West End Girls: The Real Lives, Loves and Friendships of 1940s Soho and Its Working Girls (9 page)

‘You look so nice,’ I told her.

‘But of course I do!’ she said with mock haughtiness, striking another elegant pose. Then, twirling the bunch of keys she always took with her, she was gone.

I put some sugar in a bowl, made some sandwiches and cut the cake the grocer had brought. Later that afternoon, we sat down to tea like ordinary, respectable people. Laughing at the scene, Mae said that perhaps she’d been wrong about her flat being like a hospital: it was more like a vicarage.

Despite her jokes, she must have caught the home-making bug too, because she started to bring in little things to improve the place – a couple of scatter cushions from home, an ornament or two. Now and again, when she came back with a man, she also brought something that had caught her eye in a shop. Once, it was an antique toasting fork – what she intended to do with it was a mystery – and on another occasion she produced an embroidered tea cosy and a pair of sugar tongs. All in all, we were really getting quite ‘refeened’, as Mae put it.

The toilet we used was down on the floor below, and so that no one could lurk in there or leap out at us, we kept the key for it hanging in the kitchen. Clients who wanted to use the toilet were handed a bucket – ‘Because,’ said Mae, ‘if I let them go down there, they might suddenly change their minds about coming up again and scarper.’

I was now wearing an apron: not exactly a typical frilly one, but enough to prevent the clients from being confused about my role. Furthermore, I wore my hair primly wound in a tight bun, high on the back of my head. I had reverted to the Sunlight-soap-and-no-make-up image, hoping that this might also help to make me appear just a little forbidding.

I finally felt I had things under control. By arriving earlier than Mae each day, I could maintain things in reasonable order. By now, I had begun to turn out the drawers in her bedroom, and had mended a mass of various garments. I had also jettisoned about a hundred laddered stockings and was at last able to close the drawers properly.

Now that I’d tidied up, I had more time to think during Mae’s frequent absences. This wasn’t altogether a good thing. I began to realise just how nerve-racking it was to be alone in that building – especially if Mae was out for longer than usual. The street door was always left open after she’d started work, and there was always the possibility of Rabbits coming up to vent her spite on me. Rabbits, though, was at least a known quantity; what I feared most was the unknown. Whenever I heard the slither of a man’s raincoat brushing against the sides of the narrow staircase when I was alone, I felt a mounting terror, rising to panic the moment before the customer came into view. When they had actually appeared and I could get a look at them and see that they were far more nervous than I was, my fears would subside.

I had to make sure I listened out for anyone who came up, because, if someone did manage to get past our landing unheard, he could hide round the bend of the stairs above us, listening for Mae to go out, and get me on my own with the cash. There was a lot of money in the place, and the danger grew greater as the evening wore on into darkness and even more accumulated. The clients I had to be most wary of were the first-timers. Some were potentially nasty, and I often prayed that Mae would return before they became unpleasant.

My anxiety didn’t end when the men disappeared into the bedroom with Mae. Though she always closed the bedroom door, it was left unlocked so that I could rush in if violence erupted.

What I had come to regard as the ‘Rabbits Regime’ was still in full force, and I was getting used to the constant stream of men in and out. That is not to say I didn’t get the odd jolt. For example, Mae was closeted in the bedroom with a client one afternoon when I heard a tap on the entrance door. There had been no sound of footsteps and I looked up, startled, to see a vicar standing there, smiling benevolently. He looked so pure in contrast to the surroundings, with his honest, open face, fair hair and brilliant white dog collar. I was filled with confusion and felt pangs of guilt.

‘Is Mae in?’ he asked with a smile.

So he knew her! Mae had never mentioned that she had any religious convictions: if she had, it was odd but not impossible. I stammered out that she was engaged for the moment. My hopes that he would go away were soon dashed.

‘Well in that case I’ll sit and wait for her, if you don’t mind,’ he said serenely. After a while he added: ‘I haven’t seen you here before, have I?’

‘No,’ I agreed in a small voice. ‘I’ve only just started.’

I busied myself at the sink and hoped that Mae wouldn’t be long. I supposed the man to be the saintly sort who was willing to risk censure by calling on a prostitute to give counsel or advice. Perhaps Mae was in his parish and he was determined to make no distinction between the members of his flock.

At last Mae released her previous client and greeted the vicar cordially, before taking him into the bedroom. Considering this to be a parochial visit, I didn’t bother to stand outside the door as usual. When Mae opened it a few minutes later, I thought it was to summon me in to share the vicar’s words of comfort. But when I left the kitchen and turned towards the partly opened door, there was Mae’s arm, rising up like a beautiful swan’s neck with money in its beak.

I felt cheated and strangely angry. Who could you trust if not a vicar? I couldn’t look at him when he left . . . but then who was I to throw stones? I stood there deliberating; perhaps he was an actor – this was, after all, the centre of Theatreland. As soon as he had gone, I ran in to Mae to ask if he was real.

‘Is he a real vicar, do you mean? Course he is! They are men like all the rest. True, I do get kinks who come dressed up like vicars, but you know them straight away. They act all sanctimonious and start preaching while they’re on the job. I’ve got several real ones – they never say a word about religion.’

I resolved never to be surprised by anything ever again. It was to be my saving grace.

The speed with which Mae worked had worried me right from the beginning, and I soon talked her into slowing down a bit. Consequently, our life became noticeably more leisurely, and we spent a little more of our time in chatter and, more often than not, helpless laughter. Whenever a client left, Mae’s voice would sing out from the bedroom, ‘Where are you, y’sod? Come and talk to me!’ Then she would begin rummaging through drawers and cupboards, looking for a dress or suit to show me, or ask if I thought she looked better in the blue earrings or the gold. Or she might be in a reminiscing mood and recount some childhood anecdote, or a yarn concerning some ‘geezer’ she’d known.

Often during these interludes, while we were still sitting in the bedroom with our heads together – she clad in only a bra, suspender belt and stockings – a client would venture upstairs. ‘That’s a bit of luck,’ she would say to me under her breath. ‘Now I won’t have to get dressed.’ Then to the new arrival she would give a joyous ‘Hello, love! You’re just the one I was hoping to see. I’ve been talking about you to Babs. Haven’t I, Babs? You haven’t met my new maid yet, have you? Now don’t you forget, any time I’m busy, you come up and Babs’ll make you a nice cup of tea – won’t you, Babs?’

Smiling, I would then stand up to go. Often the men would grin wolfishly and suggest that there was no need for me to rush off. Mae would scold them fondly: ‘Cheeky bugger. Want two for the price of one, do you?’ As I returned to the kitchen, I would hear her demanding to know why whoever it was hadn’t been to see her for such a long while and saying she’d missed him and he mustn’t leave it so long again or she’d think he didn’t love her.

It was this sort of treatment that made her so successful. Each one of her clients thought he was someone special, and she had a long list of regulars. The grocer hadn’t exaggerated after all: she was a queen indeed.

Though she never said much about her background – and I quickly learnt that it wasn’t the done thing to ask – it was during our many tête-à-têtes that she told me that she’d been married very young, and that at eighteen, her husband had gone off, leaving her with a baby to support.

‘So that’s what really started me on this life,’ she said.

She had eventually allowed a couple to foster the baby while she found work. Gradually she discovered that she was good at the profession she’d chosen, and even enjoyed it at times. Eventually the couple had adopted her child and Mae had made this new life her own.

She told me bits about her love life – which she kept completely apart from her work. Apparently she was ‘almost between lovers’ at the present time.

‘What do you mean,
almost
?’ I asked.

‘Well, it’s difficult to say,’ she mused. ‘I’m sort of finished with Alphonse and I haven’t really got started with Tony. Fact is, I don’t know whether I ever will. Tony’s a Malt, you see, and I don’t trust the Maltese. Haven’t had one yet, and, from what I hear of them, it’s just as well. But he says he loves me. Oh, Babs, if you could hear the way he says it!’

I didn’t pursue it. I have always been of the opinion that if somebody wants me to know something, they’ll tell me. Perhaps this is down to my upbringing, or perhaps some instinct told me to leave the subject alone. If instinct it was, it was an accurate one. Tony was to prove to be bad news.

Eight

Saturday came, and I felt like an old hand. Finding it hard to believe I’d been working at The Mousehole and the studio only one week ago, I walked to the flat through the late July sunshine. I found it even harder to credit that it was less than two months since I’d left home. I had learnt so much in that short time that it seemed incredible. And to crown it all, I’d finally discovered all about sex.

My carnal education had mainly come about by accident. During my assault on the chaos in the bedroom and waiting room, I had unearthed a massive quantity of photographs. It was from these that, in the crudest way possible, I was enlightened about the birds and the bees and finally learnt what lay beneath the statues’ fig leaves and the models’ posing pouches. I also found out – graphically – the number of uses to which it could be put.

Some of the photographs were extremely old. I recall one in particular, in which
he
wore a striped pyjama jacket and socks, fastened up with garters and suspenders, and
she
wore stockings, rolled down to below her knee. He had a Hitler-like moustache, and his hair, parted in the middle, was plastered down on each side, his face bearing a ferocious scowl.
She
, obviously a flower of dutiful Victorian womanhood, was simpering compliantly. She must have needed considerable fortitude, because they were performing on a very jagged lump of rock.

Some of the photographs, though, included such a mass of people and such a complicated plaiting of limbs that I found it impossible to make either head or tail of them. I resolved to decipher these later when I had more time. Amongst this biological bonanza, there was a fair sprinkling of studies of ladies’ torsos. Again, there is one in particular that comes back to me clearly over the years. It was an upward shot of a lady smiling lasciviously down at the camera from between two of the most enormous bosoms I have ever seen – and still don’t believe.

Further finds under the bed and in the cupboard above it were a huge assortment of canes and leather straps that quite mystified me. Nevertheless, in my zeal for tidying and making things look pretty, I put all the canes into an old vase and stood it in a corner of the bedroom. It looked rather arty, I thought, and was almost as effective as the pot of beech leaves in my bed-sitter. One morning, while brewing our first cup of the day, I asked Mae what the canes were for.

‘Well, whacking ’em, of course!’

I stopped what I was doing and stared at her.

‘The men?’ I asked. ‘Don’t they mind?’

‘I never hear them complain – only when I don’t hit ’em hard enough. Haven’t you heard me at it?’

Thinking about it, my mind went back to my first day and the strange cracking noises I’d heard coming from the bedroom. I’d heard them again often enough but hadn’t really paid any attention, supposing them to be caused by the bed springs. I sat down weakly on the other chair.

‘Oh you are funny,’ she giggled. ‘Come on, where’s that cup of tea?’

Despite occasional revelations, like the canes, I was beginning to feel as though I knew what I was doing. I was the mistress of my trade; at last I could look this Soho in the eye.

Later that day, waiting for Mae to return from one of her sorties, I peered out of the front window at a man with a crowd around him. He was making a lucrative living with a folding table and a pack of cards, while his gullible audience attempted to ‘find the lady’. I watched until there was a shrill whistle from his confederate further along the alley, who’d spotted a policeman approaching. Then he and the crowd melted away as though they had never existed.

I tried to settle down to read a book. I was just beginning to worry, when I heard Mae’s steps on the stairs. As they got nearer, I could hear that they were accompanied by a funny scrabbling noise and the sound of panting. I shot out on to the landing just as, round the bend of the stairs, two eager half-grown poodles appeared. Behind their jewelled collars and taut leads they were tugging a breathless Mae. Her face was flushed and excited.