The Road to Cromer Pier by Martin Gore - Book Tour
The Road
to Cromer Pier
Janet’s first love arrives out of the blue
after forty years. Those were simpler times for them both. Sunny childhood
beach holidays, fish and chips and big copper pennies clunking into one armed
bandits.
The Wells family has run the Cromer Pier
Summertime Special Show for generations. But it’s now 2009 and the recession is
biting hard. Owner Janet Wells and daughter Karen are facing an uncertain
future. The show must go on, and Janet gambles on a fading talent show star.
But both the star and the other cast members have their demons. This is a story
of love, loyalty and luvvies. The road to Cromer Pier might be the end of their
careers, or it might just be a new beginning.
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Excerpt
He
reached the seafront and saw the pier being buffeted by big waves crashing
against the shore. He really loved Cromer on days like this, when an
irresistible force of nature did battle with the pier as it had for over a
century.
Pulling
his coat tightly around him, he headed for the pier box office. Fortunately, he
wouldn’t need to venture to the theatre itself. Stuck out into the North Sea, it
was a fabulous tribute to Victorian engineering.
Instead,
he had only to join Janet in her small room tucked away behind the box office
at the front of the pier.
He
pushed the door open and had to close it forcibly behind him. Betty, the Box
Office Manager, smiled at his obvious discomfort.
‘Good
morning, Mr Westley, turned out nice again?’
Les
had used the George Formby line quite often himself, so the irony wasn’t lost
on him.
‘Good
morning to you, Betty. I assume Mrs Wells is punctual as always?’
‘On
the dot, Mr Westley. Whereas you are reliably 15 minutes late, as always. Black
coffee?’
‘Thanks.
Make it strong. I rather think that I’ll need it. What mood is she in?’
Betty
thought for a moment, sprinkling coffee into a genuine Pier Theatre mug.
‘Rather
like the weather, a deep depression with storms gathering in strength and
augmented by occasional thunder and lightning.’
She
smiled as she handed over the coffee. He grimaced.
‘Bugger
it. Here goes then. I’m going in.’
As
he entered, Janet was on the telephone. She smiled thinly and motioned him to
sit. He sipped his coffee as she rolled her eyes.
She
mouthed ‘Barry De Longue’ and grimaced. Les laughed. An agent from hell our Mr
De Longue, he thought. He sipped his coffee and leafed through the local paper.
Another hotel had gone under.
Eventually
she got the pushy Mr De Longue off the line, and smiled.
‘Good
morning, Leslie. Is it me or is the world about to end?’
‘Well,
looking at the news, you might think that, Janet. You’ve seen the latest?
Another of our hotels bites the dust.’
He
pushed the paper across to her.
‘Yes.
I saw it. It’s all a bit scary. And our figures don’t make good reading either.
I don’t think the bank will be overjoyed.’
‘They’ll
be OK. You’ve been a customer for years. It’s a one season blip.’
‘Well
I’d hope so but in this climate, who knows?’
‘Christmas
show bookings OK?’
‘They’ve
been better. Nobody wants to spend any money right now. The one night shows are
being affected, too. Hotels are reporting a drop in weekend trade. It’s time to
batten down the hatches.’
Oh
dear, thought Les. This didn’t sound too good.
‘I’ve
cut the hours of the office staff, and let one of the cleaners go. It went down
well in the current job climate as you can imagine but I need to get the costs
down over the winter.’
Les
looked across at Janet. She was a very calculating individual not given to
precipitous action, so the fact she had acted so swiftly indicated that she had
thought things through already. Let’s get this over with, he decided.
‘So
how do you see things for next year?’
She
paused. Les sensed the worst.
‘Well
that’s what we need to discuss. This isn’t going to be an easy conversation.
I’ve been over the figures for last season in detail. I’ve taken a salary cut
of five percent, and I’m asking for you to do likewise.’
Les
paused mid-sip, and set his coffee cup down.
‘Good
grief. You don’t beat about the bush, do you?’
Janet
leaned forward, a look of concern on her face.
‘I
know it’s a lot to ask, but if I can show some savings, it will make things
easier with the bank. I’m asking all of the creatives on the team for the same
sacrifice. I’m not going to ask anyone to do what I’m not prepared to.’
Les
slumped back in his chair. The money didn’t really matter that much to him as a
single bloke, and his other sources of income, mainly on the cruise ships,
seemed sound, at least for now. He saw a look that he had not seen in Janet
before. She seemed genuinely frightened. The storm on the pier outside would
pass, but the greater financial storm the world was facing would take much
longer to abate. There had already been bigger casualties than the Cromer Pier
Theatre Company.
‘You’re
overreacting, Janet. Things will blow over by the spring. There are too many
fat cats with too much to lose.’
Janet
had anticipated this reaction. She pushed the newspaper back across the table.
‘That’s
what Jim Collins said to me last month, and now his hotel and livelihood are
gone. Are you that confident? Really?’
He
considered the position, and Janet sat back sipping her tea from her china mug.
Her own special cup. She was content to let him think.
Les pondered.
This was not the conversation he had expected. He quietly chided himself for
not drawing all of the strands of the situation together as clearly she had.
What planet were you on, old son?
He
thought about playing for time. It would have been easy to stall her, but they
would have to plan the show very carefully if they wanted to keep up the
standard they had set on less money, and that would take time. He responded in
a calm and measured voice, which still had more than a trace of his Birmingham
accent.
‘Well,
you’ve certainly put me on the spot.’
He
paused to reflect. Janet sat back in her chair sipping her tea, her face
implacable. He broke the silence, as she clearly had no intention of doing so.
‘Look,
I think I can go with it, just as a one off. I see your predicament. But what
does this do for the budget for the show? Are you seriously proposing to cut
that by five percent, too?’
Janet
shrugged, arms folded.
‘Sadly,
yes, I am. I’m going to need to demonstrate that I’ve eliminated the trading
loss. The maths is easy to explain if you look at this spreadsheet.’
She
pushed a sheet of figures across the table. He pushed it back. He’d never
really liked numbers.
‘No
worries, Janet. I’ll take your word for it. If it will do the trick then I’m in.’
Janet
smiled, but her eyes looked tired. She hadn’t had much sleep recently.
‘I
think it will. But even then the bank might counter that ticket sales could
fall again next year. I really can’t predict how this will play out.’
Les
shook his head. Don’t push your luck, Janet, he thought. He picked his words
with care, sensing that he had capitulated a little too quickly.
‘But
we’ve always maintained that unless we offered a West End standard show, the
brand would suffer. You, of all people, have said that season after season.
It’s why we’re still here and the others aren’t.’
‘Yes.
I know I did. And I haven’t changed my opinion. But we dare not overcommit
after this season. We need to consolidate through this, however long it lasts.
If banks are going under, what does that say for the rest of us?’
Les
nodded quietly, still adjusting to the harsh reality of the situation. He began
to pick his way through the implications.
‘So
you’re going to renew the second year headline acts and get them down five
percent too? What about Karen?’
‘Karen
has agreed. She is family so she understands. But I fear you’re going to have
to sacrifice Ron and Mike altogether, great though they are. They will simply
cost too much. That’s your decision, of course.’
Now
this was a shock. Les slumped back in his chair.
‘My
God, that will go down well. They expected another season at least before getting
rotated out. That’s what we usually do.’
‘Yes.
I know that’s what we normally do. I’ll break it to them if you like. I know
they’re friends of yours. It’s only fair.’
She
sipped her tea once more. He shrugged and finally smiled grimly.
She
opened the old tin on the corner of her desk, an heirloom of her father’s.
‘Biscuit?’
She
smiled, as if relieved that the difficult conversation was done. Negotiating
with friends was always difficult, and Les counted both as a friend and a hired
employee.
Les
took a cookie and nibbled it. He shook his head, sensing that she’d mugged him.
‘So,
have you got any good news this morning? I’m thinking of taking a one-way walk
down the pier.’
Janet
laughed. Once Les started cracking jokes again, you knew he was on board,
however reluctantly. She took out a letter and pushed it across the table.
‘Well,
it depends what you think of this lady.’
The
letter was from Frank Gilbert Promotions, a London-based agent, boasting a few
big names. The name of the artist being promoted surprised him. He dismissed
it, pushing the paper back across the desk.
‘You
have to be joking, Janet. We don’t have the money to shop at Harrods. Now more
than ever.’
Janet
smiled. She handed over a printed copy of the email she’d received earlier that
morning.
‘Take
a look at that. Her star has passed its zenith. She’s been dropped by the
record company and has had a bit of dodgy publicity recently. Hit a reporter
outside a nightclub apparently, if you believe the tabloids.’
Les
read the email and looked up.
‘Bloody
hell, she’ll do the season for that? She must be desperate.’
‘Or
maybe Frank knows the score.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning
that this is going to be a bloody awful market in which to be unemployed, and
Frank knows it. He’s perfectly capable of taking his luvvies down a peg or two.
Three months of guaranteed work here looks attractive at the best of times.’
‘And
in this climate, the bird in the hand–’
‘Exactly.’
‘So,
if I read you correctly, you are saying that I need to build a show around the
money left over after we’ve hired her?
‘Pretty
much. Yes.’
‘That’s
a pretty shitty job.’
‘But
someone has to do it. In this case, you and I.’
Janet
shrugged and smiled. They’d been together too long for hidden agendas, and
besides, Les had seen enough crises in his time in this business. He was not
one to panic.
Comment
This
is from an early chapter, where we meet two central characters. Janet Wells,
Proprietor of Cromer Pier Theatre, and Les Westley, comedian and director of
the Summertime Special Show.
It
starts on a stormy morning in Cromer in October 2008, the height of the global
recession. Anyone who knows Cromer loves it on wild mornings like that, of
which there are quite a few. The waves crashing over the seawall, and the smell
of the sea ever present.
Janet
and Les are employer and employee, but are also long standing friends, forged when
Janet’s father Jack died suddenly, and she had to take over. Les became
director as a consequence. The personal bonds between the two are akin to that
of husband and wife. Janet is driven and tough, but the toughness is skin deep.
A single parent in the seventies she brought up her daughter Karen alone. Karen
is Dance Captain in the show, which is as such both their life’s work and their
livelihoods.
Les
has a past too, and their have been many tears in the life of this otherwise
lovable clown. At his darkest hours Jack Wells had given him a chance, and he
had never forgotten that. He’d come to love Cromer and the North Norfolk coast,
and the Summertime Special Show. Fiercely loyal, with an eye for talent, Les
can be affable and funny, but acerbic and critical as a director needs to be at
times. He’s a creative talent, but not necessarily the most organised of
people.
The
maelstrom of the recession makes Janet fearful of the future, and in this
excerpt she shares the position with Les. He recognises the cold fear that Janet
is feeling, the fear of losing everything they have worked for. The weather
outside is a metaphor for their feelings.
I
wanted to open up the story in an evocative setting, and both set the scene for
the reader and draw out the close relationship between the two lead characters.
Author
Bio
I am a 61 year old Accountant who semi-retired to explore my love
of creative writing. In my career I held Board level jobs for over twenty five
years, in private, public and third sector organisations. I was born in
Coventry, a city then dominated by the car industry and high volume
manufacturing. Jaguar, Triumph, Talbot, Rolls Royce, Courtaulds, Massey
Ferguson were the major employers, to name but a few.
When I was nine year’s old I told my long suffering mother that as I liked English composition and drama I was going to be a Playwright. She told me that I should work hard at school and get a proper job. She was right of course.
I started as an Office Junior at Jaguar in 1973 at eleven pounds sixty four a week. I thus grew up in the strike torn, class divided seventies. My first career ended in 2015, when I semi retired as Director of Corporate services at Humberside Probation. My second career, as a Non Executive Director, is great as it has allowed me free time to travel and indulge my passion for writing, both in novels and for theatre.
The opportunity to rekindle my interest in writing came in 2009, when I wrote my first pantomime, Cinderella, for my home group, the Walkington Pantomime Players. I have now written eight. I love theatre, particularly musical theatre, and completed the Hull Truck Theatre Playwrite course in 2010. My first play, a comedy called He's Behind You, had its first highly successful showing in January 2016, so I intend to move forward in all three creative areas.
Pen Pals was my first novel, but a second, The Road to Cromer Pier, will be released in the Summer of 2019.
When I was nine year’s old I told my long suffering mother that as I liked English composition and drama I was going to be a Playwright. She told me that I should work hard at school and get a proper job. She was right of course.
I started as an Office Junior at Jaguar in 1973 at eleven pounds sixty four a week. I thus grew up in the strike torn, class divided seventies. My first career ended in 2015, when I semi retired as Director of Corporate services at Humberside Probation. My second career, as a Non Executive Director, is great as it has allowed me free time to travel and indulge my passion for writing, both in novels and for theatre.
The opportunity to rekindle my interest in writing came in 2009, when I wrote my first pantomime, Cinderella, for my home group, the Walkington Pantomime Players. I have now written eight. I love theatre, particularly musical theatre, and completed the Hull Truck Theatre Playwrite course in 2010. My first play, a comedy called He's Behind You, had its first highly successful showing in January 2016, so I intend to move forward in all three creative areas.
Pen Pals was my first novel, but a second, The Road to Cromer Pier, will be released in the Summer of 2019.
I’m an old fashioned writer I guess. I want you to laugh and to cry. I want you to believe in my characters, and feel that my stories have a beginning, a middle, and a satisfactory ending.
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