West End Girls: The Real Lives, Loves and Friendships of 1940s Soho and Its Working Girls (22 page)

When I got home, I was deciding whether I should try my hand at a naked captive with blue feet or a bowl of grapes when the phone rang. I lifted the receiver to my ear and hurriedly moved it six inches away as Rita’s brazen voice shattered the space between us. After I’d told her how Mae was, she proposed an idea that had obviously been thought out prior to her ringing.

‘My maid keeps on about having time off for Christmas and says she hasn’t had a holiday in years. What d’you say I give her a month off, and you come to me till Mae’s back?’

Thoughts of the exciting
Blue Extremities
and the relaxing
Nature Morte Avec une Grappe de Raisin
tugged at me for a moment but weren’t strong enough to resist Rita’s call to arms. I looked hopelessly at the unmarked canvas, which stared back at me unblinkingly, and weakly submitted without a fight.

‘Right,’ she shouted. ‘I’ll tell Toots the good news and I’ll expect you here tomorrow about four.’

I turned the canvas to the wall, so at least I didn’t have to endure its unspoken reproach. The other materials I placed in the drawer where the slice of toasted cheese had once held lonely court. A maid I was, and a maid it seemed I would remain.

Rita’s flat was in Berwick Street – at least the approach to it was. Playing safe with the law, the astute landlord had effectively made two separate premises from the one. An inside passage led through a shop building to a back door and a cobbled yard. At the far side of this was a lean-to shed that accommodated Rita’s kitchen and the entrance hall. At the back of the entrance hall was the bedroom, housed inside the back of another building. A stone staircase rose out of this room, blocked off at the top by a brick wall. The occasional sound of feminine footsteps pattering above the ceiling betrayed the fact that there was another girl operating there.

Rita’s decorating tastes were stark and colourful, as personified by the linoleum – hard, cold and bright. Her room was enormous: about four times the size of Mae’s, and as hygienic as an operating theatre. The only furnishings were a single divan, a side table – on which was a lamp and a box of Durex – a rubbish bin and a cane-bottomed chair. There were no windows, therefore no curtains, and the only luxurious touch of softness was a satin bedspread on the divan with a pillow covered to match. On the foot of the bed was the usual folded travelling rug to prevent the bedspread getting ragged and dirty – the baggy trousers of those days could be jettisoned without removing shoes.

The kitchen, where I was to spend my time, was small, but not as small as Mae’s. There was no running water in the flat – you had to get that from a standpipe in the yard – and so no toilet, apart from a bucket in the kitchen that was emptied down a manhole in the yard. The bedroom was heated by an electric fire; the kitchen had an oil stove: the cylindrical sort that throws pretty patterns of light on to the ceiling but would eventually blacken it with smoke.

Like the flat, Rita’s attitude to her work was purely functional. She supplied the barest minimum and not a tittle more. She gave no endearments, no kind words, not even a smile. There was not a single cane, rope or even a dirty photo in the place.

‘Oh, I can’t be bothered with all that messing about,’ she said.

On the cobblestones just outside the lean-to was the only light between there and the dimly lit Berwick Street: a hurricane lamp. I watched Rita take this to find her way through the long passageway; she left it just behind the door to the main street, ready for lighting her way when she returned with a client. Once outside, she went to her particular spot and stood gazing into space with those hard, short-sighted eyes. When, eventually, a man came past, she asked him if he wanted a nice time in exactly the same tone that a bus conductress would have said, ‘Tickets, please.’

Surprisingly, although it took as much as quarter of an hour, Rita did manage to hook clients. To her advantage, she had striking good looks, enhanced by a pronounced bosom that she displayed to full advantage. She wore jerseys with stripes that undulated like tracks on the big dipper and, weather permitting, a plunging neckline that revealed the Grand Canyon.

She rushed her catch back without a word. As soon as the door was shut, she asked briskly for his money. She shoved this through the bedroom door to me and there was complete silence for about five minutes; then the door opened again and the client, having had his ‘nice time’, silently departed. On the occasions that a client required longer than five minutes, I heard the clonk of her high heels against the floor as she sprang from the bed.

‘Do you think I’ve nothing better to do than hang around waiting for you? Shove off!’

There was a murmur of protest from the man, who presumably
did
think she had nothing better to do. Protesting was not going to work.

‘I can’t stand here talking to you all night! Sod off!’

Most clients saw reason and slunk off, but some had the temerity to demand their money back; a few went berserk, but this was as fruitful as arguing with an iceberg. True, there were a
very
few – those who threatened violence – who
would
get their money back, thrown at them along with a stream of invective. Rita had very few regulars.

Rita’s approach exemplified the term ‘hustling’. She jockeyed the men into the flat through sheer force of will while they were still trying to make up their mind. This, of course, could account for their tardiness once inside, although Rita never did anything to foster an amorous mood. She had never quite got over the days when she worked in taxis; to her, a flat was just a big cab with facilities for making tea.

She arrived every day immaculately turned out, spotlessly clean and brightly burnished, and that was how she still was at the end of the day: not a hair out of place. This meant I had no constant sorting of her clothes, and as she didn’t want snacks and cups of tea every five minutes, life with her was like a rest cure in comparison with Mae’s ménage. I was even able to do a bit of reading, though when Rita saw this, she became most concerned about my wasting my time when I could be knitting something. It transpired she was a fanatical knitter herself.

‘I’d do a lot more too,’ she said peevishly, ‘if it wasn’t for having to keep coming here to kow-tow to sex maniacs.’

When she learnt I couldn’t knit, she insisted on teaching me. I was glad enough of a change to help fill the long hours and it appealed to my creative instinct. She was fabulous and fast. She confided that she had learnt at reform school and practised in prison, where, unlike the other inmates, she had actually taken to it wholeheartedly. She could also make beautiful silk lampshades and she cooked like a dream. She informed me, almost reverently, that if she’d never gone inside, she’d have missed half the pleasures of life.

Rita was known by all to be tactless and outspoken. A very difficult girl to know, to like or to get close to, she made enemies everywhere. I had grown much bolder, and after one clash early on – when I’d told her that she could save her nasty ways for her clients – we began to enjoy one another’s company and have quite a good time together. We took to meeting at about four o’clock in the afternoon and having a meal, over which we would sit and chat for about an hour. That was when we indulged ourselves in a little hilarity and exchanged confidences. It was then that she revealed her understanding of the ponce racket and why she would have no truck with them.

‘I can’t stand their greasy, lying mugs. They’re bone idle too! And if they ever went to school at all, they certainly never learnt nothing. I’ll stick to my feeves. A feef ’s got to use his loaf and know what’s what. They’re clean, upstanding men.’

I’d also hear about the progress of her latest romance. They never lasted long. Rita was a lone wolf and her own mistress. She was living comfortably in her own house in London, and if a boyfriend wanted to risk living in it with her, then that was up to him. Men couldn’t pick her; she picked them.

Generally she disliked men and wasn’t thrilled at having the unwanted attentions of amorous clients round her. She confessed to me one day that the only way in which she could get any sexual pleasure at all was if a man ‘went down’ on her. At one time this would have shocked me, but now I took it in my stride. I realised that the only regulars she had were men who liked oral sex and were good at it. These men always stayed a lot longer than five minutes. Their arrival was marked by laughing and talking all the way to the bedroom – though she never forgot to take their money. When they left, she was positively cordial with her farewells.

After these sessions, she pranced into the kitchen saying, ‘Put the kettle on, mate,’ and plonked herself down to wait for a celebratory cup of tea, chattering very animatedly all the while. As I began to recognise these clients and to understand the signs, I put the kettle on unbidden so that it was boiling by the time she emerged. Seeing it ready, she giggled, blushed and called me ‘cheeky sod’. She took to pre-empting me, ‘Put the kettle on’ ringing out through the yard as soon as she arrived with a client who was going to do things her way.

The toilet bucket was next to the oil stove, so that our exposed flesh wouldn’t get too chilled. One day, coming out from the bedroom, voluble after one of these nice regulars, Rita pulled her knickers down in something of a hurry to plonk herself on the bucket. Partly because her mind was elsewhere and partly because of her short-sightedness, she sat on the oil stove instead, then immediately shot up into the air like a rocket, shrieking, ‘Oh, me bum! Oh my Gawd !’

As she was in no position to do it herself, I investigated this delicate situation and found that the perforations in the top of the stove had burnt pretty red daisies all over her behind. As I reported on the condition of her nether region, I couldn’t suppress a stifled choke in my voice. Her shouts of pain mingled with tears of laughter and she rolled around yelling, ‘Oh Gawd! My poor bum!’ One hand was clutching her buttocks and the other holding her stomach, which was aching with laughter; her knickers were round her ankles and her legs were crossed because she still hadn’t used the bucket.

I applied ointment to the damage, followed by a whole boxful of sticking plasters – which came in all shapes and sizes; her bottom looked like a patchwork quilt. At last we calmed down and I made tea. Giggles broke out when Rita had to lie on her stomach to drink it, with the red and white pointillism of her backside uppermost.

All that month I continued to visit Mae whenever I could, avoiding times when I thought Tony might be there. Mae forced herself to be cheerful of course, but the thing that must have occupied her mind most of all – the fact that she was in the grip of a ponce whose capacity for violence could not be underestimated – was territory that both of us were forbidden to talk about.

I still loved Mae, of course – I still do – but I could also feel my feelings changing. To start with, she had been my only friend, my tutor, the impish, unpredictable spirit who had made me a member and co-conspirator in her riotous underworld. As time had moved on, however, the balance of things had changed. I had other friends now, for one thing. Rita was Rita and would never be Mae, but I was no longer lonely and crying out for friendship. For another thing, I realised that I was becoming maternal towards Mae. I felt sorry for her in some ways. I wanted to take care of her, and knew the limits of what I could do for her. It wasn’t that she and I were less close than before, but it was not the same kind of closeness. She knew it and so did I.

As if to mark the change in my relationships, it was Rita who invited me to her home when Christmas came round. She said she wouldn’t take no for an answer. The thought of spending Christmas on my own wasn’t particularly appealing, and I was glad to accept.

On Christmas morning, Bert, Rita’s current feef, was sent to collect me in his car. All Rita’s boyfriends were of the hearty, back-slapping variety. True to form, Bert brought both hands together in a loud clap and followed this with a booming, ‘Well, ’ow’s it going, then?’

Rita’s house was in the East End. It was Edwardian, tall, dilapidated and stacked to the roof with lodgers – all feeves – whose weekly contributions paid her expenses. What she earned on the game was really pin money.

When I arrived on this festive day, the smell of cooking was overpowering and I swam through it to join Rita in the kitchen. She was dressed in a shimmering, wine-coloured cocktail dress and an apron and was absolutely surrounded by food. In the enormous double oven was a goose, a giant turkey and a large leg of pork.

‘Well, we’re not likely to starve, at any rate, mate,’ said Bert, giving her a playful slap on the rump.

‘Do you mind?’ said Rita, straightening up and giving him a withering look. ‘We’ve got guests. Don’t be so bleeding common.’

I gave Rita her Christmas present, which was a little sexy nightie – it was my year for buying flirty nighties; I’d also bought two for Mae and one for myself. When Bert saw it, his ‘Cor!’ received another look from Rita and an enquiry as to whether he’d had too much to drink.

‘Instead of standing round acting bloody stupid,’ she said, ‘take Babs inter the other room, and introduce her to me bruvver – and give her a gin.’

Now that I was a blonde, I had decided it was high time I learned to like alcohol, to go with my new image, and so was slowly learning to enjoy gin. I took my glass happily and met the rest of the crowd. Rita’s brother was a thin, bellicose man named John, who came in tandem with an uneasy-looking wife. Then there was Rita’s little girl, sitting on the thick carpet, bewildered by the piles of new toys surrounding her. I sat down on the floor next to her and added to the bewilderment by giving her the doll I’d brought.

Everything in the room was opulent and lush, and it all looked brand new: heavy brocade curtains, silk flock wallpaper, deep velvet armchairs and a very ornate bar stocked to bursting point. John, the brother, was gazing around him as though he bitterly disapproved of every item.