This Bulldog Bites – Excerpt 1 – Malcolm Marsh

This Bulldog Bites –

Introduction

The tale that I am about to relate, was told to me many years ago, while I was on holiday in Majorca. Several versions of the same story were related to me by people who had been guests at the hotel the previous week before my arrival. On this basis and this alone, I believe the tale will make an entertaining diversion. Due to the nature of the tale, I thought it prudent to change the names of the protagonists, but not of the events that took place at the time.

Ivy Danvers began her life as plain Ivy Smith, her Father worked as a porter at Smithfield Market, her Mother took in washing. The family were not affluent but Ivy and her younger siblings were well fed and content.

Like most working folk in the East end of London, her parents liked a drink and a good old knees up, the young Ivy loved this too, and could always be found performing outside the pub with her siblings in toe, whilst her parents were inside drinking.

Ivy was no great beauty, but what she lacked in looks she made up with personality and a naïve but cheeky charm. The years passed by and a slightly older and wiser Ivy landed a job in the chorus of a West End show. A far cry from her debut performance outside the Dog and Duck in the East End.

It didn’t take Ivy long to build a circle of friends among the other girls in the chorus, many of them were from backgrounds not so dissimilar to her own. Daphne, one of her close friends, asked Ivy if she would mind going out on a date with her, her Beau was an officer in the Guards, and he had a friend who had shown more than a passing interest in the lovely Ivy.