Read After the Cabaret for Free Online Page B

cup of tea. Cora said you’d had a baby girl and lost your husband. I’m ever so sorry. Was he in the forces?’
    â€˜I’m not married,’ said Sally, bluntly.
    â€˜Oh – like that,’ Vi said sympathetically.
    â€˜It’s a long story. I won’t bore you with it.’
    â€˜Up to you,’ Vi responded, a little huffily.
    â€˜You married, or anything?’ asked Sally.
    â€˜I look after my brothers. Ted’s a docker, so he hasn’t been called up. Jack’s nine. After my dad died three years ago my mum went off. She met a feller who didn’t want to take Jack on so off she went. Left a note saying she was sorry.’ Vi looked down at her egg on toast. ‘It looks hard. I don’t fancy it somehow. I’m fussy about my eggs.’
    â€˜Have something else,’ Sally suggested.
    â€˜This took long enough to get here. I haven’t got time to start all over again,’ and she attacked it vigorously.
    â€˜It must be hard to manage the house and your own career,’ Sally said.
    â€˜My gran helps out,’ said Vi. ‘She used to be in the profession herself. She had quite a name on the music halls. Violet Lavengro. Bit too fond of the gin now. Well, she always was. So what kind of stuff do you do?’
    â€˜I’ve worked mostly in cabaret,’ Sally told her. ‘In Germany.’
    Vi looked at her. ‘I’ve heard about those cabarets.’
    Sally shrugged.
    â€˜Did you take all your clothes off? Fellers in dresses, that kind of thing?’
    â€˜Sometimes.’
    â€˜We can’t go in for anything like that, not in London. Nor you singing in German – not with a war on. Can you manage some of those little French songs, “La Vie en Rose”, that kind of thing?’
    Sally nodded.
    â€˜That’ll do,’ Vi said briskly. ‘It all hangs on the bandand God knows what they’ll be like, with everybody in the forces. Cora’s getting them in herself, which I
don’t
like.’ She leaned back and gazed at Sally from big blue black-fringed eyes. ‘What have you done since you left Germany? Had the baby, I suppose.’
    â€˜We only got here ten days ago,’ Sally said.
    â€˜Ten days!’ exclaimed Vi. The war had begun in September 1939 and now it was June 1940. A massive rescue force, including a flotilla of private boats, had just sailed out to rescue the British Expeditionary Force, trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk under heavy bombardment. Army doctors had drawn lots to decide who would remain in France to take care of the wounded.
    Sally told her, ‘At first I was ahead of the Germans getting into France and then somehow I was behind. I came over in a fishing boat from Brittany. There were lots of men on board who were going to join up with the Free French over here.’
    Vi was puzzled, veering towards suspicion. After all, Sally had confessed to nine months in Germany after the declaration of war. ‘The baby came with you?’
    â€˜I was let down by a man,’ Sally said.
    Vi continued to scrutinise her.
    Sally went on, ‘It sounds funny, I suppose. All that happened was that I got stuck in Germany with no money – and the baby. And suddenly we were at war. I ended up singing on the stage for the wives of German soldiers. They’re all blacked out and rationed, you see – frightfully depressing – so they have a policy of trying to persuade the women to bear more children for theFatherland. They put girls in scanty costumes on the stage to encourage what they call “healthy eroticism” so they’ll want to have more children, which people sometimes don’t want to do, if there’s a war on, they say. I couldn’t get enough money to escape – and by that time I was an enemy alien. The winter was grim,’ she recalled. ‘Very cold, dark, and I had someone else’s papers, someone who’s left Germany,