by Dawson, Jill
He pays, and fetches his hat from the hat stand, leaning over the counter to give the tiny old waitress in her enormous white apron a kiss. She shrieks and shouts and moans about the shortage of this and the lack of that, how’s she supposed to make a living when these days you can’t find almonds for love nor money? I know she’s just trying to keep him a little longer. It feels to me like the whole place wants to bask in Tony’s attention, that every woman in there is wishing she was me.
It’s an eventful night. I catch up with Stella, and we drink some vodka from a flask she’s brought. She’s cross because one of the Messinas’ girls insisted she move on from the room she was using on Glasshouse Street, and so she’s come to join me; she’ll give rolling a go, she says, because she’s aching, you know, down there, and she needs the laugh. We make a few feeble attempts with the young crowd passing us, and after a bit of banter one possibility emerges, an older fellow, not nice looking but clean at least, well to do, but only about five foot eight, with this silly braying manner. Stella whispers to me that his sort, public schoolboys, usually lick the stamps on the other side and where’s Bobby when you need him? But I nudge her fiercely and tell her to ssshh, because he’s leaving his friends behind, he’s crossing the road with us, he seems to mean it.
Stella gets the money first—ten pounds, each note carefully counted out—and then tells him she’ll go on ahead to sort the room. Me and this fellow are to follow after five minutes. We stand awkwardly while this silly short geezer smokes his pipe and refills it and keeps looking me up and down and then suddenly tries to kiss me, with his stinking pipe-smelling mouth. I try not to be too rough as I tug away from him, saying, “Later, darling, come on, my friend must have sorted the room by now,” and lead him in the direction we’ve planned on, and where I know Tony will be loitering.
The vodka and the red wine have kicked in a little and I find myself woolly in the head, falling ever so slightly against him as we start walking. We pass the French pub on Dean Street where Stella will be waiting, counting to a hundred like a game of hide and seek; the plan is for me to start running then, where there are drinkers still standing outside, and where we will be in full view, and the punter will feel too daft to follow. In my flat ballet pumps I can usually run quickly—outrun anyone—but somehow, and I think it must be the alcohol, my jerking away from him doesn’t quite work this time, and he’s much swifter than I’d imagine, and he chases and catches me and pulls me towards a parked car, which he says is his. Now that I’ve made an attempt to run, I’m not sure what to do. I can hardly go back to pretending that all is as it should be, so as he opens the car door and jostles me to get inside, I start screaming.
Tony appears like a black cat, skulking in the shadows. I look around in surprise, wondering where he could have been watching us to materialize so quickly. And in an instant I feel the mood crackling around Tony, and my heart quickens and I’m breathless from the tussle, and panting.
“It’s fine, this—gentleman’s just getting in his car—nothing—” I say, re-knotting my blouse under the bust, patting my hair, and groping for one of my earrings, which seems to have dropped off. I know Tony carries a razor; everyone does. The sort that slides open; a Kropp razor. I want to rest a calm hand on Tony’s arm, but feel strongly that I shouldn’t; that it would be a mistake.
“I paid thirty fucking quid! I did,” says the man, in his posh accent, taking it all in: Tony as my minder, or perhaps my pimp. Poor sap still thinks he should get his money’s worth.
“Queenie—walk back towards the French pub,” Tony says, in a cold, low voice that I haven’t heard before.
“Queenie? Fucking Dorothy, you said—” squeaks the guy and then makes a snuffled, startled sound and I turn away from him, from his short, suited figure, not wanting to see any more.
I begin walking. A dark thick fog is closing in, the coal smoke filling the air, along with the garlic and cigars. I can hear music from a jukebox but that’s streets away, along with the holiday mood of earlier, the coffee bars, and girls in their full skirts, smoking their Craven A’s. Here it’s so foggy suddenly that I can’t see my own steps on the pavement, only hear them; the soft leather soles of my pumps. At last I can make out Stella at the end of the street, a grey shape in a fuzz of grey, waving madly, calling “Come, come on, I can hear the Old Bill!” So I run towards her without looking back.
My absorbing of all this, my understanding of Tony’s mood, my anxiety, locks at once into a certainty, an inevitability. It’s deeply familiar, as familiar as mash and liquor. It’s not a reason to give him up. The certainty of its regular appearance makes you afraid, but you also long for it to happen, so that then it can be over. Prison taught me that. The nose, the instinct for it. Prison, and a childhood with someone like Dad. It’s just this: your body can always predict when something violent is about to kick off.
It was later that night, or I should say, early the next morning, that Tony came to claim his payment, the gift he was promised in our kitchen by Stella. He came round to the flat as a pink sky was breaking over the Lauriston church spire, knocking softly on the door, having run, he said, smiling broadly, the five flights of stairs in one minute flat. I quickly snatched out my rollers, and opened the door wearing a new nightdress, a black and pink nylon negligee, hoisted, I have to admit, a few days earlier, with Tony in mind.
He made us drinks, in highball glasses that he’d brought with him, and he poured a lot more gin in mine, “for the pain,” he said, plainly. I remember how I felt, beforehand. I felt wobbly—almost dizzy—with fear, with anticipation. I wanted to, I’d heard so much about it, I wanted to secure Tony as mine, I wanted to know what everyone was talking about, what was going on in Soho and behind net curtains everywhere, if The People was to be believed.
When he kissed me, lifted my hair from my neck, I was surprised that a man so strong-looking could be so gentle, so affectionate. He took my hand and led me into my bedroom, which felt old-fashioned, the handholding, I mean, and then climbed onto the bed with me, carefully folding down the blanket first, peeling back the top sheet and smiling, grinning, as if to disguise his haste.
He was studied in his behavior, and deliberate, as he always was, and there was a mood about him, as unmistakable as the violent one had been; a feeling that should have been disturbing, but was, as I remember it, only thrilling. Tony, I realized, did not like to be thwarted. Maybe I should have known better, but I was a girl, and longing for someone to want me, so back then, the force of his personality, how much he wanted me, was new to me, was the trick and the power; it was dazzling.
I came to dread it of course, Tony’s wanting me. The violence of his feelings, the strength of them. But not that night. That night, it was all new, and changed everything. He took care; he was practical; he knew what he was doing. But then he grew crazy, and I loved that he couldn’t be deliberate any longer; he wasn’t in control of himself. I felt like I stepped out of myself, watching astonished, while someone goes mad in a china shop. We woke Stella up; she was hammering on the wall, he made such a racket. And though I was embarrassed, he was undeterred. He had to have me three times, every which way he could think of, until I relaxed a little and his repeated worried questions and pauses to gather strength and pour me more gin did the trick at last, and it stopped hurting.
He leapt up then, and put on the bedside lamp. The bedroom was full of a strange new smell, powerful. It soaked into the sheets and floated up from my skin. This time he wanted to watch my face, he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and slipping his hand under the covers; he wanted me to feel it, too.
I propped my head up on my elbow, turned on my side towards him, smiling.
Yes, in those early days, I was crazy about Tony, too; Tony was a marvel, he could do no wrong.
Rolling isn’t much fun when it gets to October and the nights start drawing in, and the gas-lighter is coming by as early as six o’clock
to light the lamps in the deepest streets of Soho, where this weird old man with a beard still goes from post to post, flicking open the casements of the lamps with his wand. It’s too unpredictable for us to continue rolling for long, good though the money is, and there are too many brushes with the Messina brothers, especially the frightening one, Gino; the one not shy of using electric flex on his girls if they disobey him.
“You saved much, for the rent on the Frampton Park Estate?” I ask. Stella looks like I just asked her if the atomic bomb went off. To change the subject, she wonders where Tony is, didn’t he say he’d look out for us, and she’s had to fend for herself these last two nights.
“He’s on a job,” I tell her, which is as much as he told me, although now that we’re officially going together, he has at least admitted what it is: he does indeed work for a firm. He provides and fixes up the cars for blagging—robberies—and he’s often the getaway driver. His boss, I somehow picked up, was behind the huge recent raid of gold bullion, valued at forty-five thousand, just outside the Dutch Airline offices, off Theobalds Road, which the papers were full of. Only sign of it for me was that Tony was flush suddenly, peeling off crisp white five-pound notes, in an inexplicable but familiar way. The way Dad used to be.
“Tony doesn’t want me going out rolling, anyhow,” I tell Stella, proudly.
“What, bossing you round already, is he?” Stella says, her eyes on the window, watching the pavement outside on Frith Street, cars pulling up, couples arm in arm; five Chinese girls in blue aprons sitting on the steps outside their workplace, smoking and laughing; the place shedding its daytime colors and daytime characters for the darker, smokier ones of night.
“No . . . just taking care of me. I like it actually.”
“Well, I hope he’s keeping his socks on in bed, then. If he’s taking such bloody good care of you.”
I look a bit wide-eyed, pretending I don’t know what she means. I wouldn’t dream of asking Tony to use a French letter. In any case I know he’d refuse.
“He’s like . . . he’s told me about the other way,” I say, wanting to defend him. I don’t like Stella’s suggestion that he’s bossing me around; I don’t like her thinking that anyone could boss me around. “You know, the Catholics’ way. Safe times. And then, when it’s not safe, he can, you know, pull out . . .”
“Pull out!”
She nearly chokes on her tea. Leaning forward she whispers, “I’ve heard him, Queenie. I wouldn’t want to vouch for his self-control.”
I blush then, and stare down into my omelet and chips. Then we both crack up laughing.
“God—who’s that?” Stella blurts.
A silver Rolls Royce has just pulled up on the curb of Frith Street, outside the window of the café we’re in: The Caterer’s Club. All the while we’ve been talking, Stella’s been only half listening, craning her neck to see the comings and goings outside. We like it here because, though it used to be a place for waiters and chefs coming off their shifts, it’s now well known as the hangout of some famous show-business faces from the theaters nearby and some of Arthur Rank’s starlets.
I have my back to the window so I can’t easily turn to stare. I have an impression of the swanky car sliding by and parking up; and the commotion it’s causing; and a black-haired woman in a fur, and a curly-haired little girl.
“Is it Lady Docker?” I ask. The woman steps into the café, holding the little girl’s hand, while the car keeps its engine purring, and the man stays inside, fugging it up with his cigar.
“Queenie!” A blast of Chanel No. 5, a froth of fur coat: I realize at once that it’s not Lady Docker; it’s Gloria.
“How lovely to see you, darling!” she says, beaming, and nodding to Stella. The little girl bats big eyes at us both. Gloria opens her bag and gives the child a shilling, then swiftly flips open her compact mirror to admire herself. Still the glossy black hair, piled on her head in curls, cherry-red lips, and impressive shelf of bust. I’m calculating how long it is since I’ve seen her. Not since school. She looks . . . older, with a more angular face than I remember. But then, staring at the creases fanning out from her eyes, as she puffs at her nose with powder, staring at herself in a little compact mirror, I think: I just didn’t realize how old she was. Older than Mum. Twenty years older than me. So she must be nearly forty now.
Gloria turns to the child and says, “Go ask at the bar for a big glass of chocolate milk, there’s a good girl,” and the girl turns on her heel while Gloria squeezes herself into a banquette beside Stella. Her voice, surprisingly posh, reverts to Cockney when she tells Stella to “shove up, gel.”
“That your daughter?” Stella asks, watching the child skip to the counter in her velvet-collared red coat and shiny black shoes.
“Oh, if only . . . we like to think so, don’t we, sugar?” Gloria says, loudly, so that the child can hear. “No—it’s my Ronald’s little girl. Lost her mum, poor love. Ronald’s a widower. His loss was my gain.” Gloria gives a little wave, through the window, to the old gent in the car outside. He gives a shy wave back and looks hurriedly forward, as if afraid to catch our eyes.
“He thinks you’re working girls.” Gloria laughs.
Stella gives her a sharp look.
“Dear Ronald,” Gloria continues, beaming. “Wouldn’t touch a brass with a barge-pole. Not these days, I mean. He’d be terrified I’d leave him. What a treasure! Everyone should have a Ronald,” Gloria sighs, happily.
“What does he do?” asks Stella.
“This is my friend, Stella,” I say.
“How d’you do, dear.” Gloria, quite a bit heavier than she used to be, squirms a little in her seat to try and extend her hand to Stella, to show that she’s not offended by the direct question about Ronald, and then pops her compact away in the pink-fur lining of her crocodile clutch-bag. I find myself hoping that she might have a handbag I recognize, or a compact or cigarette case, but everything looks new. Four years. Nearly five. I’m being silly, I tell myself, to imagine that those things would be the same.
The curly-haired child returns with a big glass of milk and stands radiating sullenness towards us. She bangs her glass of chocolate milk on the table so hard that a little puddle spills. Gloria dabs at the splash with a napkin.
“Betty,” Gloria murmurs, “careful, sugar. My Ronald . . . cars. He owns a big company.” She whispers which one, as if the information would cause a riot. Then looks around the café, and back to Betty, dabbing gently at the child’s chocolate-milk moustache. “He started life as a used car salesman, did Ronald . . . just like me dear old dad!”
She cracks a huge laugh, her gold earrings jingling as she moves her head. I find myself thinking: how funny, that it never occurred to me you had a dad, back then. Or to wonder about your family at all.
Betty slurps loudly at her drink through the straw, standing up to do so, so that she can blow bubbles in the tall glass and make the maximum noise and fuss. Gloria smiles indulgently at her, patting her on the arm, and then turns her attention to me.
“So—Bleedin’ Nora, great to see you! How are you, Queenie?”
“I’m fine . . .”
“I heard from Annie you were . . . back.”
“Stella, get us a milk and a dash, will you?” I suggest.
“Huh? Why me?”
“I’ll give you the money.”
Instead of getting up, Stella just signals to the waitress, making it clear she’s staying put. The waitress, standing idly at the counter, puts her pencil behind her ear and hurries towards us, beaming all her attention to Gloria, obviously under the impression she’s famous.
Gloria is staring at me, and opens her mouth as if she’s going to speak. I think my eyes must show panic, or something, a silent plea for her not to mention anything, not to mention the subject I’m afraid she’s going to mention; because whatever she was going to say, she
closes her mouth again; seems to think better of it.
“Well,” Gloria says, after a few moments filled only with the sounds of Betty slurping up the dregs of the chocolate milk. “I only popped in here to get Betty a treat. Ronald hates this part of town. We live in Mayfair now . . . and we’ve got another place down in the country, you’ll have to come to the house, Queenie.”
Standing up to leave, Gloria says formally to Stella, “Lovely to meet you, dear. Look after your friend Queenie for me, won’t you? I’m very fond of her. And Queenie—you think about what I said. Everyone needs a Ronald . . .”
When she leaves, she carefully puts some notes under my plate and tells me that dinner’s on her. I wait until she’s in the car outside before glancing down. Fifty pounds, in brand-new tens.
Stella and I can’t stop talking about her, after she’s gone. “Did you see that handbag?” Stella says. She is like Lady Docker, Norah Collins; we’re always reading about her—didn’t she marry that director from Fortnum and Mason first, and then he died, leaving her a quarter of a million pounds richer? And that was before the fella she has now, the Daimler one. Yes, the excess of it all appeals to us: gold-painted Daimlers, mink bikinis, three husbands. “Shame that the Shirley Temple brat comes with it, in Gloria’s case,” Stella says, but I disagree. It’s clear to me—and again, gives me a sudden new view of Gloria, the Gloria from my childhood—that Gloria loves kids. Probably wanted some of her own.
“Forty’s ancient, so it’s way too late now. Gloria’s—you know—sort of a motherly person. I bet Betty’s a real bonus,” I say, confidently.
We’ve been wasting our time with this rolling lark, we decide, after our glimpse of the gold and fur-lined life of Gloria. Much too dangerous, and at the moment it’s too nippy, too. Yes, Soho is lively, and it’s definitely a step up from getting ten shillings for giving some old geezer a plate in Cable Street, with the saddest, shabbiest tarts of all, but there are richer pickings elsewhere, we suddenly realize. Stella says she was talking to this girl called Ruth, who was one of the Rank girls, in a film with Diana Dors. She knows her and another girl called Vickie, who works in a higher class place, a club, with members, where not just any old rag-and-bone man can come in and you can meet all sorts: racing drivers, actors, dukes, businessmen.