by Mary Gibson
Frank Rossi, pictured right, provider of bodyguards to some of Hollywood’s top celebrities, says that a bodyguard requires very special skills, not only physical strength, but a knowledge of how to protect clients from unwanted interest or an ability to blend in at sophisticated events. He’s even begun recruiting from England these days, because, he says, ‘Those guys have the sort of class our clients require.’ Our photographer caught up with him outside the Los Angeles home of rising star Mia Morgan. She is pictured with Rossi and her new bodyguard Dan Sabini, who hails from Clerkenwell in London. Rossi says he will be visiting family in England shortly, so will be there to hand pick his next recruits!
Matty’s hands trembled as she turned to Esme’s letter. I don’t want to alarm you, darling, she wrote, but I’ve made some enquiries at various agencies and it seems these Sabinis are a nasty mob from Clerkenwell. If Frank’s in contact with them, and he’s coming here on a recruiting drive, I thought you should at least be forewarned!
But Frank wasn’t just coming on a ‘recruiting drive’. She’d been an avid reader of Variety in their days together and she was sure the mention of his ‘family’ had somehow been for her. There was no family in England, apart from the child he thought he had. Perhaps she was being paranoid, but the idea that his vengeful reach might be extending all the way across the Atlantic sent a cold rush of fear coursing through her.
There was little she could do about Esme’s warning, but it had backed up Tom’s information and she wished she could talk to him about it. She shoved the clipping and letter into her handbag, hoping she might see him later at the Green Ginger. Freddie had invited her along to wet the new baby’s head. His wife, Kitty, came from a big Dockhead family and seemed determined to keep up the tradition. The latest addition was a boy, a cause for celebration as far as Freddie was concerned for they already had two girls and his wife’s family had an overabundance of them.
As soon as Matty walked into the Green Ginger, its landlady, Katie Gilbie, pounced on her. Matty knew that in Katie’s mind she was a fellow entertainer, but whenever they met it made Matty almost glad she’d given up the business. It was so easy to get stuck in the past, and everything about Katie, from her piled-up hair to her thick stage make-up, fixed the woman at the time of her last great success, a spell at the Rotherhithe Hippodrome before her marriage to cousin George, which had then been followed by a lifetime of pub singing.
‘You gonna do a turn for us later?’ Katie’s smile cracked her thick face powder. ‘I heard you was bumping on, why didn’t you come to me? You can ’ave as much work as you want here, darlin’. Every night of the week.’
‘Thanks, Katie, but I’m working now, got a job with the borough films.’
Katie’s face powder creased in disgust. ‘Ugh! Who wants to see a film about the inside of yer Newington’s? I couldn’t stick it for love nor money. You’re an artiste, Matty, you don’t want to be pissin’ about with all that!’
‘It suits me, Katie, and if it wasn’t for working on those films I don’t think we’d have found out about Billy so quickly.’
‘Ah, poor little bleeder, how is he? Fancy having to go to a foreign country to get a decent doctor.’
As Matty was telling her about Billy’s photograph she saw Tom come in. He nodded a hello and Matty made her escape.
She pushed through the crush to the bar.
‘She looked like she had you cornered,’ Tom said.
‘She’s trying to poach me off you, says I’m wasted on films about the digestive tract!’
Tom laughed and ordered drinks.
‘Listen, Tom, I’ve had a letter I want to talk to you about.’
He looked intrigued but said nothing until they were settled at a plush-covered bench.
‘What’s this letter then?’ he asked and Matty handed it to him with the clipping.
His high forehead creased and his clear eyes clouded over. ‘The Sabinis!’ He gave a low whistle.
‘What do you know about them?’
‘A nasty lot, belong to the Clerkenwell mob, usually stick to their own turf, though. The only reason they come over this side of the river is to pick a fight with the Elephant Boys. But if Frank’s coming over here to work with the Sabinis, then they’ll help him track you down. Best lie low, unless you want to see him again?’
‘No, Tom, I don’t want to see him again.’
She was surprised he’d even asked, but then, she hadn’t told him everything.
‘Well, it’s maybe not such a bad thing you lost your voice, Matty. Perhaps it wouldn’t do to be plastered all over the stage bills at the moment.’
‘That’s typical, just when I’ve started singing again.’
‘Really, when?’
‘It happened one day when Billy asked me to sing to him. But it’s all right. I like my new film career much better than the old one anyway.’
Tom looked doubtful about that and was going to say something when he stopped abruptly, his eyes fixed on the door. ‘It wouldn’t hurt to put the feelers out about Rossi, though... and I think the best person for the job’s just walked in.’
He stood up and waved. ‘Sugar! Over here.’
A man with a close-shaved, knobbly, thick-boned head, his face mostly taken up with a flattened broken nose, turned at the sound of Tom’s voice. He broke into a broad, crooked-toothed grin and swaggered over, his two-tone brogues out-turned and his baggy trousers flapping.
‘’Kin ’ell, Tom – ’scuse me French.’ He grinned at Matty. ‘I didn’t know you’d be here. I thought you’d give us lot the ’eave oh.’
Matty had heard Tom speak about Stan ‘Sugar’ Sweeting, a foot soldier in the Elephant Boys who’d stayed in the gang when Tom and Freddie had made their escape. She hoped Tom wasn’t going to tell him about Frank and tried to indicate with a look that he should keep quiet.
Sugar stared at Matty. ‘You ain’t half come down in the world, ain’t yer? Livin’ in a shithole like Bermondsey, bit different to America, eh?’
He was a man whose idea of chivalry was to truncate swear words in the presence of a lady. He lowered his slick-suited, muscly frame on to a bentwood chair. He looked as precarious as a cow on a pinhead, and Matty wanted to reach over to steady him, but his splayed two-toned feet provided the necessary balance. He took a last drag on a dog-end and stubbed it out with nicotine-stained fingers.
‘You still working for Nitty Nora?’ he asked, pulling at Tom’s hair, before cracking an imaginary louse with his thumbnail.
‘No, I left the cleansing station ages ago. I’m in the borough film department now.’
Sugar’s boney head wobbled from side to side as if weighing up the possible profit in such a place. He twisted a cupped palm behind his back. ‘’Kin ’ell, King Vidor ’im!’ He gave Matty what was supposed to be a playful punch on the arm, which made her wince. ‘We could always get rid of some overstock film – if you’re interested in a bung.’
Tom laughed and shook his head. ‘We use all the film we buy. But you can do something else for me.’
He quickly told Sugar about Frank Rossi and his Sabini bodyguards. Sugar wagged his huge knuckled finger at her. ‘Playing with the naughty boys, eh? Should ’a stuck with him, lily white.’ Sugar nodded towards Tom. ‘Giss a snout, Tommy.’ Sugar stuck out a bunch of thick, yellow-stained fingers and Tom obliged with a cigarette. While Sugar was drawing deep, he shot Matty a calculating look and sniffed through his broken nose.
‘What’s he got on you, this Rossi?’
Matty blushed to the roots of her hair. ‘Nothing!’
‘She’s paid him off.’ Tom thankfully lowered his voice.
Sugar narrowed his eyes as he blew out a thin stream of smoke. ‘No, blokes like Rossi – they’ve always got something on you. Go on, you can tell us.’
‘That’s enough, Sugar.’ Tom shot Sugar a warning look and Matty had a glimpse of the tough Elephant Boy he’d once been.
‘Don’t you worry, gel. I’ll ke
ep me mince pies open.’ Sugar prodded two forked fingers at his own face so that she thought he might put his eyes out. ‘If any Sabini bastards come over this side askin’ questions I’ll chuck ’em in the Thames and they can swim back to ’kin Clerkenwell.’ He choked on his phlegmy laughter.
When Sugar left them to search out Freddie, Matty turned blazing eyes on Tom. ‘I asked you for your opinion, not to get me involved in a bloody gang war! What were you thinking of, telling my business to someone like that?’
Tom looked hurt. ‘Sugar’s all right... to his friends. And he’s like a bloodhound, Matty. They use him in the Elephant Boys to sniff out the police plants. It’s useful having someone like him on your side. You shouldn’t go by appearances.’
‘Are you really telling me off for disliking one of your villain friends?’ She shook her head in exaggerated disbelief.
‘No, I’m just trying to help you shake off one of your villain friends!’ Tom slammed down his glass and got up.
She put a hand over his. ‘I’m sorry, Tom.’
But he wouldn’t be placated. ‘I could have been like Sugar. It’s just he had no one to drag him out of it.’
At that moment Tom’s saviour, Freddie, came over and Tom, ignoring Matty’s request for privacy, repeated what he’d told Sugar. ‘You should ’ave stuck with Tom.’ Freddie whistled, gazing at Matty appraisingly.
‘I’ll leave you two to talk about old times,’ Matty said, furious now with them both. ‘Oh, I forgot, not such old times in your case, eh, Freddie?’ She saw him glance quickly in the direction of his wife. ‘I’ll just go and say hello to Kitty, shall I? Tell her how lucky she is that her husband didn’t electrocute himself on a lamp post last time he was nicking the electricity!’
‘Come and sit over here, love,’ Nellie called, making room between her and Sam. Sitting opposite was Nellie’s youngest brother, Bobby, and his wife, Elsie. Elsie was one of her greatest fans, and in fact, when Elsie was only a young girl, Matty had presented her with a prize at one of the Star’s talent contests. Elsie was a rather ethereal-looking young woman, who sometimes seemed to be observing events from another world than this. Not given to shows of affection, she’d always treated Matty with unusual warmth and now she got up and threw her arms round her.
‘Here’s our Cockney Canary!’ Elsie exclaimed with undisguised admiration and Matty smiled back.
However annoyed she’d been with Tom, it had felt good just to have someone to unburden herself to and she allowed the threat of Frank to recede. Here in the Green Ginger, surrounded by people who loved her, she told herself that the Cosa Nostra was not the only family in the world.
14
Fresh Air and Fun
September 1931
Matty couldn’t breathe. She was spending another day in the darkest, dirtiest, most suffocating streets Bermondsey had to offer and she was surprised at how oppressed she now felt by its close-crowded houses and alleys. The greatest sense of expansiveness she’d ever known had been on the ship sailing over to New York. The Atlantic had been so boundless she’d sometimes felt giddy with all that limitless sky and endless water. Until then she’d been used to a life bounded by narrow streets, confined by dark theatres, and it had only been since her return that she’d felt the lack of light and air. The voyage home had been as constricting as the outward one had been expansive. She’d spent it sequestered in the cabin along with her grief.
Now they were making a film about the council’s slum-clearance programme and were shooting in some of the worst condemned properties at Dockhead, where they found families of a dozen or more living in a couple of rooms. Matty knew the film’s intention was good. Showing the contrast between existing slums and the council’s new flats was meant to be a stark demonstration of the health benefits of indoor running water, baths built into kitchens, airy courtyards and vermin-free walls. But Matty hated filming people’s misery.
They arrived at Mrs Oliver’s, the woman whose baby she’d bathed in the Maternity and Childcare film. She’d offered to let them film her two rooms in an ancient house off Shad Thames. It was a narrow place, tilting forward towards the river with only a pub on one side and a warehouse on the other to hold it up. It looked as if it hadn’t had a lick of paint since Nelson’s time. It certainly had a nautical air, and when they’d first attempted the sagging staircase with all their equipment Matty could have sworn the whole building swayed as if it were buoyed up by the swell of the tide.
Mrs Oliver’s baby looked different in its home surroundings. In the clinic, wrapped in a fluffy white towel and freshly powdered, the child had appeared healthy enough; now he looked pinched and sallow. The rooms were gloomy, airless. In one was a double bed and what passed for a kitchen; in the other were two more double beds. Mrs Oliver, with three children under six at home and another three at school, looked as ruined as the building she lived in, and yet she’d swept up, made the effort to put a cloth on the table and had obviously managed to home-wave her hair, which Matty appreciated was no mean feat in ideal conditions let alone surrounded by demanding children.
Dr Connan’s interview turned into a stilted affair; he looked out of place in his immaculate suit and made little attempt to put the woman at ease.
‘How do you find living here with your husband and six children?’
‘Difficult, sir, though we don’t complain.’ Mrs Oliver spoke nothing but the truth.
‘And tell me, do you have an indoor water supply?’
‘We don’t, sir, but we’ve got a standpipe at the back we share with the other families, so we can’t complain.’
Matty could see D.M. was not getting the best out of her and quickly wrote a question on a slip of paper, sliding it on to the table. D.M. glanced at it and took the advice.
‘And so how do you keep your children clean?’ Here the baby cried on cue.
‘My eldest helps me with the buckets up the stairs before he goes to school, but with the six of ’em, the water soon runs out, and I can’t leave the little ones to get more...’ And here Matty saw the woman falter. ‘I hope I do my best, sir.’
Matty slipped another note across the table.
‘Are all your children in good health?’ The baby wriggled in the woman’s arms.
‘Gen’lly, sir, except I lost one to the scarlet fever since I come in these rooms. All the families in this house has had it...’ she said defensively, so that D.M. would understand it was nothing to do with her housekeeping. ‘And you can’t keep the children cooped up in these rooms all day, the windows stick terrible and you can’t get no air. So I let the children play in the street, nat’lly they mix. It was only my little Daisy that died of it, though.’
Matty could see that the fractious baby was distracting Mrs Oliver and, in a pause to change film, she offered to take him from her while they resumed the filming. She whispered to Tom as she went out, ‘Do a scene with her struggling up the stairs and put one of the kids into the bed...’
She took the baby into the second room and the tightness across her chest increased; the deeper she breathed the less air filled her lungs. She fought with the sticking sash window, fearing the wooden frame would crumble away. Once it was open she held the child close, breathing deeply as air from the nearby river blew into the room. Almost within touching distance, the mast of a ship punctured the sky, and from the open window Matty could see a row of cranes in the docks. She looked up as one swung a bale full of coconuts directly over the sagging roof of Mrs Oliver’s house.
She rested her cheek on the baby’s soft hair, breathing in the unwashed, milky odour, which reminded her of custard creams. For a guilty moment she allowed herself to imagine this were her own child and a dragging sadness caught her, as she realized her daughter would have been a year old.
‘Your mummy couldn’t give you a bath, like we showed her, could she?’ she asked the child. ‘Show me your nails?’ She examined the tiny fingers, disappointed that this perfect infant already had the dirt of the do
cks under its nails, almost an omen for its future. ‘If you were mine I’d let you splash in the bath and you’d come out smelling like a rosebud!’ She was rewarded with a smile and a giggle from the child. ‘Wouldn’t you like that?’ she whispered. Again she felt the shameful tug of an unnamed desire which involved taking the baby home with her. What she would do with it when they got there, she had no idea, but it frightened her that such an absurd notion could have wormed its way into her heart, like an unwelcome guest that insisted on returning.
She quickly pulled down the sash, and hurried into the neighbouring room to hand over her charge to its mother. The interview was finished and it was Matty’s turn to go on. She was playing the housing officer, come to give Mrs Oliver good news. Her home had been condemned and she was on her way to one of the new council flats.
This was a particularly cruel fiction, for it wasn’t actually going to happen and the woman would have to continue bringing up her family in two damp rooms until the council could afford to finish another new estate. Mrs Oliver had seemed happy enough to help, but at the end of a day’s shooting Matty was almost gagging for breath. She couldn’t wait to get out of the crumbling old house, and with the smell of damp clinging to her clothes she refused Tom’s offer of a lift home in the cinemotor and ran through the airless maze of streets until she reached the river wall. Only there, with the space of the Thames stretching before her, did she feel able to breathe once more.
*
That evening, she received a visit from Winnie, who as soon as they’d sat down with their tea asked her, ‘Can you ride a bike?’
She put it down to the day she’d had. But when Winnie proposed she come on a trip to Winchester with the Peek’s cycling club, though Matty’s better judgement warned her to say no, her need for air won out.