Chapter 11 #2
She remembered that photo well; it was taken in London on a rare night off with some of the girls from the dance troupe.
‘Was that in London?’ asked Mark, the telltale sign of the London Palladium in the background.
‘It was. I worked there,’ said Alice as she sipped her wine. ‘I was twenty-one years old in that photo. I was a dancer.’
‘I want to be a dancer,’ piped up Maisie. ‘I go to ballet.’ She slid off her chair then and did a perfect pirouette.
‘How wonderful. Well, you must follow your dreams. I’m sure you will make a wonderful dancer if you work hard at it,’ said Alice wisely. ‘You can achieve almost anything in life with hard work and dedication.’
Hard work and ambition had been the path to success for Alice. She remembered the evenings her feet almost bled, but the show would go on as there was always another young hopeful waiting in the wings for their big chance if you gave up.
‘What type of dancing did you do?’ asked Jess, who wasn’t surprised to learn that Alice had once been a dancer. She stood tall with a straight back, with no sign of a stoop even at her advanced years.
‘I was in a theatre dance troupe at the London Palladium. You may not have heard of them, but we were called the Tiller Girls.’
Mark almost spat his wine out.
‘You were a Tiller Girl?’ he asked open-mouthed. He’d sat watching them as a child, as they opened a variety show called Sunday Night at the London Palladium. They wore tall feather headdresses and linked arms as they high kicked their legs in unison.
‘Yes, do you remember them?’ asked Alice.
‘Oh, I do. My dad was a big fan too, as I recall.’ He smiled.
‘I was just a little boy and every Sunday night after the usual bath, I would sit in my pyjamas and watch the show with my parents. They usually sent me to bed before it had finished, though, and I remember I was never very happy about that.’ He laughed.
‘What a lovely memory,’ said Alice. ‘Watching TV together I mean, not being sent to bed early.’
‘I can’t get my head around it.’ Mark shook his head. ‘Just think, I might have actually watched you dance.’
‘Probably not. I did my dancing in the nineteen fifties; I’m guessing you weren’t even born then.’ She smiled.
‘A couple of years later. Even so, you were a Tiller Girl, that’s amazing.’
Alice found it amusing that Mark seemed a little star-struck.
‘It was a good life, but we worked very hard. I met some wonderful stars,’ she said casually. ‘Frank Sinatra was particularly polite.’
This time everyone almost spat out their drinks.
‘You met Sinatra?’ asked Declan, open-mouthed.
‘Yes. Amongst others. But that really is a story for another evening, I think,’ Alice casually declared.
‘Who was he with?’ pressed Mark.
‘Ava Gardner at the time. She was a head turner, although I personally thought she had a hardness about her. I much preferred Audrey Hepburn. She was just as nice as she was in the films.’
‘You have to be kidding me!’ said Jess.
‘No really. She was lovely to everyone as I recall. I was never really star-struck. They were just people after all, like you and I.’ Alice helped herself to a portion of banoffee pie.
‘Apart from being rich and famous.’ Mark smiled.
‘It’s not all it’s made out to be,’ said Alice, thinking of how one or two big names had succumbed to the temptations that went with fame, and ended up ruining their marriages.
Maisie began to yawn then and asked Jess if she could change into her pyjamas.
‘Good thinking,’ said Alice. ‘Then would you like to sit on the sofa and watch a bedtime cartoon? If that’s alright?’ She turned to Jess.
‘Yes, of course. Just for half an hour maybe, then we should probably get going.’
It was a shame really as the conversation was just getting interesting.
Audrey Hepburn! Imagine meeting her in real life!
Jess could hardly take it in. She had met a well-known reality star when they promoted a branch of their clothing at the shop, and thought that was exciting. What a life Alice must have lived.
‘I will put them on in the dressing room.’
Maisie took the pyjamas from her mother and went behind the couch to change.
‘That’s what she does at home if we have visitors,’ Jess told the others with a grin. ‘Behind the couch is her dressing room.’
‘What do you do, Mark? I know a little about Declan and Jess,’ said Alice as Maisie settled down on the couch to watch a cartoon with her toy zebra.
‘I’m retired now, but I was a firefighter,’ he explained.
‘I took early retirement with a good pension, so my wife and I could go travelling.’ He took a sip of his wine before going on to tell them that his wife had passed away.
‘I’m so glad we never waited to visit the places we wanted to.
I miss her every day, though,’ he said, and Alice reached over and patted his hand.
‘Keeping busy is the key,’ Alice advised. ‘Isolating oneself just allows thoughts to develop. You must always go out, even if it is just for a walk. Maybe even join a club of some sort.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ve done that,’ Mark replied. ‘I’m a member of the boating club at the marina. I bought myself a boat on a bit of a whim with Di’s life insurance and joined the club. They are a nice bunch down there. They saved me from myself when I was in a bit of a dark place,’ he revealed.
Jess wondered if he had any other family but as he hadn’t mentioned any, she didn’t think that now was the time to ask.
Talk turned to movies and television shows then, and Alice’s guests were surprised to hear that she enjoyed a little bit of reality TV.
‘Travel programmes mainly, although I did enjoy one programme recently about surviving in the wilds. Which I found quite ridiculous.’ She laughed. ‘Especially as the participants had a whole camera crew filming them. They were hardly going to starve to death, were they?’ she said, rolling her eyes.
‘You wouldn’t catch me sleeping out in the forest without a camera crew.’ Jess shuddered. ‘There could be psychopaths out there.’
‘We need more of those,’ said Maisie, as she yawned sleepily.
‘What?’ Jess asked, startled. ‘Why would you say that?’
‘Because when we were walking home from school, I heard you say to Darcy’s mum that we need more psychopaths around here.’
Jess racked her brains wondering why on earth Maisie would say such a thing.
‘It was when that man on the bike nearly knocked into us.’ Maisie snuggled into her blanket and cuddled her toy zebra.
Jess put two and two together then and almost fell off her chair laughing.
‘I said “cycle paths”,’ she explained, and Alice, Declan and Mark joined in, roaring with laughter too.