West End Girls: The Real Lives, Loves and Friendships of 1940s Soho and Its Working Girls (2 page)

When I was nearly eighteen, the headmaster sent for me and asked what my plans were. I told him I must somehow find a job. He seemed upset: he felt I should stay on long enough to get a teaching diploma. He even suggested it might help if he had a talk with my grandmother.

‘I would be able to explain to her,’ he said, ‘that there are various further grants available to students who I feel are sufficiently promising – private grants, you understand, ’ he added confidentially.

If there has been one burning, all-pervading ambition in my life that has never varied, never flagged, it is that before I die, I will paint the perfect picture. I was tempted by his offer, but I had the pride and longing for independence of those who have very little else. It was a difficult decision for me to make, but that pride won in the end.

‘You have been very kind,’ I said. ‘I’m more than grateful, but the thought of accepting any more charity makes me feel quite ill. I can’t do it.’

He was an understanding man; he realised how I felt and that was that.

And so, during my nineteenth year, I left art school. It had taught me so much. I knew the shape and disposition of every bone, muscle and vein of
Homo sapiens
and most other animals; I knew perspective in all its forms; I knew historic architecture; I was conversant with the lives and works of the great artists and their techniques. But the war had just ended and I realised that, with continuing austerity, the last thing England needed at that moment was an aspiring artist with no knowledge of the world.

So, predictably, my first job had little to do with art. It was in the darkroom of a photographic firm, and I found the work repetitive and lonely. I tried again: this time at the National Film Library, which was, again, not for me. Then – about a year after the war had ended – people began to want pretty things around them once more. I took the opportunity to improve my lot, and found a job in a studio that had just started painting flowers, birds and such things on lampshades and other articles. They had begun in a very small way and I think I was only their second employee. It was still certainly a very far cry from my dreams of becoming a great painter, but using a brush for eight hours every day made it become almost a part of my body and taught me a dexterity and fluidity whose value I have since come to recognise.

So far, nothing had diminished the fascination Soho held for me. I had even contrived for all my jobs to be nearby, and I snatched every chance to get closer. Most of my wages went to my grandmother, so as a necessary economy, I always took sandwiches for lunch. This proved to be a happy arrangement, for it gave me plenty of time during my lunch hour to explore Soho’s perimeter. This delighted me, and the temptation to delve into Soho itself grew. Still, I did not dare to actually do so, as my grandmother seemed to have an uncanny ability to know everything I did – a sort of third eye that hovered over me wherever I went.

I knew Soho’s border formed a rectangle and that walking right round it, you covered about two miles. On the northern edge was Oxford Street, on the west, Regent Street; the southern side consisted of Piccadilly Circus, Coventry Street, Leicester Square and Cranbourn Street and the eastern boundary was formed by the Charing Cross Road.

For me, the wonders of this two-mile circuit never palled. Oxford Street, with its glamorous department stores on one side, and on the other, the small but still glamorous shops that backed on to Soho itself. These were mainly ground-floor shops with the upper floors occupied by a miscellany of small firms, and the entranceways were dotted with a profusion of interesting name boards. As well as the usual solicitors, architects and import agents, there were entertainment and detective agencies, and more bizarre professions like ‘Madam Zaz – Palmist’, and a few doors further along, ‘Mustapha ben Ali – Astrologer’ or ‘Offenbach – Trance Medium’. These were usually high up in the buildings, where rents were cheaper.

Along the grandly curving Regent Street, the shops became more expensive and precious, and I found it hard to believe that anyone was rich enough to buy things there. On reaching Piccadilly Circus, I’d pause at the statue of Eros, newly freed from its wartime wrappings, surrounded by people sitting gazing at the milling life around them. It is said that if you sit near Eros long enough, everyone you’ve ever known will eventually pass by.

Not keen to be reunited with anyone from my past, I’d head on to Coventry Street, which in those days held the most amazing Lyons Corner House. It consisted of floor upon floor of different restaurants, and I feel sad for people who are too young to have known it. Despite its magnificent interior and service, it was not at all expensive to eat there. On the ground floor was a huge patisserie-cum-delicatessen-cum-everything. There was a vast array of edible things to buy and take away in boxes tied with coloured braid. Opening off this were the many tearooms and snack bars, each with their own distinctive decor. On the floors above were all sorts of restaurants catering for different pockets and tastes. The Salad Bowl on the top floor was my particular joy when I could afford it. Here, it was self-service, with counters filled with rows and rows and rows of containers brimming with every kind of salad the mind could dream up. There were great baskets full of crispy rolls, piles of butter, and tables groaning with enormous shivering jellies, trifles, blancmanges and tremendous squashy gateaux. For the sum of two-and-sixpence you could eat your fill. Oh, a truly wonderful place! But Mr Lyons, in his wisdom, had foreseen that certain people might have limitless time to do this. So at intervals during the day, this department was emptied of customers and closed.

Slightly further along, and opening out from Coventry Street, was the fabulous Leicester Square, surrounded by all the great cinemas – the Ritz, Empire, Warner, Odeon and Leicester Square theatres, where premieres were regularly held. The great stars arrived in limousines while the excited, surging crowds were restrained by lines of policemen. In those days, television sets were still incredibly rare, and so the cinema was the land of dreams and its stars were held in near-godlike regard.

Outside these cinemas on ordinary days there were always long queues of people waiting to go in, and it was, I should think, about the most lucrative place in London for buskers. Musicians, escapologists and all sorts of novelty acts performed in the middle of the busy road, and the traffic had to skirt them carefully. In the midst of all this was the central square, like an oasis, full of trees. When dusk fell, starlings from all over London came to roost.

At the junction with Charing Cross Road, opposite Wyndham’s Theatre, Soho’s final boundary was reached, and this road was a real delight to me. There were book-shops on either side, nearly all of them with trestle tables outside stacked with second-hand books, and you had to almost fight for a place to look at them. In those days, the greatest of these were Zwemmer’s and Foyles. The latter also had the most enormous second-hand department inside – almost a whole floor. It was here that I most loved to browse whilst surreptitiously eating my sandwiches.

Shaftesbury Avenue cut this stretch of the road at Cambridge Circus, which was alive with its flotilla of fruit and shellfish stalls and hot chestnut braziers. Further along were the Tatler News Theatre, the Phoenix Theatre and the Astoria Cinema and Ballroom – always emblazoned with colourful hand-painted posters. The busy St Giles’ Circus at the top of Charing Cross Road marked my reunion with Oxford Street and my wandering would be over for another day.

Those lunch hours were the happiest part of my day, but I worked hard at my painting job, getting little pay rises here and there, though these left me no better off, as they always went straight to my grandmother. Not that that mattered to me very much, as I’d never had the opportunity to develop a desire for clothes or cosmetics (I was not allowed to wear make-up of any kind – even face powder – and my face had that permanent shine that I’m sure only Sunlight soap can give), though I would have liked to have bought some paints.

The next two years passed slowly. I was given more and more responsibility at work and gained a slight degree of self-assurance. My life at home, though, had become increasingly impossible and my grandmother more and more demanding. She had reached the conclusion that the only way in which I could repay all her charity was by becoming her support in her old age. Had she been a kind, loving person, I would have naturally and willingly fallen into that role; but as it was, I felt nervous and caged. I was only allowed out one evening a week – Friday – on the express understanding that I went to the pictures and nowhere else.

So it was that the day after I reached the longed-for age of twenty-one – the day I legally became an adult – I made all my possessions up into two parcels and, with my grandmother’s curses following me, left her house, completely alone in the world.

Two

I made my way up stairs covered with cracked and brittle linoleum to the room I had rented several days earlier in west London and let myself in with the key that had been hanging like a talisman around my neck. It was June, and I’d worn my thick winter coat to save packing it, so I felt hot and sick. I dumped everything on the narrow iron bed and gazed around me with pleasure.

Anyone who could have gazed with pleasure at that particular room must have been in a pretty parlous state. It was filthy and barely functional. Apart from the bed, it contained an ancient chest of drawers, a mirror hanging from a nail above it, a small battered table and two wooden chairs. A wardrobe had been achieved by curtaining off a corner of the room in the same fabric that covered the windows – blackout material that was grey with dust. There was also an enormous, ancient gas fire, a single ring for cooking and an ominous-looking meter. That was all, except for what stood on the table: a thick china cup and saucer, two plates, a battered kettle, a large ewer of chipped white enamel and a few assorted items of cheap metal cutlery.

I was overjoyed. For the first time in my life I had a home that I had a right to be in. I had paid the rent; I had the key. For me, those four drab, dun-coloured walls spelt peace and independence. I had had to ask for an advance on my wages to pay the two weeks’ rent. This left me with exactly three pounds in my purse to last me for the next ten days. Even this fact was not allowed to dampen my spirits.

I tried the top drawer of the chest. One of its white china knobs fell off, but the drawer opened in a lopsided sort of way. It contained a slice of toasted cheese, resting bleakly in the centre. That might come in handy, I thought, if I was living on bread and water until the next payday. The other drawers revealed nothing but crumbs and, in the bottom one, a mousetrap.

I thought about freshening up but there was no running water, hence the enamel jug. To get water, I had to go downstairs and out into the back yard, then in through another door and into a small scullery, where there was a tap. The toilet was thereabouts too. No time for all that now, I thought. It was eight thirty a.m. and I was due at work by nine. I ran a comb through my hair in front of the filthy mirror, then ripped open one of my parcels and found a cardigan. I grabbed my handbag and, carefully locking the door behind me, shot off to work.

The firm had expanded a lot, and now, instead of the original two, there were twenty-eight girl painters, of whom I was head. Meantime, the original owners had sold out to a man who did nothing but wander around tapping his teeth with a pencil and asking silly questions. He called me his ‘kingpin’ – and it was no exaggeration. I supervised all the other girls, sorted out the orders and kept an eye on the packers; I mixed the paints and worked out the wages; I did my share of the painting; I created new designs and I did a hundred and one other things. For this I was paid five pounds – a pound a week more than the other girls – and I had the doubtful privilege of hiring and firing.

During that first day of freedom, although to all appearances I was my usual composed self, inside I was dancing with joy. I had never in my life been so happy, and was making all sorts of plans for that crummy little room. At lunchtime, daringly, I spent some of my three pounds on soap, disinfectant, a scrubbing brush and a bowl.

In the afternoon, I asked my boss if I could have a few of the plentiful supply of rags we kept for cleaning our brushes. He told me to help myself and, with a twinkle in his eye that I was too naïve to interpret, said that he would have to come up sometime to take a look at this famous room of mine.

The following week, my boss decided that an evening’s stocktaking should take place. While we were engaged in this, the merry twinkle in his eye turned verbal, and he intimated that a little more than coffee and a chat wouldn’t come amiss at the end of the evening. To explain, perhaps I should say that in those days, 1948-ish, it was very unusual for a girl to leave home before marriage. To do so for any other reason, I found, meant that people assumed you were fast, and out for a bit of fun. Anyway, that’s the way my boss chose to see it, and though I naturally took up the time-honoured stag-at-bay stance, he was undaunted and even turned up at my bed-sitter the following Saturday to ask if I’d thought it over.