West End Girls: The Real Lives, Loves and Friendships of 1940s Soho and Its Working Girls (10 page)

‘Look what I’ve got for us,’ she announced triumphantly. ‘Aren’t they gorgeous? I just couldn’t help it, they looked so sweet in the shop!’

One was black and the other white, and being still too young to be clipped, they were a mass of curls. She had already named them – Mimi and Fifi.

‘I thought that, what with the place looking so nice now, they’d add the finishing touch!’ she said. ‘Anyway, it’s nice to have animals about the place.’

I loved animals too, and we had a happy half-hour watching them while they cautiously explored. But they soon started to feel at home, and all their natural
joie de vivre
became apparent as they scudded about everywhere, shooting rugs from under them and jumping on to everything they could reach. Then one of them made a neat little puddle on the polished floor, and a measure of gloom stole over me as I realised the place wouldn’t be looking nice for much longer.

While we drank our tea and they continued dealing out destruction to every object they encountered, I wondered how Rabbits would have taken to this invasion. I guessed she wouldn’t have taken to it at all. In fact I had a feeling the ‘Rabbits Regime’ was rapidly coming to an end.

Thinking of this prompted me to ask Mae if she had had any more trouble from Rabbits.

‘Oh, didn’t I tell you?’ she replied, pausing in applying her lipstick. ‘She’s gone. Dead.’

I went cold. I remembered the knife in Mae’s handbag and my chest felt tight.

‘What did she die of?’ I asked, trying to sound casual but finding it difficult to speak.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said with complete indifference. She smoothed her lower lip with a finger. ‘Heart attack, I shouldn’t wonder.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Good riddance anyway.’

I never did find out what had actually happened to Rabbits. In the back of my mind I debated for a second or two whether Mae could really have had anything to do with her demise. It wasn’t likely, and besides, I was under Mae’s spell and could think no ill of her. Protected by my growing love for her, and her irresistible charisma, Mae probably knew that as far I was concerned, she could – metaphorically, if not literally – get away with murder.

If Mimi, Fifi and the coldly rendered death of Rabbits were the first signs that I was not, in fact, as in control as I thought, then much worse was to come. Even now I shudder at the recollection of that hectic first Saturday. There were other days like it, and many far worse, I suppose, but that one remains in my memory as a day of utter chaos. A combination of reasons made it so: the arrival of the dogs, the uneasy feelings about Rabbits’ death and the fact that I’d only just been congratulating myself that I could now handle my new job with efficiency, if not verve. Nevertheless, even without these considerations, Saturdays, I was to find, were always overwhelming, and the first one of them to hit me seemed like a tidal wave.

In the hurly-burly, my worries about my predecessor were forgotten, but my new-found confidence had taken an awful pasting. Had it not been for the dogs, things wouldn’t have been quite so bad, but with them, the tempo was beyond belief and I felt myself inwardly becoming a gibbering wreck.

We decided that for the time being, the only place for our new pets was the bedroom; that being the only door that could be more or less kept shut. Mae made them a bed with one of her fur coats in the corner. As it was mink, it should have been very comfortable, but the two dogs seemed to have a yen to get back to the pet shop (I can’t say I really blamed them). Every time someone opened the door, they shot out in a blur. I must have gone down those stairs to retrieve them as often as Mae did in the course of her business.

They created havoc in the bedroom, and after only a couple of hours, it looked as bad as it had on my first day there. The only thing to be said in the dogs’ favour was that they didn’t like men. When one arrived, they nearly always slunk back to their mink. There were exceptions to this rule: sometimes they disliked a man so much that they attacked his ankles while he was getting his money’s worth, which didn’t go down well.

Mimi, the black one, was always the ringleader.

‘Who’s my limb of Satan then?
Who is?
’ Mae would coo, holding her high in the air like a child. Mimi, getting a nice aerial view of the wreckage she had caused, would wag her tail happily.

Had anyone had the time to train them, they could have been turned into perfect pets, but we hadn’t the time. They were – and remained – completely untamed.

As I grew to know her better, I discovered that Mae thrived on chaos. It was characteristic of her that she should buy her two canine hoodlums on a Saturday, the busiest day of the week. It was the day on which every worker was keen to spend his hard-earned wages. It seemed that the whole of Soho’s male population was making its way up to Mae’s flat. The tramp of feet on the stairs was endless. When Mae picked up a man, others would watch where she went and follow. It was incredible. No time for tea breaks on a Saturday! There was a slight lull between five and six o’clock, when the afternoon crowds began to go back to the suburbs and the evening ones had not yet arrived. Even so, business went on at a steady gallop, the only difference being that for an hour or so, the waiting room was empty.

At other times, every chair was occupied. It looked like a doctor’s surgery, although the thick pall of smoke from nervously puffed cigarettes marred the effect. I felt more like a nurse than a maid as I stood courageously in the doorway saying, ‘Next, please.’ There was no time to feel embarrassed by this sea of strange faces; it was all far too brisk and clinical. By nine o’clock it was standing room only, and I began to wonder if some of the straps and belts I‘d found couldn’t be fixed to the ceiling for the men’s benefit as they jostled past each other.

Around ten thirty, Mae shouted to me from the bedroom, ‘Babs, quick! Run down and shut the front door, there’s a load of drunks coming along!’

With the desperate knowledge that I couldn’t handle a load of drunks lending wings to my feet, I flew down the two flights of stairs at top speed. I skidded in a large puddle halfway along the hall, grabbing the edge of the front door as I fell and ramming it shut a fraction of a second before the rowdy, singing mob came level. They began to kick the door and call me colourful names. Although I had heard the click of the Yale, I thought I’d better slip the bolt in at the bottom as well. As I straightened up from doing this, the flap of the letterbox was pushed open and two beady eyes peered in at me.

‘I can see you!’ said a beery voice.

This was followed by the sound of raucous laughter and more loud kicks as I went running back to my gentlemen in the waiting room to see if they were still behaving themselves. I was surprised to find that, by contrast to the lot downstairs, these seemed to be models of propriety. They all congratulated me warmly and were evidently relieved at my success. Cigarettes were offered from all directions and we fell to chatting in an amiable way.

Although the battering on the front door ended fairly soon, there were so many other drunks about that Mae decided we’d better leave it locked. Our little party in the waiting room gradually dwindled as, one by one, they were ministered to and, one by one, I accompanied them downstairs to lock up again behind them.

By about eleven thirty the last one had gone and Mae said wearily, ‘Put the kettle on, love, I think we’ve had enough for one day, don’t you?’

She looked exhausted and was leaning against the door, her face shiny with perspiration and all her make-up gone. As I filled the kettle I said, ‘Mae, you are dotty, why on earth do you do it? Why so many?’

She flopped on to a chair like a rag doll.

‘Oh, I dunno, love,’ she said in the same tired voice. ‘The poor sods are there and they want it. What can you do? How many did I do, anyway? I’ve lost count.’

She rested her chin in her hands and waited while I got out my notebook and started adding.

‘Seventy-two,’ I told her at last. ‘And you’ve made eighty-five pounds ten.’

‘Not bad, I suppose,’ she mumbled through an enormous yawn.

We both collapsed with our tea amongst the debris in the bedroom and kicked our shoes off. The dogs were at last curled up asleep and snoring in their glamorous bed. Mae and I rested in the tired companionship of old campaigners who have come successfully through a major battle.

I glanced around me at the mess. It looked like we had been vandalised. There had been no chance to tidy up between clients all day, but I was too tired to care. Then my eye caught the glitter of coins scattered on the rugs and tiles.

‘Lots of money on the floor,’ I observed lazily.

‘That’s for the sweeper,’ she said through another yawn. Then, looking at my questioning face, she added, ‘I mean you, you silly sod ! Always get a lot of change when I rush ’em in and out – falls out of their pockets when they take their trousers off.’

She was now lying sprawled on the bed, one leg and an arm hanging heavily over the edge. Her eyes were closed and a cigarette was smouldering, undisturbed, in the ashtray at her side.

I gazed at her in astonishment. Seventy-two men! And I had worried that eight or nine might kill her.

I thought, too, of all the money. In this one day, Mae had received what an ordinary girl in a fairly well-paid job would earn in months. It was a staggering thought. Even my tips for today came to about twelve pounds; add to that my wages – Mae had agreed five pounds for a Saturday – and ignoring the nubbins on the floor, and I realised with a shock that in one day I had earned what it would have taken me over three weeks to make at the studio.

I mulled over the past week. So far, fate had been kind enough not to send along a client I knew. I thought of my old boss, the little man from the grocery store opposite my bed-sitter, my landlord or – the most horrific thought of all – one of my relations. It didn’t make me feel easier when I told myself that they would be more embarrassed than me. With an average of three hundred men a week teeming in and out, I thought, an uncomfortable reunion was bound to happen sometime. But I was wrong; luckily for me, it never did.

Mae’s voice broke across my thoughts: ‘Let’s have another cuppa, shall we? Then we’ll buzz off.’

‘By the way,’ I said, ‘there’s a big puddle in the hall, and it’s not the dogs.’

‘Oh you’ll soon find our passageway’s a real little gents’ toilet,’ said Mae with a grin. She was beginning to rally. Then, changing the subject, she said – rather shyly, I thought – ‘I’m supposed to be meeting Tony tonight: well, round about one o’clock or so.’ She glanced at her watch.

‘Have you made up your mind about him, then?’ I asked.

‘No, not really. But he’s definitely got something – don’t know what it is, but I think I’ll have to find out.’ Then, after a pause, ‘You don’t feel like taking the dogs home with you tonight, do you?’

I had been ready for this. After only a week with Mae, I was beginning to understand her thought processes. From the moment she’d brought those dogs in, I knew it was only a matter of time before she tried to lumber me with them, though I hadn’t expected it to be so soon. But being in the jungle, I was learning its rules, the first one of which was ‘Protect Thyself’. I answered with what I hoped sounded like real regret:

‘Sorry, I really can’t. My landlord doesn’t allow animals.’

‘Ah well,’ she answered, quite unperturbed, ‘I can put them in Tony’s car while we’re in the club. He won’t mind.’

The last job of the day was to empty the bin by the side of the bed into which the tissues and neatly knotted used condoms were thrown. I brought in a newspaper and opened it out on the floor; Mae tipped the bin out on to it. The crackling of the newspaper woke the dogs and they came bounding over to see what was going on. Mimi darted in, snatched up a rubber that was lying near the edge and ran off with it. Fifi thought this was great fun, so she grabbed the other end and started a tug-of-war. Mae and I watched, appalled. The rubber stretched and stretched, and then the fiendish Mimi suddenly let go. Fifi got such a thwack on the nose that she yelped back to the mink and sat there blinking, with watering eyes. She never touched Durex after that, and ran whenever she caught sight of one. Mimi, on the other hand, seemed to have become enamoured of them, and was almost never without one in her mouth. If I tried to remove it, she would attempt to play the same trick on me as she had on Mimi. I didn’t respond.

We clipped the leads on to the dogs, collected our things together and put on our shoes.

‘I don’t know about you,’ I said, ‘but
my
feet are killing me tonight!’

‘Cheeky sod!’ gurgled Mae, giving me a playful punch. ‘Come on, you soppy ’a’porth, let’s go.’ Then her face changed, as something dreamy came into it. ‘It’s time for Tony.’

Nine

On Monday, Mae arrived with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, full of the news that she and Tony had spent the whole of Sunday in bed together.

‘Ooh, he’s lovely, Babs! You’d like him.’

I wondered how she could see sex with any man as special and romantic when she spent her life on a virtual conveyor belt of men.