this journalism, this local newspaper business – is not just a way of life, it is a life. I can see that these people, the ones you work with, are your family.
‘I have a family – you seem to have met a few already, in conversation anyway – but it’s not the same. They’re all pretty distant. My father was an alcoholic and died when I was four. All he left me was the title and …’
‘Title?’
‘Lowest of the low. Baronet. I don’t use it.’
‘Sir Valentine Waterford?’
‘Bit too much of a mouthful, wouldn’t you say? Got me into all kinds of trouble at school and of course in the army, since I never