by Pip Granger
It was always interesting watching Luigi when Betty hove into view. His face lit up like a petrol dump hit by a doodlebug, or so Auntie Maggie used to say; personally, I’d never seen that, but I took her word for it. He certainly glowed a lot. He also leaped to his feet and shuffled chairs about to make sure that she parked herself as close to him as was decent in broad daylight.
Luigi was not usually given to glowing and leaping; that’s what girls did when he arrived, so it made a nice change to see him at it. Then he’d either get stuck for words or gabble on and on about nothing at all for ages before winding down like a clockwork top. Somewhere in the gabble there was usually an offer of a trip to the flicks or a dance or a night at his favourite jazz spot. Poor Luigi was always turned down, in the nicest possible way of course. It had become a sort of ritual in the short time that Betty had been around. This Saturday was no different.
‘So, Betty, how’s it going? New flat all right, is it?’
‘Yes thanks, Luigi, it’s fine. Apart from that trumpet player above me, that is. He can make a row sometimes but, thank God, he spends most of his time around at his girlfriend’s. She’s a singer, I forget her name.’
‘You mean Johnnie’s girl? She’s called Annie. She sings with the band he plays with.’
‘That’s her. Nice girl. Good singer. You’d think they’d see enough of each other, working together six nights a week and twice on Saturdays. It’s gotta be love. Still, it keeps the racket down. But they must have had a row because he’s in this morning, blasting away like a good ’un. I couldn’t stand it a second longer, so I came here for a bit of peace and quiet. Last night was busy, and Mr Joe was like a ruddy octopus. Kept me dodging and weaving until I thought my legs’d drop off.’
‘You’d think he’d get the message, but then Joe’s never one to get messages he ain’t interested in,’ said Luigi with a laugh. ‘He thrives on a challenge, and let’s face it, gel, you’re one hell of a challenge. You should try going out with me, that might cool him off. How about the pictures tomorrow?’
Luigi and me, we almost missed it, we were so used to her coming up with some variation on thanks but no thanks.
‘That’d be nice, Luigi. What time will you pick me up?’
‘OK, Betty, another ti— What? Did you just say yes?’
‘Well, if you’d rather not …’
‘No, no. I mean yes! I’m buggered if I know what I mean. ’Scuse the French. I’ll pick you up at six. P’raps we can grab a bite and a whistle-wetter after the flick.’
‘Lovely. I’ll look forward to it. Now, Rosie, what do you recommend for my dinner, you being the resident expert and all?’
And that was it. I could hardly wait to tell Auntie Maggie, Madame Zelda and Paulette that Luigi had finally cracked it. As it was, I had to make do with Uncle Bert until my beloved aunt got back. He tried to look suitably impressed with my news, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. He was still too busy worrying about the Widow Ginger, Maltese Joe and everything. Still, Auntie Maggie and the others more than made up for it.
Auntie Maggie got back first, Berwick Street market being a lot closer than Coptic Street. Even so, she’d taken her time, but then it was impossible for her to get two yards down the road without finding someone to chat to, as I knew to my cost. I hate to think of how many years I’ve wasted hanging about beside her as I listened to views on the weather and bits and bobs of gossip I already knew.
Even when she was back, I couldn’t pass on my news until Luigi and Betty had left, and I was hopping from foot to foot in my impatience. Poor Betty’s knife and fork had barely hit the plate before I was whipping away her empties and getting Mrs Wong to force her tea on her. She’d decided against the apple pie and custard on account of her figure. Not that there was anything wrong with it, as Luigi gallantly pointed out. Betty supposed there wasn’t, yet, but there would be if she kept guzzling Auntie Maggie’s wonderful puds. Auntie Maggie blushed with pleasure at the compliment and insisted Betty have a second cuppa to make up for it. Meanwhile, I wished like mad that she’d minded her own business so that I could blurt out Betty and Luigi’s. It was so frustrating. I was in like a ferret up a trouser leg as soon as the door closed behind them.
‘Guess what?’
‘What?’
‘Go on, guess,’ I insisted.
Auntie Maggie sighed and rolled her eyes to heaven. ‘The Queen’s coming to tea.’
‘Don’t be daft. It’s not that.’ Everyone knew the Queen was far too posh for the likes of us.
‘The donkey broke his leg.’
‘Now you’re being really stupid. What donkey?’
‘And who are you calling stupid, young lady? Watch your manners with your elders and betters or I’ll make your little bum glow. So what is it, this bit of news of yours?’
I wasn’t ready to give it up yet. ‘Promise you’ll let me tell the others and you won’t just blab it out.’
‘Tell what others? And would I blab?’
‘Madame Zelda, Paulette and Sugar. And yes, you’ll blab. You won’t be able to help it, unless you promise.’
‘Well, if that’s your attitude, young lady, I’m sure I don’t want to know.’
And she had me there, she knew she did, because I was fit to burst and I simply could not have borne to keep my gob shut. ‘Luigi’s taking Betty to the pictures tomorrow and for a bite and a whistle-wetter after. Now promise you won’t tell the others.’
‘Well, I’ll be blowed. Yes, yes, I promise. When did this happen? Who said what? Tell me everything from the very beginning.’
I’ll say this for my aunt, she really knew how to enjoy a bit of news. I told her everything and she kept her promise to let me tell the others. They were also suitably astonished, except Sugar who’d already heard it by the time he dropped in a few days later. But by then Betty had given us all the interesting details about what she wore, where they went and what the film was like. She wore her navy two-piece with the pencil skirt, with a white blouse and flat emerald green shoes so’s not to be too tall. She carried a matching clutch bag and she had her hair up in a French pleat. Luigi wore his best blue worsted suit with a two-tone blue striped tie.
There was a choice between several war pictures, cartoons or Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn. Naturally Betty chose Roman Holiday and who wouldn’t? As she said, she was sick of war and had seen enough cartoons to last her a while. Personally, I don’t think you can get enough of Mickey Mouse and his pals, but then nobody consulted me. They went to Luigi’s cousin Giuseppe’s place in Brewer Street for their meal afterward. Being a greedy little sod, I insisted on a rundown of the menu. They both had the same thing, which was minestrone soup, ravioli and green salad, with a bottle of Chianti between them, fresh fruit, on account of Betty’s diet and strong black coffee. They followed it up with a couple of drinks at the Red Lion in Fitzrovia, then they went for a stoll around the manor and, finally, he saw her home.
To everyone’s amazement and disappointment, Luigi was a perfect gentleman all evening, according to Betty. Madame Zelda said that she hadn’t realized Luigi had an ounce of gent in him, since he had never shown it before with any of his other conquests. Sugar said that that proved he was serious about her and everyone except me agreed. It seemed to me that Luigi had been serious about everything ever since he’d met Betty. Up until then he’d been a jolly soul, full of laughter and a wonderful sense of fun, but the second he fell in love with Betty all laughs were off. I couldn’t help wondering why he bothered if it was so hard to squeeze any joy out of it. I remember asking Paulette to explain it to me but all she would say was that Luigi was having a different sort of good time, one that didn’t involve playing the fool. As an explanation of the workings of grown-up romance, I have to say it was as clear as lumpy porridge and about as interesting.
11
On the Sunday morning of Mrs Williams’s tea I was suddenly excused the dreaded cucumber sandwiches. Jenny’s mum had
asked me to visit again. I wasn’t to go for the whole afternoon, just for a little while before another picnic tea. Jenny was too knackered for a long haul.
I was thrilled; not that Jenny was knackered, of course, but because I was spared those ruddy awful sarnies. I liked Mrs Williams well enough. When I went in the shop she always gave me some broken biscuits from one of the big square tins with the glass tops that she kept on a long, narrow trestle table in front of her counter. She’d give me a brown paper bag and let me choose from the custard creams, rich teas, digestives and my favourites, the ones with the pale brown, coffee-flavoured icing sugar on the top. The trick was to get the icing sugar off in one lump and suck it until it dissolved. Heaven!
Although Mrs W. was kind, I did find her visits a bit boring. I had to be on my best behaviour and sit up straight, hands folded in my lap. I was to be seen, in my best frock, but definitely not heard. Well, not a lot, anyway. So to escape to Jenny’s was a treat.
Once again, we provided the picnic on the insistence of my aunt. I helped get it ready and spent a happy morning in the kitchen beating up fairy cake mixture with a fork and licking the bowl afterwards. Bowl licking was one of my specialities. Auntie Maggie cut the bread for the sandwiches and I was allowed to slather meat paste over the slices. Then we finished making a trifle that Auntie Maggie had started the night before. We split the sponges – soaked in orange juice instead of sherry – between two bowls, one for Mrs William’s tea and one for the picnic. My tongue was busy again, finishing up the last tiny scraps of custard and cream from the blue and white striped bowls. I loved those bowls, because they meant baking and puddings. Auntie Maggie said there was no need to wash them, or the spoons, forks and saucepan, because me and my tongue were champion washer-uppers. I think she was joking, though, because they all wound up in the sink anyway. The trifles were covered with clean tea towels and put in the cold larder to set. Later, when it was ready, Auntie Maggie said I could sprinkle pastel-coloured hundreds and thousands on the one for Jenny and me. I could hardly wait, because it was hard to do without scattering them all over the place and I got to crunch up all the tiny sugar bombs I collected from the table-top – although not those that skittered across the floor.
At last it was time to go, and Uncle Bert was volunteered to do the lugging of the picnic basket. He popped in to see how Jenny was doing and found some gobstoppers in her ears. She’d lost some weight and her normally quite squinty eyes looked enormous, with dark circles underneath. Still, the thrilled look on her little pale pointy face when Uncle Bert made a deep bow and presented her with the bright, sugary balls made her look quite shiny and well for a moment. I felt a bit of a fool when my minces filled up with tears that threatened to spill over on to my cheeks and I didn’t know why. I was forced to rummage in Uncle Bert’s pocket for a hanky to blow my hooter good and hard and wipe up the salty stuff while I was at it. Uncle Bert and Mrs Robbins didn’t notice, I’m thrilled to say, and Jenny was too busy oohing and aahing over her gobstoppers to take it in.
I couldn’t wait for Mrs Robbins to show Uncle Bert out, so that I could tell Jenny all about Luigi and Betty. We had a lovely time wondering what they’d do and whether they’d get as far as a snog on the doorstep.
‘Everyone says Luigi can get a girl flat on her back without even offering her dinner, so I should think snogging would be dead easy.’
‘Yes, but Betty’s been playing hard to get, and it’s taken him this long to get her to go out with him. I reckon she’ll stay upright all right, but she might let him have a little kiss. I bet he doesn’t make it in to her place, not right off. Not on their first date. What do you reckon, Jen?’
‘What does “getting ’em flat on their backs” mean, anyway?’
I tried to look as if I knew what I was talking about. ‘I reckon they mean … er … sex and that.’
‘Yes, but what do they actually do?’
She had me there. I had never got past wondering why girls would want to be flat on their backs waving their legs in the air. This was something girls of any age were discouraged from doing, on account of showing their knickers. Knicker flashing was a very big no-no. We were trained long and hard in the art of keeping our knees clamped together and our skirts pulled down from the moment we could stand or sit unaided. Nice girls kept their knickers to themselves until they were married, and that was a fact that everybody knew.
Reality was often very different, especially in our neck of the woods. Brasses were often nice girls, but the women’s magazines suggested otherwise. Nice girls didn’t ‘go’ with men until they had the gold band. Round our way they did. Paulette was always a smashing person, tart or not. We’d always loved Paulette, whether she was on the streets or being a Nippy at her Corner House. My very own mother was not known for keeping her drawers on either. She’d gone with more than her fair share of blokes. Madame Zelda said she’d go with ‘anyone with a wallet and a heartbeat’ when the bevvy was upon her. Yet she was a really nice person when she laid off the booze.
It was tricky, dealing with my mum. She could be awful one minute and wonderful and exciting the next. There was no telling with her, so sometimes I found her frightening. I never knew if she was going to grab me and slobber all over me, or blub the place down because I wasn’t pleased enough to see her. Luckily, I didn’t have to do it all that often. Perhaps that’s why I never got it just right. Still, that’s another story – but it did get us on to something else that had been troubling me.
‘You know my mum wasn’t married when she had me, so that makes me a bastard, right?’
Jenny nodded gravely. This was serious business.
‘Then how come people call Maltese Joe a bastard and Luigi’s cast-offs are always calling him one too? How come they’re bastards when their mums and dads were definitely married? I don’t get it, do you?’
Jenny couldn’t explain that one, either, so after a bit we gave up on it. Then we got on to Romance, capital R and all. We found the topic thrilling, but a bit puzzling too. If, as the song said, love and marriage went together like a horse and carriage, how come that round our way, in our experience, they didn’t necessarily go together at all?
‘I mean, look at Sugar and Bandy. My auntie Maggie says they love each other dearly, but they ain’t married nor showing any signs of it.’
Jenny nodded, ‘Yeah, I know what you mean. Look at my lot.’
It was my turn to nod. Her lot didn’t bear thinking about, what with the Mangy Cow in the picture. We needed something more cheerful to concentrate on. ‘Who do you reckon would wear the frock, anyway? You know, out of Sugar and Bandy? Can you imagine Bandy in a frock?’
We gave it a go, but we couldn’t see it. We howled with laughter as we tried to picture the event. In the end, we decided that Sugar should wear the dress as usual, and that Bandy could have the top hat and penguin suit if and when they ever tottered down the aisle. We kicked up such a din with our shrieks of merriment that Mrs Robbins came in to find out what all the fuss was about. We couldn’t tell her, of course, but every time we caught each other’s eye we howled some more, until she gave up on us with a resigned shrug.
Before I left we managed to work out a very simple signalling system involving Jenny’s waving tea towels in a variety of sequences depending on whether she wanted chocolate, comics or a visit after school. I, in turn, would wave my arms about: two arms up meant a visit after school, one meant ‘Message understood’, and dancing around like an Apache on the warpath meant ‘Hot news, see you later’. Gossip, we decided, was too complicated for signals, and anyway poor old Jenny was so tired by then, she wasn’t able to raise the enthusiasm to work it out.
I was just leaving when it occurred to me that we ought to have a sign for ‘Help’ because all the best secret agents had one. In the end we decided she’d dangle the red scarf she’d knitted for her mum’s Christmas present out of the window and I’d wear my red gloves, should help be needed by either side. Red, we decided, was j
ust the thing: red for danger. Simple and to the point.
12
I knew the Widow Ginger, or Stanley Janulewicz as his parents probably preferred to call him (that’s if he ever had any; Auntie Maggie always said he was Satan’s spawn), the minute he walked into the cafe. The hair stood up all along my arms and my knees turned to jelly as soon as I spotted him. It was late one Wednesday afternoon. There was no big kerfuffle; he just slid in and he was there. Auntie Maggie gave a start when he spoke to her. ‘Hi, Margaret. Albert out back, is he?’
‘Oh! Hello, Stanley. No, don’t come round.’ Auntie Maggie placed her mighty bulk across the end of the counter, the route through to the kitchen, happy in the knowledge that the neat, slight man wasn’t going to be able to shift her without a bulldozer. ‘I’ll give him a shout. Take a seat, I’ll bring you some tea. Bert. BERT! It’s Stanley to see you.’
Auntie Maggie watched him all the way to his seat, the way a mongoose watches a snake. I’d seen it at the pictures; they watch the snake’s every move. Well, Auntie Maggie was watching the Widow just like that and all the colour had drained from her usually rosy face. I realized that the cafe had gone absolutely silent, apart from the faint hiss and bubble from the tea urn. Everyone in the place had sensed the tension and was waiting. I found I was cringing slightly, the way you do in a Western or war film when something’s about to explode and you know but the blokes on screen don’t. The Widow sat down and carefully removed his black hat and laid it on the table. He smoothed his hair with a delicate, almost girlie, hand. It was the palest hair I had ever seen, except on Jean Harlow maybe. Only the Widow’s was cut short and was very neat.