The Past and Other Lies

by Maggie Joel

  ‘I’ll bet it’s an heirloom,’ said Janie Lasenby, who was Aunt Nora’s eldest. ‘My mum says your mum wore it at her wedding.’

  ‘A hand-me-down, then,’ pronounced Muriel Barmby, who worked at Gossup’s tearoom with Jemima.

  ‘Hardly!’ said Bertha from the doorway, scowling. ‘It was owned by Lady Parker-Soames of Leadheath Hall in Sussex and she wore it to balls and dances and—and all sorts. It’s hardly a hand-me-down.’

  ‘What is it then? Stolen?’ said Muriel, lighting a cigarette.

  ‘It’s the colour of rotting teeth, is what it is,’ announced Jemima from the window sill. ‘And it smells musty. And what’s more, it’s so hideously long anyone wearing it will trip up and fall flat on their face at the altar.’

  ‘It’s a wedding isn’t it?’ giggled Elsie Stephens looking up from her position on the floor. ‘You’re meant to fall over.’

  ‘I think you’re supposed to get drunk first,’ observed Bertha.

  There was a clatter followed by a loud thump in the street below and Jemima leaned out of the window to see her father lying on his back, a streamer in each hand. She turned back to survey the bedroom. Elsie looked downright ridiculous. Who’d invited her, anyway? That dreadful green dress with the scarlet trim that she’d worn to the Palais last autumn, and that hat which looked like a flowerpot. Dreadful. Well, it wasn’t Elsie’s wedding, so who cared?

  Muriel, in stark contrast, was all in black, which suited her deathly white complexion and would send Mum and all the family into a frenzy. Black! At a wedding!

  As for Cousin Janie, well the Lasenbys were not noted for their sense of style and no one, least of all the Lasenbys themselves, was pretending otherwise. Still, at nearly eighteen Janie ought to be wearing something a little less nursery and a little more cocktail. Polka dots indeed!

  She heard footsteps on the stairs, followed by her father’s booming voice.

  ‘Right, then, are the young ladies decent? We have precisely one and one half hours to get to the church. I expect you all to be dressed. The bride in particular.’

  That was his butlering voice, a voice not to be argued with, and all the young women looked at the bride expectantly.

  Jemima pushed herself up off the window sill. ‘Nearly ready, Dad!’ she called in her singsong voice, and they waited in silence until they heard his footsteps retreat.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Jem, I don’t know why you must leave everything to the last minute,’ complained Bertha from the doorway and she turned and flounced off down the stairs after her father, leaving Jemima to get herself into the dreary bridal dress.

  The dress was dreary. No one seeing it for the first time as the bride emerged from the family home on the arm of her proud, Sunday-best father could fail to be disappointed by such a dreary dress, thought Jemima peevishly.

  Behind her, at a dignified distance, came Bertha and Janie—Janie fidgeting with the back of her dress and Bertha walking stiffly as though she were a pallbearer not a bridesmaid. They were followed by Muriel, who tossed her head at the watching crowd, and Elsie who flushed shyly. Then came Uncle Alan, hitching up his trousers and offering his arm to little Edie. Aunt Nora and Mum stood at the kitchen window waving white handkerchiefs and dabbing their eyes.

  Outside a good-sized crowd of neighbours had gathered in their front gardens and in the lane and a small cheer went up and a smattering of applause and someone said, ‘Oooh, look at that hat!’ and someone else agreed, ‘That’s class, that is, a hat like that,’ and Jemima closed her eyes for a moment.

  Thank God for Muriel.

  Muriel’s elder sister, Evadne, worked at the motion picture studios at Ealing and had borrowed for the bride an elegant black hat with a veil and a rather striking little embroidered jacket of grey silk which was fitted across the shoulders and bust in such a way as to enhance one’s already perfect figure.

  She raised her chin a little higher and bestowed a smile on Mr Creely’s head.

  Mr Creely—neighbour, retired police constable and Wells Lane’s sole possessor of a brand-new motor car—had gallantly offered his Baby Austin and chauffeuring skills for the wedding. So here they were climbing into the back of the gleaming black car, Mr Creely holding the door open and looking like he wanted to salute them, his hair oiled so that it gleamed as much as the duco. He tried to catch the bride’s eyes as she swept into the back seat but as he had once attempted to kiss her in a dark alley when she was eleven years old, the bride did not catch his eye and, had he not been the sole owner in Wells Lane of a brand new Baby Austin and the only alternative to an undignified hike on foot to the church, the bride would not have deemed to travel in Mr Creely’s motor car at all.

  ‘All aboard then,’ said Mr Creely, tipping his hat and confusing chauffeuring with bus-conducting. He closed the gleaming door of the Austin after Dad got in and marched around to the front of the car with much ceremony. Finally, and at a pace that would have slowed a funeral procession, they eased away from the kerb and set off up the lane. The family, neighbours and other guests now had about five minutes to dash up the alleyway between numbers thirty-four and thirty-six, turn into Gunnersbury Lane, and get to the church and into their seats before the car got there. The groom, one assumed, was already there.

  The groom.

  Jemima sat back in the plush leather seat and regarded the rounded bowl of Mr Creely’s hat. They turned into Acton Lane and passed sedately beneath the red-painted wrought-iron archway of the railway bridge. As they turned left, not right, into High Street, she realised that Mr Creely was going to take them the long way round, possibly to allow the guests time to take their seats, but most likely to prolong his self-appointed role as driver of the bride. Beside her on the seat Dad patted her hand reassuringly but stared straight ahead at the Saturday afternoon shoppers and street vendors.

  The groom.

  If it hadn’t been for that tedious Sunday afternoon at Hyde Park last September she would, she supposed, not now be sitting here in the back of this gleaming black Baby Austin heading towards her own wedding.

  They passed the fire station, the town hall and the Globe Cinema, the library and the tram depot and Crown Street market, then they turned right into King Street and ground to a halt outside the King’s Head, where a dray cart blocked the road and barrels were being rolled off. Mr Creely appeared to be giving them a tour of Acton’s Places of Interest. Beside her, Dad pulled out his fob watch and frowned. Mr Creely swung out beside the dray so that two wheels mounted the kerb, scattering a group of elderly ladies and a shop boy on a large bicycle.

  Perhaps, she mused, it might even have been Bertha sitting beside Dad in the back of a motor car in this dreadful dress (Bertha would suit it much better than she herself did) and she, Jemima, might be the one hurrying along to the church on foot. But there you were, life was funny like that.

  Having exhausted Acton’s sites, Mr Creely finally pulled up outside the church. And there he was, the groom, standing on the steps in a dark grey suit, waving. Was it a new suit, or had he just borrowed it? He was standing beside a man with one leg.

  Jemima thought about waving back but in the end she just smiled.

  ‘There he is! That’s ’im, over there. Behind the palm tree. Second from the left.’

  Muriel Barmby, four months earlier, buttoned, laced and pinned into the stuffy black waitress dress, heavy black shoes, spotless white linen apron and starched white linen headpiece that made up the regulation dress code of Gossup and Batch’s tearoom, ducked behind a pillar and nudged Jemima sharply with her elbow.

  Jemima looked up distractedly. She was trying for the third time to add up the bill of the elderly couple on table five, who had ordered a plate of cakes and a pot of tea and who might have had cream and jam too, though someone had forgotten to put it on the bill.

  She followed Muriel’s gaze, but all she saw was the usual Monday morning tearoom crowd: elderly ladies from Maida Vale and Hampstead and Belgravia in fox furs a
nd boas and elaborate and unbecoming hats who always smelled faintly musty and told you to mind the teapot was warmed before the water was poured. Otherwise, there was a young couple, wealthy by the look of them, her dripping jewels and furs; an elderly gent of the retired-colonel type; a younger, tweed-suited man with his back to her sitting with a slightly older woman in an expensive coat and a very stylish hat and—ah! Now she saw him.

  Mr Oklahoma in camel-hair coat, wide-brimmed hat, rings on the fingers of both hands and a fat cigar between his lips and (they had it on good authority) an even fatter wallet in his pocket. As usual he was studying an American newspaper which was spread out on his lap and whose pages he flung over and reshuffled noisily in the manner of someone accustomed to being the centre of attention.

  ‘Told you,’ hissed Muriel. ‘Monday mornin’, regular as clockwork. Mr Oklahoma.’

  Of course his name wasn’t really Mr Oklahoma. It was Mr van den Gelfenhoogen. Or something. He had told Muriel he was in newspapers and that he hailed from Oklahoma City, so he was known as Mr Oklahoma for simplicity’s sake. He had been coming to the tearoom every Monday morning for the last four or five weeks, where he sat and noisily read his newspaper and sipped his black coffee. Occasionally he ate a pastry or a scone (though he called it a biscuit. He called biscuits ‘cookies’). Sometimes he met other gentlemen, suited, often with attache cases, some American like himself, some English. One a German. They talked ‘business’, reported Muriel, who always returned from Mr Oklahoma’s table (table seven) rather breathless and bursting with news. This particular morning, a Monday in late November, Mr Oklahoma was seated alone, which was a good sign because it generally meant he would exchange a few words with whoever was serving him (Muriel, if she got in quick enough) and invariably left a large tip (half a crown last week).

  ‘How do I look?’ asked Muriel, turning to Jemima and smoothing down her hair, which was a soft chestnut brown—though you wouldn’t know it, thanks to the regulation hairnet. Muriel checked her nails for dirt (but as Mr Gilfroy, the tearoom manager, checked the nails of every girl before she began her shift, it was safe to conclude they were scrubbed clean). Then she checked the line of her stockings and hitched her unbecomingly long black dress up a little to expose a vital extra inch of calf.

  Muriel had designs on Mr Oklahoma. Or, rather, Muriel had designs on moving to America. Since her older sister, Evadne, had landed the job at the motion picture studio, her interest in all things American had intensified. Mr Oklahoma, who was unquestionably American and undoubtedly wealthy, had walked into the tearoom at exactly the right moment, and Muriel, who was young enough and pretty enough to keep her East End antecedents temporarily hidden, felt that she was In With a Chance.

  Jemima felt that Muriel had about as much chance of marrying the Prince of Wales. In fact, she fancied herself as having more of a chance than Muriel and, though she was too preoccupied with her own affairs to bother too much with a loud, cigar-smelling American, she still made it her business to pass his table surprisingly often and to bring him his change when Muriel was in the kitchen. And she flattered herself that the smiles he bestowed on her were friendlier, more suggestive, than any he bestowed on Muriel.

  ‘You. Gel. Gel. Yes you.’

  One of the old cats was waggling a crooked finger at her and Jemima fixed a surly look on her face and slouched over in the accepted Gossup’s way. She swayed between the crowded cane furniture and pot plants and her somewhat circuitous route took her very close to Mr Oklahoma’s table. He didn’t look up.

  Well, perhaps she could catch his eye on her way back. She flounced past, brushing against the table of the young man in the tweed suit and the slightly older lady in the expensive coat as she went by.

  ‘I’ve told Mr Cannon we ought to concentrate our efforts on the Opposition to lobby on our behalf. We really have very little of what one might call “clout” on our own.’

  ‘Yes, yes, indeed. You’re right there. Yes, quite right.’

  Jemima looked back and was mildly surprised to see the posh lady and Bertha’s funny little man from that dreadful political thing two months back. What were they doing here? Having an assignation? But no, she saw that they were having a dull political discussion and that an assignation was the furthest thing from either of their minds.

  ‘Gel. Over here. I have been waiting a quarter of an hour for my pot of tea and cake.’

  ‘It’s just coming,’ Jemima said with her sweetest smile (they usually tipped a penny each).

  ‘Say, miss! Miss!’

  She saw Mr Oklahoma calling her from over his newspaper. He smiled broadly as Jemima sidled over. A half a crown was good, but what if—what if...

  ‘What is it, sir? Can I get you something special today? Chef says the pastries are fresh out the oven.’

  Chef hadn’t said anything of the sort but it was the kind of thing you were encouraged to say. Particularly to wealthy American customers.

  ‘Well, now,’ he said, lowering his newspaper to the table and settling back in his chair and taking a long, smiling look at her. ‘That’s a mighty fine offer and I believe I’ll have to give it some serious consideration. But in the meantime what I require, young lady, is a telephone. I have a real important overseas call to make.’

  A telephone? What did he think this was—the Ritz hotel?

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, sir, we’ve got Madeira cake and Danish pastries and cupcakes and scones and Chef’s special almond slices but telephones are off today.’

  He let out a shout of laughter, throwing his head back and rewarding her with an even bigger smile, and Jemima glowed and prayed Muriel would stay in the kitchen or wherever she was.

  ‘Okay, honey, why don’t you run along and make up my check’ (he always called it a check when he meant a bill) ‘and I’ll see if there’s some place in this tiny store where a fella can make a call,’ and he winked at her in a way that seemed to suggest vast prairies and gleaming skyscrapers and endless roads. And money. Jemima winked back and sashayed her way to the counter to make up his bill and work out how to slip him her name.

  ‘Miss Flaxheed!’

  Well, now he would know her name. Everyone would.

  Mr Gilfroy had emerged from the small manager’s office that was wedged between the counter, the cloakroom and the kitchen and was now summoning her frostily like the Grim Reaper on Judgement Day.

  Oh go away, thought Jemima irritably.

  ‘I’ll just finish making up this—’

  ‘Now, Miss Flaxheed. Get Miss Barmby to finish that.’

  Miss Barmby had just emerged from the cloakroom (strictly forbidden during work hours) where she had applied a smear of powder and lipstick (an offence that would normally warrant a stern reprimand) but Mr Gilfroy had gone straight back into his office without even a second glance at Muriel. Jemima glowered at his retreating back, passed the bill to Muriel and followed him into the office.

  ‘Close the door.’

  Jemima closed the door and stood before his oversized Victorian desk. Apart from an inkwell and blotter the desk was empty and, other than serving as an object behind which one could sit, its purpose seemed to be purely decorative. Aside from the desk, the office contained only a bookcase stuffed with thick black ledgers and a rather sick-looking potted palm.

  Mr Gilfroy, his brilliantined hair parted like the Red Sea, his moustache so waxed that it looked like a single strand of hair, sat behind the desk, arms straight at his side, regarding Jemima with a stern frown. His thin, wiry frame was encased in a pinstripe suit that he must have been born wearing, so impossible was it to imagine the man without the suit. He ruled the tearoom the way you imagined an NCO ruled a barracks. There were rules, there were regulations, there were transgressions and there was discipline.

  There was a high turnover of staff.

  It was rumoured he had a wife and two children in Hertfordshire, though no one had ever seen either.

  ‘Miss Flaxheed,’ he said, thrusting
out his chin and fixing her with a severe look. Then, with a glance at the closed office door, he stood up, came over and kissed her passionately on the mouth.

  ‘Jemima!’ he moaned, his words somewhat smothered by Jemima’s hair and the starched linen headpiece that kept it in place. ‘I’ve missed you! Your smell, your softness, your divine taste. Oh God!’

  Aside from this morning’s regulation clocking on and checking of nails, it had in fact been less then twenty-four hours since Mr Gilfroy had last set eyes on her. Jemima stifled a sigh. His response to this enforced separation was gratifying though a little pitiful.

  She noted that beneath his pinstripe suit he wore, as usual, a freshly laundered shirt, that he was scrupulously shaved and smelled of the hair oil that made his hair shine in the dimly lit office. Jemima approved of these touches; they were the details that made certain exchanges possible.

  Mr Gilfroy’s hand slid down over her buttocks and he pulled her towards him so that her breasts were pushed up against his starched white chest. Jemima turned her head slightly to one side so that his kisses landed on the side of her mouth rather than on her lips.

  When she had first started working in the tearoom a year ago, she had sniggered along with the other girls at Gilfroy’s primness. What sort of wife, she had wondered, could endure such a starched, pinstriped and priggish man? A starched, dull, priggish wife presumably, probably tucked away in a semi in Ilford or Epping. (She had since found out it was Rickmansworth and that the wife’s name was Irene, but otherwise her assumptions about Mrs Gilfroy remained unconfirmed.)

  But last December, a sudden snowstorm, a store-wide electricity blackout and a twenty-year-old bottle of vintage port that Mr Gilfroy had been saving for his eldest child’s wedding had changed everything. Now Jemima was supremely, triumphantly aware that every starched collar, every lick of hair oil, every stroke of the razor was for her and her alone. When she lined up with the other girls before the start of each shift for the ritual nail check, Gilfroy’s white fingers caressed her palms and stroked the back of her hand in a way that recalled what had happened in his office the evening before, when everyone else had gone home. She was careful to keep her gaze on the floor. Even so, Muriel had proven to have hawk-like eyes.