Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [112]
Even if he hadn’t been standing outside a theatre, most people would look at him and know that he was connected with the stage, Francine acknowledged. His clothes, his manner, and yes, his good looks as well were all somehow larger than life. He had been calling himself ‘West End show producer’ when she had first met him. She had been as green as grass, anxious to impress and please, anxious to be something more than a girl from the chorus who could sing, but vulnerable about her ability to make it big. Of course, Con had sensed that vulnerability. That was what men like him specialised in, attracting the vulnerable to them like moths to a flame. She had been totally taken in by him and by his talk of making her a success on the London stage. She had been such a fool, but she knew better now, Hollywood hadn’t just provided her with somewhere to escape to, it had taken her naïvety and beaten it into awareness. Con was, as the saying went, flash and foolish, all show and no substance, handsome on the outside, but with nothing behind that façade except hollow emptiness. It amused her to see the telltale way in which his eyes widened slightly as he took in her polished appearance. Hollywood had ‘made over’ the girl who had known nothing whatsoever about how to dress or present herself. But not even Hollywood had been able to remould her completely into its preferred image of a Hollywood star in the making. Francine preferred cool elegance to lush sexuality, which was why she was wearing a smart coat and a matching hat, the coat open over a toning cashmere sweater and a slim-fitting brown tweed skirt. New clothes she had bought in New York before sailing home. In Hollywood you never knew who you might bump into, which was why you learned quickly to dress your best.
No city on earth could rival New York for the variety of its affordable and stylish women’s clothing, least of all perhaps a war-ready city like Liverpool, and Francine’s oatmeal tweed coat with its dark mink collar had already caused a lot of envious female looks to be directed her way.
She could see Con assessing her, his gaze, he being the man he was, lingering on the curve of her breasts beneath the cashmere. No doubt he was comparing her appearance now – her hair sleekly styled, and her clothes a perfect fit – with the teenager he had known in her ill-fitting clothes and with her untidy tangle of wild curls.
Being Con, though, he wasn’t likely to acknowledge that change, and she wasn’t surprised when he didn’t, attempting instead a casual, ‘I thought you were in America.’
‘I was,’ she agreed. ‘I was working with Gracie Fields and she wanted to come home.’ No harm in letting him know she was working with one of the world’s top names.
‘Aye? Well, I’m putting on a new review if you’re looking for work.’
Francine was hard put not to laugh. Did he really think she was fool enough to fall for that a second time?
‘I’ve already signed on with ENSA,’ she told him calmly, ‘and in fact I’d better go otherwise I’m going to be late for rehearsal.’
‘ENSA? You wouldn’t catch me wasting time on that. You’re a fool to come back. It’s America where the money is, not entertaining the troops.’
A girl plastered in makeup, beneath which Francine suspected she couldn’t be a day over fourteen, came tottering out of the theatre behind Con to put her hand possessively on his arm and glower at Francine.
Francine felt sorry for her and smiled at her, despite her hostility.
‘Another of Mrs Friar’s nieces?’ she asked Con drily whilst the girl pouted and scowled and Con’s handsome face turned an unhandsome shade of dark red. Not that he would be angered by her comment; Con didn’t have the backbone to be angry about anything.
‘Leave it out, Frankie,’ he muttered, trying to step closer to her, only to be yanked back by his companion. ‘She’s just one of the girls out of the show.’
Like she had been, and probably