The confab on the dance floor was finally over and Mickey was approaching the stage. It seemed they had a plan.
Once the band members had settled into their customary places, instruments were unpacked, assembled, tuned and warmed up. They trotted through Puddle’s new arrangement of the old music-hall song ‘Where Did You Get That Hat?’, which was about to go into the regular set list after a couple of trial runs at private parties.
Unlike Eustace, Puddle tended to play down her classical training. She didn’t mention her time at the Royal College of Music, nor her time playing clarinet in several of Europe’s more prestigious symphony orchestras, but she wasn’t shy about her skill as an arranger. The band had no formal leader, with Mickey Kent serving as public spokesman when the need arose, but Puddle and Benny Charles, the Antiguan trombonist, split the arranging duties between them, with occasional contributions from Barty Dunn, who ‘had a good ear’.
As the number drew to a close, a man’s head appeared round the door. His hair was so smooth and shiny with pomade that it looked as though it had been varnished. Skins and Dunn exchanged amused glances. The gleaming head withdrew but the door remained open. They could hear his voice shouting, ‘Come on, you chaps, they’re here.’
A few seconds later, five men in their early thirties tumbled into the ballroom. They were in high spirits and had obviously had a livener or two to give themselves a little Dutch courage for the dancing ordeal to come.
Dunn leaned down to talk to Skins. ‘Is that it?’ he asked quietly. ‘Where’s the birds?’
‘Gentlemen’s club, ain’t it?’ said Skins. ‘No birds allowed. I’m surprised they let Blanche and Puddle in, to be truthful. And Millie Whatsit over there must have some special hold over someone . . . Oh, there you go.’
One of the five newcomers approached Millie Mitchell and swept her into his arms to deliver a theatrical kiss.
‘My darling,’ he said. ‘Thank you. How absolutely divine of you to give up your time for us like this. Allow me to introduce you to the Alphabet Gang.’
His four pals made a great show of arranging themselves in a line with a gap in the middle. Skins looked closely and was disappointed to note that they were all about the same height – probably something close to five foot seven, just like every other bloke they’d ever met.
‘We have Alfie, Bertie, Danny and Ernie,’ he said, indicating each man in turn.
‘Where’s C?’ said Millie.
‘That’s me, you silly goose,’ he said.
‘But you’re Bob.’
‘Bob Chandler, see? C.’
‘Everyone else uses their first name, sweetie. Do they call you Chandler?’
‘No, they call me Charlie.’
‘But—’
‘It’s quite simple, old thing,’ he said. ‘Ernie here’ – he indicated the bespectacled man at the end of the line – ‘is really called Edwin Cashmore.’
‘So you should call him Eddie,’ said Millie.
‘Cashmore . . . more cash? Earn-y? Get it?’
Millie groaned.
‘Then Dudley Daniels becomes Danny.’
The long-nosed man, next in line, bowed.
‘I’ve become Charlie,’ continued Charlie. ‘Then Jimmy Albert here is Bertie.’
The man with the varnished head smiled and nodded.
‘And Cornelius Rawson here is Alfie.’
‘Why?’ said Millie.
‘So we can be the Alphabet Gang.’
‘But why aren’t you Bobby? Then Jimmy Albert could be Albie, and Cornelius Rawson here could be . . . oh, I don’t know . . . Corny.’
The men shrugged and, as one, pointed at Alfie.
The smiling, buck-toothed man at the end of the line frowned for a moment and then erupted with a loud ‘Hah!’ A penny had finally dropped. ‘Well, I’ll be blowed,’ he said. ‘That would be much simpler. Where were you when we needed you, old girl? Takes me an absolute age to explain why all my chums call me Alfie.’
‘It was your blessed idea,’ said Danny. ‘We tried to tell you at the time but you just looked vacant and told us you didn’t understand what we were on about.’
‘Should have been more . . . how do you say it? Forceful,’ said Alfie. ‘Chap needs to have things explained to him two or three times. Pictures help.’
The other men shook their heads.
‘Well, that’s the gang, anyway,’ said Charlie. ‘And this lovely lady is my darling fiancée, Millie Mitchell. After you lot saw off poor Georgina, she’s the poor soul who’ll be teaching you duffers all the new steps so we can beat the boys from the Wags Club in the dance contest. Let’s see if we can impress her a little more than we did Georgina. Poor girl had never seen anything like it.’
The Alphabets gave a ragged cheer.
‘And, ah, who are those chaps over there?’ said Alfie, pointing to the band.
‘That’ll be the band, Alfie,’ said Charlie.
‘I can see that, old horse. I mean, who are they? I thought old Thingy Doo-dah’s band played for the lessons. Did last week. You know, the chaps from Highgate with that knockout filly on the horn thing and whatnot.’
‘They’re from East Finchley,’ said Charlie. ‘They’re called the Finchley Foot-Tappers and they couldn’t make it because “old Thingy Doo-Dah” – who prefers to go by the name of Henry Bignell, by the way, should you ever chance to meet him again – had double-booked us with a twenty-first birthday party in Belgravia. And they were paying more. Sir Freddie Thompson’s youngest girl. Lovely family. And the horn thing is a saxophone. These nice people have two. Anyway, luckily for us, Millie happened to know Mickey there . . .’
Mickey gave a small wave of acknowledgement.
‘. . . and he was able to step into the breach.’
‘All well and good, old boy,’ said Alfie. ‘But who are they?’
‘The Dizzy Heights,’ said Charlie. ‘They play for the dance here every Friday night.’
‘Do they, by George? Are they any good? Can they play a Charleston? I’ve got to work on m’Charleston.’
‘Mickey?’ said Charlie. ‘I hate to be a bore, old thing, but would you mind playing a few bars to set poor Alfie’s addled mind at rest?’
Mickey looked to the band, who picked up their instruments. ‘“The Charleston”, then?’ he suggested.
Skins counted them in and they gave the assembled dance students the first verse of the popular tune.
‘Will that do you, Alfie?’ said Charlie.
‘Very nicely, old bean. Very nicely indeed. Ready when you are, Miss Mitchell.’ He shuffled a few clumsy steps.
‘I think we’d better start with the basics,’ said Millie. ‘The most basic of basics.’
The Alphabet Gang, it turned out, were truly terrible dancers. Charlie had a slight grasp on the basics, no doubt taught to him by his talented fiancée, but the others were an utter shambles.
Amiable Alfie, of the buck teeth and cheerful demeanour, was quite a mover. He was surprisingly graceful for a chubby chap, and managed to move all his limbs in time with the music. His problem was that he couldn’t for the life of him remember exactly how and where to move them – remembering the individual steps and the order in which they came was completely beyond him. The result was a chaotic mess, but one that was entirely in time with the band.