An East End Girl

by Maggie Ford

  Disdaining to take the Metro, in case anything happened while they were on it, she said, but in truth she’d so gone up in the world that she disliked her once sole means of travel, a taxi had been ordered, with expense no object, to take them directly to a few of those fine fashionable shops in Boulevard Haussman. Cissy couldn’t help a tinge of bitterness that Daisy could afford to ignore public transport these days where she herself now had to watch every centime.

  It was the same with clothes: Daisy, wearing the height of fashion that showed up her remarkably slim figure, wearied of a new dress or shoes within a couple of weeks, while Cissy, hers fast growing outdated, remembered that only months ago she too would toss aside hardly worn garments as carelessly as Daisy now did. No doubt she would be wearing the same things a year, maybe two years from now, the money Langley had given her needing to be hung on to for far more important things. She couldn’t help feeling a little jealous of Daisy, and a little wistful for what might have been.

  And where would she have been now had she and Langley remained together? Still slim and desirable, the baby she now carried a long forgotten incident, she’d have not even paused to recall it. Doing all the things she used to do, crazily dancing to some blaring jazz band, returning still somewhat intoxicated in the grey dawn to their art deco decorated apartments, a slightly worn dress tossed aside, another to be bought sometime that afternoon, together with a fabulous, wildly exotic bottle of Jean Patou perfume; Biarritz for the winter; Venice perhaps, or the Côte d’Azure. Was Langley there now, at one of those resorts, his arm around Margo? Maybe in bed with her. Or perhaps with some other girl by now, that girl exquisitely dressed and perfumed as she Cissy had once been. Instead here she was…

  It was all so degrading. She no longer enjoyed shopping with Daisy, not because of her swollen waistline, but because she knew what would happen – what always happened when they went shopping together. Daisy would see something that might suit her friend, and as Cissy hung back knowing she must not be extravagant with what Langley had left her, which even as she watched was fast dwindling merely on living, Daisy would eagerly get it for her – nothing vastly expensive because even she knew when generosity became vulgarity, but even the smallest gift was an embarrassment to someone afraid to spend much-needed money so as to appear equally as lavish. Even this taxi. As usual Daisy had refused Cissy’s part of the fare, and so in her innocence unwittingly belittling her by another fine degree.

  It was in the taxi just after passing over the Pont de la Concorde into the great square whose vast proportions always made Cissy’s eyes feel vaguely out of focus, that the pain caught her again. Not too bad to make a fuss about, but this time an alarm bell did begin to ring.

  ‘Oh…Daisy…We’ve got to go back home!’

  ‘But we’re…’ But one glance at her tense expression was enough for Daisy to forgo all thoughts of that new gown she’d set her heart on for Christmas, only three days away. Disappointment showed on her face but in an instant she was leaning forward commanding the taxi driver to turn his vehicle swiftly around the ornate fountains and central obelisk of the busy Place de la Concorde and head for home as fast as traffic allowed.

  ‘It’s got to be a boy,’ Daisy said as she sat on the edge of a tall-backed chair in the waiting room of the private convent-run hospital. ‘Her going nearly three weeks over her time, and it taking so long to come now – it has to be. They say boys are lazy.’

  Theodore nodded wordlessly. He didn’t look comfortable here, looked as though he’d much rather be at his office desk, but Christmas Eve, he’d closed the office early, as was expected. Now he paced the floor of the cold, neat little waiting room looking decidedly out of place.

  ‘It can’t be much longer,’ Daisy said, for need of something better to say, though she was seldom stumped. Having got going again, she wasn’t now. ‘Fifteen hours. Mind you, she didn’t have all that much pain to start with, did she? Hardly any really. I mean, after the taxi dropped us up at home, there was nothing – not until this morning. And I was sitting at her bedside and she was chirpy enough then. It didn’t really start until a few hours ago. I just hope it doesn’t go on too long, for her sake. It’s nearly midnight. Nearly Christmas Day. Wouldn’t it be funny if it’s born on Christmas Day? I wish something would happen.’

  As if in answer, the door opened to admit a sister in a starched shell-like cap with flaring white wings and a stiff blue and white uniform, her scrubbed face as radiant as if she were a relative.

  ‘You are the friends of Mademoiselle Farmer?’ she enquired in rapid French. ‘You will be pleased to know that the child has been born safely. It is a girl. Both the mother and the child are very well.’

  ‘Oh, merci!’ Daisy said excitedly, and went on in halting French to ask when they could see them. She was told Cissy was sleeping but they were welcome to come back in the morning, and if they would like to see the child it was in the crèche where they could peep at it through the glass partition. It was a very modern hospital. Babies were taken from their mothers immediately after birth so that the weary mother could rest.

  ‘Ah…she’s lovely, perfect,’ Daisy sighed, maternal instincts flooding out of her. She felt Theodore’s strong hand tighten across her shoulder.

  ‘Please God, ours may be as perfect.’

  ‘And as beautiful. But us two are quite nice-looking people. We’re bound to have beautiful children.’

  ‘Please God,’ he said.

  Cissy was sitting up in bed, her baby in its crib beside her, as her two visitors approached. The look of relief on her face that they were the first in was apparent even as they entered the ward.

  Daisy had begged to be let into the small ward a few minutes before the main inrush of fathers and adoring relatives; spinning a yarn to the stone-faced sister in charge as to how the mother and her fiancé had been due to marry, but that he had been killed in a tragic accident, leaving the mother alone and unmarried and with child. She’d stressed the poor girl’s suffering, having been so in love and now so alone in the world, and that, but for the grace of God, any girl could be left as she had been left.

  Hoping to crack the woman’s sense of the practical and appeal to any romance she might have in her, Daisy had sighed that it would be a kindness to the distressed mother if her visitors could be allowed in that little bit earlier so that she would not have to sit alone while other fathers came to see their wives.

  She had put it so poignantly, so convincingly, that the cold face took on a slight flush and the stonework metamorphosed to sympathetic putty. The doors had been opened a fraction unto them three minutes before the official time, much to the many frowns and asides of those left waiting in the cold corridor.

  In a way it wasn’t all lies. It would have been distressing for Cissy to see husbands coming in to cuddle their wives and admire what they had sired, while she lay alone, conscious of her own isolation and the enquiring eyes turning in her direction as to why no husband was leaning over her. Cissy and Theodore were able to surround her, not so much to protect her from those curious glances but so that she would not have to notice them.

  Daisy bent over the scrap in its crib, lifting back the frilled cap to see better. ‘She’s gorgeous, Cissy! She’s like you. I’m so glad. How do you feel?’ She straightened up to regard the mother.

  Cissy smiled wanly. ‘Like I’ve been pulled through a hedge backwards.’

  ‘I bet you do,’ Daisy said as Theodore frowned his incomprehension of the statement.

  ‘Backwards, through a hedge?’ he echoed.

  ‘It’s a saying. I’ll explain it to you later.’ She turned back to Cissy. ‘You look well. Congratulations, darling. I bet you’re relieved it’s all over.’

  Cissy gave a faint shrug. For hours yesterday all she could think about was that she had been a damned fool. To go through all this for another man’s child – a man who had walked out on her. At some insane moment at the height of her labour had come the thought tha
t when this was over, she would take the baby to a quiet place on the Seine and in the darkness of night beneath the shadow of one of its ponts, drop the alien body into the dark waters. Then it would be all over. But as the tiny scrap was placed into her arms, faintly bluish, with a streak of blood across its little nose and cheek, her heart swelled with love and pride and the knowledge that this little life had come out of her – nothing to do with him, and no one could take it away from her. To think that she could have had such a thought made her shudder, even as she shrugged so offhandedly.

  ‘Aren’t you thrilled?’

  Yes, she was. And Langley could go and boil his head. Suddenly she wanted nothing to do with him. Suddenly she knew what she wanted from life. She’d get on, make a success of it, be her own person, bring up her daughter and give her the best that money could buy. And to hell with men and love and shame. She would seek a position in a shop, a small shop, learn what there was to learn and then she would make her own way in the world. But how lovely it would have been if everything could have been normal – a good husband, a supportive family to come and admire her achievement, a nice little house not far away from them – rather like her brother Bobby had, like her sister May would one day have, like she would have had with Eddie Bennett. She wondered briefly where he was and how he was and what he was doing, then dismissed it to watch Daisy lift her baby from its hospital crib.

  ‘What’re you going to call her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Daisy frowned, gently rocking the sleepy form. ‘It’s Christmas Day. How about Noelle? It sounds very French. Being born in France too. What about Noelle Louise – doesn’t that sound beautiful?’

  Certain of her decision as Cissy smiled agreement, so far having no name in mind for her new daughter, Daisy dropped a kiss upon the tiny smooth cheek. ‘And we will be Noelle Louise’s godparents,’ she added defiantly as a sister came and took the baby from her to put it back firmly in its crib – hospital regulations – tightly tucking it in like some Russian doll.

  Her days revolved around Noelle and nothing else. She would sit for hours watching the little hands jerking happily, those large blue eyes darting about with such knowing looks as if in recognition of some previous life. Little sounds of ecstacy would issue forth from those puckered rosy red lips, and Cissy would feel her heart give little skips at almost each sound, rejoicing in the soft feel of those tiny hands.

  Amid the luxurious surroundings of Daisy’s home, the radio playing softly, she felt safer than she ever had since coming to France, even with Langley. But Langley was becoming an ever more distant shadow – an episode she’d rather not remember. More clearly she remembered her times with Eddie, but then that memory would make her heart plummet so that she quickly turned her thoughts away from it. Yet she couldn’t escape a wish that she could go home, pick up the pieces, begin again. That, of course, was out of the question. Even if she could be sure of forgiveness from everyone, Eddie, her family, pride would not have let her go crawling back seeking it. She told herself that she was happier here, just her and Noelle, Daisy and Theodore, and as they expressed no desire to see her gone, she felt she was content.

  Winter gave way to spring. Trees lining the boulevards of Paris budded into leaf and then into blossom. Parisians cast off the heavier of their garments and colour came back to the city in the shape of bright dresses and lightweight hats, this year with broader brims, and gaiety grew more abundant, for even in winter it never truly departed as it might have done in sombre London. Music always present, summer or winter, became even more light-hearted, and flower stalls became even more full of blossom, parks and open spaces more full of people and lovers – especially lovers.

  Daisy did her best to get Cissy to go out, but it was like hitting her head against a brick wall, even though Cissy seemed happy.

  ‘I’m content enough staying here with Noelle.’

  ‘But we can take her out with us. She’s not going to catch cold or anything with the weather so lovely and warm – if that’s what you’re worrying about.’

  ‘I know, but you don’t need me hanging around.’

  ‘For goodness sake! I love us going shopping together. Like we did last year.’

  ‘But it won’t be the same for you, me pushing a pram around.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘No, I’m happy here.’

  Daisy gave up.

  Theodore got tickets for the theatre, for each of them.

  ‘It will be nice for you to come out with us for an evening.’

  Cissy’s alarm was overt. ‘What about Noelle?’

  ‘For that evening we will get a nurse for her.’

  ‘I couldn’t leave her with a stranger.’

  ‘We’ll be getting one from a reputable agency,’ Daisy said a little irritably, but Cissy shook her head.

  ‘I don’t want to be a nuisance. You and Theodore go on your own. You don’t see each other enough as it is with your work taking up all your time, Theodore. You two go. I’m quite happy here. Honestly.’

  ‘You’re getting to be a recluse, Cissy. You used to be so lively, but you’re growing into a real misery.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Cissy defended. ‘I just want to be with Noelle.’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ Daisy said pointedly, and left it at that.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Daisy had been as happy about Noelle’s birth as if it had been her own baby; without thinking she’d said she couldn’t wait to tell her parents all about it. But Cissy had sworn her to silence.

  ‘It’ll get back to my family. You know how things spread. It won’t take them long to find out where I am. I don’t want the upset of being badgered to go back to them and be looked down on. I mean what I say, Daisy. Don’t tell anyone.’

  Daisy had shrugged, nodded her acquiescence and in her letters to her family did her best to avoid reference to the baby. It wasn’t easy. Her natural excitement bubbling over, many times she’d have to scrap a whole sheet when something had slipped in quite unnoticed about the little things the baby did. Especially now. Noelle was six months old, growing more interesting each day, and as the months went by Daisy felt herself beginning to grow increasingly broody for a baby of her own.

  She told Theodore. He said, ‘Then we should begin seriously for a family,’ but so far nothing had happened. Still, she consoled herself, not everyone fell at the drop of a hat. Meanwhile, she’d soon be looking after Noelle on her own. Although Cissy was trying to cling on to breastfeeding which kept Noelle bound to her, her milk was beginning to dry up. The time was approaching when the baby could be left in her charge while Cissy began to look for work.

  So looking forward to the prospect, hardly able to wait for Cissy to get started, keeping her vow of secrecy became even harder when, before the event bound her to childminding, she took an opportunity to visit her family in England.

  It was only her second visit since her marriage. The first had been a couple of months after the wedding and Teddy had come with her. They had already met him at the wedding itself, he paying for their trip. They’d been most appreciative of his generosity and had taken to him immediately, particularly having seen how comfortably he could keep their daughter – done well for herself as the saying went – even if he was Jewish and German and had a funny foreign accent, having money covered a lot of sins, so Daisy thought, slantingly amused at their motive as she saw it.

  Cissy wasn’t too pleased by this present need to go visiting across the Channel. ‘It is only for a week?’ she wanted to be reassured.

  ‘One week,’ Daisy promised. It was surprising how so lacking in self-confidence Cissy had become. Too much reliance on others, that was her trouble. There was a time when Cissy had been the one to lead, calling the tune; and when she’d met that Langley, had suffered no compunction about letting Eddie down. She had no doubt that Cissy had been to the very fore with her society friends at Biarritz and elsewhere. Now here she was, shivering in her sho
es about being left on her own to cope for one week. How on earth would she ever manage the business she was so intent on if this was how she behaved?

  ‘Teddy will be around,’ she reassured. ‘He’ll keep you company. And it is only a week.’

  ‘I never know what to say to him,’ Cissy pouted. This was something Daisy had never realised. ‘I’ll just be glad when you get back.’

  ‘Give me a chance,’ Daisy laughed. ‘I haven’t even gone yet.’

  It was wonderful seeing her parents after so long. Talk about the fatted calf – her mother at the stove making probably the best meals she’d cooked in her life, relations turning up to see her, a party on the Saturday in her honour, bombarded by endless questions. How was she? How did she like living in France? How was her husband doing? Theodore, wasn’t it? And what was her peculiar married name again – Halfgot? Helgott, she corrected. Was it German then? Of course it was German. But isn’t he Jewish too? Did she light those candles on Friday nights and did they observe the Jewish Sabbath? No, she didn’t light candles, she told them. Teddy hadn’t practised his religion for years, just as lots of other people don’t practise theirs. Oh, Teddy – was that what she called him? It sounded quite English really.

  Daisy suffered it all with a smile, only too happy to be home for a while. Eager to tell everyone about her life, her lovely home, her marvellous Paris shopping sprees, she let slip the lots of money her generous husband made – information that instantly reaped slewed looks and a hasty change of topic, indicative, she sensed, of jealousy and accusations of boasting. She learned to keep accounts of her spending to herself except that her mother was so over the moon about her Daisy ‘landing on her feet so to speak’ it just invited more slanted looks and very readable changes of topic.

  ‘It’s a big flat you got then,’ her mother said as she dished up the Sunday dinner.

  ‘They’re called apartments. And yes, Mum, it’s quite spacious.’