Free Shirley by Muriel Burgess Page B

you understand it. Then you’ll go home to Cardiff and let your mother read it. Then she’ll sign it and you’ll come back.’
    ‘How long can I stay in Cardiff?’ Shirley asked desperately.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ said Juhni. ‘We’ll talk about it when I give you the return fare.’
    ‘And ten pounds salary,’ added Sullivan. You’ll see in the contract that you get a salary of ten pounds a week.’
    When Sullivan had finished explaining the contract, he was too hoarse to continue the meeting and Juhni took Shirley to the lift. She came back and, with some misgiving, asked her husband whether he genuinely believed he could turn this girl into a star.
    Michael Sullivan had grown up in the era of the movie heroes and heroines of the 1930s and ’40s, and had wanted to be a film director. Instead, he became an office boy to a man who booked variety acts, and, at weekends, he went down to Southend-on-Sea to help a man who owned a freak show. Sullivan was fifteen, he wore a straw boater and carried a cane, and earned a pound every Saturday.
    The owner of the show helped him to train his voice. ‘Now make sure they can hear you all over the fairground,’ he instructed him. ‘You’ve got to fill this tent at sixpence a go to see the five-legged sheep.’ The young Michael succeeded in filling the tent, and although the sheep’s fifth leg was only glued on, he made the customers laugh. Butthis was something different. Juhni was right, how the hell was he going to turn an eighteen-year-old girl from nowhere into a star?
    Hundreds of kids went to RADA and other drama schools every year and how many of them became big stars? A mere handful. Okay, the raw material he had was good, he could polish the talent, but what the hell did he do finally with a beautifully polished singing bird?
    His anxiety was not helped by recalling Joe Collins’ words to him. He’d been to see him when he got back from Jersey because Joe had been the management that sent Shirley’s last show,
Hot from Harlem
, on the road. To his horror, Collins had said, ‘Don’t touch that girl with a barge pole.’
    Joe Collins could be a difficult man, but he knew his stuff, and he made money. ‘Shirley Bassey walked out of my show,’ Joe told him. ‘Left us flat without a girl singer. Don’t touch her, she’ll let you down.’
    Sullivan began to feel ill again. What had he done? Signed up a girl for God knows how long at ten pounds a week. He was broke, and even if she didn’t walk out and didn’t let him down, he wasn’t sure what was he going to do with her. He needed lessons himself. He’d have to find out how these men who dealt with star acts succeeded. He needed to know their secret.
    Shirley returned from Cardiff with the contract duly signed by her mother. Sitting in an imitation zebra skin chair in Sullivan’s rather opulent office she looked strangely subdued. She had been unnerved by her longed-for visit home to Splott. In a few short weeks she had become ‘AuntieShirley’ to her own child, while her sister Iris, as she had feared, had taken on the role of Sharon’s mother. ‘I show her your picture every day,’ said Iris, ‘don’t worry.’
    But Shirley did worry. Three more months away from baby Sharon, at this crucial time of the child’s life when she was bonding with those close to her, couldn’t be right. She hardly heard Sullivan going on at her about her last show
Hot from Harlem
. Why had she walked out of the show, why had she let Joe Collins down so badly? Didn’t she know it was a mortal sin? . . . A performer never walks out!
    Shirley began to weep. She wept not because of Sullivan or Joe Collins but because she was losing her baby. Kindly but surely she was being taken away from her.
    Sullivan was aghast. ‘Don’t take on like that. Just tell me why, that’s all I ask.’
    It all poured out, the pregnancy, the fears, the fact that she hadn’t been able to get into her costumes because she was five