No Peace for the Wicked

by Pip Granger

  ‘Are you listening to me?’ Rosie’s young voice demanded and I started guiltily.

  ‘Sorry Rosie, I was thinking about all those blank shop fronts in Gerrard Street. I thought T.C. might know what goes on there. What were you saying?’

  Rosie rolled her eyes at me and began again in a voice loaded with patience. ‘I said,’ she began, ‘that Luigi told me that Lucky told him that they call us “ghosts” because they like to pretend we’re not really here, and anyway, we’re such a funny colour, so pasty and white that we all look the same to them.’

  I smiled. ‘Well, that makes a change. It’s what we’ve been known to say about them.’

  ‘I know. Do you think Peace will be stand-offish like the others?’ Rosie asked. ‘I hope not, because I’d like to get to know her better. We’ve got stuff in common, after all.’ Rosie hesitated and blushed slightly. ‘There’s our parents for starters. I mean, it was ages before I knew who mine were and Peace still doesn’t know who hers are; nobody does. It’s hard, not knowing. At least I see mine from time to time. Poor Peace wouldn’t know hers if she fell over them, would she?’

  Rosie had a point. I knew for a fact that the question of her parentage was an extremely vexed one for Peace, because Sugar had told me she’d asked more than once if Bandy was her mother. ‘I mean,’ he’d said, ‘if you start hoping Bandy’s your mother you’ve got to be desperate. Bandy has all the maternal instincts of a municipal paving slab, and is about as cuddly.’

  It was an unkind observation, but a true one. Bandy liked children well enough: she held legendary children’s parties at the club, but they were festive occasions, not real life. And anyway, Bandy was doing what came naturally being a hostess, but a hostess was a far cry from being someone’s mother. You couldn’t send your kids home when you’d had enough, or because they bored you, the way you could your guests. I couldn’t imagine Bandy smoothing a fevered brow, clearing up vomit, making breakfast before school, washing a nappy, rubbing zinc and castor oil cream into a chapped bottom or giving up a night on the tiles to take care of the children.

  ‘And then there’s this boarding-school business.’ Rosie’s voice brought me back from my musings.

  ‘Peace’s been to boarding school, and Auntie Maggie and Uncle Bert are beginning to think that I should go too. It’s all my mother’s fault; well, her relatives anyway. I don’t think my mum cares one way or the other, to be honest. They always send their kids away to school in that family,’ she added darkly, as if they were being sent to a deep, dark dungeon to be tortured. ‘They don’t think Soho is a fit place to bring me up really. That’s what I heard Auntie Maggie tell Madame Zelda. My Great-Aunt Dodie, my mother’s aunt, talked them into it. She’s dead set on it, and now so are Auntie Maggie and Uncle Bert.’

  Actually, this wasn’t really true. I knew that Maggie and Bert were merely putting a brave face on it. They hated the plan, but they also knew that it would offer Rosie more choice in later life. ‘There’s no doubt about it,’ Maggie had said. ‘Those schools open doors that slam in your kisser if you go to an ordinary school. I mean, if she stays put, she’ll wind up running the cafe, probably, or something like it.

  ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I’m happy in my work. But if she goes away to a school, she could do anything, be anyone. She could inherit that bloody great business of theirs, or marry a diplomat even, and know what to do at them banquets they have to go to, with all them forks and knives …’

  Her voice had trailed away as her blue eyes grew moist with unshed tears. Poor Maggie didn’t want her beloved Rosie to marry some snotty diplomat and move away, but being the good woman that she was, she realized that she had to equip her little girl to make some of the difficult choices that lay in her future.

  Cassie, Rosie’s mother, was high-born by local standards, and had come from money before she’d discovered booze and hard times. So far, Rosie was the only heir to the family business and fortune. Cassie had drunk her shares, and Rosie’s Uncle Charles was what Maggie called ‘a confirmed bachelor’ and unlikely to have children. That left illegitimate Rosie the only viable heir to Loveday-Smythe Engineering. As Maggie said, she had to be equipped to deal with it and whatever came her way.

  I tried to explain her Auntie Maggie’s point of view, but I didn’t need to. Rosie understood why she had to go. Maggie and Bert had been preparing her for it for quite a while. ‘I thought, seeing as how Peace had been to one of those schools, I’d ask her for some hints on how to get on.’

  ‘Remember, though, dear,’ I pointed out, ‘it’s not the same school as you’re likely to wind up at. And Peace obviously didn’t do that well with fitting in, poor lamb, otherwise she wouldn’t have run away.’

  ‘I know. It was because she was Chinese. It made her different from the rest.’ Rosie’s voice grew small. ‘But I’ll be different, too. So I thought I’d ask, then maybe I can be ready for them.’

  There was nothing I could say. Poor Rosie knew she’d be likely to have a rough ride at school, what with her background and accent. If I told her it wasn’t so, I’d be lying. I knew as well as anybody how cruel children can be, especially to an outsider. I’d been one as a kid. Children can be natural bullies, even so-called genteel ones.

  Rosie sighed and dropped the last piece of toast on the bread plate. I buttered it, cut it in half and added it to the pile. Her mind was on more important things. ‘How about another jam tart while we wait, Auntie? They’re delicious.’

  ‘Let’s wait until Peace gets back with the milk or there’ll be nothing left for her. Anyway, you’re supposed to eat your scrambled egg before the tarts, you naughty girl. I was so busy nattering I didn’t see what you were up to.’ It was so good to have her around. She reminded me of Jenny. Not in her looks; Rosie had fair curls, peaches and cream skin like her mother’s, and her father’s merry blue eyes, with just a touch of sadness lurking in their depths. My Jenny’s hair had been straight and much darker; she’d been darker altogether, in skin tone and her hazel eyes had pretty speckles of darker brown and honey gold if you looked closely.

  My own eyes filled with tears for a moment, but I swallowed the lump in my throat at the sound of Peace’s key in the door. The girls were awkward together at first, but the ritual of tea in front of the fire helped to ease their shyness and an hour spent working together on my appearance made them fast friends.

  Rosie started it. ‘Let me see your new frock, Auntie,’ she pleaded as we finished the washing up after tea.

  ‘Oh yes, do show it to her, Aunt Liz.’ Peace’s eyes shone as she turned to Rosie. ‘She looks very nice in it, but she needs to do something with her hair and, of course, some make-up would help.’

  ‘Let’s give her a new hairdo and a face job,’ Rosie suggested, as if I wasn’t there. I noted the determined look that flashed between the girls and sighed with resignation. I was about to be turned into a guinea pig. I could feel it ‘in my water’, as Madame Zelda would have said.

  Sure enough, Peace and Rosie had me sitting in front of my dressing table with a small bowl of warm water, some setting lotion and a bag full of curlers and hair grips almost before I could agree to the plan.

  ‘She needs some curl in that hair,’ Rosie had said firmly. ‘She’s always on about my lovely curls, so it’s time she had some as well.’ She grinned at me. ‘It might stop her from ruffling mine quite so often if she’s got some of her own to play with,’ she added cheekily.

  ‘Yes, you are right. I have seen the girls at school do it,’ Peace assured me earnestly. ‘So I am pretty certain I know what to do.’

  ‘So am I,’ Rosie added. ‘I’m always doing Kathy Moon’s for her when we’re in Mademoiselle Hortense’s shows. Her hair’s almost as straight as yours,’ she informed Peace gravely, ‘only not as dark and glossy.’

  I have to say that between them they did a pretty good job. When they had finished, my fine mousy hair was softly curled around my face with pretty little kiss curls
. They’d given my hair a bit of height and volume by using large rollers on the top, which was far better than the scraped-back French pleat I normally wore to keep it out of my way.

  I didn’t own a great deal of make-up, so they had to make do with powdering my shiny nose and putting a little lipstick on my mouth. Peace stood back and looked at me critically. ‘You still look too pale,’ she told me. ‘What do you think, Rosie?’

  ‘You’re right. She is a bit pasty,’ the younger girl agreed.

  I was a little nettled. ‘Do you two mind? I’m sitting right here, you know, and I have ears and feelings just like the next person. Pasty, indeed!’

  ‘Sorry, Auntie Lizzie,’ Rosie giggled, not sounding at all sorry.

  Peace stood deep in thought for a second, then her solemn face broke into a radiant smile. ‘I have it. I saw Cynthia Mortimer-Rendalsham do it when she went out after lights out. She had a boyfriend in the town,’ Peace explained, ‘and she would creep out to meet him. She would put a little lipstick on her cheeks, to make them pinker. Just a little, then you rub it in. Like this.’

  She dabbed a blob of lipstick on each of my cheeks and then rubbed her fingertips across them gently, in a circular motion. It was very soothing and when she’d finished, I did look brighter and healthier. It was a tip I would remember, I decided, as I looked closely at the result.

  ‘Now for the posh frock,’ Rosie sang out excitedly. ‘Put on your posh frock, so that I can see it.’ She rushed to my cupboard, where she found the dress immediately. It stood out as a splash of colour in my otherwise decidedly dull wardrobe.

  ‘OK,’ I agreed, ‘but out, the pair of you. I’ll only be a minute.’ I shoved the giggling girls into the hallway.

  ‘All right, Auntie, but be careful of your hair and don’t get lipstick on your frock,’ Rosie instructed as I closed the bedroom door on her excited and smiling face.

  As instructed, I lowered the dusky pink silk gently over my new hairdo, being careful not to smudge my lips on the fabric while I was at it. Freddy and Antony had done me proud. Even I could see that I looked good in it, the first time I had tried it on. With my hair and face done, I looked even better, almost beautiful.

  The dress itself had a narrow, fitted bodice that hugged my shape as if they’d painted it on. The boned bodice emphasized my bust and narrowed my waist so that the flared skirt, with its stiff net underskirt stood out proudly. It was held up mainly by whalebone, but thin, spaghetti shoulder straps also helped. Freddy had even taken the trouble to provide me with a strapless brassière, knowing that I would never have owned such a thing. Luckily, I had a small waist and my hips were in proportion, something for which I thanked providence on a regular basis, so he didn’t need to provide a corset or roll-on as well.

  As a finishing touch, Sugar had embroidered a large spray of briar roses in a slightly darker pink across the bodice, so that the green stalks and leaves were grouped on the left-hand side of the waist and the blooms themselves were scattered up and across until they petered out on my right breast. It really was a stunning creation.

  I took a deep breath and stepped out of the bedroom to meet the critical gaze of my two young dressers.

  Rosie’s face split into a huge, delighted grin that made my heart stop for a moment. She looked so much like her father, only without the crinkly bits. Peace smiled widely too.

  ‘You look smashing, Auntie Lizzie, absolutely smashing.’ Rosie danced and clapped around me like an excited imp. ‘I’ve never seen you look so gorgeous. I love the embroidery. Did Uncle Sugar do that?’ I nodded, delighted with her uninhibited approval.

  ‘You look very lovely, Aunt Liz, very lovely,’ Peace assured me with her solemn smile. ‘But I believe you also need to buy mascara and some blue eye shadow to complete your face. That is all. The rest is very lovely.’

  I found I was looking forward to some unashamed showing off when I next went to work in Bandy’s bar. I had a beautiful dress that made me look pretty and I had no mother breathing down my neck telling me that I looked like a Jezebel in my make-up and brand new finery. Freddy, Antony, Sugar and Bandy had been so kind to provide me with my first-ever posh frock, that I didn’t even know where to begin to thank them.

  Rosie brought me back. ‘Put it away,’ she told me severely, ‘before you get it dirty.’

  13

  It was Friday, and I was due to make my grand entrance in my new dress. Rosie popped round and joined Peace in attending to my face and hair before I set off. Once I had their seal of approval I kissed them both and walked with them down the stairs. Peace had offered to see Rosie safely home as, being winter, it got dark early, and she herself was off to the Wongs’, having been invited to pay a visit for the evening.

  It hadn’t taken Mrs Wong long to issue the invitation once she realized how desperate Peace was to speak her own language and to taste some good, Chinese home cooking. She probably remembered homesickness all too well. Peace had also been looking forward to renewing her tentative friendship with Bubbles Wong, which had begun during one of her previous visits to Soho during school holidays. I was pleased to think that Peace had a friend around her own age who knew what it was like to be a Chinese girl in England.

  Having seen Peace and Rosie safely out of the alley I walked back into the building and shrugged off my coat. There was no point in ruining my entrance with my shabby, grey flannel.

  As promised, Freddy and Antony were waiting at the bar. To my surprise and embarrassment, T.C. was there too, chatting to Sugar in the corner. Bobby and Pansy Bristowe sat with Madame Zelda at a table at the back. Freddy spied me first, although I’d crept in, my nerve having suddenly abandoned me at the last moment.

  ‘There she is!’ he screeched, clapping his hands together in excitement. ‘Ducky, you look fantabulosa, just fantabulosa. I told you you’d look better for some slap and a bit of riah shushing. Didn’t I tell her, Ant, when she tried it on the other day, didn’t I say about the hair and the face?’

  ‘You did indeed, Freddy dear, you certainly did,’ Antony agreed. ‘And you were right. You do look very nice, Elizabeth, very nice indeed. That pink looks so good on you, and Sugar’s embroidery …’ Antony kissed his fingertips in appreciation. ‘I said it the first time I saw it and I’ll say it again, that man is wasted in a bar, simply wasted. He should be working for us.’

  Sugar laughed as he came up to give me the once-over. ‘Yes Antony, you’re probably right, but I know for a fact that you pay peanuts and I ain’t no monkey.’

  Sugar grew serious as he walked round me and studied the whole ensemble, then his dear face lit up with the widest of smiles and he positively twinkled at me. ‘It’s official, Lizzie, you’re a bona fide stunner – Sugar has spoken!’ He flung his arms wide in a grandiose gesture and gathered me into a bear hug that lifted me off my feet.

  ‘Watch the schmutters!’ Freddy squealed in alarm. ‘Put her down: you’ll snap the straps if you’re not careful.’

  Sugar put me down gently and flapped his hand at T.C. and the others. ‘What do you think? We thought she needed a cocktail dress for the job, what do you think?’

  ‘Very nice, very nice indeed,’ said Bobby Bristowe, gruffly.

  ‘Smashing, Lizzie dear, you look smashing,’ Pansy offered more enthusiastically. ‘Doesn’t she look smashing, Zeld?’

  Madame Zelda smiled appreciatively. ‘Yep. She does scrub up quite well, don’t she?’ she asked no one in particular.

  I glowed beneath all the unaccustomed praise, but self-consciously waited for T.C.’s verdict. He stood at some distance from me and smiled widely, his head on one side as he considered what he was seeing. ‘You look beautiful, Lizzie,’ he said finally, making my heart leap into my mouth. ‘Really beautiful.’

  The spell was broken by the arrival of Bandy, who was obviously in a filthy temper. She peered at me through a haze of Passing Cloud smoke and growled, ‘Is that the frock? It looks a bloody sight better than the togs you usually turn up in, I must
say. I told Sugar you lower the bloody tone and that we ought to do something about you. Get you to fit in more with the ambience if you’re going to be working here regularly. Glad to see that we’ve managed it.’ She turned to Freddy and Antony: ‘Another fine job, boys, you’ve surpassed yourselves.’

  Bandy took up her usual place on her stool at the corner of the bar. It was the first time in ages that she had made an appearance at work. I couldn’t believe she’d come specially to see me in my dress and I wondered why she had disentangled herself from Malcolm. It wasn’t long before we found out.

  ‘So to what do we owe the pleasure?’ Sugar asked as he handed Bandy her first gin of the evening. Bandy lit up another Passing Cloud and carefully fitted it into her long cigarette-holder before she answered.

  ‘I had a look at the books earlier, and the takings are down. Seems this place goes to the dogs without me.’ She took a deep drag on her cigarette, and followed it up with a hefty swig of gin. ‘So I thought I’d better put in appearance, encourage the customers and keep an eye on things at the same time.’ Bandy looked towards the door as Cassie, accompanied by one of her regular men friends, Neville, and also Sylvia and Toothy, piled in noisily. Sharky Finn, Sylvia’s usual escort, was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘See what that lot want, Elizabeth,’ Bandy instructed. ‘They look as if they’re off out somewhere and we want to make sure they get their full quota on board before they go. There’s little profit in allowing the customers to leave the place stone cold sober.’ I hurried to do her bidding.

  While I was away taking their orders, Bandy and Sugar began to quarrel quietly. They were still at it, hissing through gritted teeth, as I stood behind the bar to pour the drinks and put them on my tray. They were obviously so deeply involved, they simply didn’t notice me. T.C. winked and smiled at me while we both eavesdropped.