The four of them were in high spirits as they left the nurses’ home and set off for the bus stop, linking up together at Connie’s instigation, and laughing in the summer sunshine.
The conductor on the bus gave them a wink and said, ‘Off to have some fun, is you, girls! By, I wish I was coming with youse!’ as he took their fares.
‘I’m hungry,’ Josie complained. ‘I was that excited I never ate me dinner.’
‘Well they won’t let us in with food any more,’ Vera complained. ‘So we’ll get a glass of porter and summat to eat before we go in.’
The bus took them right up to the music hall. Vera had suggested that they got off a few stops short of it and had a look at the shops, ‘whilst we’ve got the chance', but Mavis and Josie had both vetoed this suggestion.
‘Ooh, look, they’ve got George Robey as the comedian,’ Josie gasped in thrilled excitement, as they got off the bus and hurried over to look at the programmes posted outside the building.
Clinging together to avoid being jostled by the growing crowd, the four of them peered excitedly at the billboard.
‘Look there, right at the top, there’s Marie Lloyd, and he’s there, too!’ Vera burst out excitedly. ‘It’s him as I was telling you all about, George Lashwood. He’s that handsome …’ She gave a deep sigh.
‘It says here that there’s an Ella Shields on as a male impersonator, Josie began, and then stopped to demand, ‘does that means she’s a woman pretending to be a man?
‘ Ere come on you girls, let someone else get a look at the billing.’
The jocular request, made by a young man with a ready smile and twinkling blue eyes, had them falling back, blushing.
‘Going in, are yer?’ he asked. ‘Only I’m with a few of me pals and we could sit together, if you fancied it.’
Immediately Connie tensed. Kieron’s desertion of her and its frightening aftermath had left her feeling very wary of the male sex. And aware, too, of her own shameful secret. She felt a fierce need to protect herself, not just from having her past discovered, but also from giving any other man the idea that he could treat her as Kieron had. This might go against the grain of her normally fun-loving, light-hearted personality, but men, in Connie’s eyes, had become a species who were not to be trusted – and certainly not allowed to take any kind of liberties!
‘What, let you sit with us? Not likely!’ she answered him sharply, exclaiming to the others, as he stuck his hands in his pockets and laughed before walking off, ‘Cheek!’
‘You’re turning into a right spoilsport, Connie!’ Vera complained. ‘It would have been a bit of fun sitting with ‘em!’
The crowd outside the building was growing by the minute, and when Mavis suggested that they get themselves something to eat and then go inside, the other three willingly agreed. By the time the curtain went up on the first act, they were sitting cosily in their seats, waiting expectantly.
The loud roar of approval with which the crowd greeted the first act set the tone for the whole night, and, well before the curtain had been rung down on the first half of the evening, all four girls had thrown themselves into the spirit of things.
‘I’m hoarse already from singing,’ Mavis complained, as the curtain swung down.
‘Ooh, that comedian had me laughing that much me ribs ache,’ Josie marvelled. ‘No wonder they calls him the Prime Minister of Mirth.’
The interval gave everyone the opportunity to get up from their seats and stretch their legs, and when the four girls were entertained by an enterprising young man who came and stood in front of them, and provided an impromptu show of his own devising – complete with a song extolling their beauty – everyone around them started to clap and cheer.
The good-natured atmosphere couldn’t help but lift your spirits, Josie announced.
‘It’s a pity it’s so full, otherwise we could have done a bit of dancing ourselves, up at the back,’ Vera complained.
All four of them exchanged slightly wistful looks, but their disappointment at not being able to dance was soon forgotten, when the curtain went up on the second half of the show.
Ella Shields came on first, dressed in her male clothes, and sang, ‘Burlington Bertie from Bow’, to catcalls and yells of encouragement and approval from the audience.
When everyone else got to their feet to join in the final chorus, so did the four girls, singing the familiar words at the top of their voices.
Red in the face and happy, they waited expectantly for Vera’s handsome singer to appear.
When he did, his appearance was enough to cause an impressed silence to fall over the theatre, followed by a soft, muted sound, which was a sigh of pleasure from the whole of the female audience.
‘Oh, isn’t he handsome,’ Mavis whispered in awe.
‘Told you so,’ Vera announced smugly.
In mutual silence, the girls focused on the stage, watching the man standing there as he took the part of a swell out on London town for the night. When his act had finished, the applause was so loud it hurt the ears.
‘Oh, I did enjoy this evening,’ Mavis exclaimed happily when the four of them got off the bus outside the Infirmary, and linked arms.
Mischievously Connie started to sing a few words from one of the numbers, whereupon Vera started to mimic the dance steps performed by the chorus girls.
Within a few seconds, the four of them had given in to their high spirits and were singing and dancing their way down the street, and enjoying the spontaneous applause of a couple of young men who stopped to watch them.
‘Do you think he wouldn’t have died if they hadn’t cut off his leg?’
‘Josie, will you please give it a rest. I’m sick of hearing about it.’
Even Connie felt that Vera was being unsympathetic when she saw the tears filming Josie’s eyes.
‘It wasn’t like someone dying on the ward, Vera,’ she felt obliged to point out. ‘Josie and I were there in the operating theatre when Mr Clegg amputated the man’s leg.’
‘Connie, please don’t!’ Josie begged.
There was a greenish tinge under her pale skin and Mavis, too, was looking slightly pale. Connie, on the other hand, had found that her fascination with the operating procedure had overcome any squeamishness she might have felt. And Sister had certainly moved smartly when she realised that Josie was going to faint, Connie reflected mentally.
They were sitting in the large room which was referred to as the recreation room, and as Josie started to talk again about the awfulness of the patient’s death on the operating table, Connie glanced absently round the room. There was a piano in one corner, but, as yet, Connie had never seen anyone playing it.
‘This will cheer you up, Josie,’ she announced, as she got up and walked over to it, sitting down on the stool and folding back the top. On top of the keys was a notice saying, ‘This piano is not to be played without permission!’
‘What are you doing?’ Josie demanded.
For a moment Connie hesitated, and then she pushed the notice behind a sheet of music and announced, ‘I’m going to play some cheerful music to drown out the sound of you going on about the amputation.’
‘You can play?’
Suddenly, not just her three friends, but also several other girls who were also in the room clustered around her, their admiring attention making Connie feel very pleased with herself.
‘Yes,’