Sheep in Wolf's Clothing
A Lena Aldridge short story
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To celebrate publication of my new novel, Harlem After Midnight, in the US and Canada (UK and elsewhere will be 14th September), I wanted to share a short story featuring Lena Aldridge, heroine of the book. Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing was originally published in My Weekly magazine in 2022.
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Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing
Later on, I realised she’d been watching me. That nothing about our meeting had been an accident. But at the time, there was no reason for me to be suspicious.
Every afternoon, around four o’clock, I would pop into Mrs DeMarco’s café. The coffee hit had become a hard habit to break, but it was also a way to fill that awkward gap of time when most decent living people were finishing up a hard days’ work, my own work yet to begin. The alternative was to return to the dreadfully mean boarding house room that was my official residence. Much better to sit in the DeMarco coffee shop, in my usual seat by the window, pretending to read the latest issue of Vogue while gazing out at Soho life. The men in their trilbys and fedoras, the women showing off their Marcelled hair beneath neatly pinned hats. I was as grateful as anyone that the bob was now out of fashion; it hadn’t suited me one bit. Umbrellas started to go up as an April shower made itself known, large drops of water spattering the plate glass that sheltered me.
‘Excuse me.’ I looked up to see a young girl hovering nervously at my table. ‘I don’t suppose you mind sharing.’ She gestured around and I saw that the café was quite full. The rain had brought them in off the street.
‘Of course.’ I moved my magazine, and she took the seat opposite me, a cup of milky tea in front of her. Slight and blonde, she looked no older than eighteen. Her clothes were sensible, a brown knee length skirt and a blouse that buttoned up past her collarbone. Very middle class. What was a girl like her doing in Soho on a Thursday afternoon?
‘You’re going to think me terribly rude,’ she said, ‘but don’t I recognise you?’
I tried to look nonchalant. ‘Perhaps.’ I didn’t often get recognised out and about. Usually if they did, it was immediately after a performance, or at the stage door on those few occasions when I’d managed to get a serious role. ‘I do live on this street.’
‘No, it’s not that.’ She stared at me, then her face broke into a wide grin. ‘You’re Lena Aldridge! From the Canary Club.’
I forced a smile. The Canary Club was not a high point of my career. I’d love someone to recognise me from playing Christine in Miss Julie, or from a concert I’d sung in at the Palladium. The Canary was a dirty basement jazz club that meant nothing more than a guaranteed wage. Still, beggars can’t be choosers.
‘Do you go to the Canary often?’ I asked. She wasn’t old enough but then the fellas who worked the door would often let the young ones in with no questions asked.
She shook her head. ‘Just once or twice. I love jazz and I think you’re just marvellous.’
‘Oh? Thank you.’ I couldn’t help it; my pride got the better of me. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Jean,’ she said. ‘Jean Wilson. Are you singing tonight?’
‘Pleased to meet you, Jean. And yes, I am. Are you coming along?’ I knew I shouldn’t encourage her. Girls like Jean were too good for the likes of the Canary. They tended to get chewed up and spat out. ‘Where are your friends?’
‘Oh, they don’t like jazz,’ she told me, her face telling me what she thought of that. ‘I wondered… oh, but you’ll think me very forward.’
I laughed. ‘Spit it out!’
‘See I like to sing myself,’ she said, lowering her voice as if she was scared someone would overhear. ‘And I saw that they’re auditioning at the Canary today.’
‘They are.’ I sat back and wondered how to explain. ‘But it’s not really for singing.’
Tommy, the manager, liked to audition the girls because it meant he could choose the best looking. The job itself was waitressing. Wearing a skimpy uniform and dodging the groping hands of the male clientele while not spilling a drop of the cheap booze Tommy sold.
‘It’s a start.’ Jean looked at me, her eyes pleading. ‘The big man at the door, he said I was too young. He wouldn’t let me in.’
‘And you think that if I put in a good word…’ I was beginning to understand. Well, ambition wasn’t all bad. Little Jean Wilson had some gumption at least. If she’d had the guts to come and find me and sidle her way into my confidence, then perhaps she had what it took. ‘Fine. But on your head be it. And don’t go into Tommy’s office alone with him, whatever you do.’
Her grin lit up her face. But she wouldn’t be smiling for much longer.
I hadn’t stopped to see what happened after I walked Jean into the Canary. There had still been a few girls loitering as Tommy paid attention to those filling a mock drinks order. There were few things that turned my stomach more than a middle-aged man ogling girls young enough to be his daughter, so I waved to Vic, the bartender, and left again. I didn’t need to be at the Canary until after dark.
Perhaps I should have stayed though, because when I returned it was chaos. The unsuccessful applicants had left and the empty club was a battlefield. On one side were the old hands, on the other was a trio of bright, new waitresses, fresh faced and badly dressed in spare uniforms that had been handed down from those who’d eventually escaped the Canary. Heading the trio was a triumphant Jean Wilson, and she’d lost the timid look of earlier. Now she looked as though she’d been born to the task at hand.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked Vic, who was surveying the scene warily.
‘Tommy. He took that blonde haired girl into his office. When they came out, he told this lot that she’s their new supervisor.’
‘I forgot that Jan had left.’ She’d been the previous supervisor. After finding herself an accountant husband, she didn’t need to work late nights anymore. ‘But why give it to a new girl?’
‘Why d’you think?’ Vic raised an eyebrow. There was a reason that I’d warned Jean about going into Tommy’s office, but it seemed that she’d taken it as advice rather than the opposite. ‘And so of course the others made sure that Serena found out.’
I drew in a sharp breath. What on earth had Jean done? Not only was Tommy married, but he already had a bit on the side: Serena Mayhew. Serena had worked at the Canary almost as long as I had but had quit once she’d hooked Tommy. Why work when your married lover would pay for everything, including your rent? It was a precarious position though. There was always the chance that Tommy would get bored and find someone younger and less demanding. Someone like Jean.
‘Where’s Serena?’ I asked.
He threw a thumb back in the direction of Tommy’s office. ‘They been in there for half an hour already.’
I baulked at going back there, behind the curtain that separated the public area of the bar and club from ‘backstage’, a narrow corridor with just Tommy’s office and a stinking WC hanging off it. Although perhaps I could eavesdrop… And I did have to get changed at some point. An early bird couple had already arrived, one of the established waitresses breaking the stand-off to show them to a table. Tips were the only way to make a living; the new girls would find that out soon enough.
I hurried out the back and got changed but it was ominously quiet out there. Even with an ear pressed to the door of Tommy’s office, I couldn’t hear a thing. Luckily, I’d moved away by the time Serena yanked the door open, marching out into the club. Tommy slunk slowly behind her.
‘Sing something cheery for a change,’ was all he said to me. Serena must have really done a number on him. What on earth she going to do to Jean?
I pulled on my heels quickly, and rushed back out to see the confrontation, but everything was disturbingly calm. Tommy had taken his usual seat by the stage, and Serena had gathered her allies to her by the bar. I walked over to Jean who loitered at the back of the room.
‘You used me.’
She shrugged. ‘I told you what I wanted. You didn’t have to bring me.’
A fair point. ‘But I didn’t know about this. About Tommy. You, my girl, are either very clever or very stupid. Serena will kill you if you even look at him the wrong way again.’
‘I just needed a foot in the door.’ She’d changed from cocky to pleading now, but I didn’t trust her. ‘Nothing happened back there. Not really.’ She looked down at the ground. ‘Once you get a job, the next step is so much easier.’
She was right, in a way. Bosses are lazy. Why train someone with no experience when you can give the job to someone who knows how it’s done?
‘You don’t need this job,’ I said.
‘Not for the money,’ she agreed. ‘But I want to be like you one day. I need to see how it all works.’
‘Jean!’
I turned to see a woman arrive, as middle-class as they come. A nice-looking woman who looked rather horrified to see her daughter in the tawdry costume of the Canary Club. Behind her trotted a timid man whose cheeks flushed red on seeing Jean.
‘Mother? Father?’ Jean’s jaw dropped.
‘You looked ever so lost, dear.’ Serena wandered over. ‘You’d given your telephone number to Tommy so I thought I should make sure that your parents weren’t worried.’
‘Why, you -’ Jean caught herself.
‘What happened to your secretarial job? Really, Jean! I was on the verge of calling the police when this… this woman told me what you were up to.’ Her mother was furious.
‘The police?’ Tommy’s face was white. ‘Apologies Mr and Mrs… Well, no harm done. Drinks on the house if you wanted to stay.’
‘I rather think we should be going. Get your coat Jean. I assume you have some suitable clothing with you?’ Mrs Wilson’s words could have cut paper.
I retreated to the bar and Vic poured me a gin and lime. ‘That could have ended badly.’ We watched Jean slink out sheepishly, her parents following her like well-mannered jailors.
‘Just goes to show,’ Vic said. ‘Sometimes you might think you’re a wolf. But then you meet a real one and realise you were never anything else but a sheep.’
He could be a wise man, could Vic.