West End Girls: The Real Lives, Loves and Friendships of 1940s Soho and Its Working Girls (35 page)

I treated what she said flippantly. ‘I’m not as mean as you,’ I said. ‘I’d get myself a new bed.’

She wasn’t smiling.

‘If I thought you meant that, I’d put a deposit on one tomorrow. If you played your cards right, you could have your arse hung in diamonds.’

She put some more lipstick on, preparing to go out. As a parting shot, she said, ‘Now think about it, mate. I’m serious.’

So I was left thinking about it. She was gone for about twenty minutes; that twenty minutes was my Moment of Truth: the little patch of time that shaped my future more than any other.

I had no doubt that Rita was serious. From her point of view, it would be a very convenient arrangement for the duration of her pregnancy. She had accused me of doggedly hanging on to my virginity, but it was not quite like that. I was not primly retaining it for any specific reason; it was merely that I had never got round to losing it.

As for my mental virtue, that had gone long ago. I saw nothing at all wrong with prostitution on moral grounds. For me, it had become a bona fide business, albeit one that continually irritated me with its poor standard of service. I had seen so many girls working in so many different ways that I had it in my power to become the perfect whore. It was a shock to realise it, but it seemed a pity to waste my expertise.

I could save enough money for a really good hustling flat of my own. I would decorate and furnish it to a standard none of the other girls thought they needed. It wouldn’t be necessary to go out looking for clients; with the right maid, they would come to me. I would be a wealthy woman before I reached thirty.

During that twenty minutes, I came within the breadth of an eyelash of deciding to take up Rita’s offer. I mentally planned my campaign and made my fortune, and then, in a moment, I lost it.

It would be nice to report that it was an innate sense of virtue that won through – or even that I didn’t wish to go back on the promise I’d made to the nice policewoman two years earlier. But in fact what made the difference was a strange feeling that life wasn’t meant to be that easy. Along with the feeling came memories of things that held far greater potency for me than either righteousness or wealth would ever do: the pungent smell of turpentine and linseed oil, the almost erotic pleasure of dipping a good brush into rich paint, the gently responsive sensuality of a canvas and the magical joy of alchemy – of transmuting the basic and crude colours on the palette into a picture.

I realised that I was now, of my own volition, bringing an important and valuable phase of my life to an end. I knew I had to leave Soho before I weakened and my desire to paint grew weaker and eventually died. I knew that if I allowed that to happen I would have forfeited something immeasurably wonderful.

When Rita next came into the kitchen, I was unpinning my calendar from the wall.

‘Chickened out, then, have you?’ she observed drily.

‘Chickened out,’ I affirmed.

But it wasn’t true. I was ready to take on my own life, on my own terms. After twenty-one years in my family’s loveless care, and two in Soho’s riotous embrace, I had finally learned to walk on my own two feet. I had grown up. I knew what I wanted and I was determined to get it.

After our last day’s work together, Rita and I stowed all our possessions into holdalls, leaving the canes hanging on the wall for the next occupier. Then we locked the door and, for the last time, picked our way together through the treacherous, malodorous mews. Rita waved to me from her taxi and said she would phone me. I watched until she was out of sight, then turned and walked away, feeling suddenly desolate.

Somehow, I didn’t feel like going straight home. I wanted to get one more whiff of this life that I was leaving and what better swansong, I thought, than a visit to Tearaway Tina.

When I got to Tina’s, news of Rita’s impending ‘retirement’ had reached her ears. She sent her maid for cigarettes, and the moment the door was shut behind her, spun round to me.

‘Now look,’ she said, ‘I’ve been thinking. I could easy get shot of that old cow and you could come here to work. How about that? Us would have some lovely fun.’

I thought of the ‘old cow’ and how she did all Tina’s washing, prepared her meals and, in general, clucked over her like an anxious hen.

‘It’s a very kind thought, Tina,’ I answered. ‘But I’m going straight.’

‘You must be mad,’ she said, disbelievingly. ‘What you going to do?’

‘Paint,’ I told her.

She was so astonished that she leapt off her chair. ‘You going to what?’ she shrieked.

I feasted my eyes on her. There she stood, in fishnet stockings, French corsets and a flimsy short black negligee. Her legs were wide apart, her hands on her hips. She was staring back at me from under multiple layers of eyelashes, her vermilion lips curled in derision. She was corrupt, vicious, evil, rotten to the marrow of her bones – but so magnificent. I found myself sending up a prayer that some day I would be given the insight and the skill to be able to transfer what I now beheld on to canvas.

‘And what the bloody hell are you going to paint?’ she shrilled, moving into an even more devastatingly primitive pose.

Something like a great smile of excitement and joy welled up from the soles of my feet. I felt it rush through my body and almost explode in my head.

‘Why,’ I said. ‘With any luck, perhaps someone like you.’

Thirty-Six

My professional association with that life was over, but it would have needed a much stronger will than mine to make a complete break, and I didn’t see any necessity to do so.

At first it was quite impossible to settle down fully to my new regime as a painter. I would down tools at the least provocation and make my way back to the dim little streets and obscure cafés where my old friends hung out.

Rita – whose back really had been done in by the sagging old bed and who had now been advised to sleep on a board – finally had her baby. It was a boy, and he was the image of Tom.

I hoped she would find sufficient contentment and happiness to retire. I was both surprised and relieved when one day she phoned to tell me that she had decided to go straight.

‘Rita – that’s wonderful,’ I said. ‘I never thought you’d do it.’

‘No, neither did I, mate. And what d’you think I’m going do now? I’ll give you three guesses.’

‘I give up. Tell me.’

‘I’m going to run a clip-joint,’ she said. ‘I’ve been told they’re bleeding gold mines.’

Sadly for her, Tom was arrested one night with his pockets full of objects that were not rightfully his. He was given nine years ‘hard’, and later, Rita was herself arrested for receiving and sentenced to three years in Holloway.

I heard snippets of news – that Cindy was still with her ponce, Mario; that aristocratic Anne was still playing the lady in her prim little parlour and Fiona was continuing to have trouble with her epileptic maid; Lulu was still creating distress and havoc in her orbit and Jessie was in debt as always. Candy, a drug addict, died – as did poor Treesa, who slashed her wrists one lonely night. Old Hilda, permanently drunk, was living on handouts from the other girls. Benzy Nell had disappeared – it was rumoured she had forgotten to about-turn at the end of her beat and had gone marching on until she vanished over a cliff at the coast. Tina also disappeared into limbo – although some said it was Manchester.

Gradually I became more engrossed in my painting. I trotted round all the galleries, studying the ‘greats’, and took further courses at art school. When my savings ran out, I did any old part-time job to tide me over and painted in every spare minute. In short, I became dedicated. Now and again my longing for the bright lights would overwhelm me and I would take a trip to town, but to economise, I’d had my telephone removed. As a result, my links with Soho became more and more tenuous.

I could see enough, however, to know that things there were changing. A Royal Commission was set up to report on prostitution, with recommendations for abating the practice, and the results caused shock waves through the streets I used to know so well. Because of the commission’s findings, the government devised a law that would make it virtually impossible for girls to solicit men in the streets any longer. It was, in effect, so tough that even a smile from an upstairs window might be construed as soliciting, and sufficient cause for arrest.

For a while before this law came into force, there was considerable anxiety in the trade, and doubts were voiced everywhere as to whether it would be possible to continue at all; but when the blow finally struck, and zero hour arrived, the ready wits of those involved swiftly found ways and means to carry on. The word ‘Model’ was scribbled roughly on to pieces of card and pinned to the open street doors of the various gaffs; and any shopkeeper possessing a glass advertisement case became richer by virtue of that asset, as, for rocketing fees they pinned up postcards bearing the telephone numbers of young ladies available for French lessons, corrective therapy, soothing massage and other equally ambiguous services.

During this period of adjustment, there was a fair amount of gloom and hardship, but justice was done too, in that the girls who had been conscientious enough to always please their clients and had acquired plenty of regulars were the least hard hit.

One rather unpleasant side effect caused by the apparent disappearance of the prostitutes was that men desperately hunting round the streets looking for them began accosting any ordinary women who paused to look in shop windows. But gradually the dispirited and aimlessly wandering men learned the new order of things, and began to understand what the word ‘Model’ meant, and in no time at all they were galloping happily up and down the numerous stair-cases again.

Soon the furore died down, and everything was very much as it had been before; except that now Soho
looked
clean, for the girls had been, metaphorically speaking, swept under the mat.

Then, as though all this outward purity were anathema to the very fibre of Soho, clip joints began springing up everywhere. Along with these, strip clubs began to burgeon, and gradually everyone settled down to the new lifestyle and eventually forgot the days of walking the streets.

It was only by chance, some while later, that I heard that Mae had married a grocer. At first I couldn’t believe the news, but everyone confirmed it. She had left the West End and was serving behind the counter of her husband’s shop in the suburbs. Several girls had even taken taxi rides out there to verify this phenomenon. By all accounts, they returned rather speechless and a trifle sorry for her.

My own life, away from my old habits and friends, gradually became ever busier, crammed with personal events and endeavours. Time was at a premium and not to be wasted on luxuries. All superfluous activities had to be pared back. Sadly, Soho and my friends there fell victim to this economy.

The antipathy I had always felt for men had increased enormously during my time as a maid, and I had become totally sickened by what I saw as universal sweaty sexual eagerness. When at last I met a man who was able to approach the subject of sex with light-hearted bonhomie, I was so impressed that I married him. In due course we had a daughter. It was a perfect marriage.

My relations with my own family never became warm, but I did start to resume occasional contact with my mother and half-sisters. Now that I had a family of my own, I felt I had to try. My grandmother, however, I never saw again, nor ever wanted to.

The years passed with frightening rapidity. My daughter grew up and herself had a daughter. I achieved some success and a few distinctions as a painter, and took great pleasure in knowing that reproductions of my paintings hung in thousands of homes. It was what I had always dreamt of when I got that first job, painting silk. Finally all my hard work was bearing fruit. Despite being immersed in a different world, I did what I could to set my Soho life down in paint. Two of my favourite pictures – which I have never sold and never will – are one of Mae and Rabbits, and another of Tearaway Tina, she of the magnificent appearance and the rotten heart. I have never yet painted the perfect picture, but I am only eighty-three, so there’s hope for me yet. Perhaps I shall find success in some afterlife.

And then one day: a minor miracle. A small hand-written poster caught my eye outside a Spiritualist church and stirred up poignant old memories. The next visiting psychic medium was, apparently, none other than Rita. It was over twenty years since I’d last set eyes on her.

Nothing could have been more ludicrous than the thought of Rita turning spiritual; I would have thought she was more likely to be running an opium den in Wapping. I laughingly told myself that lots of people bore the same surname and it just had to be a different person. Nevertheless, the nostalgia seeped through, and I made a mental note of the time and date.

The advertised night arrived and I sat in the small hall along with about fifty others. The door near the little platform opened and the leader of the church emerged, followed by the visiting medium – and glory be, it
was
Rita!