The Pearl Within

By G.J. Dyer

Some time in the first decade of the 20th century, a troupe of traveling actors is making its way from one small town to another in the North and Midlands of England, setting up their tent and rough stage on any piece of spare ground they can call home for a week or two, with the intent of separating the local miners and mill workers from at least a small portion of their hard-earned wages. They perform the popular melodramas of the day, with the occasional abbreviated Shakespeare, translated into the local dialect. It's a hard way to scratch out a meager living, and viewed with some disdain by the more respectable sort. But life is about to change for one member of the Dyer family. First, Tommy meets Angelina, daughter of Italian immigrants and the love of his life and wife-to-be. Angelina's parents, with their old-country values, disapprove of an itinerant actor with no prospects as a husband for their only daughter, so Tommy is forced to give up his life as an actor and join Angelina's brothers, cutting coal underground. But an explosion down the mine that kills one of Angelina's brothers persuades Angelina's parents that coal mining is not such an ideal life for a son-in-law. So Tommy returns to the stage and Angelina's parents give their consent. Then an agent of the French film company Pathe Freres changes their life forever. They are offered an opportunity to travel to America and be part of the fledgling movie business. At the Pathe studio in New Jersey they meet world-famous actress Pearl White, star of the hugely successful "Perils of Pauline" serials. Pearl and Angelina become the best of friends and Tommy goes along for the ride, as the plain-speaking, down-to-earth farm girl Pearl plunges into one misadventure after another, and with Pearl's tendency to to stretch the truth, it's hard to know where fact ends and fiction begins.
Pearl's increasing reliance on Angelina, as alcohol and painkillers take their toll, leads the couple eventually to Paris, where Pearl marries her Italian count and they meet the legendary entertainer Mistinguett; a very young, not-yet-famous Maurice Chevalier and an even younger English clown and comic Max Wall. who would become a star on the stage of the London music halls. In time fond memories of England beckon and they return to the small town where it all began. They acquire a rundown theater, convert it into a movie theater and begin every showing with an episode of "The Perils of Pauline.

• Language: English
• Publisher: G.J. Dyer
• Release date: Feb 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370884148

G.J. Dyer

Born 29th Dec.1948 in the small town of Farnworth, Lancashire. Educated at Canon Slade Grammar School, Bolton and Pembroke College, Cambridge. Graduated 1971. Spent the summer of 1969 in the US and decided to move to the US at the earliest possible opportunity. Became a permanent resident in the '70s, lived in New Jersey and Texas before moving to California in the 1990s. Spent most of my working life as a chef, in restaurants, private clubs and catering, retiring in 2014. I now spend my time selling CDs and DVDs online, and flyfishing.

Book preview

The Pearl Within

G. J. Dyer

Copyright 2018 G. J. Dyer

Smashwords Edition

Chapter 1

Bloody Hell was all he said.

But those two angry words foretold a mishap of considerable awfulness. My father was not a man given to unnecessary profanity and he frowned on it in others. I had been out behind the stage straightening a stake that my younger brother Eddie had pounded in crooked, and with the wind picking up, the tilt, as we called our canvas roof, was like to lift off and float away, more likely than not during some gripping murder scene or tender soliloquy. Before you knew it the patrons would be demanding their money back, even the cheeky bastards who had gotten in free by crawling under the tent flap.

The worst sin in the old man’s doxology was to be the cause of a refund and, though Eddie could be a dozy bugger at times, I didn’t wish my father’s wrath on his tender backside. Eddie was but 12 and still on the bony side, so he seemed to suffer more than I from the administration of father’s boots.

I had just re-tied the guy rope and was pulling it tight to bring our canvas roof into a nice tight square when I heard the old man’s voice, loud and clear. My father had spent many years on the stage, and when he raised his voice in anger he could clean the wax out of a sleeping drunkard’s ears. I hefted the big mallet and took the short route under the canvas flap to look for the source of the commotion.

Father and Mother were standing in front of the entrance, both staring down towards the Matlock road. Shite was all that my mother felt the need to say. Father frowned and leveled his best disapproving stare, but we both knew it was wasted on her. Mother, when not on the boards, chose her words carefully. She would not use two when one would do, figuring that the old man was spendthrift enough in that currency. Shite was a favorite word of hers. She was the daughter of a Leicestershire farmer and shit of one specie or another had been constant companion to her small boots every day of her childhood.

We had arrived in the Derbyshire town of Thorne flat broke, but with hopes of a good run to pad the tin box that Father kept to set aside money for the lean times. But the lean times had outnumbered the fat in recent months and now you could rattle a pea from one corner to the other in that tin box. It had been some time since we had played these parts and both Father and Mother were cheerfully anticipating the eager crowds with money in their pockets who would cram into our tent each night.

I, too, was now looking hard at the Matlock road, at the source of their consternation. Stretched out along that road, half-hidden by the hedgerows, was a motley procession of caravans, carts and cages on wheels. A circus, a bloody circus. This snake in our grass passed out of view for a short while behind a church and a row of houses. We all stood and held our breaths, since by now all work had ceased and our entire company was motionless and staring at those houses that screened the circus from our anxious eyes. We knew that out of our view beyond those houses was the turn-off for the main road to Derby. If the procession did not reappear we would breathe one single sigh of relief. If they did reappear, it meant that there was only one destination in their minds, the same patch of waste ground that was, for now, home to our little company of traveling actors.

For the longest of moments they did not show themselves beyond the last house. Just as we began to allow ourselves a moment of hope, two horses filled the blank space that all our eyes were fixed on. Their heads lifted in response to the reins and turned towards the gate. At a yell from the driver a small boy jumped down from the rear of the wagon and dashed at the gate as if he meant to run right through it. His feet churned, the dust rose, and slowly the gate fell back before him and wedged itself in the dry tufted grass alongside the track. The boy perched on the gate as all the variety of vehicles passed before him, then, when the last was beyond him, jumped down, dug in his heels and put his back to the gate and slowly pushed it closed. He dusted off his hands in boyish pride then launched himself after the wagon from which he had tumbled.

By now we could read the letters on the side of the caravan that led the way, a name repeated here and there down the line: Baker’s Circus. Well we knew then that it was all up for us. If this had been some lesser, flea-bitten menagerie with a few broken-down clowns and beer-bellied strongmen past their prime and bearded ladies whose beards were no more real than the tears on the clowns’ faces, we might have had a chance. But Baker’s was one of the finest traveling shows in the country with a huge company, a traveling organ and Russel the knife thrower, who was a great draw at country fairs in those days. The various wagons and carts rolled by us and we stood in dumb despairing silence as each of our tormentors passed before us until they formed a circle around the edge of the clearing with us its forlorn center, and a single gap showing us the way out.

The locals could not afford both, and, given a choice, we knew they would rather be separated from their brass amid the many delights of the Circus than the subtler pleasures of our poor show.

Now that all of Baker’s Circus was within the enclosure, the hustle and bustle began. Men, women and children of all sizes descended from their wagons. Accompanied by a chorus of shouts and exhortations, ramps were laid up, canvas and rope tossed down, poles handed out. A solitary lion, somnolent in his cage, took little interest in the proceedings, just once summoning the energy for a prodigious yawn, but his head came up when the ramp of the largest van was lowered and the ponderous gray bulk of an aged elephant moved sedately down to the ground. His upraised trunk trumpeted a salute to the growing number of scruffy kids who had gathered outside the fence to gape in wide-eyed wonder at the horses, the lion, and now, marvel of marvels, an elephant. To us, his blast was the note of doom and a couple of the veterans of our company had already begun to dismantle the stage without bothering to wait for a word from the old man. They didn’t need to be told that we were moving on.

Father turned away from his gloomy survey of the Circus that was springing to life around us and gathered the full company before him as he perched on a keg at the edge of a now precariously supported stage. There was Mother and the baby, me and Eddie, my sister Carrie, Johnny Wilmore and Arthur Cleveland.

You can all see how it lies, Father said. There’s nowt for us here except empty pockets and humiliation now that Baker’s is here. We’d best push off and try our luck elsewhere. So, let’s get it packed up. The sooner we’re off, the better.

He had decided that we should head for the Potteries, Stoke or some such place. The show would travel by train, but there wasn’t enough money for anyone to ride along with it. We would have to walk.

Our belongings were packed in short order, for, in truth, we did not own much and were well used to leaving towns quickly, often at night after the close, so as not to waste an evening’s show in the next town. Here in Thorne we had barely had time to smooth the creases out of our backdrops and curtains. Now they were again folded and bundled along with everything else that was rolled, lashed, boxed and roped.

We made ready for our tramp. While all of this was going on, a few of the more inquisitive of the circus folk had wandered over to chat and commiserate, for they meant us no harm. One of them must have communicated our predicament to Mr. Baker himself and, soon after, the man himself appeared before my father to wish us well. When he heard that we all planned to walk, he became quite disturbed and insisted that he should pay for mother and the two youngest children to ride the train. Father was a proud man and seemed to be on the point of declining the offer, but a fierce glance from mother killed the words of refusal on his lips. He accepted the offer with as much stiff grace as he could muster, though the words came awkwardly as if his mouth was full of dust.

After we waved goodbye to the train, father led the way. Johnny Wilmore, Arthur Cleveland and myself trotted after him. Father never strolled anywhere, but always moved with the purpose of a man who has a score to settle. The three of us skipped and skedaddled to keep up with him. I was wearing nothing but galoshes on my feet and before long it began to rain, a steady moorland drizzle that, inch by inch, peeled the shoes off my feet. By the time father decided it was time to stop for the night at a lodging house run by an Irish widow, I was walking more or less barefoot with the tattered remains of my shoes hanging around my ankles and mud squelching between my toes.

Janey Beattie was the lady’s name, and I can barely say why her name clings to my memory after all these years, but it has never left me. She seemed quite old to me then, though she must have been not much older than 40. From the vantage of my present wisdom, 40 seems to be a woman’s prime, but to a boy of fifteen she seemed beyond the reach of youth’s recklessness and folly.

She shooed the men into her parlor and laid out some cold meat, cheese and bread that might have served better duty as a doorstop. Noticing my pitiable state, she ushered me into the scullery at the back of the house, stripping off my wet clothes with little thought for my modesty. She set about me with a pair of towels, coarse as rugs, and pummeled my flesh until it glowed. But as she moved to dry off my lower parts, I was mortified to find that my almost-manly member, far from hiding itself out of modesty, insisted on standing out rigid as a barber’s pole. I started to squeak out some incoherent apology and turn away, cheeks blazing at both ends, but she held me firm by the buttocks and stared at the shameful thing with cheery grin on her face. Mary, Mother of Jesus, will you look at that. I haven’t seen one of those in too many years, not since the night before my husband, God rest his soul, left to fight the Bloody Boers 20 years since and never came home to give me children to comfort me in my old age.

She glanced over her shoulder, but the chatter and clatter from the parlor told its own story. The fare was meager but the three men were making the most of it. She had left a jug of porter on the sideboard and Johnny Wilmore would have had his face in that long before he ever got to cracking his teeth on the stale cobs, and the others would have been close behind.

I imagined that I heard the creak of a footstep on the stair. The thought that, at any moment, father or one of the other men might find me there, bare- arsed and shamefully erect, propelled me back into my damp clothes with so much haste that I wound up with both feet in one trouser leg and went tumbling to the floor with my arse up in the air, still naked to the world. Our landlady began to giggle and could not seem to control herself, so she pressed her apron to her face until she could recover her composure. At long last I was dressed again, with me out of my damp rags once again and now draped in some old but sturdy clothes she pulled from a wardrobe and we made our way back downstairs.

All three men were still at the table, the pitcher drained and their tongues in full flow. I knew for a certainty that my embarrassment must be written across my face and I did not look their way, but they paid me no particular mind. I took a chair by the fire and soon their chatter faded into the growing night. I was shaken from a nodding sleep by my father’s hand on my arm. I stumbled back up those same stairs and rolled into the soft bed next to father. Sleep once again got the better of me and I knew nothing more until he was shaking me to get to the breakfast table before there was no more to be had.

Chapter 2

The rain had passed in the night and a stiff breeze had dried the road a little. So with my new boots, a relic of the widow’s husband, padded with three pairs of the man’s socks, I followed the others down the road to Stoke. Soon we all were prattling on about this and that, full of the hope that Stoke would prove a more prosperous pitch for us than had Thorne. The tramp passed easily enough and by noon we had found Mother and the little ones waiting for us in the station yard. Mother was taking her ease atop our various traveling bundles and the children played hopscotch in the dust of the yard. But Mother had not been idle. She had already scouted the town, found some spare ground with good prospects and was in no mood to let us rest. She pointed us in the right direction and strode off with hardly a word of greeting as we trudged on after her to the site of our newest palace of dreams.

We spent four weeks there and good weeks they were. The tin box was, by the end, stuffed tight as a Christmas turkey. The people of Stoke seemed to have been starved of entertainment of even the meagerest kind before we showed up. They could not get enough of us and I’m sure I saw a few of the same faces two or three nights in a row. Even if the play was the same, which was not often the case, we were in the habit of extemporizing to add a little local color. You could never be sure from one night to the next if your cue was exactly as it had been the night before.

If a particular play had the canvas bursting at the seams, with its excess of flash, bang, blood, smoke and tears resulting in an impressive pile of corpses at the final curtain, Father would decide that there was life in this one still. This would come as music to our ears, since it meant we would not have to paint a new set before the sun had barely risen enough to dry it, nor struggle by faint candlelight in the early hours to learn our lines.

But, after four weeks, we could see that we had milked that cow dry, and it was time for new pastures. We packed up once again and headed north. Small town by small town we finally washed up in the borough of Farnworth, not far from Bolton, in Lancashire. For a while we toured the various nettle-choked pastures and rubble-strewn spaces. Here traveling folk could settle themselves in peace and practice their trade in the villages that formed a scattered ring around the buzzing hive that was Bolton. But we always cast a favored eye on the ground in Farnworth. It was up close to the market with its constant throng of gawkers and curious passers-by to make a pitch at.

In due course Farnworth Market became our great stand-by to the neglect of all others. We would take root there from October until Easter, resurrecting a different drama every night except Thursday. On Thursdays I would ride the tram into Bolton and play the part of spectator at whatever drama was unfolding at the Theatre Royal. This was very much the Busman’s Holiday, for I was not there to enjoy the play but to borrow it, scribbling down as much of the plot and dialogue as I could in the dim light. Back under our home canvas, the rest of the crew would flesh out the skimpier parts with their own improvisations, adding a murder or two as a matter of principle. We would set to and paint the scenery to match and present the new show the following Monday. Our backdrops had witnessed so many dramas in quick succession that they could almost stand by themselves, so thick was the paint.

Johnny Wilmore's fondness for his ale showed no signs of abating as the months passed, but he was always on cue, line perfect, never missed a show. But the same could not be said of his drinking companion, our first violinist George Allsop. George did not handle his booze well and frequently didn't even make an appearance in the pit, claiming to be unwell. This proved to be a boon for our family's finances, since I would then step up to first violin, with its increased share of the takings. But when George did make it to the stage front, ready to scrape his bow, the notes that escaped from his violin often bore scant resemblance to the notes the rest of us were trying to play. For Father the last straw came when George, unsteady on his feet after too much fortification before the show, tripped over the music stand and fell flat on his face. No-one was too concerned over George himself. We felt sure he was feeling no pain. But underneath him lay a violin with a broken neck. The Old Man could not tolerate such wanton destruction of property that would cost him good money to replace, and George was encouraged to retire early from the orchestra as soon as he had his legs back under him and he could make his unsteady way back home. But now we needed a new violinist. There was little talent around Farnworth, but we had recently seen a rash of posters announcing the imminent arrival of another traveling show in Oldham, about 25 miles away. Of course we made sure these posters were removed almost as soon as they appeared, not wanting the competition. This other show was a musical revue, so there was every chance that there might be a violinist going spare who might be prepared to throw in his lot with us. I was dispatched by train and bus on a rainy Sunday afternoon to catch the matinee performance in the hope of spotting some likely talent. The show was no great shakes, to be honest, and there was no violinist to be found amid the musical dross, but up on the stage there was