by Barbara Tate
From the girls’ point of view, the drawback of getting nicked was not the stigma of the public seeing how they earned a living, nor was it having to fork out for a fine or even the taxi fare to the police station: it was having to get up early to appear at the magistrates’ court. It must be said that even in this, the Law might have been thought reasonable, but ten o’clock – the usual appointed time – was the middle of the night to these women, and lack of sleep would seriously affect their work. A man is not likely to choose a prostitute who propositions him with a yawn.
At court, notwithstanding the unsociable hour, the girls chatted away together cosily while they waited for their names to be called. Their real names, bellowed from the mouth of a burly sergeant-usher, were distinctly less colourful than their professional ones. This was, essentially, their ‘backstage’, and they didn’t bother to wear make-up or to pout prettily at a magistrate who had seen it all before so many times. (In fact, very few prostitutes ever bothered to wear make-up outside of business hours.) Appearing after the drunks, they would exchange news and catch up with each other’s gossip before enduring the ten seconds or so it took to put their crimes to them and decide on suitable punishment (usually a two-pound fine with the alternative of a week in jail if they preferred ). Exactly what public good it all did is hard to say, but it seemed to keep everyone happy.
First offenders could be a bit of nuisance, for in deference to the older, more experienced members of the sisterhood, the Law found it necessary to point out their status. As an apprentice, the fine was reduced to ten shillings, after which it became one pound, only reaching the full two pounds at the third ‘offence’. Very occasionally, the conga-like procession was disrupted by a girl being pedantic enough to plead not guilty. This foolishness, of course, led to the need for evidence and cross-examination. True, as there were never any independent witnesses – especially a curious absence of the men who were supposed to have been annoyed – it was likely that the accused would be vindicated. However, the arresting officer was robbed of the notch on his truncheon, the court’s coffers were denied their two pounds and the magistrate was annoyed at the waste of the court’s time. Again, repeated arrests over the next few weeks generally persuaded the miscreant that pleading guilty from time to time was the right and proper thing to do.
After court, everyone had time to kill; it was not worth going back home and it was too early to start work. Mae would usually arrange for me to meet her at the hairdresser’s – Gaby’s in Shaftesbury Avenue. It was where all the girls went; in fact, I never saw anyone ‘straight’ there: just girls and their maids. As it was in a basement, passers-by probably didn’t even know it was there.
Gaby’s had none of the glamour one associates with beauty parlours. It was strictly a ‘three-sink, two-dryer’ sort of place. No two towels were alike; the two laconic women who made up the staff wore different overalls and wouldn’t so much as knock the ash from their fags for you – but they were friendly enough. A newcomer might have supposed that no staff were in attendance at all and a roster system had propelled these two into their role for the day. It wasn’t unusual to find one of them with her own hair in curlers. Perhaps because of this, the place had a cosy, kitchen feel about it, especially as there were always cups of tea on the go, made on the spot by anyone who felt like bothering. The girls sometimes sent their maids to get sandwiches from a little café nearby. Two or three hours spent in Gaby’s was a happy time – a sort of return to the cradle. Tired after rising before midday, we would drowse in the steamy warmth, sprawling amongst the clutter of damp towels, basins, bowls and kicked-off shoes.
The lazy, random conversations that took place in Gaby’s never aimed beyond the mundane but occasionally rose above it. One day, a girl who was in the tedious process of having her hair ‘pinned up’ and was making a half-hearted onslaught on her fingernails addressed the room in general:
‘I had some geezer the other day who brought his wife up with him – only wanted her to watch him perform with me! I told him, “I should bloody cocoa!” Some people just haven’t got any morals.’
All the girls fully agreed with her sentiments and most brought forward other examples of this type of debauchery. They fell to musing on what made couples want to do such a disgusting thing. One girl said that a pair came to her once who were an engaged couple. The man wanted to show his allegedly virginal fiancée what would be involved once they were married. All the girls were terribly shocked at this story; they tut-tutted and gasped their disapproval.
From that, the conversation veered to men who brought their womenfolk to Soho – usually at weekends – just to point out the girls to them. On Sundays, the streets had apparently become so cluttered with these nuisances that the working girls preferred to stay inside and rely on clients calling.
‘Like we was on show at Madame Tussaud’s!’ one girl said.
It would be easy to see these protestations as comic, but in truth the girls had their own dignity and knew when it was being insulted. I never heard any of them tell rude jokes. Perhaps, I thought at the time, it’s because their whole life is really like one big rude joke and telling one would be rather like talking shop – or perhaps the jokes were too close to the truth to seem funny.
It was at Gaby’s that I had my first hairdo, facial and professional manicure, and later, during a mad moment, it was there that Mae persuaded me to go blonde.
‘Go on – it’ll give you confidence,’ she said.
My not replying was taken as assent, and in a flash, my head was smothered with what seemed to be runny plaster of Paris that was left on for about an hour, making ominous crackling and popping noises in my hair. When it was washed off, I arose like Venus from the foam, a dazzling platinum blonde. I could hardly believe my eyes.
The other girls admired the results enthusiastically, and Mae was so pleased with the change it made to my whole appearance that, later, she put me in one of her strapless, long-skirted dresses and made me pose for a photograph. She was, of course, quite right: it did give me more confidence. Unfortunately, it also meant that as well as wearing an apron at work, I now had to wear a headscarf as well to make sure no punters confused me with Mae.
I have been blonde ever since, and often think it appropriate how Mae should have made her mark on me physically, the way she had already done emotionally. I was a new woman now, in more ways than one.
Twenty
For all Mae’s careful instructions to her clients with regard to the Christmas presents she wanted, she wasn’t around to see if any of them bore fruit, because when Christmas came, she was in hospital.
For a while she had complained of sharp pains in her stomach. Then, quite suddenly one night, she had woken in agony and been rushed into Casualty. It was found that she had an ectopic pregnancy that had ruptured.
The phone woke me at six that morning with an agitated Tony at the other end to give me the news. I had no doubt he was responsible for her condition. I felt furious at him, and resented the whining way in which he implored me to go and visit her to ‘help keep her spirits up’. But of course, I took the necessary particulars of where she was and the visiting times.
I went to see her that same evening and was shocked by her waxy face and listlessness. She had tubes running into her from all directions, and was evidently extremely ill. But Tony’s greatest worry was that the flat would be eating rent without producing anything in return. I was not surprised, therefore – though still appalled – when he telephoned me to say he’d found another girl and maid who would be glad to take it over for the month Mae was going to be away. As an afterthought he added, ‘But what about you? Do you want I should find a girl without a maid?’
He sounded so anxious that I shouldn’t upset his speedy arrangements that I toyed with the idea of breaking his heart by saying yes. On second thoughts, I contemplated time off and getting back to my painting: this was my chance. As our replacements were to move in that same afternoon, I raced o
ver to put all Mae’s personal things into the waiting room and lock it. After that, I stayed on in town to get myself a canvas and a few bits of art material. It felt strange to be buying these things from my old life and old ambitions. The empty canvas felt both extraordinarily inviting – a New World of its own, an undiscovered territory waiting for me to map it – and also alien. What had it, after all, to do with the life I led now?
When I got home, I was deciding whether I should try my hand at a naked captive with blue feet or a bowl of grapes when the phone rang. I lifted the receiver to my ear and hurriedly moved it six inches away as Rita’s brazen voice shattered the space between us. After I’d told her how Mae was, she proposed an idea that had obviously been thought out prior to her ringing.
‘My maid keeps on about having time off for Christmas and says she hasn’t had a holiday in years. What d’you say I give her a month off, and you come to me till Mae’s back?’
Thoughts of the exciting Blue Extremities and the relaxing Nature Morte Avec une Grappe de Raisin tugged at me for a moment but weren’t strong enough to resist Rita’s call to arms. I looked hopelessly at the unmarked canvas, which stared back at me unblinkingly, and weakly submitted without a fight.
‘Right,’ she shouted. ‘I’ll tell Toots the good news and I’ll expect you here tomorrow about four.’
I turned the canvas to the wall, so at least I didn’t have to endure its unspoken reproach. The other materials I placed in the drawer where the slice of toasted cheese had once held lonely court. A maid I was, and a maid it seemed I would remain.
Rita’s flat was in Berwick Street – at least the approach to it was. Playing safe with the law, the astute landlord had effectively made two separate premises from the one. An inside passage led through a shop building to a back door and a cobbled yard. At the far side of this was a lean-to shed that accommodated Rita’s kitchen and the entrance hall. At the back of the entrance hall was the bedroom, housed inside the back of another building. A stone staircase rose out of this room, blocked off at the top by a brick wall. The occasional sound of feminine footsteps pattering above the ceiling betrayed the fact that there was another girl operating there.
Rita’s decorating tastes were stark and colourful, as personified by the linoleum – hard, cold and bright. Her room was enormous: about four times the size of Mae’s, and as hygienic as an operating theatre. The only furnishings were a single divan, a side table – on which was a lamp and a box of Durex – a rubbish bin and a cane-bottomed chair. There were no windows, therefore no curtains, and the only luxurious touch of softness was a satin bedspread on the divan with a pillow covered to match. On the foot of the bed was the usual folded travelling rug to prevent the bedspread getting ragged and dirty – the baggy trousers of those days could be jettisoned without removing shoes.
The kitchen, where I was to spend my time, was small, but not as small as Mae’s. There was no running water in the flat – you had to get that from a standpipe in the yard – and so no toilet, apart from a bucket in the kitchen that was emptied down a manhole in the yard. The bedroom was heated by an electric fire; the kitchen had an oil stove: the cylindrical sort that throws pretty patterns of light on to the ceiling but would eventually blacken it with smoke.
Like the flat, Rita’s attitude to her work was purely functional. She supplied the barest minimum and not a tittle more. She gave no endearments, no kind words, not even a smile. There was not a single cane, rope or even a dirty photo in the place.
‘Oh, I can’t be bothered with all that messing about,’ she said.
On the cobblestones just outside the lean-to was the only light between there and the dimly lit Berwick Street: a hurricane lamp. I watched Rita take this to find her way through the long passageway; she left it just behind the door to the main street, ready for lighting her way when she returned with a client. Once outside, she went to her particular spot and stood gazing into space with those hard, short-sighted eyes. When, eventually, a man came past, she asked him if he wanted a nice time in exactly the same tone that a bus conductress would have said, ‘Tickets, please.’
Surprisingly, although it took as much as quarter of an hour, Rita did manage to hook clients. To her advantage, she had striking good looks, enhanced by a pronounced bosom that she displayed to full advantage. She wore jerseys with stripes that undulated like tracks on the big dipper and, weather permitting, a plunging neckline that revealed the Grand Canyon.
She rushed her catch back without a word. As soon as the door was shut, she asked briskly for his money. She shoved this through the bedroom door to me and there was complete silence for about five minutes; then the door opened again and the client, having had his ‘nice time’, silently departed. On the occasions that a client required longer than five minutes, I heard the clonk of her high heels against the floor as she sprang from the bed.
‘Do you think I’ve nothing better to do than hang around waiting for you? Shove off!’
There was a murmur of protest from the man, who presumably did think she had nothing better to do. Protesting was not going to work.
‘I can’t stand here talking to you all night! Sod off!’
Most clients saw reason and slunk off, but some had the temerity to demand their money back; a few went berserk, but this was as fruitful as arguing with an iceberg. True, there were a very few – those who threatened violence – who would get their money back, thrown at them along with a stream of invective. Rita had very few regulars.
Rita’s approach exemplified the term ‘hustling’. She jockeyed the men into the flat through sheer force of will while they were still trying to make up their mind. This, of course, could account for their tardiness once inside, although Rita never did anything to foster an amorous mood. She had never quite got over the days when she worked in taxis; to her, a flat was just a big cab with facilities for making tea.
She arrived every day immaculately turned out, spotlessly clean and brightly burnished, and that was how she still was at the end of the day: not a hair out of place. This meant I had no constant sorting of her clothes, and as she didn’t want snacks and cups of tea every five minutes, life with her was like a rest cure in comparison with Mae’s ménage. I was even able to do a bit of reading, though when Rita saw this, she became most concerned about my wasting my time when I could be knitting something. It transpired she was a fanatical knitter herself.
‘I’d do a lot more too,’ she said peevishly, ‘if it wasn’t for having to keep coming here to kow-tow to sex maniacs.’
When she learnt I couldn’t knit, she insisted on teaching me. I was glad enough of a change to help fill the long hours and it appealed to my creative instinct. She was fabulous and fast. She confided that she had learnt at reform school and practised in prison, where, unlike the other inmates, she had actually taken to it wholeheartedly. She could also make beautiful silk lampshades and she cooked like a dream. She informed me, almost reverently, that if she’d never gone inside, she’d have missed half the pleasures of life.
Rita was known by all to be tactless and outspoken. A very difficult girl to know, to like or to get close to, she made enemies everywhere. I had grown much bolder, and after one clash early on – when I’d told her that she could save her nasty ways for her clients – we began to enjoy one another’s company and have quite a good time together. We took to meeting at about four o’clock in the afternoon and having a meal, over which we would sit and chat for about an hour. That was when we indulged ourselves in a little hilarity and exchanged confidences. It was then that she revealed her understanding of the ponce racket and why she would have no truck with them.
‘I can’t stand their greasy, lying mugs. They’re bone idle too! And if they ever went to school at all, they certainly never learnt nothing. I’ll stick to my feeves. A feef ’s got to use his loaf and know what’s what. They’re clean, upstanding men.’
I’d also hear about the progress of her latest romance. They never lasted long. Rit
a was a lone wolf and her own mistress. She was living comfortably in her own house in London, and if a boyfriend wanted to risk living in it with her, then that was up to him. Men couldn’t pick her; she picked them.
Generally she disliked men and wasn’t thrilled at having the unwanted attentions of amorous clients round her. She confessed to me one day that the only way in which she could get any sexual pleasure at all was if a man ‘went down’ on her. At one time this would have shocked me, but now I took it in my stride. I realised that the only regulars she had were men who liked oral sex and were good at it. These men always stayed a lot longer than five minutes. Their arrival was marked by laughing and talking all the way to the bedroom – though she never forgot to take their money. When they left, she was positively cordial with her farewells.
After these sessions, she pranced into the kitchen saying, ‘Put the kettle on, mate,’ and plonked herself down to wait for a celebratory cup of tea, chattering very animatedly all the while. As I began to recognise these clients and to understand the signs, I put the kettle on unbidden so that it was boiling by the time she emerged. Seeing it ready, she giggled, blushed and called me ‘cheeky sod’. She took to pre-empting me, ‘Put the kettle on’ ringing out through the yard as soon as she arrived with a client who was going to do things her way.
The toilet bucket was next to the oil stove, so that our exposed flesh wouldn’t get too chilled. One day, coming out from the bedroom, voluble after one of these nice regulars, Rita pulled her knickers down in something of a hurry to plonk herself on the bucket. Partly because her mind was elsewhere and partly because of her short-sightedness, she sat on the oil stove instead, then immediately shot up into the air like a rocket, shrieking, ‘Oh, me bum! Oh my Gawd !’