is get costs down and …’
‘What you need is The Urge, Granny.’
‘What I need, Gavin,’ continued Mrs Phipps, who in her time had experienced more urges than her grandson could possibly imagine, ‘what I need to do is keep this theatre open – and to do that I’ve got to find an act which is cheap and a guaranteed box-office success. Not something that’s going to eat up the profits with sky-high electric bills and frighten the locals away at the same time.’
‘They won’t need all those spotlights you’ve got. They don’t need a stage set. They don’t need make-up – though one or two could do to cover up their spots, I’ll admit – and the last thing they need is people ushering the punters into their seats. In fact the fans’d probably tear out the seats if they did.’
‘Disgusting,’ spat Mrs Phipps, pouring herself another. ‘Nothing but louts and Teddy boys. Don’t you see what people want on a nice night out? They want glamour, they want to be carried away on wings of song.’
‘No they don’t, Gran. These days what they want is deafening noise.’
Mrs Phipps shuddered. ‘To think we fought our way through two wars to end up like this,’ she said. ‘Once upon a time and not so long ago, gentlemen would wait at the stage door of the Adelphi with a gardenia, a bottle of perfume and a taxi waiting to whisk me off to supper at the Café Royal.’
‘Darling thing,’ sighed Gavin, ‘the days of the Gaiety Girl are long gone. The war’s been over for an age, and there’s a whole new generation that wants something different, something original. Danny Trouble and The Urge are it.’
‘They’re noisy and uncouth,’ said Mrs Phipps, who had no idea whether they were or not.
‘They’re definitely that all right,’ said Gavin, with pride.
‘But what will the townsfolk say? The council? The press?’
‘Ah,’ said Gavin, a wily smile on his lips, ‘you can’t fail with the press. They’ll have to write about them, one way or the other. That’s guaranteed! Either it’ll be “Disgrace to Temple Regis” or else “Britain’s Top Beat Group Come to Town”, and hopefully both. The theatre will be full. Every night.’
‘No,’ said Mrs Phipps, exhaling a hefty cloud of nicotine, ‘no, Gavin. It really won’t do.’
‘It’s the new religion!’
‘Then you’re a poor missionary, and I am no convert,’ said Mrs Phipps, absently peering into her glass.
‘Look,’ said Gavin, ‘we both have an opportunity here, Granny. Raymond’s scarpered and you don’t know when or if he’ll be back …’
‘Oh, he’ll be back,’ said Mrs Phipps, ‘he can’t live without me.’
‘You didn’t say that last time he ran off with Suki Raffray.’
‘Don’t mention that Jezebel’s name!’ screeched Mrs Phipps. It had been an ugly business.
‘You don’t know when or if he’ll be back,’ repeated Gavin, seizing his moment. ‘The theatre has to open for the new season next week – what are you planning to put on? I’ve got Danny and the lads on a contract until the end of the year, but that’s all. They’ve just had their first Number One and pretty soon some manager will come along who knows what they’re doing, and that’ll be curtains for me.
‘Bringing them down here, they’ll be the first beat group ever to do a summer residency in a British seaside resort. That’ll give them headlines, it’ll give Temple Regis headlines, and people will come flocking to this …’ he paused, searching sarcastically for the word ‘. . . er, delightful town.’
‘Plus,’ he added ingratiatingly. ‘you can pay them less than you paid Alma Cogan last year. They’d have a regular income, and I’d get paid.’
Mrs Phipps looked across at her grandson and shook her head. ‘You father had such hopes for you, Gavin. The Brigade … maybe the Foreign Office afterwards …’ She sighed. ‘But since you ask, what I had in mind was Sidney Torch and his Light Orchestra. I know Sidney, and he’d come down here for me in an instant, I feel sure of that. They have such beguiling music, darling, just the sort of thing to attract the traditional holidaymaker. He came down here once before, years ago, and you know, they even got up in the aisles and danced!’
‘With Danny Trouble they’ll never sit down,’ said Gavin tartly. ‘What this place desperately needs is something for the younger crowd.
‘You know, Granny’ he went on, ‘this is 1959 – people don’t want to dance cheek to cheek any more, they want rock and roll!’
‘I suppose you may be right,’ conceded his grandmother, who was becoming alarmed at the prospect of having to confess to Temple Regis that the Pavilion Theatre would remain dark through the summer season. ‘We do need something new. People got fed up with Arthur doing his West End Life – that’s why he ran away, you know. They got up and started catcalling.’
‘It wasn’t Suki Raffray, then? Why he ran away?’
‘IT WAS NOT SUKI RAFFRAY!’ shouted Mrs Phipps. ‘Don’t mention that name again!’
‘Then you agree, Granny? That Danny and the boys can come for the six-week season?’
‘What else can I do?’ said Mrs Phipps, shaking her head so hard her fine silvery hair escaped its pinnings. ‘I have no alternative.’
‘You won’t regret it, Gran.’
Mrs Phipps shuddered as she reached again for Plymouth’s most famous export.
‘I feel as though someone just walked over my grave,’ she said.
The atmosphere in the editor’s office at the Riviera Express was as it always was – dusty – but the moment the newspaper’s chief reporter walked in it got dustier.
Judy Dimont was everything an editor could wish for – a brilliant mind, a dazzling shorthand note and charm enough to entice whole flocks from the trees. Yet, as Rudyard Rhys raised his eyes from the task in hand, a particularly recalcitrant briar pipe, he could see none of this. Before him stood a striking woman of indeterminate age dressed vaguely in a macintosh with its belt pulled tight at the waist, and with a waft of corkscrew curls slipping joyously from the restraints of a silk scarf. A faint scent of rum entered the room with her.
‘Got the fishermen,’ said Judy Dimont, a trifle dreamily. ‘What extraordinary men they are! Why, do you know …’
‘Rr … rrrr,’ growled her editor, whether by way of approval or dissent it was hard to tell, but enough to douse Miss Dimont’s tribute to those in peril on the sea.
Rhys returned to his pipe. ‘There was a murder while you were out on your jolly boating trip,’ he said, a nasty edge to his voice. ‘As my chief reporter I should have liked you there.’
‘There was a force nine out beyond the headland,’ said Miss Dimont, not a little proud of her early morning exploits. ‘Rather difficult to spot a murder from there. Anyway, who …’
‘Had to send him,’ said Rhys, nodding towards a corner of the room. A young man half rose from his seat and, with a slight smile, gently inclined his head. In a second the chief reporter had it summed up – wet-behind-the-ears recruit, probably the son of a friend of the managing director, going to be useless, a dead weight, another failed experiment in attracting the nation’s young talent into local journalism.
Miss Dimont was not without prejudice but in general she was kind. She did not feel kind this morning.
‘Well then, let him write it up,’ she said, eyeing