West End Girls: The Real Lives, Loves and Friendships of 1940s Soho and Its Working Girls (23 page)

‘Must have cost her a pretty penny, this little lot,’ he said to his wife. I went back to the kitchen to help Rita, who had a spare bottle of gin tucked away in there. By the time the meal was ready, both of us were slightly tipsy, dropping baked potatoes on to laps and enjoying ourselves enormously. It was a jolly, plentiful meal, and despite our inebriation, it was cooked to a turn. Although John enquired about the cost of the turkey, I noticed that he partook of it with gusto.

After dinner, Rita remembered her present for me: a silver cigarette lighter, with an intaglio of Siamese dancers. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever owned.

I stayed overnight and through Boxing Day. I was so grateful to Rita, and touched that she had included me in her family at that time of the year. It was a Christmas that stays in my memory to this day; a perfect opposite to the VE Day that had once come and gone, unremarked and uncelebrated, in my grandmother’s uncharitable home.

Twenty-One

I greeted the end of that month with mixed feelings. Working with Rita was far less nerve-racking than working with Mae. On the other hand, I’d developed a taste for the excitement, strange sights and hurly-burly with which Mae surrounded herself, and to my surprise, I really wanted to jump on the merry-go-round again and get back to Mae’s mad one-girl brothel.

In addition to my various hospital visits, we’d enjoyed a lot of late-night, bed-to-bed telephone conversations when Mae was back home convalescing. When she was finally on her feet again, we’d met in town for a meal or two and she’d even visited me in Rita’s flat, where she’d snorted in amusement at the sight of my knitting and made disparaging remarks about Rita’s working methods – which I tacitly agreed with.

Of course, Mae was raring to go, long before her month was up. She would have gone straight back to work had it not been for the other girl in her flat. When we at last started work again in the New Year, she was positively straining at the leash.

In this, she was destined for disappointment. Although the streets were full of men wistfully eyeing the means of breaking their fast, Christmas had left them without the funds to do it. Mae had reason to be impatient: her loan from Betty Kelly had not been anywhere near paid off when she had been taken ill. With the interest that had accrued in her absence, the debt was nearly back to the amount she’d first borrowed. She was also keen to replenish Tony’s coffers, because she was touched by the way he’d stuck by her through her hospitalisation and worried because he’d announced that he was ‘in debt up to the eyebrows’ because of it. I hated her gullibility – assuming that she was truly still that gullible – but there was nothing to be done. In the meantime, she fretted.

‘I know those bastards out there have got it tucked away somewhere,’ she grumbled. ‘All I need to do is squeeze it out of them somehow.’

As day followed day without a real breakthrough, her mood grew increasingly gloomy and a trifle waspish. She eventually decided that one particular day was going to be it, ‘boom or bust’!

The first hour augured more towards the latter. She changed her clothes and jewellery, hoping that something would turn out to be her Aladdin’s lamp. Nothing did, and there was no sign of any boom. By nine o’clock in the evening, she had earned only forty pounds; then Betty called and turned it into fifteen pounds.

Mae muttered something, braced herself and, tight-lipped and grim, clattered down the stairs. She came back five minutes later – on her own – and sailed past the kitchen door without a word. I waited for the hysterical outburst, but none came. Instead, she called out – quite cheerily – asking for a cup of tea.

I made two cups and carried them in. She was waving a Benzedrine inhaler at me, and informed me that the ‘boom or bust’ promise was still on.

‘I didn’t know you had a cold,’ I said.

A mock-puzzled look spread over her face, then, as if for the first time, she read out the print on the tube, ‘ “Breathe easier!” or “Take the lot to make a lot,” I say.’ She shrugged. ‘Well, Nell says it’ll do the trick,’ she said. ‘She says this is what drummers take when they want to play their drums really fast.’

‘You don’t take it; you sniff it,’ I said. ‘And surely not the whole lot.’

Mae wrinkled her nose speculatively for a while, before saying, ‘Time’s getting on and I need fast results.’

I asked her if she needed water to take it with, but she ignored me. She placed the tube on the floor and brought her heel down hard on it. There was a tightly wound, pungent stick of wadding amongst the broken pieces. She pulled this apart and, bit by bit, dropped the whole lot into her tea. I watched, appalled, as she stirred it into a thick, brownish porridge, exuding a strong scent of lavender, which gradually filled the room.

‘Ugh!’
she said. ‘It doesn’t look very nice, does it?’

I wasn’t very optimistic about it. I watched, fascinated, as she lifted the cup to her mouth and, holding her nose with her other hand, drained the nasty concoction to its bitter dregs.

‘Oh Gawd !’ she gasped. ‘Get me some water, quick – it’s bloody horrible!’

She gulped the water down, lit a cigarette and lay back on the bed, saying, ‘I might as well take it easy for a few minutes, while I’ve got the chance; if this works like that girl says, you won’t see me for dust.’

It hit her ten minutes later, halfway through her next cigarette. Her eyes became brilliant and enormous and she suddenly leaned up on one elbow and turned them on me at full beam. Her voice was breathy and long-distance.

‘Babs, it’s wonderful! I feel like I’m queen of everything. I’m ready to take on every man in London.’

She rose slowly and voluptuously, quivering all over. She was like a powerful machine that had just been switched on and was throbbing with suppressed energy. Suddenly something threw the ‘start’ lever, and she became frenetically animated and could not stop talking. She chattered her way down the stairs, her voice dipping out and then in again as she chattered her way back up, hustling clients before her. The only respite I was to get from this incessant prattling was during the brief intervals when she was down in the street. I thought she might give it a rest while she was in the bedroom, but she didn’t. One after the other, dazed men found themselves in her room without quite knowing how they had agreed to it.

She was ruthless and she was rapid. Man after man was chewed up and spat into the street without stopping. She was seized by a drug-induced recklessness, grabbing anyone and everyone – among them a protesting, venerable old gentleman, who quavered, ‘You’ve gone to all this trouble, my dear, but I don’t know if it will be any good.’ It seemed like only seconds later that his faltering step had regained its spring and his face had somehow achieved a delicious grin.

She made a bomb all right – and more, because she couldn’t stop working when midnight came. In fact, she kept on throughout the night. At some godforsaken hour of the morning I did manage to squeeze in a few words to ask what time she was going home, and was told she would be staying at the flat until she’d restored the family fortunes.

The West End of London settles down to sleep with one eye open for opportunity, but even so, there comes a time when men are too drunk, too tired and too few to be divested of their hard-earned cash. Mae’s need to talk supplanted her need to work. Long before dawn broke, my bed seemed like a lost paradise to which I would never return. I felt my eyes burning, my mouth turn into a desert and my body tremble with sleep deprivation. During the ever-longer intervals between men, Mae talked and talked and talked. She even carried on lengthy monologues concerning things she knew nothing about, including a long treatise on the cracks in the wall.

The stupendous, crackling energy that raced around inside her carried on through the morning to midday, then through the afternoon to the evening, by which time I was almost asleep on my feet. I was hot and feverish, but Mae was still bouncing around like a spring lamb. When we were nearing the second midnight, I put my foot down.

‘Mae, I have got to get some sleep and you must go home too. Perhaps, if you lie down quietly, you’ll just drop off.’

Privately, I didn’t hold out much hope of her ever sleeping again. Seen through my bloodshot eyes, she still had the appearance of a pre-race Grand National favourite. Nevertheless, I prevailed on her to go home by giving her the happy idea of how pleased and surprised Tony would be when he saw how much money she had. She was all a-quiver at the prospect.

‘Yes! I’ll cook him a marvellous meal and I’ll have a lovely bath.’ With some relish creeping into her voice, she added, ‘And I rather fancy him tonight, too.’

I passed a clammy hand over my fevered brow and gasped. She’d had about a hundred and fifty different men in the past thirty-six hours and she still wanted him! Her poor feet!

Twenty-Two

Eventually I managed to get home. I collapsed on to my bed without undressing and fell asleep immediately. It seemed only moments had passed when I was woken by a banging on my door. I staggered over and groped around, feeling for the handle, opening the door with my eyes still tightly shut. I was jolted into sudden wakefulness by that eternal and chirpy voice:

‘Oh, look, Tony love: she’s still asleep!’

Mae was so full of beans I wanted to scream. By her side was ‘Tony love’, looking like the vanquished foe of a mighty army.

‘S’eight o’clock, love. I thought we’d make an early start. A nice cup of coffee and you’ll be as right as rain.’

Tony was eyeing me anxiously. ‘Do you mind?’ he whispered. For once we were allies.

I paused for a little while. Tired as I was, I wanted to make the most of the sight of Tony in defeat. Recognising the inevitable, I turned and picked up my coat and handbag from where I had dropped them and staggered after the dancing figure of Mae into the waiting car. Tony followed behind us to make sure I didn’t make a run for it and leave him alone with her. By the time the car was moving fast enough to prevent my jumping out, he was his old arrogant self again.

We arrived at the flat by the usual devious means of Tony dropping us near enough to get a taxi. Mae’s eyes, in the stark morning light, were still bright and enormous but her face appeared to have had more of her voice than it could take. As soon as we arrived, I had a wash and made coffee, while Mae kept on saying, ‘Gawd, don’t I look ’orrible!’ as she made running repairs to her face with high-density make-up.

Over my second cup, I began to perk up a bit and, in spite of myself, was able to join in with Mae’s boisterous frivolity. Though the blood was still pumping exuberantly around her veins and her toes tingled with a desire for action, she was becoming ill from fatigue. She was sick several times, and by the afternoon, she was bent over the sink, retching.

The drugs had given her a thirst but taken away her appetite, so she was running on innumerable cups of tea. Her talking had, at last, begun to dwindle. For one thing, her brain was running out of subject matter to talk about, but it was also becoming painful for her to speak. Despite this, she still
wanted
to talk and constantly leant against the door jamb of the kitchen saying, ‘Bu . . . u . . . u . . . t . . .’ This gave her time to grope around in her tired mind for something to say.

She still managed to race up and down the stairs at top speed; she still raked in the money at breakneck pace, but as the afternoon wore on, the staccato tapping of her heels on the staircase and the sight of her hand poking round the bedroom door with the cash took on a nightmarish quality. I had a welcome hunch that we were almost at a full stop.

It came the very next time she leaned against the door jamb and opened her mouth to say something. Instead, she doubled up, retching and heaving in paroxysms – painful even to watch. She straightened up at last, with black mascaraed tears streaming down her face, and I took the bull by the horns.

‘Right,’ I said sternly. ‘I’m taking you to hospital. I can’t stand any more of this, even if you can.’

To my surprise, she grinned weakly and said, ‘All right, love – just to please you.’