‘Oy! We ain’t brasses, Finlay,’ Alice Boone said. A couple of the other girls expressed their outrage at the very idea. This was somewhat dishonest, Delia thought. They all thought themselves better than prostitutes, but most of them would lead a drunk on with a promise if the chance arose, then roll him for his wallet.
Finlay held up both hands in supplication. ‘You misunderstand me, ladies. No offence, but if I was looking for girls to do that sort of work, I wouldn’t come round here.’
Jenny Wicks pouted with mock affront. ‘What’s that mean, “no offence”? Are you telling me I ain’t good enough to open my legs for your punters?’
‘Quiet,’ Stella said.
Under Finlay’s pose of boredom, Delia could see he was aggravated at the way these women refused to respect him. He knew they were making fun of him, saw how they’d shut up for Stella, not for him, and he didn’t like any of it. He said, ‘All I want you to do is come to a club I own, two or three of you each night. Drink a few drinks. Talk to the customers.’
‘Talk to men?’ Delia asked.
‘Men, women. People at the club.’
‘What about?’
‘About whatever you want. Just be yourselves. Within reason.’
Stella said, ‘You can tell these people you’re hoisters if you want. They won’t care. They’ll like it. But no details. And nothing about me at all. You understand?’
‘I’ll pay you each a fiver a night,’ Finlay said. ‘Bonuses if you do ’specially good work. Plus all your drinks for free, as long as you’re sensible.’
Kathy, the new girl, asked, ‘Is this the same club where Maggie works?’
Delia had been to that club, the Ferrara, twice. In a back room there she had helped sell stolen furs and dresses to a procession of debs and their boyfriends, any of whom could easily have afforded to buy the same goods legitimately.
Finlay said, ‘This is the Gaudi. Completely different sort of clientele. More bohemian.’
‘What’s that mean?’ Kathy asked.
‘Artistic.’
‘Like a strip club?’
Finlay gave her a weary look. ‘If I mean strip club, I’ll say strip club. The Gaudi’s my artistic establishment. It’s a boozer for your creative types. Painters, writers, musicians. You get a lot of that sort in Soho these days. They like to think they’re on the outside of what you might call conventional society.’
Rita’s voice was full of contempt. ‘You mean they like hanging about with criminals?’
‘That’s right, sweetheart. They love hanging about with criminals. Criminals are their favourite sort of company. They’ll be interested in you, and all you got to do is look as if you’re interested in them. Listen to what they talk about.’
‘Don’t forget,’ Stella said emphatically, ‘keep it vague. No details about our business. So, do you lot fancy helping Finlay out?’
It wasn’t a question. Not really. Stella wasn’t democratic, but this looked like a good deal.
‘Can’t argue with a fiver plus drinks just for a night’s socialising,’ Delia said. ‘And that’s all there is to it, right?’
Finlay paused, then said, rather too casually, ‘Maybe from time to time, me or Stella here might ask you about what one or other of ’em has to say on a particular subject.’
‘That’s that,’ Stella said. ‘We’ll let you know which nights we need each of you. Delia, wait back a minute, love.’
After the others were gone, Stella told Delia the news about Maureen. In the normal way of things, if one of her hoisters was brought to trial, the boss would send Teddy or Lulu or one of the others to sit in the courtroom, partly to keep an eye on events, partly as a visual reminder of the consequences of grassing. But being only seventeen, Maureen was tried at juvenile court, where there was no public gallery. The cases weren’t even reported in the paper. Luckily, Finlay knew some kind of bribable official, through whom Stella was reassured that during all her testimony Maureen had kept faith and done as she should: stuck to the story, maintained she’d acted alone and on impulse.
Grayson, Stella’s lawyer, had agreed he shouldn’t be involved directly. Being of previously good character, the girl would likely get away with probation, especially when the time she’d already served on remand was taken into account.
What none of them knew, however, was that a year ago, Maureen had been involved in a car theft. The three young men with whom she’d been found travelling in a stolen Ford Zodiac were all convicted of taking and driving away, but the judge believed her story that she’d innocently accepted a lift. He gave her the benefit of the doubt and let her off with a warning to be more careful in future.
‘Bad luck she’s still underage,’ Grayson had said. ‘If she’d been a legal adult, they’d have suppressed her juvenile record.’
Maureen was only seventeen, and now she had pleaded guilty to stuffing a fur hat into her knickers at Barkers of Kensington. This time, there was no doubt for which she could be given the benefit. The judge concluded that she was a young woman of mendacious and criminal character who had failed to respond to his predecessor’s generosity. He sent her down for six months to Bullwood, the girls’ borstal in Essex.
4
The mail dropped noisily into the cage behind the letterbox. Mum was at the grocer’s and Dad was at work. Tess’s younger sister was still asleep. There were three letters for her parents, two for her. She opened the one with a London postmark, leaving the other, from Lancaster, amongst the rest. Then she walked three streets to the nearest telephone box and called the number Penny had given her a fortnight previously.
Through the sound of the pips a female voice, not Penny’s, said, ‘Hullo?’ Tess pushed a coin into the slot.
‘Could I speak to Penny Hoxworth, please?’
‘Just a moment.’
The silence that followed continued so long that the pips went again and she needed to put in more money. Eventually she heard a familiar drawl.
‘Penny Hoxworth speaking.’
‘Penny? It’s Tess Green. I don’t know if you’ll remember. We met just after my interview for Moncourt, and you said—’
‘Oh yes. At Ginelli’s. I told you you’d get in! I was right, wasn’t I?’
‘You were, yes. I heard a few days ago.’
‘Well! Congratulations.’
The lie about when she had received her offer had slipped from Tess’s lips without thought, out of a subconscious decision to avoid looking too keen, she supposed. ‘Thanks. Anyway – as I said, I was wondering about the room in your house.’
‘Ah. That one’s gone, I’m afraid.’
Suddenly, the fantasy of London had become unreal again. If she couldn’t live in Penny’s house, how could any of it be possible?
‘I see. Well, thanks for—’
‘Hold on though, Tess. That girl who answered the phone – Emma’s her name. Not that it matters – she’s moving out next month. It’s not such a nice room as the one you missed out on, but—’
‘I’ll take it,’ Tess said.
Back at home she found her mother in the hall, sorting through the mail.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Getting some fresh air. Anything for me?’
‘Here. It’s from Lancaster.’
Tess tore open the envelope. ‘They’ve said yes too.’
‘Who’s left?’ Mum asked, though she knew perfectly well.
‘Only Moncourt. The one in London.’
‘I must say, I don’t know why you don’t just stay on at Leeds.’
She had made the same remark on the arrival of each of her daughter’s previous acceptances: from Canterbury, Newcastle and Stoke-on-Trent. She made it again a few days later when Tess finally showed her the letter from Moncourt. And again, tearfully, when Tess told her she was definitely going to London; and one last time, most tearfully of all, at Dewsbury Bus Station in September, as she watched the driver load Tess’s cases into the belly of the coach.
Maureen served only four weeks of her sentence in the end. After that, they released her to a hospital in Braintree, and from there into the supervision of her ‘grandmother’ Lulu, who brought her to London on the train. There was a little Welcome Home gathering for her in the kitchen at the Lamplighters when she got back: just Stella and Delia.
According to records, the girl had injured herself in an accident whilst on work detail in the turnip fields, but her smashed-in face and broken leg suggested a different history.
‘Christ! You’ve been in the wars, ain’t you?’ Stella said. ‘You fall into one of them combine harvesters or what?’
‘It was the screws,’ Maureen was hard to understand. Her mouth hadn’t healed properly yet. Her face would never look right again. ‘Couple of them took against me, said I wasn’t working quick enough. I told them I couldn’t go no faster, and—’
Maureen choked back a sob at the memory. Stella took the girl’s hand between her bony palms and said, ‘That’s why you got your sentence shortened. They’re covering up what they done. Disgusting. But it’s an ill wind blows nobody any good – at least you’re out, eh? And remember we promised if you did right by your friends, we’d take care of you?’
Maureen nodded, conscious perhaps that ‘take care of’ had many possible meanings. She sipped gingerly at the hot tea.
‘We’ll put you in a nice little flat I’ve got next door to Delia here,’ Stella told her. ‘She feels ever so bad about all this, you know.’
Maureen turned to Delia. ‘It wasn’t your fault I got myself caught, Dee.’
Oh, but it was, Delia thought. She should have spotted that shopwalker. The Imps had expected that of her. When she failed, they’d sacrificed Maureen. ‘You did well helping me get away,’ she said.
Stella let go of Maureen’s hands. ‘She’s got a big heart, Delia does. Even asked if she could go out to Bullwood to see you on visiting days.’
‘I’d have liked that,’ Maureen said.
‘Well, I couldn’t let her do that of course.’
‘Of course,’ echoed Maureen.
Her parents had cut her off after the incident with the stolen car. During what had evidently been a hellish month at the girls’ borstal, her only visitor had been Lulu in the role of grandmother, there to remind her of the importance of keeping her mouth shut.
‘Anyway,’ continued Stella, ‘Delia wants to make sure you’re all right now you’re out. So it’ll be good for you to be living right by her.’
A look of concern crossed Maureen’s face. ‘What about the rent?’
‘Don’t worry about no rent. When you’re properly better we’ll find you a bit of work to do. But like I said, you done right by us, and we owe you.’
Stella gave Delia a glance that meant we understand each other. It was obvious Maureen would never be able to work as a hoister now but she had done her duty and kept silent, so Stella would let her have a flat for free, with a paid job on top. And these rewards would redeem Delia’s portion of the debt too. It was an arrangement that would neither be spoken of nor recorded in the ledger where Stella kept her secret accounts.
Delia knew it was more complicated than Stella understood. She was glad the girl was being looked after, but it wasn’t enough. She could feel wrongness in the balance of things, heard it in the whispering of the Imps. What she had done to Maureen could not be remedied with money alone.
‘Lucky this place was empty,’ Maureen said, opening the door.
‘Yeah,’ Delia replied. ‘Lucky.’
As they entered the flat, she glanced at the doorframe where a week ago, Teddy had repaired it, grumbling about Pete and Tommy as he did so. ‘Fucking idiots,’ he’d said. ‘There was no need for this. Stella gave them a key.’
The flat’s previous occupant had been a brass by the name of Suzy. According to Stella, she had been late with her rent too often and, in contravention of the rules, brought customers back to the flat. Suzy had refuted both complaints, perhaps with justification. Delia didn’t know whether she had always been on time with her money, but she had certainly never seen or heard any men in there.
On Monday morning Itchy Pete and Tommy the Spade had resolved the dispute by kicking in her door and putting Suzy out on the pavement with all her stuff. Delia had no idea where she went afterwards. Maybe her pimp found her somewhere else.
Knowing nothing of this, Maureen explored her new flat gleefully. Like Delia’s, it had a separate kitchen and bathroom, but it was smaller, with only one bedroom. The place was near-enough unfurnished. All Suzy seemed to have needed was a bed, a kitchen table and a portable gas hob.
‘It’s nice here. I’ve been in bedsits ever since I moved out of Mum and Dad’s. I’m so pleased you and me’re going to be neighbours.’ Maureen flinched at an unexpected twinge of pain. Her excitement had made her careless of her injuries.
‘That thing Stella said about me having a big heart. It ain’t true, Maureen.’ This point seemed important to Delia. It might help the girl recognise the reality of her situation.
‘But you’ve been really good to me, Dee.’
‘I haven’t done anything for you.’
‘You were going to come and visit me at Bullwood.’
‘I was. But I didn’t.’
‘Only ‘cause Stella said you weren’t to. I understand why. And you’re going to keep an eye on me now, aren’t you? Help me get settled in?’
‘I ain’t got a big heart, Maureen. I’ve barely got any heart at all, and what I do have is hard. But I believe in doing right.’ Delia hesitated. How much could she tell Maureen about the Imps, their demands for sacrifice and balance? ‘It’s my opinion that the more you do right, the less goes wrong for you.’
Maureen looked out of the window, down at the street. ‘You know my mum and dad don’t have nothing to do with me no more?’
‘I heard that, yes.’
‘It was the first time I’d ever been in any trouble, and I hadn’t even done anything wrong. I was really frightened, locked up in a cell at the police station, and they just turned their backs on me. My dad never spoke to me again, not properly. Mum said it wasn’t my being in a stolen car so much as— they thought I’d done things with those boys.’
‘Had you?’
‘No,’ Maureen said. Then she laughed. ‘Well, not much, and only with Derek. He was the nearest I ever had to a proper boyfriend. If he hadn’t been driving the car I’d never have got in it. I tried explaining to my mum, and I asked her if she couldn’t at least try to get Dad to understand, but she just kept saying, “You broke his heart” over and over. “He’s got a big heart, your dad, an’ you’ve broke it, Maureen.” Like it was all my fault. I believed that.’
She turned her injured face back to the room. Delia saw there were changes in her beyond the physical damage. Maureen was no longer exactly the girl who had followed her into Barkers of Kensington.
‘Your parents should have looked after you, whatever you’d done.’
‘I know that now. Back then I was just so sorry for hurting my dad, even though I’d never meant to and it was only a mistake – and I hadn’t even done half of what he thought I had. Seemed like it was my fault he was so upset.’ She looked around this flat she had been given. ‘Things have worked out all right, haven’t they, with me here and you looking after me?’
‘It’s all Stella, really,’ Delia said. ‘This is her place. I couldn’t have done this for you. I’ll help you get some nice furniture, though.’
It was hard to read Maureen’s expression, because of the damage, but a couple of fat tears rolled down her cheeks.
‘You know what I realised in hospital?’ she said. ‘I realised I wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for D
ad’s big broken heart. If him and my mum would’ve looked after me better, I wouldn’t never have tried working for Stella, wouldn’t never have tried nicking that stupid hat, wouldn’t never have gone to borstal and wouldn’t never have got beat up.’ She took a breath, grasping at this stream of hypotheticals and finding a conclusion among them. ‘So all in all I’d rather have someone with a small heart, trying to do the right thing. Someone like you.’
5
As the closest pub to Moncourt, the Lord Nelson was almost an outbuilding of the college, filled with students and staff every night. Jimmy had gone along there with this or that new acquaintance several times since beginning his studies a fortnight ago, and usually regretted it. Tonight he was already half-cut by eight o’clock. Best stop now, he thought, before I lose control. Then he kept drinking. At nine he was entirely drunk, and talking to Tess and Penny.
He wasn’t impressed with Penny, but Tess, he had decided, was the first person he had met here who might become an actual friend. She wasn’t, it turned out, nearly as sophisticated or as bohemian as he had imagined when he’d met her before his interview.
The noise from an excitable cluster of students and staff at the next table, together with the alcoholic fuzz in his head, made concentration difficult. It was a struggle to follow the story Tess was telling him. Something about her fooling Benedict Garvey with a lie about hitch-hiking. When she reached the end, Jimmy had made enough sense of it to know he should find what she had done both hilarious and admirable. He told her so.
‘I’m not sure,’ she answered. ‘It sort of feels like I’m here on false pretences.’
‘Everyone’s here on false pretences,’ Penny announced.
‘Well, I certainly am,’ Jimmy said, and immediately felt annoyed at himself for being drawn into her game of stupid proclamations. ‘Anyway, speaking of false pretences, have you read Art Matters yet?’
Garvey’s book on criticism and theory was required reading for the course. After four pages of the introduction Jimmy had hurled his copy at the wall of his room. It was still lying where it had landed.
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