The Champagne Sisters, p’rhaps? No. Too fancy. The Ravenscroft Sisters . . . Yuk! The Raven Sisters? Hmmm.
Stella blew out the candle. Had Sadie stayed awake she would have heard what her stage name was to be from that night onwards.
The concert at the Mission wasn’t quite up to Stella’s expectations. They had arrived at precisely six o’clock, with Sadie having spent the day secretly hoping the building had been burnt down, flooded, or undergone any other equally dramatic disaster.
Stella had insisted that they enter by the stage door, which proved exceedingly difficult to do as it turned out that the Mission didn’t have one. They settled on filing in with the audience, with Stella carrying the music and Sadie carrying all their props. One of the younger men in the audience volunteered to assist Sadie with the props, but he was at least seventy years old – albeit a young seventy years old – and Sadie ended up assisting him to his seat.
Stella took an audience’s view of the stage, which looked more like a coffee table with a piano perched on it. As they made their way to it Sadie kept her head hung low so she wouldn’t be seen, while Stella lifted hers defiantly at them, so as to show she had no fear. As it happened, it wasn’t possible to see their faces because the Mission was full of pipe smoke.
She whispered to Sadie, ‘They’re too old to inhale.’
‘Is it a full house?’ asked her sister nervously.
‘From what I can see through the smog, it is.’ She paused to count the audience. ‘Yes,’ she said at length. ‘All seventeen seats are taken.’
They stepped behind the curtain and, to Sadie’s relief, out of sight. The Reverend John Wright was awaiting them there, calmly pacing the floor with his hands behind his back. ‘Hello,’ he beamed encouragingly.
‘Hello,’ replied the girls suspiciously.
‘You must be the new talent we’ve heard so much about.’
Stella and Sadie exchanged furtive glances. ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Stella confidently.
‘Oh, good. Mr Bland said you’d come highly recommended.’
Sadie put the suitcases down. She felt as though her arms had been elongated. ‘Please step this way,’ requested the Reverend with a gentle swaying motion of the hand. ‘Mr Barnes is at the rear.’
Wondering who Mr Barnes was, the girls headed for the rear of the building.
‘Hello, kids. I’m Joey Barnes. I do compering. I’ve done plenty afore, so don’t go fretting that I’ll make a right fool of myself . . . or yourselves.’
‘Your names?’ enquired the Reverend. Stella spoke at Joey Barnes.
‘Just say, “Ladies and Gentlemen, you’re about to be entertained by the fabulous Raven Sisters, with their own brand of song and dance and high-class comedy.” ’
‘The Raving Sisters?’ laughed Joey Barnes.
‘No. Raven. R.A.V.E.N. That’s Raven.’
The Reverend started to blush and moved awkwardly from one foot to the other. ‘Er, like the bird, perhaps?’ he offered, hoping he was right. Stella nodded. Sadie remained silent, with head hung even lower than before. Joey Barnes couldn’t help but notice it.
‘Is there owt wrong with her neck?’ he whispered to Stella. ‘It isn’t broken or anything, is it?’
‘It’s called fear,’ she explained, at which Sadie dropped it even lower which would have seemed impossible until she actually did it. Then Sadie asked, ‘Could someone show me to the dressing-room, please?’
The Reverend looked to the compere for advice, and he in turn looked at Stella and said, ‘I’m afraid you’re standing in it.’
‘Don’t worry, my child,’ said the Reverend, putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. ‘Once we get started, no one will disturb you here.’
The curtain burst open and a middle-aged man bounded in with the sort of expression that said this wasn’t the first time he had worked at the Mission. ‘Evening, Vicar. Watcha, Joey. Sorry I’m late, the bus was running late.’ He glanced at the girls. ‘Hello, ’ello. Who picked these dainty little flowers from the Garden of Eden, then?’ The Reverend blushed again, as he so often would.
‘These young ladies are on our show tonight, Mr Rodgers.’
He offered his right hand. ‘I’m Rodgers, alias Magico the Master Magician.’ Stella told him who they were, emphasising the word Raven.
Magico took Barnes to one side to discuss his act and a fragile old man wavered up to them from behind the curtain. The girls both jumped with fright. It was like watching the walking dead. ‘This is our pianist, Mr Baxter,’ said the Reverend, feeling that there needed to be an explanation.
Without saying anything the old man reached forward and gently pulled the music sheets from Stella’s grasp. Having studied them from behind half-moon glasses for a while, he said, ‘Sorry, girls, I don’t do any of these.’
‘But it’s all there for you,’ said Stella. ‘All you have got to do is read it.’
‘I only play by ear,’ he said, indignantly.
‘Only by ear?’ she repeated, dumbfoundedly.
‘Let’s go home to Mam and Dad,’ suggested Sadie, who must have got to know every inch of the stage floor by now.
‘So what you’re saying is that you can’t play any of our music?’ said Stella.
The old man didn’t like this forthright young woman’s attitude at all. ‘Don’t you shout at me, Miss Wonderful,’ he croaked. ‘I once played with G. H. Elliot.’ And with that, and a body that tremored so much it seemed on the brink of falling apart, he shimmied over to join Barnes and Magico.
Eventually, in the old showbiz tradition, the show went on. Magico succeeded in making the audience disappear – most of them to the toilet. Joey Barnes, because the pipe smoke had blanketed the stage, walked straight over the edge, struggled back on, and then introduced the girls as the Crow Sisters.
Mr Baxter played all the songs he knew and none of the ones the girls had rehearsed to. Of all the free concerts put on at the Mission, it was the first where booing had been heard.
Stella stormed out at the end in a raging temper, stating that she would never work there again – not even if they paid her. And Sadie, who did manage to finally lift her head for the briefest of moments, left in floods of tears.
Reflecting on the affair and the injustice of it all in the comfort of their home, Sadie categorically stated that her brief flirtation with showbusiness was at an end. The same humiliation had had the reverse effect on Stella. It made her more keen to succeed, and more motivated about improving the act and finding the right places to play. The Mission was merely a hiccup on her way to becoming a great performer, one day to be idolised by the public. At least, that was how she intended looking at it.
There were two important things she’d learnt from this unfortunate experience: always make sure that the piano-player was capable of playing their music and that the compere said their names right.
It took nearly two weeks of kindness mixed with animal cunning for her to persuade Sadie to make a return to the dancing classes. By making Sadie understand her own importance to their act, and the fruitlessness of embarrass-ment, outrage, and humiliation, by the third week she had her making suggestions for an act of her own.
When they came to the time when they felt the act was as polished and presentable as it could ever be, Stella made it her job to find them a public gathering to perform it to.
She kept alert to any opportunities, and, at the very low fee of nothing, she managed to fix them a job in the very high-class venue of the County Hotel,