West End Girls: The Real Lives, Loves and Friendships of 1940s Soho and Its Working Girls (27 page)

He worked hard to exude the aura of a Chicago mobster. Tony’s god was Al Capone, a man who talked in monosyllables and who never smiled except when pulling the trigger. When describing the latest gangster film, he would become animated and childishly enthusiastic till he remembered he was supposed to be morose and abruptly fall silent again just in time to preserve the image. Now he gazed murderously at the traffic, whilst chewing savagely on an unlit cigar. I noticed, with spiteful satisfaction, that his double chin was progressing nicely.

Attempting to bring a little festivity into the atmosphere, I remarked on the beautiful day but met with no response from Tony. Mae, however, began to chatter: I supposed her last tablet was beginning to take effect. Throughout the forty-three-mile drive, Tony’s contribution to the conversation was an occasional grunt or burp and a frequent clashing of gears. At least he showed a mild interest when I pointed out a spot known as Gallows Corner, and he actually came quite near to merriment when he narrowly missed running over a dog.

At last the sea hove into view, which thrilled me, as I’d only seen it two or three times before in my life. I would have loved to go paddling along the strand, examining seaweed and looking for shells. But that wasn’t the point of the exercise: it was the Kursaal that had brought us, said Mae, not all that ‘soppy’ water.

By the time we got in – with Mae about four steps ahead, fluttering in her bouffant silk like a giant butterfly looking for a flower – it was obvious from Tony’s expression that whatever misgivings he’d had about the outing, he was now in the process of trebling them. Mae was positively sparkling; she had already swept the car park attendant off his feet and flustered the man we bought our tickets from. If she’d had ‘Whore of Babylon’ stamped on her forehead in fluorescent ink, it couldn’t have been more obvious what she was. To my shame, I shared a little of Tony’s embarrassment. I don’t think either of us were worried she would use bad language, but she had spent so many years ogling men, it had become more or less habitual. Her only concession to being respectable was to refrain from actually winking at them – although from some of the startled expressions I saw, I’m not so sure she always managed that.

Tony was convinced that every West End plain-clothes policeman had decided to visit Southend that day, and kept trying to maintain a discreet distance between himself and Mae’s conspicuous flamboyance. He stiffened with alarm whenever she disappeared into the crowd after something that had attracted her attention. She then had to trot after him in her four-inch heels in order to catch him and cling on to him affectionately.

‘Oh, Tony, look – candyfloss,’ she said with a squeal of joy. ‘I must get some.’ And off she swooped.

‘Ma – don – na!’
he muttered, staring gloomily after her.

We walked along with our candyfloss, Mae eating one and carrying Tony’s, as he refused to take any part in this exhibitionism. At least while she had both hands full, she couldn’t clutch at his arm.

Whilst she was working her way through the second cocoon of sticky pink cotton wool, we came upon a merry-go-round.

‘Come on, both of you, let’s have a go,’ she said as she shot forward. I looked enquiringly at Tony, but he stood his ground.

‘Mella!’
he growled.

I don’t suppose Al Capone went on roundabouts any more than he would eat candyfloss. Tony would have been relieved to be standing on his own, watching the two of us, had Mae not taken it into her head to warble out
‘Tonee!’
every time our horses passed him.

We rolled pennies, went on the Ferris wheel, the roller coaster, the Whip and the Cakewalk, with Tony
‘Mella
ing’ and ‘
Madonna-
ing’ at every new suggestion. In an attempt to restore his mood to normal, Mae looked around for a rifle range.

‘He’ll love that,’ she whispered to me. ‘He likes guns.’ When we found one, she paid for a rifle and, beaming, offered it to him, looking for the warm twinkle in his eye. There was none. He glared and muttered,
‘Ostja!’
– another good old Maltese expression.

‘Oh well,’ she said with a shrug, and turning to point the gun at the targets, proceeded to make a spectacle of herself once more.

Having done her bit towards placating Tony, Mae made a beeline for the dodgem cars. There, she succeeded in banging us into everything in sight, until going into a slow gyration in the middle of the arena. This, of course, necessitated the attendant’s aid, and she rewarded him with dazzling smiles and a few provocative words, during which I stole a glance to where we had left Tony and saw him turn away with a murderous scowl.

After that, we giggled our way through the Tunnel of Love, got ourselves thrown around in the Giant Caterpillar and exhibited our underwear to greater-than-ever advantage on the chair-o-planes. Meantime, we managed to eat all the things one should eat at a fair: ice creams, hot doughnuts, saveloys, bags of crisps and peanuts, whelks and jellied eels.

Eventually we actually achieved the impossible: we got Tony into the hall of mirrors, which had an economical admission charge, no call upon one’s skill, no risk to life and limb and no chance of him making a spectacle of himself. He was not amused, however. In fact, he didn’t even look at any of his reflections, though they were making Mae and me hysterical. So when we chanced upon the haunted house, we didn’t press him, but just accepted his snarled
‘Mella!’
and left him outside.

Halfway round this, after encountering clanking skeletons, fabricated cobwebs, corpses in coffins revealed by lightning flashes – all to the accompaniment of blood-curdling screams – we stepped on the inevitable grating, which blew a fierce gust of wind up our dresses. We were reduced to howls of laughter when Mae’s yards of skirt flew almost over her head, making her look like a parachutist going the wrong way.

When we emerged from the darkness into the sunlight, still giggling, we couldn’t see Tony anywhere. At last Mae caught sight of him skulking about a hundred yards away. We walked towards him, still chuckling. I could hardly miss the fact that he was wearing his most diabolical glare to date. Apparently he had stationed himself directly outside a window at the precise spot where Mae’s skirt had blown over her head.

‘And,’ he hissed, ‘you’ve got a great big hole in your drawers – and everybody saw it.’

This set us off laughing again, which didn’t improve his temper at all, and we left the Kursaal to get a meal of fish and chips at one of the many seafront cafés. At last Tony became slightly more buoyed up, and almost smiled at Mae’s dismay when she dropped a glob of tomato ketchup on to her party dress. Perhaps he hoped that might curtail her activities for the day; but he should have known her better. On the way back to the fair, she spied a small boating pond.

‘Oh, we must have a go on that,’ she cried. ‘I haven’t been in a boat for ages.’

Surprisingly, after much persuasion, we managed to get Tony into a boat with us. Although Mae and I rowed him twice around the pond, he remained unhappy, until Mae caught a crab and liberally splashed herself. She saw his grin this time and called him a sod.

When our time was up, we manoeuvred the boat – stern first – to somewhere near the landing stage. Mae thought it was time to stand up and take stock of things. Her little hysterical shrieks for help, which were intended to enhance the fun of it all, ensured us a substantial audience and the assistance of every available attendant – particularly when it came to lifting her to safety. Tony hated having to be hoisted out of that boat by two pairs of sturdy, willing hands. His face now wore the bitter expression of someone who had reached the end of their tether. He had been looking at his watch all through the afternoon – no doubt totting up what Mae could have been earning – and he now checked it again, more definitely.

‘It is six o’clock,’ he announced firmly. ‘We must go.’

‘Oh, Tony, must we?’ Mae wailed. ‘I wanted to go back to the Kursaal.’

‘I have to meet a man on business,’ he said and, added in a matter-of-fact way, ‘and you can go back to work.’

‘Oh well,’ she acquiesced, unenthusiastically. ‘All right.’

We walked along to the car park, where Mae gave a final dazzling smile to the attendant, before sinuously sliding into the car with a last lingering display of leg. She was hardly in before Tony crashed into gear and reversed with a screech of brakes. Then, giving one more
‘Mella!’
to Southend in general, he lurched us off at breakneck speed. When we reached London, he dropped us at the first taxi rank he saw, then drove away looking happier than he had done all day.

When we stepped from the cab at the end of our alleyway, our Saturday men were lurking everywhere. By the time we got to the front door, they had formed into a procession behind us. I sat in my crowded waiting room while Mae picked them off one by one, with better results than she had displayed on the rifle range, regaling each with snatches from her day’s adventures.

At the end of a very busy evening, I took our tea into the bedroom, where, in an exhausted state, we both sat down to drink it. The frothy dress was now lying in a discarded heap in a corner of the room. It had been shown off, honour had been paid to it, and it was now of no account. I picked it up and put it on a hanger in the wardrobe. Mae watched me thoughtfully, then said:

‘I wish we could do that sort of thing more often. Don’t you? It must be good for me because . . .’ she lied, ‘I haven’t take a single Benzedrine all day.’

We sat for a while, sipping our tea in silence, then she sighed. ‘Oh, Babs! Hasn’t it been a lovely day?’

It wasn’t easy to answer that. Had it not been for Tony, we could have had any number of such days. With him, that was all but impossible. I blamed Tony for her Benzedrines, Tony for her fits of ill-temper. But there was nothing much to be said or done about it. She was the prostitute, he was the ponce, I was the maid and we all knew our places.

Twenty-Six

When I began my maidship, I could see only affection and friendship in the streets of Soho, but as time went by, I realised that malice and enmity walked there too. It was a restless little world, full of undercurrents of turmoil and strife, ever poised for vicious attack or aggressive defence.

It wasn’t always the ponces to blame, either. Trouble often sprang from intrusion by the girls on to one another’s territories. This could be a girl new to the district trying to carve out a manor for herself; but more usually it was a girl already established on a neighbouring beat purposely setting out to settle a grievance or just feeling bloody-minded.

Mae had a generally sunny and happy nature, and left alone, she never picked quarrels; but when this sort of thing occurred, she felt she had to fight in order to save face. In these situations, if words and threats had no effect, she would ram a nail file down the middle finger of one of her gloves and go flying out like an avenging Fury. She was a trim, lithe, and amazingly strong girl, and she always made her point in the end.

Another constant source of trouble was the rent. No one ever knew who their real landlords were, as each place had been let, sublet, and underlet again. All that the girls themselves ever knew was that X was their rent, and Y the person they gave it to; the same face appeared every week, and the cash was handed over. If for any reason that face had to be changed, then the old rent collector and the new would arrive together, and the changeover would take place before our eyes, such was the continual Soho caution. If it weren’t for such precautions, some slick operator would inevitably make a note of rent day, and call earlier than the legitimate collector, pretending that the usual man was ill and had asked him to collect on his behalf. If the girl
did
fall for this old trick, it was no excuse when the rightful collector called. Such slow-wittedness found no tolerance in Soho, and there would be nothing for it but for her to pay again. Generally, to avoid the possibility of a girl trying to claim any tenancy rights, and to assist in dislodging her when necessary, most landlords would never permit the girl to sleep on the premises. Then, if she refused to pay the rent, their first step was to padlock the street door, or change the lock on it during the night.

The police would often overlook these internal Soho struggles. You see, trying to clean up vice and crime in Soho was rather like trying to dig a hole in dry sand; you dig some out, but other grains slide down the sides to fill it up again. There were occasional big purges, though; I remember one in particular, where the old crime bosses were taken away and had to account for various foul deeds that their henchmen – with more brawn than brain – had committed in their names. When the bosses were removed, these henchmen, who were the really nasty fellows, snarled and fought for the spoils, and everything became chaotic. Flats that one girl had been working in happily for years now had strings of girls passing through them, until the girls didn’t know whether they were coming or going. Those who dissented received harsh and violent treatment from these thugs, who imposed a reign of intimidation. The protection racket got more greedy and spiteful; there were also mysterious and seemingly pointless batterings, and even a murder or two.