The Ladies of the House

by Molly McGrann

  When Rita married, aged seventeen, there was a stunned silence. And then, the great hypocrisy: the wings of the community drawing round her. The luck of that Rita, they said, to find a man who would have her for good. A baby would put her right now. Oh yes, a baby.

  He was a stranger, a sailor ashore who found his way inland to the chemical factory and got caught up in town life. He spent enough time in the pubs to become known to Rita’s father and brothers, and so he was brought home and presented to her late one night. Men in the kitchen, swaying on their feet, a blur of faces and mended shirts, and Rita, who had been drinking Blue Nun with her mother when they all trooped through the door; Rita in a puddle of light. The stranger, laughing, unshaven, missing his molars, was shoved forward. They met. He took her hand, pulled her to her feet. There were whistles, clapping. Her mother hissed something Rita didn’t quite catch and her father slapped her mother and told her to shut it. Rita didn’t have to look at her father to knowhow fearsome he was: his misshapen face streaked with burns, caustic splashes; eyes squeezed into slits, a cauliflower ear.

  The sailor drew her into the hall and kissed her. He threw his hand up her skirt, straight into her knickers. She rocked against him and he was solid. They went out back, past the bog, into the field where the ragwort flourished, and they did it right there with the moon hiding in the trees.

  It went on like that for a few weeks, hot and fast, and they soon announced they would marry. It was plain to see they were in love, always together except for shifts, down the pub or in bed, the sailor having his own bedsit – she had already moved in with him. Rita wanted a party, and didn’t she get drunk and kiss every man she danced with and let them stuff notes into her brassiere? She could hardly stand up at the end of the night, and neither could anyone else, either.

  In bed, her new husband wanted to show her things. ‘I’m a citizen of the world. I’m telling you this because I’m telling you what I need. You’re hot as hell. You got the right ideas.’ She’d kept herself clean, he said, putting his nose in. ‘You have a nice thing down there. That’s what I need. That’s all I need, and plenty of it.’ He kissed her everywhere – she thought she would die of pleasure. ‘You’re pretty. Whores ain’t pretty, and you ain’t really a whore, no matter what people say.’

  ‘Is that what they say?’ Rita tossed her head.

  ‘I want a wife now. You better listen to me.’

  She laughed. ‘Then tell me what it is I’m to be doing.’

  ‘That’s right. It’s my rules now,’ he said.

  She was curious about whores and asked him all about them as they rested together after. Whoring, he said, was something young girls were talked into by older men. ‘Sometimes they’re so young and thick they can’t do anything else in this world. There’s some that have had plain bad luck and you know they won’t get far. But there’s some girls that do it because they want to. They can’t think about anything else. Everything to them is sex. I met one or two of them and they were something special. That’s the kind of girl I’m always looking for.’

  ‘I’m your girl. You know I am.’

  ‘There’s some that live it.’

  ‘I live it. I been living it for years.’ Rita gazed at him, loving him, wanting him to believe her.

  But he didn’t seem to hear; he was remembering. ‘The young girls, the virgins, they cost dear at first, but there’s a lot of yelling with them. It ain’t worth it, when you think you’re hurting someone. Then there’s your two-bit whore and she’s an old girl, an old horse, knackered and done for.’

  There were the poor dark girls in foreign ports lying motionless under a white man, and the English workhorses with their barnacled calves and breasts like long-drawn udders: the scrubbers. There were the drinkers falling into a ditch, taking a man down with them, and always there was the queue of sailors and soldiers tailing back, waiting their turn. She knew it should fill her with horror, to hear him talk so. Why didn’t it fill her with horror?

  She wanted him to come to her like he was paying for it. She wanted to feel the difference – she, who had never made anyone pay to have his way with her. She asked him to wait outside the door and knock. He had to show her his money and put it on the dresser before she lay back and did what he told her.

  It seemed a good enough marriage. She didn’t think much about it at the time. She was happy, she would have said.

  The first night he didn’t come home, Rita’s thighs were aching. There was supper on the table, for she’d hurried back from old Mrs Benson’s, where she did housekeeping, to cook and change her dress. The supper sat, Rita with it, waiting for the pubs to close. Gone midnight, he was still not home, nor had he returned when the milk float rattled past. At dawn she locked the door to their bedsit. She knew – of course she knew. She took the day off sick from Mrs Benson’s and prowled Widnes, just to be sure, a house sparrow chirruping over her shoulder. Then she went home and tidied up and made his tea as usual and when he finally returned that evening, she didn’t say, ‘Where you been?’ She knew. There was a girl named Diane, a young war widow who looked as if she could do no harm but who only liked married men.

  Rita said, ‘Here you are, my love,’ and set down a plate of sausages and mash. He ate, not looking at her, pushing his plate away when he was done. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, stood up and made to leave. She couldn’t stop herself from asking, ‘Will you be back tonight?’ and heard the words break apart in her mouth. He didn’t answer, already out of the door, and then she was at the window, watching him go.

  He mostly stayed away after that. Sometimes he stopped home in the morning for a bit of breakfast before work and sometimes he was gone for days at a stretch and his shirt was a new one when he reappeared, wanting tea and comfort. Rita sat each evening and waited for him. She prepared a meal – she couldn’t eat a bite herself but studied each plateful, looking for her mistakes. Her potatoes turned to powder. Her cod smelt rank. There was fat in the gravy. He didn’t eat greens. The milk was off again. Her meat pie was underdone except where it had burned on top, and didn’t she cry over that pie while he stared at her? Wasn’t he raging hungry after a shift at the chemical plant, and didn’t he hate to see a girl cry? She had let him see her with her face unmade-up, wearing the raggedy brassiere that was most comfortable under her housecoat. She had told him everything about herself; she had talked all night sometimes, pressing him about his life: she wanted to be close to him. He didn’t want to be close. He didn’t want a housewife, a maker of gravy and meat pies, a woman who cried over the cooking. He wanted a whore.

  He was leaving anyway, going back to sea. That’s what he told her when she threw herself at his feet. Married life didn’t suit him after all. He would collect his next pay and be gone. Then he led her to bed. He rode her raw and she stuffed her fingers into her mouth to stop from crying out. After it was done, she waited for him to sleep, then Rita picked his pocket and fled into the night.

  No one was surprised to hear she had caught a ride to London. Hadn’t she been carrying on the last month of her marriage with a bus conductor? Or was it a train driver? Whoever he was, he was a man with wheels.

  That was the birds again, putting her story to the wind.

  *

  He drove a taxi. His name was Paul, although that didn’t matter for she never saw him after. A quickie in the back seat and he was off, having deposited Rita outside a guesthouse in Ladbroke Grove where he thought she might stay. He lived round the corner with his wife and children. Just round the corner, he said. It would be easy enough to get to her. She smiled and nodded. She had smiled so much; laughed and chatted, all the way from Widnes to London. That’s what a girl did when she wanted something.

  Rita stood at the door of the guesthouse and pretended to knock until he’d driven off in search of fares. Then she walked. Her fever carried her along – it was like being ill, taking the first steps in the direction of Soho. She knew what it meant. Fast girls went to Soho. Tarts. The
women running the tills of the shops where Rita stopped to ask the way turned their backs on her. Birds, all of them, bitchy old crows.

  The evening drew in and the lamps of the city were lit inside and out. London was still a shambles; there was work for a brickie, work for a sparks, but she couldn’t be a brickie or a sparks. She took a drink at a pub, stopped a few more times, celebrating the sights, spending her last pennies on Blue Nun. She saw Kensington Park and Marble Arch. She heard a man declaim from Speaker’s Corner, a burning candle in his hand. She picked up Oxford Street, marvelling at the department store windows, brilliantly dressed, advertising all sorts, then turned down Regent Street and followed its curve.

  It was late when she finally reached Soho: half wrecked or half built, buzzing with exotic life such as she had never seen; people everywhere, more people than ever at that hour, women in all kinds of get-up, rattling bunches of keys to draw attention, and the punters that surrounded them just as raucous. She found a room easily enough at the YWCA and slept on a hard camp bed in a full dormitory. The next day, on the advice of the girl who served her breakfast, she took a job doing coat check in the Colony Room. If she were willing to work at night, she would always find employment. ‘It’s the day jobs that are scarce. I’d like to be a typist,’ the girl had said.

  ‘Who wouldn’t?’ another said, zooming past with a tray of toast. ‘Not on your feet all day – that’s the life.’

  Rita dressed for the Colony Room with care, showing her long white neck and regal shoulders, her tiny waist accentuated by a full skirt under which anything might happen. She loved to watch the rich folks swinging by, dragging their furs. They whirled around the room in glamorous pairs, laughing as if they didn’t have a care in the world. She longed to be out on the dance floor. She danced a bit herself among the coats, wrapping their sleeves around her. Sometimes she slipped off to the broom cupboard with a bloke – a nice little earner. She made enough to get her own bedsit, but London was always showing her what could be hers, if she only had the money.

  ‘Let me sell cigarettes,’ Rita said to the manager.

  ‘I ain’t seen more than your legs yet,’ he replied, but even when he’d seen the whole of her, he kept her in the cloakroom – he kept her for himself.

  She worked all hours, until the place shut up for the night and everyone stumbled home with the sun in their eyes. When she’d had enough of checking coats, she moved on to one of the new Gaggia milk bars, thinking it would be a modern experience, there among the potted plants. The milk bar was full of clean-cut young men who called her ‘doll’ and told her, when they took her out for a drink, that they wanted to respect her. She laughed, excused herself to powder her nose and slipped away. There was no money in what they wanted.

  She took a job as a chambermaid in a five-star hotel. She studied the way the hotel guests slept in their beds, the contents of their bins, the state of the bathroom – she looked boldly into the toilet bowl and marvelled at what came off on the brush, what had been flushed: till receipts, a man’s wallet, a black lace brassiere with holes cut out. She sifted the dregs of their cups; she could read tea leaves and so she knew their futures, whoever they were, wherever. Nothing put her off. She slept with the hotel manager every morning on his break and he added ten hours to her time card each week.

  Then she wanted to be on the stage, so she made her way to the Windmill. She heard they were always looking for girls. ‘Proper English girls. I’m an English rose. That’s what they want. Just look at my colouring,’ said the girl at the front of the queue. ‘I’m a trained ballerina.’

  ‘I’m good on roller skates,’ another girl said.

  ‘I can do the scarf dance.’

  ‘I can pony-trot.’

  ‘I can tap-dance.’

  Rita kept quiet. She knew what she was good at, too.

  ‘What I want is a touring variety show,’ one girl said. ‘I want to see the world. They pay for your travel and board. All you got to do is stand onstage a few hours every night.’

  ‘You take your clothes off, too, you big dummy. That’s the show.’

  The girl behind nudged Rita. ‘What about you? I’m from Leicester. I came down on the bus two days ago. My mum don’t know where I am – she thinks I’m looking after my sister’s new baby. How about that for a joke?’

  When the stage door was unlocked, they all pushed in at once. They were shown where they could undress: a corridor where the buckets and brooms were kept. ‘Just down to your knickers and bra for the first pass.’ One by one the girls filed past several men, all wearing suits and sucking on cigarettes. Waiting her turn, Rita smelled the room, the choking smoke, the soured floorboards and body odour. There wasn’t a window – there wasn’t a sun in there.

  When it was her turn, she didn’t get far. ‘Come on, darling, blondes only.’ She started to dance. ‘I don’t want to see you shimmy. I want blondes. Who’s next?’ So Rita went across the road to the peepshow and was hired on the spot.

  She had to be with the boss of the Cul de Sac and then she had to be with his friends, but Rita wasn’t getting paid extra, although she suspected the boss was. When she complained, he said, ‘If you don’t like it, there’s another girl out there to take your place. Girls like you are a dime a dozen.’

  Rita shut up. She put out. She went to him when he called her name – the boss called her Margarita. In that godforsaken room, his office in the eaves, she tried to think of other things. She listened to the pigeons cooing, a big family of them perched on the window ledge. His elbow at the back of her neck. He had bad breath. His teeth were chipped like an old mug. He wheezed and heaved – he smoked cigars continuously and the hair that thickly covered him made her itch.

  A seagull screamed – so far from the Mersey. A seagull in the middle of Soho, down a greasy alley, in a cranny: a seagull. Another one, and then many, until there were hundreds of them, from the sound of it. They drew in like a storm cloud and chased off the pigeons. They covered the roof, squawking and fighting, pummelling wings; chinks of light appeared in the ceiling like stars where the tiles dislodged. More came, rubbish spilling from their beaks: the bits they picked up from the street, sandwich crusts and snips of string, butcher’s paper, newsprint, potato skins. The noise was incredible. Rita shook her head. The boss gave her a slap. He was done.

  She rolled to the floor and found her clothes and shoes. Shaking, she made her way down the narrow, turning stairs to a dressing room full of half-naked girls. She took her place before the mirrors. She blew her nose and powdered her face, fluffed her curls. She drew on eyebrows and a mouth. A bell rang. Rita walked down a corridor. She stepped inside a cupboard that had a curtain down the middle and a single chair, separated from her by some glass. Nine hours passed.

  There were certain women who frequented the peepshow, making no secret of why they were there. Some of them were butch, but others were more maternal: stocky, soft-looking women, soberly dressed. Nell was one of those mothers, well known around Soho, and once she saw Rita she carried on a crush for months, stopping by every afternoon, tapping on the glass. She always had a favourite to whom she was devoted, but she was fickle, too. Rita waited for it to pass. Nell sat with her legs open, skirt hitched above her knees. Transfixed. But Rita was no ingénue. She knew all about Nell, how she liked the young girls and hunted them down, targeting the ones she called green. She was kind to them, bought them meals if they were hungry, clothes if they needed them, and let them stay in her room above the Sugar Shop, most of them having nowhere else to sleep. It was there that she taught them to please her.

  ‘Fancy a cuppa?’

  Rita always said no. ‘I’m not that kind of girl,’ she told Nell.

  Nell laughed. ‘What kind do you mean?’

  Rita looked Nell straight in the eye. ‘Your kind.’

  ‘It’s just a cup of tea, darling. Nothing to be frightened of.’

  ‘I’m not scared of you,’ Rita had answered, but she was, a bit. She was cur
ious, too. She’d heard from other girls about long nights of petting, of pleasures exclusively female. Initiation, they called it. Some said it was pure love, what happened between women.

  As usual, Nell was waiting outside the Cul de Sac when Rita finished her shift. Rita, with the hectoring voices of seagulls still in her head, finally said yes. She only wanted someone to be nice to her. Off they went to Lyons where, despite the crowd and queues, Nell found them a booth in the Grill & Cheese. The servers knew Nell, and the cooks did, too. Tea appeared unbidden, and sandwiches and wedges of cake, cheese and biscuits, a plate of fresh fruit polished to a shine.

  ‘You’re skin and bones,’ Nell said. ‘Not an ounce of fat on you. I like a girl with something to hold onto. Most folks do.’

  ‘Even if I ate a steak every day, it wouldn’t stick to me,’ Rita said.

  ‘You weren’t so thin as this when I first saw you. You’re not taking care of yourself. What are you earning a week? Twenty pound? Twenty-five?’

  ‘I got everyone asking for me.’ If Rita didn’t eat because she wanted a new dress, it was nobody’s business but her own.

  Then they needed a drink. Nell said she had a bottle and that sounded good to Rita so they moved on to Nell’s room above the Sugar Shop, where they sat back against a pile of cushions on the bed. Rita was wary, but only just, and she was soon disarmed, for the whisky warmed her through and Nell was a laugh, even if her hands did wander. Once Nell started on stories there was no stopping her. She reminded Rita of the sailor, with her talk of whores.

  It was after midnight. They had been together for hours and finished their bottle. No, Rita said when Nell went under her skirt. Stop. Please. Rita pushed Nell away at last, a great shove that knocked the wind out of her.

  Nell got to her feet. Sturdy and strong, she stood like a man, her softness gone. ‘You think you know a thing or two, but you’re only a filly. You need me.’