by Anne Bennett
On Coronation Day, she looked angelic. She was five and a half and Arthur had bought her a dress based on one of those worn by Shirley Temple. It was of white satin, trimmed in blue, reminiscent of a sailor suit. Stiff petticoats pushed the skirt of the dress out and she wore white sandals and socks, but because of the temperature of the day, Arthur had bought a pure white cardigan in fluffy angora to wear over the dress.
She accepted the acclamations of delight as if it was her right and stood docilely enough for Pauline to brush her hair. It had been in rags all night and framed her face and bobbed on her shoulders in perfect auburn ringlets.
She stood out amongst all the other children, however well-dressed they were, and Hannah would have felt proud of her if she’d had any hand in the child’s upbringing at all, but she was Angela’s mother in name only.
However, she refused to be downhearted and settled down to enjoy the coronation and she watched the Queen arrive at Westminster in a golden coach through flower-decked streets. The announcer described the diadem of precious stones upon her head and the robe of crimson velvet, trimmed with ermine and bordered with golden lace around her shoulders, the train carried by six maids of honour adorned in white and gold.
Everyone could hear the music resounding and the Queen’s scholars of Westminster singing ‘Vivat Regina Elizabeth, Vivat, Vivat, Vivat’. The pomp and ceremony of it rendered everyone, even Angela, speechless as Elizabeth began the slow walk up the aisle to the Chair of Estate.
After the blessing and anointing, Elizabeth was dressed in ceremonial robes. She held out her slim wrists for the armillas to be fastened around them, bracelets of sincerity and wisdom. And then the heavy crown was taken from the altar and placed on her head.
Philip, resplendent in his Navy uniform of blue and gold, knelt before his wife and now his Queen and promised allegiance to her. He rose and touched her crown and kissed her left cheek and all the women in the room sighed and dabbed at their eyes as the cries of ‘Long Live the Queen!’ resounded in the Abbey.
The street party for the children had to reconvene to the church hall from the road, due to the drizzling cold rain, but the children didn’t mind and tucked into the food with gusto. Then each child under fifteen got a coronation mug and a golden coach to remind them of the occasion and after the children’s activities were over, there was a coronation dance.
The place was familiar enough to Josie and Mary Byrne for they’d been going to the youth club there since they’d been fourteen. Cynthia had laughed when Josie had described it to her one day while opening the post. ‘Let’s get this right,’ she said. ‘You stand one side of the room and boys stand the other and you never meet?’
‘Sometimes we do, but not often,’ Josie said. ‘There’s a table tennis table and snooker down one side, you see, and the boys play there. The girls go the other side near the music and dance together around their handbags. Some of the boys pluck up courage to come over now and again. Mary, my friend, has been asked up to dance, but not me. She’s pretty, see.’
Cynthia looked Josie up and down and said, ‘So could you be if you set your mind to it.’
‘Oh get off, Cynthia,’ Josie said. ‘I know what I am. Don’t be codding me.’
‘I’m not,’ Cynthia said. ‘Your hair is fabulous, a lovely colour and so shiny and thick with those natural waves and curls. Don’t you know people spend a fortune having a Marcel permanent wave put in their hair? My mom has her hair shampooed and set each week and it never looks like yours. No, Josie, all you need is a good cut.’
‘A cut?’ Josie cried. She’d done nothing to her hair but brush it since she was a child and she started work with it just tied back as she’d worn it at school. ‘I don’t know whether I want it cut.’
‘’Course you do. Be adventurous,’ Cynthia encouraged. ‘I have mine chopped off. It will always grow back if you don’t like it.’
Cynthia had had her hair cut into a pageboy like many girls, but she knew that style wouldn’t suit everyone and certainly not Josie. ‘Look, Josie, let’s just go and find out,’ she said. ‘Will Hannah go mad with you if you have your hair cut or what?’
Josie thought about that. ‘No,’ she said at last, ‘I don’t think so. Hannah never seems to get mad.’
‘So what d’you think she’d say if you had your hair cut short?’
‘I really don’t know,’ Josie said. ‘But at the end of the day, it is my hair.’
Hannah did have a shock, though, seeing a shorn Josie, and yet when she was used to it, she had to agree it suited her. So did Pauline and Gloria when she popped in on a visit and so Josie didn’t care that Arthur said she looked a sight or that Angela, taking the lead from her father, said it looked horrible.
‘You should use a bit of make-up too,’ Cynthia suggested when Josie had got over the shock of her hair. ‘It would highlight your good points.’
‘What good points?’ Josie asked sarcastically.
‘For God’s sake,’ Cynthia exploded. ‘To hear you talk, Josie, anyone would think you looked like one of those gargoyle things outside some old churches.’
Josie grinned at her friend. ‘Okay. So, say I don’t frighten the children to death and send old ladies running for the smelling salts, I still say, what good points?’
‘God, you’re aggravating!’ Cynthia cried. ‘Your eyes for one thing.’
‘They’re too big.’
‘Eyes can’t be too big. You just need to emphasise them. They’re so dark and people would die for lashes like yours.’
‘I bet. How do you know all this?’
‘It’s all in the Woman magazine my mom gets. She keeps all the recipes and I cut out the beauty tips and fashion, of course. After all,’ she went on with a toss of her light brown hair, ‘a girl has to have all the help she can get.’
Josie burst out laughing for Cynthia was a very pretty girl. ‘And that’s not all,’ Cynthia went on with a grin. ‘There are your cheekbones.’
‘What about them?’
‘They’re lovely but would be better with a bit of rouge rubbed into them.’
Josie had never heard anyone talk about nice cheekbones before. ‘Are you having me on?’
‘No, I’m not!’ Cynthia said firmly. ‘If you did define your cheekbones a bit, it would draw attention from your mouth which is, I’ll admit, a bit on the big side.’
‘Mine will be nothing to the size of yours if you don’t stop this nonsense,’ Josie cried, her voice high with indignation.
‘Girls! Girls! Stop this chattering!’ came the supervisor’s sharp words. The girls bent industriously over the envelopes, but when the supervisor’s attention had drifted from them, Cynthia whispered, ‘Come over to our house and I’ll show you. Come to tea. Our Mom won’t mind and after we’ll try all my make-up. If you don’t like it, you can wash it all off and I’ll not say another word about it.’
But when Josie looked in the mirror in Cynthia’s bedroom that evening, she barely recognised herself. She’d become used to her hair, but now long, black, curled eyelashes framed large eyes dusted with brown powder and underlined in black, while a delicate peach-pink colour was brushed over her high cheekbones. ‘No bright colours of lipstick,’ Cynthia said authoritatively, applying a pale brownish red colour to her lips. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Don’t you look a treat?’
Josie could only stare at her reflection as if she couldn’t believe it. ‘Now for the clothes,’ Cynthia said, rummaging about in the wardrobe. ‘Get your frock and cardigan off.’
‘What?’
‘You heard,’ Cynthia said, taking a dress in different shades of pastel blue from the wardrobe. ‘This is the new look this year,’ Cynthia said, holding it out. ‘It has a dropped waist and a full skirt. Come on, slip it over your head and then get those thick stockings off and put these nylons on, but carefully, because I’ve only got the one pair, and then slip your feet into my high heels.’
What a transformation!
She rememb
ered that Hannah had suggested that she take the money she had saved for her over the years and get herself a couple of rigouts for work and things to wear in the evenings, especially as clothes rationing was over, but she had pooh-poohed the idea. Now she saw how silly she’d been and she looked disparagingly at her discarded clothes.
‘Clothes maketh the man,’ Cynthia said, catching her look. ‘Women, too, if you ask me. You want to get yourself down the Bull Ring. If you know where to go you can pick up bargains there for next to nothing.’
‘I wouldn’t know what to buy, or where to start.’
Cynthia thought she probably didn’t. She’d have to take her in hand. ‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘I’ll go with you. We’ll go Saturday. By the time I’m finished with you, my girl, the boys will be lining up to dance with you and your friend will be green with envy.’
Josie had been to the Bull Ring before of course, but she found going with Cynthia an illuminating business.
As the two girls pushed their way through the seething mass of people thronging the cobbled streets of the Bull Ring, Josie remembered how frightened she’d been on her first visit when she’d been in Birmingham just a few short weeks. Now she loved the place as most Brummies did.
There was a special buzz, an excitement in the air made up of many things. There was a clamorous noise from people talking, shouting, arguing, laughing, the costers yelling out their wares and prices, entertaining the shoppers with their patter, and above it all, a blind old lady, who’d been at the Bull Ring as long as Josie could remember, who called out constantly, ‘Andy Carriers, Andy Carriers.’
The barrows stretched from Bell Street, past Wool-worth’s, downhill as far as Edgbaston Street. Fruit and vegetable stalls mixed with those selling meat and fish and other stalls with rolls of curtain material or bedding, or baskets of cheap crockery and kitchen utensils. The different smells of the goods rose in the air, sweetened by the different scents from the flower sellers who ringed Nelson’s Column and the front of the church, St Martin-in-the-Field, which towered over everything.
There was always so much to see. Woolworth’s, where nothing cost more than sixpence, Peacocks, which sold an array of things and where the toy department had been a particular favourite of Josie’s when she was younger. Then there were the hobbies shop, the Army and Navy Stores and the Market Hall, roofless since 1940, courtesy of the Luftwaffe, but where bargains could still be had.
But Cynthia would not allow Josie to dawdle around other shops or stand and daydream, for Cynthia was a serious shopper and on a mission to dress Josie in more suitable clothes than those she had. She led the way to the Rag Market. It still held a slight reek of fish, for it was only on a Saturday that it was used as a general market, the other days it sold fish, but it was, Cynthia declared, the best place for bargains.
And there were bargains and Josie nearly died of embarrassment when even those prices Cynthia refused to pay and she bartered as Josie squirmed with discomfort, her face flushed. ‘They expect it,’ Cynthia said, and true enough no one seemed to resent Cynthia for pressing for a lower price and the banter between them, Josie saw, had entertained many of the other shoppers.
And so for far less money than she’d anticipated, Josie acquired some fashionable, but serviceable work clothes and a few classier things for evening wear, including stiletto-heeled shoes and a fashionable blue coat.
Mary had been unaware of Josie’s total transformation, though she seemed to disapprove of the new hairdo. But that night, when Josie called for her to go to the coronation dance, Mary was astounded when she opened the door.
Josie had always been the plain and dowdy one. In fact, that had been one of the main reasons Mary had gone around with her, for her plainness emphasised her own prettiness. This Josie with new clothes and the carefully made-up face seemed like a different being. ‘What you all dolled up for?’ she asked cattily. ‘We’re only going to the flipping youth club.’
Had Cynthia not warned Josie about Mary’s possible reaction, for she could guess the type of girl she was both from what Josie said and what she didn’t say, then Josie’s fragile confidence would have crumbled at that moment. Instead, remembering Cynthia’s words, she said, ‘Well, I got some new things, have to wear them sometime. Anyway, it isn’t a normal youth club night tonight.’
And of course it wasn’t. A proper bar was set up in the corner. ‘No home-made cakes and orange juice here tonight,’ one of the girls remarked in the hall before they went in.
‘Maybe they’ll pass on the cakes all right,’ another retorted. ‘But I’d like to bet you’ll get nothing stronger than orange juice from those behind the bar.’
Josie didn’t care about that. She just cared about the band and hoped they weren’t a fuddy-duddy lot that played the old-fashioned stuff alone. ‘Haven’t they done it up nicely?’ she said to Mary, for it was unrecognisable as the youth club.
For a start, there was no sign of a snooker table, or table tennis equipment. Instead, there were tables arranged around the whole room covered with tablecloths of red, white or blue, leaving a largish dance floor in the middle. The lighting was dimmed and the room festooned with banners of red, white and blue, while a large flag hung above the stage, where the band sat.
Mary hadn’t answered, for she was watching as Josie took off her coat to reveal a dress of shimmering red satin, that rustled and swirled as she moved, and nylon stockings with black patent stiletto-heeled shoes. Mary was consumed by envy and she’d never have imagined in a million years being envious of Josie.
For Josie the evening was a wonderful success. The band alternated between the Big Band sound, the music of Duke Ellington and Tommy Dorsey that the young liked to jive to, and the music of Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Doris Day for the older people.
The highlight of the night came early on for Josie. A boy Mary had fancied for ages came across to the girls as they danced in a circle around their handbags. Mary smiled as he approached, certain he was going to ask her to dance. Josie thought so too; such an occurrence had never happened to her. She’d been as surprised as Mary when she realised the boy was talking to her.
And he wasn’t the only one. She jived with the best of them and learnt the rudiments of the quickstep, the foxtrot and the waltz and won a spot prize of a coronation box of chocolates.
Each time she returned to the table, Mary had a face on her that would sour cream, until in the end, after Josie won the spot prize, she couldn’t be found at all and was discovered in the ladies’, having a major sulk.
Josie danced on air all the way home for she’d seldom had such attention, but Mary was cool and distant.
‘You can’t do anything about that,’ Cynthia told Josie the next day. ‘The green-eyed monster has got hold of your friend.’
‘Jealous of me?’ Josie echoed, for never in her life had she thought anyone would be jealous of her. But she remembered Mary’s behaviour at the dance and realised Cynthia could be right. It was a shame, she thought, especially as she and Mary had been friends for years. But Josie, having tasted popularity and the attention of boys for the first time, had no intention of reverting to the drab she had been to please anyone. She was enjoying life far too much.
Josie enjoyed herself still further when Bill Haley and the Comets released ‘Rock Around the Clock’ the following year. It was the theme music to a film called The Blackboard Jungle that was for adults only. Josie and Cynthia were tempted to find a way into a cinema until they heard of the teenagers rioting in places, ripping up seats and generally trashing the place.
‘I don’t think it’s ordinary teenagers,’ Hannah said to Gloria. ‘I think it’s these teddy boy types.’ She, like many more, had been alarmed when gangs of them appeared in the streets with their heavily Brylcreemed, slicked-back hair with sideburns, wearing long Edwardian frock coats, drainpipe trousers and thick suede shoes.
Josie, at first, had thought the teddy boys fine and the clothes just a bit of fun, but she
soon changed her mind. They were so objectionable and menacing to members of the public and committed such heinous deeds that teddy boys became synonymous with troublemakers. Hannah went up to see Gloria and their conversation came around to the teddy boys’ latest atrocities that had been reported in the Evening Mail.
‘This is all the fault of that damned war,’ Gloria said. ‘Lack of control, see. Mothers in munitions or God knows what till all hours, fathers away and kids running wild in the street. Then for many, of course, fathers didn’t come back. Children need fathers for discipline.’
‘Ah Gloria, will you listen to yourself,’ Hannah burst out. ‘Christ, you know there’s a child not a million miles from here that I think would have a chance of growing up to be a decent human being if she hadn’t a father.’
‘He’s no father,’ Gloria said dismissively. ‘Not a proper father. He dresses her up like some doll, buys her everything she wants, treats her like a princess and resents anyone else she shows a spark of affection for. The man’s not normal.’
‘I know that all right,’ Hannah said with feeling, ‘and it isn’t just the way he is with Angela I’m talking about.’
‘I know, I know,’ Gloria said. ‘But his time will come. As you sow, so shall you reap. He’s bringing up a wilful child there who expects her own way in everything.’
‘Well, I hope this teddy boy thing is over by then,’ Hannah said. ‘For I hear there are girls caught up in it now. Teddy girls! I ask you? Mind you, if I was Mary’s mother, I’d be worried. I’ve seen the girl myself hanging around the coffee bar in the High Street where the teddy boys hang out.’
‘Why doesn’t her mother stop her?’
‘I don’t think she knows,’ Hannah said. ‘I would say something, but we’ve never really hit it off and she might think I’m just out to make mischief. I’ve an idea Mary tells her mother she’s coming to our house, but her and Josie don’t get on that well now, not since Josie met that girl Cynthia at work and she started taking an interest in her appearance.’