by Rosie Thomas
‘Give a party for Jessie? Of course we must do it. Listen, we’ll make it just like the old evenings that Jessie talks about. Squeeze everyone in, make sure everyone has a good time …’ Mattie snatched a piece of paper and a pencil, and began making a list. ‘Friends of ours, not too many, but enough. Felix will have to help us to round up Jessie’s friends. As many as we can. We’ll have singing, and vodka martinis …’
Mattie had been taken out once or twice by a dubious club owner, and he had introduced her to vodka martinis. Under the influence of three or four of them Mattie had had more trouble than usual in fending him off, and she had only managed the last time by jumping out of his Ford Zephyr and running away. The girls thought that the cocktails were the height of sophistication.
Plans for the party took off with surprising speed. Slightly to their surprise, even Felix plunged into them. ‘We’ll have to have it at home,’ he agreed. ‘Jessie won’t go out anywhere else. Leave it to me to invite the people she would like to see.’
They kept it a secret from her as long as they could, but they were too excited and the girls wanted to share the pleasure of anticipation with her.
‘Don’t be so silly,’ she snapped. ‘I’m past the age for all that nonsense.’ But they knew from the way that her eyes brightened that she was delighted.
Felix said that he would provide the food. Julia and Mattie, without thinking much about it, had imagined sandwiches.
‘Meat paste sandwiches, I suppose?’ Felix scoffed.
They realised that all the vodka martinis they could afford wouldn’t go far either.
‘Tell everyone to bring a bottle,’ Felix advised.
‘And what about the music?’ Felix’s record player was unreliable, and there was no piano in the flat so there was no point in Mattie and Julia dreaming of the kind of pianist who thumped out the old songs in Jessie’s stories.
‘Don’t worry,’ Felix answered. ‘Bish is coming.’
Jessie had told them all about that. Freddie Bishop played the mouth-organ to compete with a twenty-piece dance band.
On the day of the party, Felix went out very early, to Soho. He came back with two bulging shopping baskets and shut himself in the kitchen. Mattie and Julia contented themselves with pushing back the furniture in Jessie’s room, the only decently sized space in the flat. Then they turned their attention to Jessie herself. They rummaged mercilessly in her wardrobe, exclaiming and pulling out dresses and holding them up against her.
‘You’re wasting everyone’s time,’ Jessie said. ‘None of those things will go anywhere near me now.’
‘This red skirt will, look, it’s loose.’
‘And this coat with the sequins. You’ll look like Ella Fitzgerald. When did you wear all these wonderful things?’
‘In my heyday, dear, in my heyday.’
Mattie wound Jessie’s hair up on to rollers, and they practised painting her face with their Outdoor Girl cosmetics. By early evening she was giggling with them, as over-excited as a schoolgirl. Felix emerged from the kitchen with a blast of spicy cooking smells, and helped them to lay out the glasses and plates borrowed from a restaurant, one of Jessie’s old haunts. The proprietor and his wife had promised to come to the party after closing time. Then, when everything else was ready, Julia and Mattie retired to prepare themselves.
Mattie had made herself a dress, from a bolt of greeny-black shot taffeta with a bad flaw in it, picked up for a few shillings from one of the stalls at the top end of Berwick Street market. The bodice was strapless, and she had sewn it tight to show more of her cleavage. The skirt was full, puffed out with layers of net petticoats. Using her staff discount, she had bought herself a pair of wicked black stiletto-heeled shoes. They were so high that they made her almost as tall as Julia. Mattie brushed her hair out into a froth of curls, and then spun round, admiring herself, until her skirts whirled up to show her black stocking tops.
‘I just hope the top stays up,’ she murmured, hitching at it so that the creamy skin with its faint powdering of freckles bulged even more precariously over the taffeta.
Julia hated sewing. She had planned to make do with one of her own or Mattie’s dancing outfits, but in Jessie’s wardrobe she had discovered a red embroidered silk kimono. She wound it round herself, tighter and tighter, until it was a twisted column of scarlet splashed with fronds of abstract colour. She found a black silk shawl and tied it around her waist, letting the fringed ends trail down at the back. And, with a touch of last minute inspiration, she fasted her hair up on the top of her head, and stuck the poppies from an old hat into a comb at the back.
When they emerged, Jessie was sitting in her chair, dressed up, ready to hold court. Felix had been sitting beside her, filling her glass. He looked at Mattie and Julia, his eyes travelling critically up and down, while they held their breath.
And then he smiled.
‘At last,’ he pronounced. ‘You’re getting the idea.’ Mattie was like Turkish Delight, he thought. Scented and powdery and overpowering. Julia was a tall, white-skinned geisha, as clean and sappy as a peeled willow wand. His eyes slid back to her.
There was a moment’s silence and then, from far down at the bottom of the house beyond the empty offices, they heard the bell ringing.
‘People!’ Mattie yelled, and ran to the door.
By some miracle, the party, so casually and sketchily planned, was a roaring success from the very beginning.
The people flowed in and filled Jessie’s room, and overflowed into Felix’s bedroom and the kitchen and even the bathroom. Freddie Bishop perched on Mattie’s bed and played the mouth-organ, someone else had brought a guitar and a banjoist arrived after the pubs closed, and the guests danced and swayed and spilled down the stairs past the deserted offices. Most of them were Jessie’s old friends from her club days. There were men who brought their own whisky bottle and held firmly on to it, women who laughed a lot and shook their lacquered heads, singers and barmen and waiters and painters, and even one or two policemen. They mixed with big black men in trilby hats and coloured shirts, regulars from the Rocket, Felix’s student friends, and Johnny Flowers and his coterie who devoted themselves to pursuing Mattie and Julia, all together in a big, hot, happily drunken mêlée.
That first party became the prototype, in their memories, for all the others that followed it through the short Soho years.
There was never enough food. That night Felix had made chilli, in a huge saucepan, with red kidney beans and chopped steak, hot chorizo sausage and chillies, and it vanished in an instant, with a great vat of rice. But there was always drink, from the bottles brought in instead of invitation cards, and noisy music, familiar faces and beguiling new ones to focus on.
Jessie sat in state in her chair, presiding like a queen over the stream of people who came to greet her. Felix had done a wonderful job in searching them all out. Mattie and Julia danced, talked and laughed, and drank whatever was put into their hands. Even Felix, for once, was more of a participant than an observer.
Johnny Flowers was drunk, but Julia thought she must be drunker. Everything seemed wonderfully funny and her legs kept twisting around themselves inside the tight kimono.
‘I saw you first,’ Johnny complained, as he tried to extricate her from the arms of one of his friends. ‘And you still owe me a pound.’
‘You said we were quits. Dance with Mattie.’
‘Everyone else in the room is falling over Mattie.’
It was true. Mattie was in the middle of a tight circle. Her face was flushed, but she was in perfect control. She was very good at keeping the onslaught at arm’s length.
‘Sit down here with me, then.’
Julia and Johnny slid down to the floor together. They sat with their backs propped against the wall, their knees drawn up to keep there feet from being trampled on. Felix saw them, but he didn’t let his attention wander from his conversation with a friend of Mr Mogridge’s.
‘You two,’ Johnny said adm
iringly. ‘Have you always been friends?’
‘Mattie and me? Yes, for ever. Since I was eleven and she was twelve. Do you know where I first saw her?’
Johnny let his head fall on to her shoulder. ‘Mmm? Tell me.’
‘Blick Road Girls’ Grammar School. My first day. I can see her now.’ At the other end of a long corridor, Mattie had turned a corner, with the sun behind her. It shone through her hair, turning it into a pale and glamorous halo. But as she came closer, Julia saw that the halo had come to rest on the wrong head. Julia’s own uniform was pin-new, correct and proud in every fold and button. Mattie’s gym-slip was short and cinched in at the waist with a wide elastic belt. She had real breasts. There was no sign of the hideous bottle-green and chrome-yellow striped tie that they were all supposed to wear. Mattie’s grubby shirt was open at the neck, showing a deep V of milky skin powdered with freckles. Her white socks were as dirty as her shirt, and longer than the regulation ankle-length, emphasising the swell of her calves. Her shoes were the triumph. They were bright red, with pert little heels. ‘I thought she was wonderful. I wanted to be her. But I just said, “Excuse me, I’m lost.” Mattie looked me up and down, very very slowly, and then she put her head on one side and smiled at me. She said, “You don’t look lost. In fact you look as if you were manufactured here. Made in Blick Road.” I wanted to rip off my tie, and stuff it in my stupid shiny satchel, and throw the whole lot into the canal.’
‘But I did show you the way.’
They looked up and saw Mattie leaning over them. Her breasts swelled inside the black taffeta and Johnny Flowers groaned. He reached up to cup one of them, but Mattie slapped his hand down.
‘Hands off the goods,’ she grinned.
‘And after that there was the Christmas Party,’ Julia reminded her. ‘Then I knew we had to be friends.’ They laughed delightedly at the memory of it. Fifty little girls in organdie dresses and white socks. And Mattie, with her hair up in a French pleat, done up in a bright blue shiny low-cut dress of her mother’s, with wedge-heeled peep-toe shoes, and real nylons. Most of the little girls giggled at her. It didn’t occur to them that Mattie might not have a party dress of her own to wear.
There was a talent contest. Most of the contributions were piano duets, or recitations. And then, at the end, Mattie had jumped up on the stage to sing a song.
The song was ‘Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me’.
Mattie’s singing voice was unremarkable, but the enthusiasm of her delivery made up for that. She went through the volume range from whisper to shout, with a supporting repertoire of winks and smiles. The performance was absurd, but her confidence and a hint of real talent carried it off for her.
The last line of the song, delivered at full-throated roar, was ‘Mama, he’s kissing me!’ In the crescendo of chords that followed as her pianist tried for her share of the limelight, Mattie pursed her red lips and blew a lingering kiss at the girls and teachers.
There was a terrible silence.
‘It was Julia,’ Mattie remembered, ‘who jumped on to her chair and clapped her hands until they nearly fell off. It was after that that we made friends.’
‘And slid down together all the way to here.’
They looked so young, and fresh, and pleased with their loucheness, even to Johnny who was hardly any older, that he laughed and draped his arms around their necks and kissed them.
‘C’mon, you two. I can’t handle you both. Let’s have another drink. By the way, who won the talent contest?’
They stared at him, and then dissolved into giggles. ‘A girl with pigtails and glasses. Who recited Walter de la Mare.’
Later, they weren’t sure how much later, they saw Jessie being helped to her feet, supported by two waiters from there favourite Italian restaurant. Julia was ready to run forward to help her, thinking that she must be overcome by heat or vodka, and then she saw that Jessie was beaming with pride. She held up her hand.
‘Albert’s asked me to sing. I couldn’t say no, could I?’
There was an instant storm of cheers. Freddie Bishop wriggled forward and cupped his hands to his mouth yet again.
Jessie sang.
She loved all the old songs, of course, ‘We’ll Meet Again’, and ‘Tipperary’, and ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’. Everyone, all the people crowded in the smoky rooms, sang with her. Felix saw the rekindled light in her face, and he knew that in her heart she was back in her club bar, with the curtains tightly drawn, and her friends and customers around the piano. He looked across the room, and his eyes met Julia’s.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered to her through the singing, and she dipped her dark head at him.
Jessie held up her huge, pale arms. ‘I’ve got two new friends,’ she called out, ‘who made this party for me, with my Felix. Come over here, both of you, and sing with me.’ She beckoned to Julia and Mattie. When they reached her Julia whispered, ‘I can’t sing. Mattie’ll do my bit for me. Jessie, do you know “Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me?” ’
‘Of course I know it,’ Jessie roared.
They sang it together, the two of them, as if they had been rehearsing it for years. Julia saw that Mattie had grown into the ripeness that she had caricatured at Blick Road. The eyes of every man in the room were fixed on her. Of everyone except Felix, because Felix was looking at Julia. Julia didn’t feel even a tremor of jealousy. She closed her eyes, and let the ridiculous song bridge the years back to Blick Road school. She loved Mattie. This was her family now, she thought, prophetically. Mattie, and Jessie, and Felix.
‘Mama, he’s kissing me!’
There was no terrible silence this time. There were whistles and shouts and applause. Near Felix a small, thin man with a little thin moustache was clapping too.
‘That girl packs quite a punch,’ he murmured, to no one in particular. ‘She can’t sing, but she must have plenty of other talents. What can I find for her to do?’
Two important things happened that evening, although at the time they seemed hardly more important than the other snatches of talk, promises and pleas and evasions, that rose with the plumes of cigarette smoke.
Mr Mogridge’s friend eased Felix into a corner. He had looked carefully around the flat, and now he said, ‘Did this place up yourself, didn’t you? Tommy Bull told me. Made quite a nice job of it, I must say. Listen, I’ve got a proposition. I’ve got some flats, I want ’em done up and furnished for letting. Quality letting, mind. Tasteful, but nothing too fancy. Like this place. Do you want to take the job on for me? I pay well.’
Felix studied the man. He didn’t like him any better than he liked Mr Mogridge or Mr Bull, and when the man said quality letting he knew that he meant No Blacks or Irish, like the signs in the landladies’ windows. Then he thought about the life studio, and the art school exercises languishing in his portfolio.
‘All right,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll take the job on for you.’
The man with the thin moustache went over to Mattie when the storm following her song had died down. He took a card out of his wallet and handed it to her. Mattie read the name, Francis Willoughby, and the title, Manager, Headline Repertory Companies.
‘I’ve got three companies on the road at the moment,’ he said grandly. ‘I need a girl Friday to help me out in our London offices. All aspects of theatre work, on the administration side. You interested?’
‘Yes,’ Mattie whispered. She reached out for the card as if it was the Holy Grail.
‘Give me a tinkle, then.’ The man peeled his lips back in a smile.
Jessie fell into her sudden sleep not long after that, and the crowds began to trickle away.
Julia stood with Johnny’s arms around her. She wasn’t sure that she could hold herself up without his support. His mouth felt very hot on her neck, and he was excited. She could feel him pushing against her. Over his shoulder, she saw Felix. He bent down to pick up an empty glass, and then he walked away.
This wasn’t what she had planned for tonight, J
ulia realised. It shouldn’t be like this. But she was too tired now, and too drunk, to change anything.
‘Come on, darling,’ Johnny begged her.
‘No. I can’t. Tomorrow.’
‘Okay.’ He sighed. ‘Not tonight. But tomorrow, or sooner. You can’t keep me gasping for you like this, baby. Look. It’s bad for me.’
Julia shut her eyes.
Johnny picked her up and carried her to her bed. He laid her down and pulled the covers over her, kimono and all, and left her there.
Julia opened her eyes once more and saw that she was safe, although Felix wasn’t there. The room was spinning around her but she shut her eyes again anyway, and plunged down into the revolving tunnel of sleep.
Four
It was the party that made Julia feel, now I do belong here. It was gratifying to have been part of a success that was still talked about in the Rocket and Blue Heaven. Out of a new, buoyant sense of security she wrote to Betty and Vernon.
The letter said no more than I’m here, with Mattie, and I’m all right. Betty would be worried, and even in the confusion of her feelings about her mother Julia didn’t want her to be anxious for no reason. She put the address of the flat at the top of the letter because it sounded so fixed, a long way from Fairmile Road.
Betty saw the envelope at once, lying on the rug behind the front door with a church newsletter and a bill addressed to Vernon. Her hands were shaking as she picked it up. She held on to it, crumpling it a little, while she fetched her glasses and the Brighton souvenir letter opener.
Betty read Julia’s brief message, and re-read it, and then sat down abruptly on the upright chair beside the telephone.
She remembered that she had done exactly the same thing when she had read the first note, the few words that Julia had scribbled before she disappeared. It had made no sense then, and she had turned the envelope over in her fingers. The gum on the flap was still damp and she saw her daughter licking it to seal in her goodbye, with her dark hair loose about her face.
‘No,’ Betty had said aloud into the quiet of the house. ‘Oh, no. Julia, where are you?’ The words echoed back at her. Betty had dropped the note and run up the stairs. In Julia’s pretty, schoolgirl bedroom the drawers and cupboards were half empty. The neat cardigans and pinafore dresses that Betty had bought for her were still there, and the strange, defiant clothes that they had quarrelled about were all gone.