‘We have to buy white carnations and dye them blue with hair dye when the boss comes in,’ she told Maud on one of her aunt’s frequent visits to the salon. ‘We fill up all the vases with them, it looks stunning.’
‘Is that Mr Teasie-Weasie your big boss, Audrey?’ Maud asked, as Audrey was about to lower the hairdryer over her head.
‘Yes, Aunty Maud, but please don’t call me Audrey. I’ve told you, when I’m at work I’m Tessa.’
‘I don’t get it. Why can’t they just call you Audrey number two?’
Audrey laughed, and explained again. ‘One more time! There are a hundred of us here and there was already an Audrey when I arrived, well, her name isn’t really Audrey it’s Barbara, but there was a Barbara here when she started so she became Audrey. So my trade name is Tessa.’
‘You don’t look anything like a Tessa, though,’ grumbled Maud. ‘Why can’t this Audrey change her name now that there’s a real one?’
‘Oh Maud, it’s not like making a bed. Your students can’t tell who has made their bed, can they?’
Maud looked up quickly at Audrey. ‘Damn cheek,’ she told her, ‘they’d soon know if I haven’t made it. They’d be asking what had happened. The other bedders can’t make a bed like me, my boys always tell me that.’
‘Alright,’ Audrey soothed the older woman. ‘But if I start doing someone’s hair and they had asked for the other Audrey, well, Gina and Michael wouldn’t be best pleased.’
Gina and Michael Wilson were the salon managers, and Audrey did not want to do anything that would upset them and give them reason to let her go (which is how they’d explained Janice’s sacking the week previous). There was always another girl waiting to start training at Raymond’s.
‘It doesn’t matter, it’s not like I’m not used to being called other names, is it, Maud; you still occasionally call me Tiny and the boys and their mates are still calling me that, too. Look at me – I don’t think I warrant it any more, do you? Tessa is just fine. Please remember.’
Now fifteen years old, Audrey had blossomed into an attractive young woman. She was always dressed in a black miniskirt and a white blouse, and with her short blonde hair she was the epitome of fashion. Naturally, this made Edward even stricter with her, and he would not let her go out after work or with her friends at the weekend.
‘You been saving your wages?’ Maud asked as Audrey handed her a cup of tea.
‘Don’t be daft,’ the girl responded, ‘most of my wages go on bus fare. But my pay will start going up with my age and experience. I reckon I’ll be on one pound, eleven and six by the time I’m seventeen. I have to start saving for my own salon as soon as possible of course, it’s the only way you make anything. It’s like Dad says, I shouldn’t be selling myself for next to nothing.’
‘One day you’ll have your own business. I can see it.’ A dreamy look came over her face as Maud stared into the middle distance, seeing visions of what she imagined Audrey’s future to be. ‘You’ll have “Audrey, Hair Stylist” above a shop,’ she told her, ‘and I’ll help you get it when you’re qualified.’ She didn’t want to mention to Audrey that she was saving for the girl’s future, not just yet anyway. She wanted her to complete the training and was so proud of her working at Raymond’s.
So was her dad, and as he told Maud, ‘He’s got horses that Teasie-Weasie fella has, up in Newmarket.’ Edward told Audrey, ‘Your mum would have liked him as well, I have no doubt. He worked his way up in his dad’s barber shop and he can demand stupid money for a hairdo. Good for him, I say, if people are prepared to pay for it.’
Edward approved when his daughter said that she didn’t want to go back to school after the summer. She had been offered an apprenticeship at Raymond’s whereas some girls had to pay £200 a year to be trained by them. It wasn’t long before she was doing more than putting customers under dryers and making them tea, too. She was washing hair, and assigned to watch and learn from a couple of older cutters by November 1963, when the Beatles returned to Cambridge. This time Audrey had no problems affording the ticket, because she won one in the salon’s sweepstake.
There were some 2,000 girls waiting before the show to try and get a look – or even a touch – of the band before the concert, and Audrey joined the queue early, knowing she might miss something otherwise. But when she found herself being shoved every which way by girls as they pushed against policemen, who were trying to keep them off the road outside the Regal, she took herself off away from the crowd and to the Civic café, where she had a cup of tea with a couple of friends. Like them, Audrey had ordered ‘She Loves You’ from the record department in the basement of Miller’s Music, across the road from Joshua Taylor’s, at least two months before it was released – even before they knew what it was going to be called, it was simply ‘the new record by the Beatles’. She’d played it at least twice every day since getting it in August, alternating it with the other Beatles 45s, ‘Love Me Do’, ‘Please, Please Me’ and ‘From Me to You’, and their first long player, Please, Please Me. She was waiting for their second LP, With the Beatles, which was about to come out. They were all looking forward to getting their copies of a new Beatles 45 the Friday after the concert, and had their orders in.
That single, ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’, wasn’t played that night, but ten songs that they all knew were performed – only it was very difficult to hear any of them because of the constant screaming and shouting from the audience. Audrey was sure that Paul was always looking at her again, but the music and the night was spoiled by all the hysterics of the girls – some of them looked as if they were barely twelve years old, she thought, with irritation. At the end of the night, Audrey was very glad she’d seen them again, but she didn’t have the same floaty feeling afterwards like she had in March. Still, she thought, I’m older now, more mature. A look at her reflection in the shop windows she passed on her way home showed the truth of that: her hair was backcombed into a trademark Raymond beehive, her kitten-heel stilettos and tight pencil skirt made a perfect line from the short, flared wool jacket with three large buttons. She knew that she could easily pass for eighteen.
MAUD
Cambridge 1960–68
By the time that Audrey was established at the salon, Maud looked forward to her regular hair appointments with ‘Tessa’ enormously. Maud had moved to a different part of town in 1960, and since Audrey had left the colleges for hairdressing, they didn’t get to see each other as often as they used to.
Maud hadn’t regretted moving house, only that it took her further away from Audrey. She had been offered a two-bedroom flat in the brand new section of the Arbury estate called King’s Hedges, and as Hugh’s mother had died she could see no real reason to remain in her three-bedroom house in Ditton Fields.
Maud had no money worries, as she still had Hugh’s pension. Her work as a bedder had become a matter of routine, and while she didn’t get as close to the boys as many of the others at her college, she had no reason to complain about the way she was treated by either the college or the students. As the move neared, she became almost excited at the idea of starting again, and saw it as an adventure – which is what the twelve-year-old Audrey had said it would be. Maud decided to take very few things from the house in Ditton Fields to the flat in Campkin Court. She would buy new furniture, all modern and in bright colours, with Formica tops and glass doors. She’d had enough of the dark brown Edwardian and Victorian sideboards, cupboards and ball-footed, heavy table that she’d inherited from the Ingrams. Naturally, the Singer sewing machine that Hugh had bought her (and which she’d paid him back for) would make the journey across town with her, as would the dressmaking basket she bought for that first – and last – May Ball in 1950.
When the housekeeper asked if she’d like to attend the next Ball, in 1951, Maud told her that she’d rather not. ‘I didn’t really like seeing them all drunk like that.’ Which wasn’t true, but she couldn’t tell anyone the real reason why; that she didn’t
want to be reminded of the attack on Hugh that happened the same night. She was ashamed that she was dazzled by the lights, dancing and fun being had by all at the May Ball while her husband was being bashed up. She never went to another in all the time that she continued to work for the college.
Maud ordered most things for her new flat from the Littlewoods catalogue, which she and Audrey spent hours looking through, selecting everything from tea towels to a record player. ‘I’m really enjoying this,’ she told Audrey after they’d just decided to get a new alarm clock. It looked like something from outer space, with silver spikes for legs and little black balls at the end of them.
‘But can you afford it, Aunty Maud?’ Audrey asked as she completed the order form for her (she did them all because Maud said her handwriting was clearer).
‘’Course I can,’ Maud said with feeling, ‘I would never get it all otherwise. I’ve got a little put away in the Post Office, I’m alright, Tiny.’ In fact, she had quite a lot of money saved having had nothing to spend it on before now.
On the day of the move, Maud had Edward and a friend of his put all of the Ingrams’ old furniture into her front garden for anyone to take as they liked. To her surprise, a large man with a horse and cart arrived just after 11 a.m. and loaded the whole lot onto his wagon. The rag and bone man took everything, including crockery and cutlery, and Maud didn’t mind at all, at least it was gone.
The previous day she had taken all of her late mother-in-law’s clothes to the Red Cross. She had removed Hugh’s clothes the day after his funeral, although not to a charity. Instead she’d put them into his old navy duffle bag and left them on the desk at her college porter’s lodge with no explanation. At the time she had taken great pleasure in doing so, although she would later come to regret it.
The only things she took with her from Ditton Fields that had once belonged to her late husband were the Encyclopaedias Britannica, and they were for Audrey. Maud encouraged her to read as much as possible when she was with her. ‘If you were a boy, Audrey, you’d probably have been allowed to go to grammar school like Marjorie Mizen’s youngest son,’ Maud told her and Audrey laughed.
‘You mean Alan?’ she replied with a snort. ‘Alan Seymour? He boxes at the Henley Road boxing club with some of the boys from my school. I can think of other boys I’d rather be like.’
Maud looked crestfallen at that, and Audrey joked, ‘Blimey, Aunty Maud, do you know his great-grandmother as well?’
‘Cheeky bugger,’ Maud perked up. ‘She was a bedder too, but no, I never met her. Both his mum and his Nana Bertha are, you know, and that’s how it is at the colleges, daughters, nieces and sisters.’
Maud had encouraged Audrey to choose a job that she wanted to do, and thought that if she could help Tiny through life avoiding the mistakes that she’d made, then she would have something to be quietly proud of. Maud hated the idea that Audrey might end up in a loveless marriage like she’d had.
It was a Saturday morning in 1965, after her shift at the college, and Maud was looking forward to catching up with Audrey. As soon as she was settled, she asked her about her love life, which she’d been doing since the girl had begun to go out dancing.
Most of the time, Audrey didn’t mind. She could get away with denying that she’d dated any boys, and only saw them to dance and drink with. Nothing serious had gone on (or not as far as Audrey was concerned; she knew Maud might think differently about what she got up to during the slow dances at the Dorothy and the long, quiet walks home at 1 a.m.).
But at the salon, where there were lots of interested parties listening in, Audrey knew she needed to get Maud talking and thinking about something else. ‘But how are your boys, Aunty Maud, how’s that blind boy, Simon, doing? Is his dog still there an’ all?’
‘Oh yes, he’s ever so nice. I don’t know how he does it, you know. He doesn’t let me get things for him when I’m in his room. Did I tell you he gave me a tenner at Christmas?’ Maud’s eyes sought Audrey’s in the mirror, and the girl looked back quizzically.
‘I said, “You do know what you’ve given me, don’t you?” and he says, “I most certainly do and you’re worth every bit of it.” And I thought for a bit and then said, “But ’ow do you know what you’ve give me?” And he says straight back, “Barney” – that’s his guide dog – “got it out of my wallet for me.” Well, I laughed at that, and said, “No, really Simon, this is too much, it’s . . .” and he said quick as a flash, “A tenner, Mrs Ingram. I know.” Blow me, I thought, his dog must be clever!’
Audrey laughed at that and said, ‘No Aunty, a tenner will feel different to a fiver or a pound note, won’t it? It’s bigger, for a start.’
‘Oh yes, I s’pose you’re right. Anyway, he made me keep it, and of course I look after him as best I can, you know. But that dog of his, he’s a right life saver. Simon told me the other day how he was walking up Regent Street with Barney leading him, and I’ve seen Simon walking about and he don’t half move fast, I tell you. Anyway, Simon says, “Barney suddenly stopped, so I had to as well, but couldn’t think why. I could hear the traffic to my left and nothing in front. I couldn’t get him to move forward at all, and he sat there, solid as a rock. Then a nice gentleman spoke to me and said what a good dog I had, and would I like to be helped around the very large hole that covered the pavement! If I’d dragged Barney on I would have done who knows what harm to myself and him.”’ Maud paused and Audrey looked suitably impressed. ‘He’s lovely though, that Simon, and of course this is the third year I’ve looked after him, which the college don’t usually like doing. But ’cos of his blindness they let him have the same room, and Barney with him. He must be right clever, my Simon.’
‘And what about that other boy who took you punting, Maud, how’s he?’
‘What, Matthew? He’s alright, got himself a girlfriend, though – I burst in on them in a state of undress the other morning – I din’t know where to look! So I left and came back to his rooms last, and he was waiting for me. “Oh Maudie,” he says, he always calls me that and I don’t mind, he’s proper handsome an’ all, “Maudie, I’m terribly sorry about you catching me giving Miss Sellers an examination.” I said, “You what? That din’t look like no ’zamination to me!” He smiled and said, “Oh but it was, you know. I’m in second year medicine and Miss Sellers was complaining of a having a bad chest, so I was, er, listening to it” – and do you know, he managed to keep a straight face!’
‘Ha ha,’ said Audrey, ‘I bet he’s doing vet training, not medicine, eh Aunty?’
‘He’s lovely really though, so I won’t say nothing. Now if I was to catch that ’orrible Gervaise doing something sim’lar I’d be straight down to the porter’s lodge, I tell you.’
‘Oh dear, is he still being ’orrible to you?’
‘He never says nothing nice, never a “Good morning, how are you today,” it’s just “Clean under the bed, don’t move my books, where’s my bloody Bakelite tea set.” Little sod. I threw that old set out when he left it by the sink in the gyp room at the end of last term. We’re told to chuck anything like that if it’s left behind when they’re gone, an’ so I did. He was upset, though, and told me he wouldn’t care if I’d kept them, but I told ’im, “I wouldn’t want that old rubbish,” and ever since he’s been as surly as anything with me. Still, not for long, eh, he’ll be off somewhere else next year.’
Maud turned her head both ways, admiring the cut that Audrey had given her. ‘Oh, that looks lovely, Aud dear.’
‘Glad you like it, Aunty, now do you think it’s alright if we change your regular Saturday morning appointment for one at the end of the day from now on, please?’
Maud agreed hesitantly, and Audrey explained that they didn’t have time to chat properly on a Saturday morning, but there wouldn’t be the same pressure at the end of the day to get her out of the chair so another customer could take it.
From then on Maud spent Saturdays after her shift at the college wandering around
town, looking in shop windows. She had never given herself time to do this before and took to sitting on a seat opposite the entrance of the Sainsbury’s store on Sidney Street or outside the Post Office, watching people go about their business. She sat, staring at people, imagining what their lives were like, until it was time for her appointment with Audrey.
After a year or so, though, Maud began to miss appointments with Audrey, usually without telling her beforehand. When she’d missed three appointments in a row, Audrey rang her college on a Friday and asked to pass a message to Maud, for her to visit Audrey that evening.
‘Another cup of tea?’ Audrey asked as Maud settled in the kitchen that evening. She nodded, thinking that the tea making would give her time to think about what to say to her Tiny.
‘I’ll do your hair if you like seeing as you’ve come all this way,’ Audrey suggested as she put the kettle on. ‘I’ve got all my kit.’
‘No, no, it’s OK, I’m not really in the mood.’
Audrey leaned against the cooker and looked quizzically at Maud.
‘What’s up, Maud? Come on, out with it. I know something’s bothering you. You’ve not been coming to the salon. Is something wrong?’ Maud looked away from Audrey, who turned on the gas ring under the kettle and tried again. ‘Come on, Maud. You can tell me. Is it ’cos you didn’t get Charlie, is that it? The last time I saw you, you said there was talk of him going to your college?’
Audrey meant Prince Charles, who was going to be coming to the university.
‘No, that was just talk,’ Maud said dismissively, ‘he didn’t come to ours. No, it’s not that. He got Flo Moore from Whitehill Road. They picked her specially for him and she’s a nice lady. Look, I know you’re a fighter, Audrey. It’s me that’s not. I’ve had enough. I stood at the bus stop at five-and-twenty to six yesterday morning in all that snow and I said out loud, “I can’t do this any more.”’
‘Something else must have happened to make you do that, Maud, you don’t just pack in your job without a by your leave.’
The Staircase Girls Page 24