The Music Hall

Just an Act

[‘Our lodger’s such a nice young man,

Such a good boy is he;

So good, so kind to all our family!’

Murray & Barclay, 1897]

During those first years of the war we lived in Charham, my grandmother and I. She took in lodgers, offering what nowadays would be called bed and breakfast. She didn’t cater for travelling salesmen or the general public but for artistes, men and women who trod the boards of the music hall. It was a limited trade and those were straitened times but the small income helped. Having herself been on the stage my grandmother had an affinity with those in the business and had an interest in the theatre long after she had retired when she married my grandfather.

I was seven or eight at the time when Mr Gancey stayed with us. It was reading the short obituary of him in the ‘Northern Echo’ that brought those long forgotten years and memories back to me.

I had quite forgotten not only him but all the other entertainers who for those few years had populated my childhood. I no longer live in Kent and all the links which otherwise might have kept my memories tethered had been severed- my grandmother had died just as I was entering university up north.

The obituary merely mentioned his name, the date of his birth and death, and quickly summarised his short career in the music hall. The accompanying photograph of him was rather like a spectral apparition snapped at a séance. But this was enough to re-awaken my memory of him. We will all fade away but some memories are worth preserving.

*

There was little about Gancey’s act which made him stand out from the hundreds of others on the circuit in those days. He wasn’t in the same league as the big stars like George Formby, Max Miller, Will Hay or Flanagan and Allen. He wasn’t even one of those whose names might appear regularly further down the bill. He didn’t seem to have any particular catch-phrase.

He once told me ‘I don’t know why I’m in this game!’ but turned it into a laughing matter so that I had no idea if he was serious or not. Having the run of my grandmother’s large old house I would often spend time with the lodgers. Some would give me biscuits or sweets; others would show me how to make cards vanish or walk like an Egyptian in a sandstorm- and other things I’ve long forgotten but which at the time were fun!

My grandmother was independently wealthy. She had been quite successful on the stage herself and unlike many others hadn’t spent what she earnt freely on a lavish lifestyle. My grandfather had been well off too and as a Mason well-connected in society. By the time of his early death the family in which my mother grew up was comfortable. She had married my father and when she died giving birth to me my father took rapidly to drink and disappeared, leaving my grandmother to bring me up.

I remember nothing about my parents; but I remember evenings spent reading in my grandmother’s company as she listened to old 78rpm shellac records of performers she had known. One of her favourites was Millie Lindon and my grandmother would sing along to ‘Mary, she kept a dairy’, ‘For old time’s sake’ or ‘The Angel of my dreams’. She had a rich coloratura contralto voice which always surprised me when I heard it. She would only sing in my company and I never heard her singing alone or in the presence of anyone else.

I remember the time Mr Gancey got me on to the stage with him. It was the only time I have been inside the music hall, which had been opened in the last years of Victoria’s reign. By the time I was old enough to go on my own that venue and many others had either closed down or been turned into a cinema. It seemed like Aladdin’s cave to me then as I stared out into the auditorium with its two tiers, several private boxes and elaborately decorated central dome from which hung a massive chandelier. The balconies were intricately crafted plaster and the walls had decorative painted tile murals. In my dreams if ever I’m in a theatre that is how it appears to me!

It was an afternoon performance and he was filling in. That he was one of the first to go on the stage to me meant he was the star, though of course the top act would come on last. All I had to do, he told me, was to stand off to one side and whenever he said the word ‘mother’ I was to come in and ask him a question “Mister, where’s me shilling?” How his act went down ordinarily I’ve little idea; but that afternoon all I remember is the hoots of laughter which his monologue and my interjections drew. At the end, as he prepared to walk off, I was to silently trail him into the wings; but I called after him “Mister, I’m feeling wankle” (which was true) and as the curtain fell the audience- the theatre was half full- roared with laughter. Mr Gancey gave me the sixpence he had promised me all the while grinning hugely as he smuggled me out the exit. He said it was the first time he’d gotten off the stage without having a fusillade of tomatoes hurled at him. I’d always wondered why his suit looked so untidy.

The lodgings my grandmother offered were tidy and smart, the rooms well-appointed and cleaned daily. She could afford to have a woman come in to do the cleaning and another to prepare the meals. I never saw my grandmother cook, though she was not stuck up or unable to do ordinary household chores. She had high moral standards which for the lodgers translated into men and women keeping strictly to their own rooms and visitors only being entertained in the downstairs lounge.

I did not know then what ‘hanky-panky’ meant, only that it was not allowed. I would hear the cook and the cleaner whispering about it and falling silent when I came into view. Because it was forbidden I kept my eyes open for it, hoping I would know it when I saw it. Whether Mr Gancey got up to ‘hanky-panky’ with Miss Lily Lirry I couldn’t say, though I suspected he might have done. He was soft on her and would share her table for breakfast and the evening meal. If they were not performing of an evening they would sit together in the lounge and play All-Fours or Put while smoking a cigarette.

I knew that Miss Lily must have been in Mr Gancey’s room at least once since I found one of her gloves under a seat cushion one day whilst snooping around. I didn’t regard it as snooping since it was my grandmother’s house and I lived there. But she had explained to me that I was not to play in the lodgers’ rooms and usually I obeyed that rule. Mr Gancey often invited me into his room to listen to his monologues and offer applause- ‘Clap now, Robin,’ he would say. That was the name he had given me, even though he knew my real name was Bryce. He would only call me ‘Robin’ when I was in his room; should I cross his path in the hall or lounge he would call me Bryce like everyone else, though he would also wink as he did so. I took his regular invitations to mean that I could come and go more or less as I chose.

The problem with snooping was that even when I found something which interested me I didn’t understand it. Mr Gancey kept a diary and left it on the writing table by his bedroom window. I could read and only resisted the temptation to pry the first time I noticed the diary. When I did sneak a peek at what he had written I could understand little of it. He mentioned meeting or talking with various people I did not know. I knew my grandmother kept a diary but it only contained notes about household matters and lists of things to do or buy. I knew that because she told me as she wrote in it, helping me to learn and understand the workings of the house.

It was through my snooping that I came to know more about Mr Gancey than appeared in his obituary. At the time it all meant nothing to me. A child naturally forgets as new experiences come along. I had forgotten, for example, the morning when two men in belted raincoats arrived at breakfast time and took Mr Gancey away. My grandmother hushed me when I asked her what was going on. Two other men came later to remove the belongings from Mr Gancey’s room. By this time Miss Lirry had already left the lodging to keep another engagement in London. The rumour was that Mr Gancey was a German spy. Everyone who was different was rumoured to be a German spy, or so it seemed to me. I didn’t believe that since I had never heard him speaking German. He had vanished from the town that was for sure.

*

Forty years after the event is not a good time to try to find out ‘the truth’ of a rumour.

There was not a word in the obituary about German spies. The fact that there was an obituary suggested to me that the spy rumour had been false. Perhaps Mr Gancey had been arrested because of defaulting on debts. Perhaps he was what nowadays we’d call a paedophile. I knew nothing about that sort of thing then; but there had never been the slightest indiscretion on his part towards me- no fondling, caresses or naughty words. Maybe, I thought, someone had been playing a joke on him- there was always some kind of horse-play and setting up going on among the theatrical fraternity. I wondered if it had been a ruse to avoid paying his dig money; but my grandmother always asked for payment in advance to avoid such defaults.

Finding anything more about Mr Gancey beyond those bare bones in the obituary proved impossible. I spoke with the editor responsible for the obituaries. He told me that was all the information he had been given. The only reason for the notice having appeared was because Mr Gancey had been born in Birstwith, Yorkshire. I checked all the parish records I could find but there was no trace of him anywhere despite this information.

I had better luck when I began to research Lily Lirry. I found that she was still alive and living in an actors and actresses retirement home near Wickhambreaux in Kent. After phoning to make an appointment to visit her- yes, she was fully compos mentis, I was informed- I arranged to travel south. To some degree I wondered why I was going to all this bother. After all, I had not thought about those days for years. Perhaps it was a resurgence of that curiosity which as a child saw me snooping around the lodgers’ rooms.

*

Caxes Hall was a large mansion in several acres of land. I drove there from my hotel in London. So much had changed in the county- not that I knew this particular area all that well, for Charham had been near the Medway and more built up.

Miss Lirry was in her room and I was taken there by an attendant. When I introduced myself she nodded knowingly.

-Ah yes, you were Gertie’s grandson. We used to call you Robin because you were always hopping about the place…

I told her that I had read Mr Gancey’s obituary and how that had awoken my memories of growing up in Charham and the lodgers we had had staying.

-That wasn’t his real name, you know, Miss Lirry said as we sipped tea on the balcony of her room. Edward’s real name was Shay.

That surprised me. I mentioned having seen him being taken away by those two men and I saw a spark of compassion in her eyes.

-Bad luck you being there, she said. He was a spy, you know.

I looked at her and felt my heart plummet at the words.

-Oh not a German spy but one of ours. It was all an act. There never was a Mr Gancey, you see. We knew there was a cell of German spies operating in the area, collecting information on airfields and squadron bases. Edward was posing as an informant offering information in the hope of flushing them out. The arrest was meant to enhance his standing with the Germans- and it worked! We caught them trying to transmit the false information a few days later. It was all very hush-hush. Gertie knew, she had to know, but couldn’t let on, could she?

We? I queried.

-Oh yes, I was part of the team as well. You saw Edward’s act, didn’t you? He wasn’t very good, was he? But that was the point, to convince the Germans that he was desperate for money as his career was failing. I remember he took you to the ‘Hippodrome’ one time. That was very clever of him. That was when he passed the information to the German spies, who were in the audience. Every time he said ‘mother’ and you said your bit the next few words of his act were in code. When it was all strung together they had what they thought were the sites and strengths of the squadrons there. Your little ad lib at the end was the icing on the cake, young ‘Robin’! It convinced them what they had was genuine.