Colonel Walter Irvine was not accustomed to having visitors. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had dropped by Beach Cottage, his cosy bachelor abode overlooking Shellsand Bay. It was a small two-up-two-down with a tiny kitchen and bathroom tacked on. Those had been Peter’s handiwork. Very good at design and building, was Peter.
Walter had already tidied up the shabby sitting room in readiness for his visitors, now he was looking at the uneven walls of the narrow and gloomy hall. How long had it been since he’d painted them in that magnolia eggshell? He thought for a moment. It must have been soon after he’d lost Peter. Goodness – forty years ago. Could it really have been that long? He reached up and brushed a cobweb from one of the numerous photographs of his Glorious Glosters. Not many of the boys left now. He straightened his shiny regimental tie and gave them a smart salute.
‘I’m on parade today, chaps. Got a visitor. Save the Pavilions, what. Tell you about the battle plan once briefed.’
Turning away from his old comrades, he marched into the kitchen. He’d no sooner started to lay out a tray of two cups and saucers when there came a knock at the door.
‘Come in, come in. Welcome to Beach Cottage.’
His visitor had a kind, pretty face and introduced herself as Helen Merrifield. Walter recognised her from around the village and seemed to recall that she had moved to Pendruggan quite recently.
‘Am I right in thinking you are new to these parts, my dear?’ he asked, ushering her in.
‘Yes’, Helen replied. ‘I came from London after my husband and I divorced. Fresh start.’
‘Ah yes, the big metrollops! You probably wouldn’t guess it now, but I hail from London myself. St John’s Wood. But Cornwall feeds something in the soul, don’t you find?’
‘I couldn’t agree more. I feel like I’ve found my spiritual home.’
She followed him into the kitchen where he passed her the cups for their tea and some ginger nuts and fig rolls to arrange on a patterned plate. They both settled in front of the fire in the sitting room. They chatted easily until the Colonel set down his cup and said, ‘I don’t think you’ve come just to humour an old man, have you, my dear?’
‘Well, no, not quite,’ said Helen. ‘As you know, Colonel Irvine, the council are planning to sell the Pavilions to a large coffee chain. Many people in the area feel that this shouldn’t be allowed to happen and we’re mobilising strong opposition to the plans. But we’re on the back foot rather, and time isn’t on our side.’
The Colonel nodded, encouraging her to continue.
‘We’ve come across something that might just make all the difference to our campaign to prevent the sale going ahead. And that something is you.’
‘Me, dear girl?’
‘You were the man who opened the theatre and ran it, weren’t you?’
For a moment the Colonel seemed engrossed in picking at some invisible fluff on his check trousers, but eventually he looked Helen in the eye, and with some pride, replied, ‘I was.’
‘You were a performer as well as theatre manager?’
‘Indeed. Me and my alter ego – Colonel Stick. I created him during my time in Korea. I was barely out of my teens when I was called up for National Service; drew the short straw and got sent off to fight. Terrible times.’ Walter shook his head, then focused his gaze on an old photograph propped on the mantelpiece. It featured a good-looking man in wellies with one foot resting on a garden spade and a cup of tea raised to the camera. ‘To liven things up, my friend Peter and I and several of the other chaps formed an entertainment corps. We all needed to take our minds off the horrors that the war was inflicting on us, so we’d put on plays and musical revues. Colonel Stick was my contribution – a parody of some of those blustering army major types. It made the lads laugh, and laughter was something we desperately needed back then.’
Helen could see that they were stirring painful memories: ‘We found a photo of you and Max Miller on the opening night of the Pavilions.’ She reached in to her handbag and fished out a plastic document case.
‘Don’t bother with that, dear girl.’ The Colonel patted her hand and rose creakily to his feet. ‘I’ve got the original here.’ He went out into the hallway and opened the door to the dining room. It was so cold in there, it almost took her breath away. ‘Do excuse the mess. I use this room as my office but never seem to get things straight.’
On the old table in the centre of the room were boxes and boxes tied up with string or falling apart where old sellotape had yellowed and lost its stickability. Next to the boxes were piles of letters, theatre programmes and photos. Some had spilled onto the threadbare carpet.
The Colonel indicated the wall to the right. ‘There you are. Opening night.’
Surrounding the rusty and empty Victorian grate, were more than thirty framed photographs of a young and extremely dashing Walter with various major stars of the fifties and sixties. Helen noticed that in many of the pictures, posing alongside Walter was another handsome young man, the same one from the photograph next door. In one image, taken in a garden, he had his foot on a spade and a cup of tea in his hand. The Colonel pointed; in the middle was the picture they were looking for.
‘Max was a marvellous fellow. He fought in the First World War and entertained us in the Second. He took me under his wing when I was a young assistant stage manager, taught me everything there was to know about performing, about respecting talent and about being generous as a performer. I finished my National Service in 1952 and when I got home, I went to see him backstage at the Hackney Empire, and he took me on again. For a couple of years I honed my craft and performed up and down the country, but I really loved the whole world of the theatre, not just being on stage. When I spotted the advertisement in The Stage listing vacancies at a new theatre in Cornwall, Max was the one who encouraged me. He thought I had enough “chutzpah” to go for the top job as theatre manager, even though I was still only twenty-five. “Aim low, you can’t miss. Aim high and the sky’s the limit,” he told me. Anyway, I came down here and got the job. Later, I found out that he’d pulled a few strings on my behalf and promised he’d top the bill on the opening night as long as they gave me the job.’
‘That’s amazing!’ said Helen, completely caught up in the story. ‘But this is marvellous. No one could let the theatre close now. You are its star.’
The Colonel gave a sad smile. ‘I’m eighty-seven, my dear. Who would be interested in me?’
‘Colonel, we’ve heard rumours of a film archive – a collection of home movies that you made featuring various actors and actresses of the period. Can you tell me about that – is it true?’
The change that came over the Colonel was instant. His friendly face turned pale and he stammered out a reply: ‘I can’t think what you are talking about, my dear.’
‘But, Colonel, our local historian, Piran Ambrose, read somewhere that—’
The Colonel’s tone was polite, but it had taken on a distinctly frosty edge: ‘I can assure you, there is no such thing – and I should know. Now, please excuse me, I find visitors terribly draining and would be grateful if we could draw this meeting to a close.’
‘But—’
The Colonel was already on his feet and off to the hallway, retrieving her jacket and light cotton Liberty scarf, a present from Penny, from the old-fashioned hat stand by the cottage door.
‘Please, Mrs Merrifield …’ the Colonel’s steady gaze met her own and Helen thought that she detected more than brusqueness in his face. Sadness? Regret? ‘I am an old man and talking of the past tires me. I don’t mean to be rude, but I would prefer it if you would leave now.’
‘Of course, Colonel. I’m sorry to have tired you. Thank you for taking the time to see me.’
The Colonel bade her farewell and Helen stood on the doorstep for a moment as the front door closed, politely, in her face.
What have I done? she thought. There’s a mystery here. Wait until I tell Piran!
*
Later that evening, resting her legs on Piran’s lap as they lounged on Helen’s comfy sofa in Gull’s Cry cottage, Helen recounted her visit with the Colonel.
‘Mmm,’ Piran mulled, as he drank his pot of Cornish Rattler cider. ‘Sounds like you ’it a raw nerve there.’
‘That’s what I thought. What do you suppose it could be?’
‘How would I know?’
‘I noticed that in a lot of the other pictures of the Colonel at the Pavilions, he was with another man. Perhaps if I could find out who he is and get in contact with him, he might be able to shed some light on the whole film archive thing.’
Piran nodded. ‘There’s more than one reference to it in the records, so it definitely exists, regardless of what the old boy might say. I’ll see what more I can find in the archives. As if I didn’t ’ave enough to do – bloody Pavilions!’
‘Oh, put a sock in it, you old grumbler. You’re interest is piqued – I can always tell, you get that look in your eye.’
‘Rubbish.’
Helen stretched over and picked up her iPad from the side table. Piran did the same with his own that has burrowed down behind one of the cushions on the sofa. For the rest of the evening, they must have looked at hundreds of websites relating to the theatre world, many of them run by enthusiasts and featuring plenty of old photographs. There were familiar faces, such as Max Wall and Arthur Askey, and others that Helen had never heard of.
‘Blimey, ever heard of Wilson, Keppel and Betty? They were huge in the thirties and forties.’
Piran frowned, ‘What are you wittering on about now, woman?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ she sighed, ready to give up on the seemingly fruitless search. ‘Plenty of pictures of the Colonel, but none of the other chap.’ She yawned.
‘Hang on a minute,’ said Piran. ‘What’s this?’
Helen leaned over to see what he was looking at. On the screen was a picture of the Colonel alongside another man. It was definitely the man she had seen in the photographs at the Colonel’s house. The caption underneath read:
Theatre manager Walter Irvine and director Peter Winship celebrate the successful opening of Hats Off, Trevay!
Helen grinned like a Cheshire cat. ‘Bingo!’
*
The next morning, Helen padded downstairs to make a pot of coffee and spotted a letter on her doormat. She opened it and found a neat handwritten note:
Mr Walter Irvine
Beach Cottage
Shellsand Bay
Dear Mrs Merrifield
Please excuse my unforgivable rudeness yesterday. I fear I am becoming a crotchety old man.
I can’t help you with your other enquiry, but the Pavilions mean more to me that I can adequately express. I’ll do anything I can to assist.
Yours very sincerely
Walter Irvine (a.k.a. Colonel Stick)
*
Brooke was curled up on the sofa in her flat, nursing a gin and tonic and a bad case of self-pity. She was trying to watch the news but the endless stories of soaring crime rates and rising house prices made her feel much much worse.
Milo had been as good as his word. In the next day’s post she had received a recorded letter from Café Au Lait’s legal team, explaining that they would not be moving forward with the contract and citing grossly unprofessional behaviour as the cause. In her place, the newspapers crowed, CAL had signed up a pneumatic ‘glamour model’ who was looking to change her image.
Despite her many voicemail messages and texts, trying to explain what had really happened, she’d seen neither hide nor hair of Bob in the last couple of weeks. Until this morning, when she’d opened her newspaper to find photographs of him with his new girlfriend, a beautiful and bright sports presenter with a satellite TV channel.
So here she was: a stinking cold, no job, no agent, no boyfriend and no prospects.
Brooke got up and went to the kitchen to pour herself another gin and tonic. As she came back into the lounge, a shot of the Pavilions filled the television screen. She reached for the remote and turned the sound up.
… It may look like any other forgotten seaside theatre, but down here in Trevay the curtain is rising on an extraordinary tale.
The Pavilions made way for a faded photograph of Colonel Irvine, the camera slowly pulling away to reveal Max Miller standing next to him.
Walter Irvine, seen here with comic legend Max Miller, has been keeping a secret. He knows more about this old building than anyone else alive.
Cut to a shot of Colonel Irvine, walking along the headland to the theatre, swinging his stick jauntily, followed by a close-up of him in his dressing room.
‘My God! It’s him!’ Brooke spoke aloud to no one. ‘That’s the dressing room he showed me.’
‘Colonel, what does this place mean to you?’
‘A great deal. I ran it for over two decades and during that time we had the cream of British theatre and light entertainment through these doors …’
‘But now you are fighting to save it. Why?’
‘Because the last thing Trevay needs is another coffee shop …’
As his short speech drew to a close the Colonel raised his voice and banged his ubiquitous stick loudly on the floor. Watching him, Brooke laughed, but it died on her lips as the faces of Rupert Heligan and Michael Woodbine filled the screen. The very sight of the men from CAL made her feel physically sick.
Rupert was talking in his smooth, oily tones:
‘Café Au Lait is committed to bringing jobs to Trevay while offering visitors a place of quality in which to relax. The Pavilions is a great old building, but it’s had its time as a theatre. Councillor Chris Bedford has been most helpful in getting our plans as far as he has and he and I feel the people of Trevay will be very pleased with what we’ll bring to the town. I’m a family man with family values and that’s what Café Au Lait stands for too.’
Brooke snapped the television off. Family values? The man was a sexual predator and a ruthless conniving shark. Thanks to Rupert Heligan and his cronies, she was out of a job and her career prospects were in ruins – and now he was going to wreck the Pavilions too, and break an old man’s heart in the process. Somehow, he had to be stopped. She was damned if Café Au Lait and that cretinous councillor were going to get away with their underhand schemes. First thing in the morning she was going to get herself down to Trevay and join the campaign to save the Pavilions. Milo James might think he’d put paid to her, but he was about to find out that Brooke Lynne could still command a headline or two.
Her head cold and self-pity vanished and she enjoyed the best night’s sleep she’d had in ages.