West End Girls: The Real Lives, Loves and Friendships of 1940s Soho and Its Working Girls (32 page)

He flung his arms wide open and said, ‘Oh Mae, my darling. I thought I’d really lost you. Don’t ever leave me like that again, or I’ll kill myself; I swear it. I can’t live without you.’

With a little sob, she rushed into his arms. With the mock tears already drying on his face, Tony smiled at me triumphantly over her shoulder.

Nothing was ever quite the same from then on. There was constraint – a sense of embarrassment – between Mae and me. She wanted to forget Tony’s insults, but she couldn’t because I’d heard them too. More than that, she’d heard me tell Tony what I really thought of him; my long-term concealed dislike had become apparent. I had made a classic mistake: I had taken sides in a fight between partners; the rift was no longer between them, but between them and me.

Left alone, Mae and I would have forgotten this unpleasant episode and, in time, returned to our old, easy relationship. But we were not left alone. In Tony’s book, my days were numbered.

I knew that I had always been a thorn in his side; moreover, I had stood toe-to-toe with him in open conflict. I knew enough of him to realise that he wouldn’t be happy until I was out of the way. This fact should have made me nervous, but I felt nothing but cold anger. He knew that resorting to the customary threats of violence wasn’t going to work with me. He recognised my principled nature and so hit on a more subtle and cunning plan.

Guido’s Lulu – already responsible for Mae’s drug addiction – began visiting us every evening, ostensibly to make up her face before going to work. At first she performed this task in the waiting room so that Mae could carry on working if she wanted to. One evening she began to complain that the lighting in there was bad and asked if she could use the bedroom. Not being able to do anything whilst Lulu was in there, Mae sat on the bed and chatted with her. The following evening, Lulu went straight into the bedroom as a matter of course, ‘absent-mindedly’ closing the door after her to exclude me.

From then on, there was a noticeable decline in Mae’s manner towards me. It started as a slight decrease in her warmth and cheerfulness. It was nothing much: as though she weren’t feeling too bright. It was strange enough to arouse my suspicions but not enough for me to be direct. I asked if she was worried about something, but she said no, everything was fine.

Gradually, after two or three evenings of being closeted with Lulu, the change became so marked that she wouldn’t look at me when I spoke to her and wouldn’t speak at all unless I did first. I wasn’t able to suffer in silence for long.

‘Mae, what is the matter? Have I done something wrong?’

She wouldn’t look at me, and said nothing.

‘What is it?’ I said. ‘It’s not fair to be like this without telling me why.’

Slowly, still without looking at me, she said, ‘I’ve heard that you’re going around telling everyone that I take it in the mouth and go without rubbers and do all sorts.’

It was a relief not to be guessing what was wrong any more, but at the same time I suddenly felt weary and sick of everything. It was a stock insult from one prostitute to another – a real old chestnut – and Tony had dusted it off and succeeded in ascribing it to me. I was shocked that after so much time spent together, Mae had so little understanding of my nature. Our friendship had been so important to me that I would have fought a horde of dragons for it, but she had let a few calculatedly spiteful words destroy it.

Memories of the past flooded into my mind; amongst them were the words of the kind policewomen who had tried to prise me away from Mae: ‘Promise me you won’t waste your loyalty. Don’t throw it away on something worthless . . . Just wait and see; you’ll learn in time.’ That time had arrived. My idol’s feet of clay had finally crumbled and pitched my first, passionate friendship into the dust.

At last I made myself say something. ‘You believe that? You really think that’s my style? Is this what Lulu’s been saying?’

‘Several people say you’ve said it,’ she answered, still avoiding my gaze.

‘So it was Lulu,’ I corrected her, firmly.

At last she turned to me. ‘Did you?’ she said.

I didn’t grace the question with an answer. I had a vision of Lulu’s doll-like face and her large, innocent blue eyes turned on Mae while she watched the effect that her slow poisoning was having; then I thought of Tony’s satisfied grin as he received her daily progress reports.

Even now, I thought cynically, all will not be lost if I start to shout and scream – if I threaten to go and carve up Lulu. Mae would understand that: it was the accepted defence strategy. But I was so hurt that Mae didn’t understand quiet, unostentatious loyalty – didn’t recognise true friendship – and I wasn’t about to demean myself.

‘Just tell me you didn’t say it,’ she insisted, now eyeing me quite hard.

My pride shot up to the roof of my head. I looked at her coldly and turned away.

‘Maybe, one day, you’ll learn who you can trust,’ I told her over my shoulder. Then, ‘Can you get someone to take my place by tomorrow?’

Thankfully, there wasn’t much of the evening left; the atmosphere was too strained to be endured much longer. Several times Mae looked as though she wanted to say something, but she didn’t. After locking up, we said good night and parted company. In the taxi going home, I burst into tears.

Thirty-Two

A few evenings later, the telephone rang about four times in one hour, and I finally took a deep breath and picked up the receiver. It was not Mae, but Rita. Her raucous voice came bellowing through to me with all the comforting reassurance of a Wagnerian overture.

‘You poor bloody sod,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard all about it. What surprises me is how you put up with it all for as long as you did.’

My gratitude bubbled up and I told her that she was like a tonic to me. She brushed my words aside and continued:

‘I told Mae straight, she must be potty believing anything that bleeding Lulu says. One day that girl’s going to end up with her throat cut, you mark my words. If it wasn’t for all them pills Mae takes, she’d never have been took in. Hasn’t she bleeding changed? I’d never have believed it.’

Her tone deepened confidentially. ‘But here, what do you think? That bastard Tony has taken her out of the flat and put her in one that’s got a maid that goes with it. That’s so she won’t get no ideas about having you back. But listen . . .’ Here, her voice gathered all the gusto and dramatic effect of someone who has left the best bit until last. ‘She’s going to marry him next week – special licence, she says. It would have to be a
very
special bleeding licence before I’d marry that sod. She must want her fucking brains tested.’

She paused while I voiced my surprise at the news, then she burst into full spate again. I was listening merely to the cadences of her voice as it crashed like breakers against my eardrums, when something she said caught my attention once more:

‘So look, I’ve had a smashing idea. I don’t like the flat I’ve got now and I don’t like the bleeding maid that goes with it. If I was to take another flat – I’ve got one lined up – would you come and maid for me?’

I was taken off balance for a moment and didn’t know what to say. I had got on well with Rita during the month when Mae was in hospital and had enjoyed that first Christmas with her, but as she considered sentiment a weakness, I hadn’t realised she was so fond of me. I was surprised and touched that she had taken up cudgels on my behalf and was now prepared to uproot herself to accommodate me.

‘Do you really want us to do that?’ I asked. I realised I was close to tears.

‘Course, mate,’ she answered gruffly.

‘When do we start?’ I asked, breaking into a grin.

I powdered my nose, put on some lipstick and went to meet her, feeling happier than I had for a long while.

Our inspection of the new flat was cursory and routine. Naturally, it was in a state of utter filth, so we decided to give it a good clean before Rita attempted to do any work there. We thought we could get it presentable during the afternoons of the following week, leaving enough time for a quick meal before Rita went on to her old flat for the evening’s hustling.

‘Bleeding nice, isn’t it?’ she remarked. ‘Charring all fucking afternoon and whoring all sodding night. Talk about being a lady of easy virtue – I haven’t seen nuffing easy about it yet.’

The flat was situated at the bottom end of a long, narrow mews that was approached through an archway from a northern Soho street. Nowadays the term ‘mews flat’ conjures up visions of elegance and grace. Our mews was not like that: it was an original murky, Dickensian mews, a Jack the Ripper alley, unlit even by gaslight. It was monopolised by barrow boys, who at night-time used the old stables to house their portable stalls, along with their unsold fruit and veg. In the morning, before first light, these street traders brought fresh produce from nearby Covent Garden and reorganised their displays. They threw wrappings, wooden boxes and yesterday’s bad fruit on to the cobbles, where they awaited the midnight gangs of refuse men. By the time we arrived each day, there was a mash of slowly putrefying vegetation amongst the debris, overlaid by that pungent, winey smell of rotting oranges. Even now, the faintest whiff of fermenting oranges takes me back once more to that place. It makes me think of picking my way through the puddles and filth, between the blackened and decaying buildings, up to Rita’s flat.

After dark, when we were pretty much its only inhabitants, the mews had a sinister quality. Lit only by the feeble light from the street beyond the distant archway, the puddles took on a baleful gleam and the unhoused barrows and piles of boxes had the appearance of crouching, furtive monsters. Rita bought herself a powerful and heavy flashlight to serve her during her repeated excursions to the world beyond the archway.

There was a bright new lock on the door of our flat, gleaming like a jewel on the leprous surface. Immediately inside, there was a steep, narrow flight of bare wooden stairs. These gave out on to a large room carpeted in red and furnished with heavy Victorian furniture – well abused, but polishable – and a double bed with brass knobs and a deep sag in the middle. Rita later claimed it had done her back in for life.

Reluctantly she forwent a repeat of the operating-theatre sterility of her previous flats. With a few pretty shaded lamps – bought under pressure from me – and a judicious plant here and there, the place looked quite nice. Through a curtained doorway at the other side of the bedroom you entered the kitchen, which justified that title only inasmuch as it held an old stone sink – an everlasting attraction for cockroaches – and an ancient black iron gas stove. The floor here was just plain boards, and a much-splintered tea chest served as a table. At the side of this was an old Windsor chair with part of its back rest missing and the remaining spokes waiting their turn to do someone damage. Best of all, through a door at the end of the kitchen was a real toilet. Almost the first thing we did was to buy a pretty toilet roll holder, some coloured paper and a lavatory brush. With this priceless luxury in our midst, the future had to be all right, we reckoned.

We draped a chequered tablecloth over the tea chest and, during the first tea break of our actual residency, debated whether we might prepare a roast in the antiquated oven. Everything seemed very rosy, and as we sat eating our meal after Rita’s first day’s trial run, we were filled with a sense of well-being and of bright new vistas opening before us. Rita even bought a couple of canes and hung them on a nail in the bedroom.

‘They’re to make you feel more at home,’ she announced sheepishly.

Apparently she was determined that this time she was going to make a bomb and set herself up in a proper business. It was a nice thought and we both let ourselves believe it.

Rita and I had always got on pretty well together, but the fact that we were now a permanent team improved on that and created a closer rapport between us. Our days were spent in the relaxed and easy intimacy of established friendship. I even dared to criticise her treatment of the clients.

‘Think I can’t be nice to ’em, eh? You just wait and see, mate,’ she declared.

Knowing that I could hear every word through the curtained kitchen doorway, she became treacly sweet to the men for my benefit, loudly admiring their suits, their physiques and their looks, no matter how ghastly their appearance. Amazingly, no one ever seemed to have the slightest idea that she was lying.

She certainly could have made a bomb if she had really applied herself but that was not Rita’s way. She was quite content to earn the rent, fund her leisure activities and buy small luxuries. On days that were running with liquid gold, days when any other girl would have kept going, Rita would say, ‘Come on, mate, let’s sling our hook and go and have a nice salt beef sandwich.’

She was mad keen on Jewish food and taught me to like it too. In fact, it is Rita, Cindy and Tina who I have to thank for my now cosmopolitan tastes in food. Rita introduced me to Chinese and Jewish cuisine, Cindy to the delights of Indian cooking and Tina to all the Latin specialities. It’s strange to think, that Mae, who as a person was the most individualistic of the lot, stuck doggedly to sausage and mash or chicken and chips.