Blue Door Venture Read online

  ‘Oh, Mr Halford,’ she cooed, ‘I work in the Education Office.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And there is something that I think you should know.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Thropple?’

  ‘You are employing this week, I believe, half a dozen little girls who are un-licensed…’ Nigel went hot and cold under his make-up. How ever had he neglected to think of that detail? He was silent. On the stage the others stood watching the conversation, trying to overhear and wondering what had caused the interruption. ‘That is so, is it not?’

  ‘It is, I’m afraid. It’s just that we have not had time to apply for licences for them. I’m sure they will be granted, for they are all over twelve—and after all, this is holiday time. They aren’t missing any school hours.’

  ‘Ah, yes, yes,’ Miss Thropple raised a finger importantly. ‘But that is not the point. It is not legal for them to appear without a specially granted licence, and I happen to know that the Education Officer, the Schools Attendance Officer and the Probation Officer are going to prevent it.’

  ‘But it’ll take days to get a licence,’ groaned Nigel, ‘and we open tonight.’

  ‘Without the little girls, I’m afraid,’ added Miss Thropple.

  Nigel flared up. ‘What business have you got to come here, poking your nose into our business? If the little tin gods at your office want to interfere with us, why don’t they do it themselves?’

  Miss Thropple bridled. ‘Well, indeed—I was only trying to help you. I’m a great friend of Mrs Potter-Smith, you see, and she is always so interested in your endeavours, but of course, as you know, she is so unfortunately in hospital, and when I heard what was going to happen about the licences—’ At this point, Maddy, who had crept gradually nearer during the conversation, popped up in between them wearing the little short white Goldilocks’ dress and ringlets, and, pointing an accusing finger at Miss Thropple, quoted from the script of the pantomime:

  What evil sprite is this I see?

  Begone—you cannot frighten me—

  Miss Thropple recoiled. ‘Well, I’ve done my best. You are most ungrateful—most ungrateful! But I warn you—you will receive a visit from the Probation Officer just before the show tonight. And he will stop the show, if those poor little girls are made to appear.’

  ‘Poor little girls!’ roared Nigel. ‘What’s poor about them, I’d like to know? They’re perfectly happy—look at them! And a great deal healthier than you are, I’d like to bet—’

  ‘You are being most impudent!’ Miss Thropple quivered with rage. ‘I shall leave you to your fate.’ And she swept out of the door, colliding with Mr Chubb, who was coming to see what all the noise was about. When she had gone, Nigel sank into a chair and put his head in his hands.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he groaned. ‘This is more than I can stand.’ The others grouped round him silently.

  ‘Is it us?’ said Buster guiltily. Nigel nodded. ‘Oh, dear,’ she quavered. ‘We ought to have told you about licences, but we didn’t want to tell you because we were afraid they might not give them to us, and then we couldn’t be fairies.’

  ‘I blame you, Maddy,’ Nigel said bitterly. ‘You should have reminded me when we got yours—I didn’t dream—I mean, they were at the Academy—’

  ‘All right, blame me,’ said Maddy bluntly. ‘The point is, what are we going to do?’

  ‘Can’t we go on tonight?’ said Snooks sadly.

  Nigel thought for a long time, then said gently, ‘No, I’m sorry, but I don’t see how you can. We’re in such a precarious state at the moment that we can’t afford to risk trouble. We’re not in a position to defy the Council, because we’re under an obligation to them. We can’t afford a court case, or a fine—and we certainly can’t risk being closed down altogether. This show has got to make up for all the money we lost on the last one.’

  ‘But Nigel,’ said Vicky, ‘the show will be about twenty to twenty-five minutes shorter! There’s their robin number, as well as the snow-flake one—’

  ‘I can’t help it,’ said Nigel wretchedly. ‘They can’t go on until we’ve applied for the licences and got them. And that might take any length of time. Perhaps even until after the show is off—’

  ‘Oh, no,’ cried the dismayed fairies.

  ‘Vicky will have to dance to make up the time,’ suggested Bulldog.

  ‘Impossible,’ said Vicky. ‘The dances all come while I’m changing my costumes. And those principal boy tights and boots take an awful long time—’

  ‘What on earth are we going to do?’ groaned Jeremy. ‘And how did they find out about it?’

  ‘Somehow,’ said Maddy, ‘I seem to connect it with Mrs Potter-Smith.’

  ‘Yes,’ mused Lyn. ‘It seems to bear her stamp.’

  ‘Who is Mrs Potter-Smith?’ asked one of the fairies.

  ‘Oh, an awful old dame who is always trying to catch us out,’ said Maddy. ‘She has very false teeth, and dyes her hair an awful colour.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Snooks innocently, ‘I think we saw her the first day we were here—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Buster, ‘a funny old woman came up to us outside the theatre and asked us were we members of the company, and how old were we, and all sorts of things—’

  ‘That’s her!’ cried Lyn. ‘And she told her pal Miss Thropple who passed it on to the Education people!’

  ‘I’m glad she’s got pneumonia,’ shouted Maddy. ‘I hope it’s double—no—treble—or even—what’s the next—quad—rupeddle—’

  ‘Shut up, Maddy. It’s no good getting excited about it. The panto will be spoiled without the ballet, that’s obvious, but we must just think of something else to fill in twenty minutes.’ Lyn looked at her watch. ‘The point is, the curtain will be going up in just under eight hours’ time, so we’ve got to think quickly—we’ve still got the dress rehearsal to get through.’

  ‘Well, we must decide what to do before we start to rehearse.’

  The fairies sat down and sadly began to undo their ballet shoes. Then suddenly Snooks said, ‘I know what—’

  ‘What?’ said everyone else.

  ‘Well, you know the night we came, and Vicky got the idea about the snow-flake dance, and everyone was joining in—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, it was awfully funny, wasn’t it? Don’t you remember how we laughed? At Maddy—and Bulldog and Ali—and everyone? Well, why not do that in the pantomime?’

  ‘You mean—a comedy ballet, instead of a serious one?’

  ‘Yes. Just for a few days, until we get licences.’ There was a silence while they thought about it, and then slow smiles of approval appeared on their faces.

  ‘It’s an idea,’ admitted Vicky. ‘I wonder if it would go down?’

  ‘I think it would,’ said Nigel, hope returning. He jumped briskly to his feet, ‘Come on, let’s work on that.’ They worked on it all the morning until they were having to stop to double up with laughter and, after snatching a hurried lunch at the café, went right through the show. In order to cheer up the disappointed fairies, Nigel asked them all to sit and watch with pencil and paper and note down their criticisms of the performance, just like real live producers. When they had gone all through despite numerous hitches, there was only just time for Billy to be dispatched to fetch a can of tea and some sandwiches, before the audience began to come in. They seemed to arrive by the dozen. Poor Mr Chubb’s fingers ached with marking seats in the booking plan, tearing off tickets, changing money and trying to answer the telephone, all at the same time. But there was a gleam in his eye as he did so.

  The usual buzz of anticipation among the audience before the curtain went up was louder than ever tonight because of the large proportion of children. Five minutes before the curtain was due to go up, Mr Chubb emerged from his box-office and, with a proud and firm tread, went outside the theatre carrying a square board. This he stood up against the wall in a prominent position. ‘House full’ it read. Then
he resumed his place and blandly but politely turned away as many would-be patrons as were already inside. Most of them, however, he managed to persuade to book for later in the week. Once he had heard the spatter of applause as the curtain rose, he went outside and stood, legs apart and head high, for a long time in the crisp frozen snow, gloating over the notice, happy in the feeling that it was his theatre as much as everyone else’s.

  Inside the theatre the show was going splendidly. The children all loved the bears, and the grown-ups cooed over Maddy’s angelic Goldilocks.

  ‘If you didn’t know her,’ remarked her mother to Mrs Darwin, ‘you would think that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.’

  Vicky’s dancing and Sandra’s singing were the most polished things in the show, but the hit of the evening was the ‘Snow-flakes’. Jeremy parodied his original music for the ballet, and Nigel, Bulldog, Ali and Billy did a shocking pas de quatre, with Maddy doing a slightly more correct solo, which was still quite funny.

  A rather puzzled Education Officer, sitting in the front row with a friend, murmured, ‘Now that’s very strange—I understood that they were having a lot of little girls to dance—that wretched Thropple woman wasting my time again…’ But he was soon laughing with the rest of the audience.

  At the end, after a session of choruses in which the children had all joined heartily, led by the six ex-fairies who were planted in different corners of the theatre, the whole company appeared, coming down the traditional flight of stairs which the boys had constructed themselves at the back of the stage. The closing number was one of Jeremy’s efforts, entitled ‘Christmas Crackers’, during which the whole company with crossed arms pulled crackers, and threw some to the audience. The curtain fell on a festive note, and the audience trooped out to the sound of carols thumped out by Jeremy at the piano. All the others were in a state of collapse on the stage, worn out after the long and hectic day.

  Snooks came running round, saying, ‘It was the loveliest pantomime I’ve ever seen. I’m so glad I wasn’t in it. It was much more fun seeing it.’

  Mr Chubb clambered on to the stage waving the box-office returns. ‘We’re saved!’ he cried. ‘Tonight has nearly made up for all we lost during the last two weeks. Keep it up, and we’ll soon be paying back our debt to the Town Council.’ Tired as they were, their noises of relief were enthusiastic.

  ‘Thank goodness we haven’t got to rehearse tomorrow,’ sighed Nigel. ‘I shall stay in bed for hours…’

  Wearily they took off their make-up and trudged home, singing the pantomime numbers softly to coax along their heavy feet.

  ‘And no visit from the Probation Officer, or whoever the gentleman may be,’ observed Nigel. ‘I’ll apply for the licences tomorrow, and you’ll soon be back in the show, you girls,’ he assured them.

  Next morning Nigel’s ‘lie in’ was disturbed by a visit from Mr Chubb’s landlady. He went down, tousle-headed in his dressing-gown, to see the distressed lady.

  ‘It’s Mr Chubb,’ she gasped. ‘I don’t like the look of him. It’s bronchitis something chronic—croaking like an old raven, he is. It’s that draughty box-office, Mr Nigel. It’ll be the death of him, I know.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Nigel. ‘Wait a few minutes, will you, Mrs Smith, and I’ll come round and see him.’

  Mr Chubb, propped upright on the pillows, was very pale and gasping for breath. ‘I’m sorry, dear boy,’ he wheezed. ‘Seem to have caught cold, or something. Afraid I’ll be off tonight.’

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ said Nigel. ‘You stay there and take it easy. I’ll find someone for the box-office.’

  He rang up the doctor and asked him to visit Mr Chubb, dispatched Bulldog to hold the fort in the box-office for the time being, and then went to all the employment agencies in the town to search for someone to replace the invalid. All day he tramped round in the snow without success. As he went into the theatre that evening Maddy said brightly, ‘Did you enjoy your morning in bed?’ and wondered why he glowered at her.

  4

  ENTER LUCKY

  Next day Maddy sat shivering in the box-office, wearily adding up the number of tickets she had sold and trying to make it balance with the amount of money in the cash-box. She had either five shillings too little or five shillings too much, but she couldn’t quite work out which. In the middle of the calculations the telephone rang. She snatched it up.

  ‘Is that the theatre?’ demanded a voice.

  ‘No, it’s the Dogs’ Home,’ she began, then remembering that it was her business to increase the sale of seats, she said in quite a different voice, ‘Oh, yes, this is the theatre.’

  ‘Have you any seats for tonight?’

  ‘Nothing left at all until next Wednesday matinée,’ Maddy announced proudly, scanning the seating plan. In these few minutes there was already a queue of several people waiting outside the box-office, and by the time she put down the telephone, there were even more. In the absence of Mr Chubb they had found it necessary to man the box-office in shifts, and even Maddy had to take her turn, despite the incredible muddles that always followed in the wake of her session. As she wasn’t in the next show that they would be doing because her holiday from the Academy would be over by that time, it fell to her lot rather often while the others were rehearsing. At eleven-thirty Billy appeared with a mug of tea for her.

  ‘In cathe you’re thirthty,’ he said.

  ‘Thankth awfully,’ said Maddy. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Billy, I mean thanks.’ But Billy was quite resigned to having his lisp mimicked, consciously and unconsciously.

  For the rest of the morning Maddy yawned and shivered and watched the clock, between answering the phone and handing out tickets. The time until lunch seemed endless. She was studying the booking plan closely, and coming to the conclusion that she must have sold the same seat three times over, when a shadow fell across it. She looked into a pair of the beadiest little black eyes she had ever seen. They were set in a round rosy face, and their owner had sleek black hair plastered to his head with a strongly scented hair cream. His shoulders were padded out to a sharp razor-edge line, and his tie had a racehorse hand-painted on it.

  ‘Hi…’ he said laconically.

  Maddy eyed him suspiciously. ‘Can I help you?’ she said.

  He surveyed the tiny foyer with a lordly air. ‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ he observed.

  ‘We think so,’ said Maddy.

  ‘Super.

  ‘H’m. Panto—good draw. Do you do good business the rest of the year?’

  ‘Not all the time,’ Maddy said truthfully. ‘Not during the cold weather, anyhow.’

  ‘What’s a kid like you doing in a box-office?’ he wanted to know.

  Maddy drew herself up to her height of not quite five feet. ‘I am one of the joint directors of the theatre,’ she told him, flinging one pigtail airily over her shoulder.

  He guffawed. ‘You’re a caution. Whoever heard of the director of anything working in the ticket-office?’

  Maddy pondered. It did seem strange, now that she came to think of it. ‘Well, you see,’ she started, and soon had told him the whole story of the Blue Door Theatre.

  He listened, open-mouthed, chortling in the right places. At the end of it he slapped his thigh and said, ‘Well, that’s better than the pictures—what a story…’

  At this moment three people arrived to buy tickets, and the telephone rang. Maddy snatched the receiver up and laid it on the desk while she dealt with the customers. But before she had finished with them her new acquaintance had entered the tiny office by the side door and was answering the phone for her.

  ‘Blue Door Theatre here,’ he announced in a carefully Oxford accent, very different from his usual half-Cockney half-American twang. ‘Yes, madam. If you will kindly hold the line one minute, I will see what I can do for you.’ He peered over Maddy’s shoulder at the plan, then returned to the telephone. ‘Boxing Day, did you say? First house? Twenty seats… I can do it in the four-and-sixpennies,
but not the three-shillings.’

  Maddy turned round amazed. Both the three-shilling seats and the four-and-sixpennies were always the last to go as they were the most expensive, and she knew that there were plenty of three-shillings left.

  ‘Hey—you—’ she hissed, but he went blithely on, ‘Yes, well, I’m sure you want your girls to have the best on their outing, and especially for pantomime it’s nice to be nearer the stage, isn’t it? Very well, madam, twenty four-and-sixpennies for you and your girls on Boxing Day, first house. What name is it? Thank you, madam. We shall look forward to seeing you.’ And he put the receiver down, his eyes shining like currants in a bun.

  Maddy goggled at him. ‘But we did have some three-shilling ones—’

  ‘Sure you did. And you still have. I sold her twenty four-and-sixes. That’s twenty times one-and-six more than you would have got. You gotta have a sense of business in the theatre racket.’ He put his thumbs inside the armholes of his loud yellow waistcoat and looked round the office. ‘It’s a shame to make a kid like you stick here all day. Are you in the show tonight?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Maddy. ‘I’m Goldilocks.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you run off and amuse yourself for an hour or two? I’m used to this game. I’ll look after the booking for you.’

  Maddy shook her head vehemently. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. I don’t know who you are. Why, I don’t even know what your name is—’

  He stuck his hand out and shook hers briskly. ‘Mine’s Lucky. What’s yours?’

  ‘Maddy. Why are you called Lucky?’

  ‘Because I am. Nothing I touch goes wrong. Back a horse—it comes in. Buy a raffle ticket—win the goods. Why, it’s not safe to play me at tiddlywinks. I been on the business side of this racket quite a lot. Business manager to Red Radcliffe and his Rhythm Boys—and did they clean it up! Had me own party on the beach at Browcliffe last year—made a packet. Just can’t go wrong.’ He adjusted his tie modestly.