Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Gilda O’Neill
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Postscript
Copyright
About the Book
London in the Swinging Sixties.
When Angie Knight transforms herself into a mini-skirted dolly bird, it’s an escape from life with her bone idle mother in the East End. Angie soon has the world at her pretty, white-booted feet as she dances the night away in Soho’s strobe-lit Canvas Club with her best friend, Jackie.
She’s heard all about the dangers of Soho, of course, but what can go wrong? They’re only playing around.
Until club owner David Fuller sets his sights on Angie and, on a dark rainy night, she climbs alone into his big, shiny car …
About the Author
Gilda O’Neill was born and brought up in the East End. She left school at fifteen but returned to education as a mature student. She wrote full-time and continued to live in the East End with her husband and family. Sadly she died on 24 September 2010 after a short illness.
Also by Gilda O’Neill
FICTION
The Cockney Girl
Whitechapel Girl
The Bells of Bow
Just Around the Corner
Cissie Flowers
Dream On
The Lights of London
NON-FICTION
Pull No More Bines: An Oral History of East London Women Hop Pickers
A Night Out with the Girls: Women Having Fun
My East End: A History of Cockney London
For Lynne Drew
Chapter 1
AS THE TWANGING opening strains of ‘Ticket to Ride’ struck up on her transistor, Angie Knight closed her magazine with a sigh, and shoved it under the bed.
It was all right for Jackie – she looked like a fair-haired version of that Cathy McGowan off the telly – and for all the other girls who looked as though they belonged to the world that Angie could only glimpse in the glossy pages of Honey. They all knew how to dress, how to look good, and how to do their make-up.
On the secret occasion when Angie had experimented with cosmetics, she had wound up looking like a cross between Coco the Clown and a cheap tart: just like her mother, only without the fag hanging from the corner of her mouth. Mind you, men seemed to like the way Angie’s mum looked. Lots of men.
It was a good job Angie didn’t care what blokes thought about her, and that she didn’t mind spending yet another Saturday night with no one for company except a bunch of pirate disc jockeys who sounded as though they were speaking with their heads stuck in a bucket. Although, Angie suspected, that had more to do with the radio her nan had bought her off Doris Barker than the quality of the actual broadcast, despite the fact that it was coming from somewhere out at sea instead of a nice, cosy, BBC studio.
The unexpected sound of a key turning in the street door had Angie hurriedly flicking off her crinoline lady bedside lamp and turning off the transistor with a metallic click, darkening the room and silencing Radio Caroline and the Beatles right in the middle of their final chorus.
She groaned inwardly and pulled the blankets up over her head. It was only a quarter past ten. She hadn’t expected them home nearly so soon. Had the pubs run out of booze? She had hoped, really hoped, that she would be asleep by the time they got back.
Angie listened, in the muffled darkness, as Vi, her mother, and Chas, her mother’s latest, useless, boyfriend, stumbled drunkenly up the stairs, their voices raised in anger over something or other.
She hadn’t expected them to be rowing quite so soon either. It usually took at least a month for her mother to grow bored with her men – or rather her ‘meal tickets’, as she called them behind their backs, and sometimes to their faces as well if she’d had a few too many Snowballs – and then another week or two for the inevitable, and occasionally spectacular, battles to begin.
‘All I said,’ she heard her mother shriek, ‘was I didn’t like the way your nasty little brother was looking at her yesterday.’
‘Vi, your daughter is meant to be how old?’
‘She’ll be seventeen next week, as you’d know if you’d listen to a single, bloody word I say.’
Angie threw back the covers and propped herself up on her elbows. Had she heard right? Were they actually arguing about her?
‘Seventeen. Exactly.’ Chas was triumphant.
This was a first. Her mother was the centre of the universe, the only possible topic of interesting conversation, everyone knew that. Well, you did if you spent any time in this house, regardless of whether you were her daughter, or a visiting boyfriend, even if you were a well-off, dodgy car dealer – sorry, businessman – from Chigwell, like Chas, rather than a casual pull off a local building site as the last one had been.
‘Surely she can look after herself at that age.’
There was a pause, then the sound of her mother’s bedroom door being swung back viciously on its hinges, and her mother snapping, ‘You’ve seen how slow she is around fellers. She could get really conned. Specially by a nice-looking boy like your Matthew. You’ve got to do something, Chas. I mean it.’
Slow? Conned? Angie sank back on her pillows, her cheeks burning red with shame.
‘Don’t be daft.’
‘I’m telling you, I didn’t like the way that randy little so-and-so was looking at her.’ Vi’s voice was now whiny and low, as, in a customary display of acrobatic mood-swinging, she had leaped from banshee to pouty child in a single, accomplished swoop. ‘He could take advantage.’
Angie heard Chas snort derisively, and then the twang of bedsprings. ‘Be honest, sweetheart, who’d want to take advantage of that mousy little thing? She’s as timid as a bloody rabbit. And twice as gormless.’
‘Don’t talk about her like that.’
Chas snorted again. ‘I’m not saying she’s got a furry coat, long, pointy ears and big teeth, I’m just saying—’
Angie could hear Vi laughing. ‘Stop it, Chas. She can’t help the way she is.’
She can’t help the way she is? Angie felt her eyes begin to prickle with humiliation.
‘Well, don’t be so silly.’ There was another pause, then she heard Chas say, ‘Here, you’re not jealous are you?’
‘Jealous? Of her?’ The sound of her mother’s obvious outrage made Angie feel sick.
‘I’m not a fool, Vi. I know as well as you what you’re up to. As long as you keep her looking like some gawky schoolkid in those terrible clothes you make her wear, people’ll look at her as if she’s a child. And that makes you seem younger.’
‘You bastard. You know I’m only thirty-four. And I don’t tell her what to wear, I just sort of advise her, that’s—’
‘Come off it. If anyone did show interest in her, you’d be right up the Swannee. Who’d you have to skivvy for you then?’
‘You know I’ve got my condition.’
‘What? Lazyitis?’
‘Don’t be so rotten. The doctor said it was a very traumatic birth. He said I was to get plenty of rest. I had a lot of trouble. It affected me. Psychologically.’
‘Vi. That was seventeen years ago.’
‘You’d understand if you were a woman.’
‘Wel
l, I’m not, am I? As you can see.’ There was another, brief pause, followed by Vi squealing in half-hearted annoyance. Then Chas went on, ‘Come on, darling, don’t let’s fall out over a bloody kid. Show me how good even an old girl like you can be.’
As Angie felt the tears brim, and then trickle down her cheeks and flow into her ears, she pulled the blankets back over her head and tried to block out her treacherous mother’s lascivious giggles, and the vision of what was happening in the next room, as the bedsprings began squeaking like a rhythmic, asthmatic donkey.
Chas was right, she was a mousy little thing, a timid little rabbit. She was too scared, or too stupid, to make it clear how unhappy she was, how unhappy people could make her. Her nan was always telling her to stand up for herself, but somehow she never had. She knew she had to do something about it, or she would be trodden on for ever.
But knowing something didn’t mean you could do it.
Angie sobbed as quietly as she could, hoping that they had no idea next door that she had heard every humiliating word.
The petite, expensively dressed blonde glanced down at her gold cocktail watch as she strode purposefully across the concrete floor of the private underground car park, her high heels tip-tipping like a metronome.
Nearly half past ten.
Without pausing, she looked over at the security booth. The guard wasn’t there. He often wasn’t at this time of night. She smiled indulgently. Lazy sod. Off having a crafty drink and a cigarette as usual. If only the other tenants of the exclusive Mayfair block knew that their precious E types and Bentleys, supposedly being defended to the death, were regularly abandoned to the mercy of any even half-way competent thief or resentful vandal, the guard would have been sacked on the spot. If you lived in these flats, you could afford the luxury of bypassing any sentimentality regarding the jobs and lives of lesser mortals such as car-park attendants.
She stopped beside a scarlet Mini Cooper, dropped her chin, opened her handbag and began to rifle through the lipsticks and screwed-up tissues, searching for her keys.
As a large, masculine hand clapped over her right shoulder, the woman froze.
‘Don’t turn round, and don’t even think of screaming.’ The voice was deep, husky. ‘Understand?’
She swallowed hard, then nodded.
‘Good.’ The man laughed, a sound that rose from somewhere deep in his broad chest. ‘Look at you. Birds like you, you’re asking for it. Dress up your arse, flashing all you’ve got. Now. Now you can turn round. Slowly.’
Wide-eyed and with her open bag still in her hand, the woman did as she was told. But, before she had a chance to call for help, run, or even faint, the man, in what seemed a blur of movement, had slammed her back against the car, had pulled up her skirt with one hand, and had ripped open his flies with the other.
‘Stockings and suspenders. Good.’ His breath came in short, excited grunts as he made a wild grab for the triangle of sheer black lace that barely covered the mouse-coloured curls of her pubic hair – the woman was not a natural blonde.
She snapped upright, clapping her knees together. ‘Careful!’ She spoke in a refined, Home Counties accent, and she sounded annoyed: a middle-class woman complaining about the behaviour of the lower orders. ‘David only bought these for me today. They cost a fortune.’
The man grinned. ‘Glad I’m the first to appreciate them, Sonia.’
Sonia grinned back, and stepped delicately out of the panties. She tucked them neatly into her handbag, clicked the clasp shut, set it on the ground next to her, and then rolled her skirt tidily up her thighs.
‘Get on with it then, Mikey, or the guard will be back.’ She ran a perfectly manicured fingernail across his cheek, and peered up at him through suggestively lowered lashes. ‘Or maybe you’d give a better performance with someone watching …’
As the man thrust into her, and the woman threw back her head with a gasp, neither of them realized that they did, in fact, actually have an audience.
Too busy with their game, they had failed to notice the hot, red glow of a cigarette, coming from the back seat of the nearby racing-green Jaguar, as her husband, David Fuller, took a draw on his rare, imported Turkish Imperial, before crushing it, without a flinch, in the palm of his hand.
‘Coming.’ Tilly Murray, a pleasant-looking woman in her early forties, walked along the passage to answer the door, wiping her floury hands on her apron. Sundays, especially the mornings, were all go for Tilly – even harder work than the other six days of the week were for her and her husband, Stan. And that was saying something.
‘Hello, love. How are you, then?’ She stepped aside to let Angie Knight into the hallway. Like a lot of other homes on the estate, the Murrays’ house had a front room, kitchen and bathroom leading off the passage downstairs, and two main bedrooms and a box room leading off the tiny landing above. Being on the other end of the five-house terrace to the Knights’, the layout was a perfect mirror image of Angie’s own, but there the similarities ended: the Murrays grafted long and hard to make sure their house was warm, comfortable and full of the tantalizing smells of cooking, with Stan working all hours to pay the bills, and Tilly doing all the domestic chores, so they could make a decent home for their kids, while the Knight house offered none of those things, not unless Angie herself did something about them when she got in from work. Violet Knight was not a bad woman, in fact she could be a loving, lovable, warm and funny person to be around, it was just that men, rather than her daughter’s comfort and future opportunities were her priority, and when one of them was in her life, which was most of the time, she was definitely above such banal matters as home-making.
‘Hello, Mrs Murray. Is Jackie around?’
Tilly jerked her head towards the stairs. ‘She’s not out of bed yet, but go on up. I know she’s awake.’ She smiled warmly at Angie. ‘I don’t know how you youngsters manage to spend so much time laying about doing nothing. You’re like little dormice in hibernation.’ Immediately wishing she hadn’t said something so stupid to a kid who spent just about every waking hour either at work or slaving to keep her idle, no-good mother’s house in some sort of order, Tilly put her hand on Angie’s shoulder. ‘Stay for dinner if you like, love. I’m doing a nice shoulder of lamb with all the trimmings, and I’m making a jam roly-poly for afters, with loads of custard. It’ll be no trouble, I’ll just peel a few more spuds.’ She nodded encouragingly. ‘You know how Mr Murray likes his Sunday roast. And he deserves it, how hard he works.’
‘Thanks all the same, but I’m going round to see Nan.’
Good for you, thought Tilly, you leave that lazy mare to sort herself out. ‘Well, you’re more than welcome if you change your mind, you know that.’
‘Thanks, Mrs Murray, I know.’ Angie grabbed hold of the banister and swung herself up the stairs.
‘So much energy.’ Tilly shook her head in affectionate wonder as she took herself back to the kitchen and the monumental task of cooking the Sunday dinner.
‘It’s only me, Jack. Can I come in?’
‘Course.’
Going into Jackie’s room always made Angie feel happy; no matter how often it was decorated, or changed round, it was just the way Angie would have chosen – if she had had the chance. The latest look involved the walls being emulsioned in white with a big red, white and blue target painted on the wall facing the door: the handiwork of Jackie’s older brother, Martin. The carpet was plain navy – terrible to keep clean, according to Mrs Murray, but as beautiful as the finest velvet according to Angie – and had a thick, sheepskin rug by the bedside to warm Jackie’s toes. The bed itself stood along the length of one wall, and was covered in a Union Jack bedspread, with matching pillowcases; opposite was the ‘dressing unit’, as Jackie called the combination white melamine dressing-table and wardrobe. Reflected in the mirrored wardrobe door was a much-kissed poster of the Beatles, which showed the Fab Four walking along a beach dressed in jokey, old-fashioned stripy swimsuits and straw hat
s; strange outfits, but, as Jackie said, they looked gear in whatever they wore, and Paul especially could get away with anything.
The only concession to the pink, girlie bedroom that it had been up until just a month before was the crinoline lady bedside lamp, with its deep rose, nylon skirts, through which the bulb glowed warmly: an altogether feminine accessory, and a match with Angie’s own. Angie’s nan had bought them for the girls from Doris Barker, a woman who lived in her buildings in Poplar, and who, considering she didn’t go to work, seemed to spend all day, every day, at home being visited by people and always seemed to have a whole flat full of stuff to sell. Where it all came from was a mystery to Angie, but, as her nan told her, it wasn’t polite to ask people about their private business; it was like a code in the East End, she had said.
Angie settled herself at the foot of Jackie’s bed with her back leaning against the wall.
‘You look so miserable, Ange.’ Jackie made herself comfortable in her nest of pillows and blankets. ‘Everything all right?’
‘Not really. Mum’s new boyfriend said something horrible.’
‘How do you mean?’ Jackie first frowned, then her mouth and eyes widened. ‘Here, he didn’t try it on or nothing, did he? Didn’t try and get a feel up your kilt?’
‘No, nothing like that.’ Angie closed her eyes and rubbed her hands roughly over her cheeks, refusing to let the tears come. ‘I heard him say to Mum’, she said, her voice catching, ‘that I was ugly, and stupid, and useless, that no one would ever fancy me, and that …’ Too late. Her bottom lip began to tremble, and her eyes watered.
Jackie threw back the covers and scrambled to the other end of the bed to be close to her friend. Tugging down the hem of her blue-and-white striped, granddad-collared nightshirt that had recently usurped her pink baby dolls, she screwed up her face in anger. ‘The buggery, rotten old sod. What did your mum say?’
All Angie could do was shake her head as the tears flowed.
‘Was this last night?’
She nodded.
‘Drunk, I suppose.’
Playing Around Page 1