by Barbara Tate
As she was in no position to do it herself, I investigated this delicate situation and found that the perforations in the top of the stove had burnt pretty red daisies all over her behind. As I reported on the condition of her nether region, I couldn’t suppress a stifled choke in my voice. Her shouts of pain mingled with tears of laughter and she rolled around yelling, ‘Oh Gawd! My poor bum!’ One hand was clutching her buttocks and the other holding her stomach, which was aching with laughter; her knickers were round her ankles and her legs were crossed because she still hadn’t used the bucket.
I applied ointment to the damage, followed by a whole boxful of sticking plasters – which came in all shapes and sizes; her bottom looked like a patchwork quilt. At last we calmed down and I made tea. Giggles broke out when Rita had to lie on her stomach to drink it, with the red and white pointillism of her backside uppermost.
All that month I continued to visit Mae whenever I could, avoiding times when I thought Tony might be there. Mae forced herself to be cheerful of course, but the thing that must have occupied her mind most of all – the fact that she was in the grip of a ponce whose capacity for violence could not be underestimated – was territory that both of us were forbidden to talk about.
I still loved Mae, of course – I still do – but I could also feel my feelings changing. To start with, she had been my only friend, my tutor, the impish, unpredictable spirit who had made me a member and co-conspirator in her riotous underworld. As time had moved on, however, the balance of things had changed. I had other friends now, for one thing. Rita was Rita and would never be Mae, but I was no longer lonely and crying out for friendship. For another thing, I realised that I was becoming maternal towards Mae. I felt sorry for her in some ways. I wanted to take care of her, and knew the limits of what I could do for her. It wasn’t that she and I were less close than before, but it was not the same kind of closeness. She knew it and so did I.
As if to mark the change in my relationships, it was Rita who invited me to her home when Christmas came round. She said she wouldn’t take no for an answer. The thought of spending Christmas on my own wasn’t particularly appealing, and I was glad to accept.
On Christmas morning, Bert, Rita’s current feef, was sent to collect me in his car. All Rita’s boyfriends were of the hearty, back-slapping variety. True to form, Bert brought both hands together in a loud clap and followed this with a booming, ‘Well, ’ow’s it going, then?’
Rita’s house was in the East End. It was Edwardian, tall, dilapidated and stacked to the roof with lodgers – all feeves – whose weekly contributions paid her expenses. What she earned on the game was really pin money.
When I arrived on this festive day, the smell of cooking was overpowering and I swam through it to join Rita in the kitchen. She was dressed in a shimmering, wine-coloured cocktail dress and an apron and was absolutely surrounded by food. In the enormous double oven was a goose, a giant turkey and a large leg of pork.
‘Well, we’re not likely to starve, at any rate, mate,’ said Bert, giving her a playful slap on the rump.
‘Do you mind?’ said Rita, straightening up and giving him a withering look. ‘We’ve got guests. Don’t be so bleeding common.’
I gave Rita her Christmas present, which was a little sexy nightie – it was my year for buying flirty nighties; I’d also bought two for Mae and one for myself. When Bert saw it, his ‘Cor!’ received another look from Rita and an enquiry as to whether he’d had too much to drink.
‘Instead of standing round acting bloody stupid,’ she said, ‘take Babs inter the other room, and introduce her to me bruvver – and give her a gin.’
Now that I was a blonde, I had decided it was high time I learned to like alcohol, to go with my new image, and so was slowly learning to enjoy gin. I took my glass happily and met the rest of the crowd. Rita’s brother was a thin, bellicose man named John, who came in tandem with an uneasy-looking wife. Then there was Rita’s little girl, sitting on the thick carpet, bewildered by the piles of new toys surrounding her. I sat down on the floor next to her and added to the bewilderment by giving her the doll I’d brought.
Everything in the room was opulent and lush, and it all looked brand new: heavy brocade curtains, silk flock wallpaper, deep velvet armchairs and a very ornate bar stocked to bursting point. John, the brother, was gazing around him as though he bitterly disapproved of every item.
‘Must have cost her a pretty penny, this little lot,’ he said to his wife. I went back to the kitchen to help Rita, who had a spare bottle of gin tucked away in there. By the time the meal was ready, both of us were slightly tipsy, dropping baked potatoes on to laps and enjoying ourselves enormously. It was a jolly, plentiful meal, and despite our inebriation, it was cooked to a turn. Although John enquired about the cost of the turkey, I noticed that he partook of it with gusto.
After dinner, Rita remembered her present for me: a silver cigarette lighter, with an intaglio of Siamese dancers. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever owned.
I stayed overnight and through Boxing Day. I was so grateful to Rita, and touched that she had included me in her family at that time of the year. It was a Christmas that stays in my memory to this day; a perfect opposite to the VE Day that had once come and gone, unremarked and uncelebrated, in my grandmother’s uncharitable home.
Twenty-One
I greeted the end of that month with mixed feelings. Working with Rita was far less nerve-racking than working with Mae. On the other hand, I’d developed a taste for the excitement, strange sights and hurly-burly with which Mae surrounded herself, and to my surprise, I really wanted to jump on the merry-go-round again and get back to Mae’s mad one-girl brothel.
In addition to my various hospital visits, we’d enjoyed a lot of late-night, bed-to-bed telephone conversations when Mae was back home convalescing. When she was finally on her feet again, we’d met in town for a meal or two and she’d even visited me in Rita’s flat, where she’d snorted in amusement at the sight of my knitting and made disparaging remarks about Rita’s working methods – which I tacitly agreed with.
Of course, Mae was raring to go, long before her month was up. She would have gone straight back to work had it not been for the other girl in her flat. When we at last started work again in the New Year, she was positively straining at the leash.
In this, she was destined for disappointment. Although the streets were full of men wistfully eyeing the means of breaking their fast, Christmas had left them without the funds to do it. Mae had reason to be impatient: her loan from Betty Kelly had not been anywhere near paid off when she had been taken ill. With the interest that had accrued in her absence, the debt was nearly back to the amount she’d first borrowed. She was also keen to replenish Tony’s coffers, because she was touched by the way he’d stuck by her through her hospitalisation and worried because he’d announced that he was ‘in debt up to the eyebrows’ because of it. I hated her gullibility – assuming that she was truly still that gullible – but there was nothing to be done. In the meantime, she fretted.
‘I know those bastards out there have got it tucked away somewhere,’ she grumbled. ‘All I need to do is squeeze it out of them somehow.’
As day followed day without a real breakthrough, her mood grew increasingly gloomy and a trifle waspish. She eventually decided that one particular day was going to be it, ‘boom or bust’!
The first hour augured more towards the latter. She changed her clothes and jewellery, hoping that something would turn out to be her Aladdin’s lamp. Nothing did, and there was no sign of any boom. By nine o’clock in the evening, she had earned only forty pounds; then Betty called and turned it into fifteen pounds.
Mae muttered something, braced herself and, tight-lipped and grim, clattered down the stairs. She came back five minutes later – on her own – and sailed past the kitchen door without a word. I waited for the hysterical outburst, but none came. Instead, she called out – quite cheerily – asking for a cup of tea.<
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I made two cups and carried them in. She was waving a Benzedrine inhaler at me, and informed me that the ‘boom or bust’ promise was still on.
‘I didn’t know you had a cold,’ I said.
A mock-puzzled look spread over her face, then, as if for the first time, she read out the print on the tube, ‘ “Breathe easier!” or “Take the lot to make a lot,” I say.’ She shrugged. ‘Well, Nell says it’ll do the trick,’ she said. ‘She says this is what drummers take when they want to play their drums really fast.’
‘You don’t take it; you sniff it,’ I said. ‘And surely not the whole lot.’
Mae wrinkled her nose speculatively for a while, before saying, ‘Time’s getting on and I need fast results.’
I asked her if she needed water to take it with, but she ignored me. She placed the tube on the floor and brought her heel down hard on it. There was a tightly wound, pungent stick of wadding amongst the broken pieces. She pulled this apart and, bit by bit, dropped the whole lot into her tea. I watched, appalled, as she stirred it into a thick, brownish porridge, exuding a strong scent of lavender, which gradually filled the room.
‘Ugh!’ she said. ‘It doesn’t look very nice, does it?’
I wasn’t very optimistic about it. I watched, fascinated, as she lifted the cup to her mouth and, holding her nose with her other hand, drained the nasty concoction to its bitter dregs.
‘Oh Gawd !’ she gasped. ‘Get me some water, quick – it’s bloody horrible!’
She gulped the water down, lit a cigarette and lay back on the bed, saying, ‘I might as well take it easy for a few minutes, while I’ve got the chance; if this works like that girl says, you won’t see me for dust.’
It hit her ten minutes later, halfway through her next cigarette. Her eyes became brilliant and enormous and she suddenly leaned up on one elbow and turned them on me at full beam. Her voice was breathy and long-distance.
‘Babs, it’s wonderful! I feel like I’m queen of everything. I’m ready to take on every man in London.’
She rose slowly and voluptuously, quivering all over. She was like a powerful machine that had just been switched on and was throbbing with suppressed energy. Suddenly something threw the ‘start’ lever, and she became frenetically animated and could not stop talking. She chattered her way down the stairs, her voice dipping out and then in again as she chattered her way back up, hustling clients before her. The only respite I was to get from this incessant prattling was during the brief intervals when she was down in the street. I thought she might give it a rest while she was in the bedroom, but she didn’t. One after the other, dazed men found themselves in her room without quite knowing how they had agreed to it.
She was ruthless and she was rapid. Man after man was chewed up and spat into the street without stopping. She was seized by a drug-induced recklessness, grabbing anyone and everyone – among them a protesting, venerable old gentleman, who quavered, ‘You’ve gone to all this trouble, my dear, but I don’t know if it will be any good.’ It seemed like only seconds later that his faltering step had regained its spring and his face had somehow achieved a delicious grin.
She made a bomb all right – and more, because she couldn’t stop working when midnight came. In fact, she kept on throughout the night. At some godforsaken hour of the morning I did manage to squeeze in a few words to ask what time she was going home, and was told she would be staying at the flat until she’d restored the family fortunes.
The West End of London settles down to sleep with one eye open for opportunity, but even so, there comes a time when men are too drunk, too tired and too few to be divested of their hard-earned cash. Mae’s need to talk supplanted her need to work. Long before dawn broke, my bed seemed like a lost paradise to which I would never return. I felt my eyes burning, my mouth turn into a desert and my body tremble with sleep deprivation. During the ever-longer intervals between men, Mae talked and talked and talked. She even carried on lengthy monologues concerning things she knew nothing about, including a long treatise on the cracks in the wall.
The stupendous, crackling energy that raced around inside her carried on through the morning to midday, then through the afternoon to the evening, by which time I was almost asleep on my feet. I was hot and feverish, but Mae was still bouncing around like a spring lamb. When we were nearing the second midnight, I put my foot down.
‘Mae, I have got to get some sleep and you must go home too. Perhaps, if you lie down quietly, you’ll just drop off.’
Privately, I didn’t hold out much hope of her ever sleeping again. Seen through my bloodshot eyes, she still had the appearance of a pre-race Grand National favourite. Nevertheless, I prevailed on her to go home by giving her the happy idea of how pleased and surprised Tony would be when he saw how much money she had. She was all a-quiver at the prospect.
‘Yes! I’ll cook him a marvellous meal and I’ll have a lovely bath.’ With some relish creeping into her voice, she added, ‘And I rather fancy him tonight, too.’
I passed a clammy hand over my fevered brow and gasped. She’d had about a hundred and fifty different men in the past thirty-six hours and she still wanted him! Her poor feet!
Twenty-Two
Eventually I managed to get home. I collapsed on to my bed without undressing and fell asleep immediately. It seemed only moments had passed when I was woken by a banging on my door. I staggered over and groped around, feeling for the handle, opening the door with my eyes still tightly shut. I was jolted into sudden wakefulness by that eternal and chirpy voice:
‘Oh, look, Tony love: she’s still asleep!’
Mae was so full of beans I wanted to scream. By her side was ‘Tony love’, looking like the vanquished foe of a mighty army.
‘S’eight o’clock, love. I thought we’d make an early start. A nice cup of coffee and you’ll be as right as rain.’
Tony was eyeing me anxiously. ‘Do you mind?’ he whispered. For once we were allies.
I paused for a little while. Tired as I was, I wanted to make the most of the sight of Tony in defeat. Recognising the inevitable, I turned and picked up my coat and handbag from where I had dropped them and staggered after the dancing figure of Mae into the waiting car. Tony followed behind us to make sure I didn’t make a run for it and leave him alone with her. By the time the car was moving fast enough to prevent my jumping out, he was his old arrogant self again.
We arrived at the flat by the usual devious means of Tony dropping us near enough to get a taxi. Mae’s eyes, in the stark morning light, were still bright and enormous but her face appeared to have had more of her voice than it could take. As soon as we arrived, I had a wash and made coffee, while Mae kept on saying, ‘Gawd, don’t I look ’orrible!’ as she made running repairs to her face with high-density make-up.
Over my second cup, I began to perk up a bit and, in spite of myself, was able to join in with Mae’s boisterous frivolity. Though the blood was still pumping exuberantly around her veins and her toes tingled with a desire for action, she was becoming ill from fatigue. She was sick several times, and by the afternoon, she was bent over the sink, retching.
The drugs had given her a thirst but taken away her appetite, so she was running on innumerable cups of tea. Her talking had, at last, begun to dwindle. For one thing, her brain was running out of subject matter to talk about, but it was also becoming painful for her to speak. Despite this, she still wanted to talk and constantly leant against the door jamb of the kitchen saying, ‘Bu . . . u . . . u . . . t . . .’ This gave her time to grope around in her tired mind for something to say.
She still managed to race up and down the stairs at top speed; she still raked in the money at breakneck pace, but as the afternoon wore on, the staccato tapping of her heels on the staircase and the sight of her hand poking round the bedroom door with the cash took on a nightmarish quality. I had a welcome hunch that we were almost at a full stop.
It came the very next time she leaned against the door jamb and
opened her mouth to say something. Instead, she doubled up, retching and heaving in paroxysms – painful even to watch. She straightened up at last, with black mascaraed tears streaming down her face, and I took the bull by the horns.
‘Right,’ I said sternly. ‘I’m taking you to hospital. I can’t stand any more of this, even if you can.’
To my surprise, she grinned weakly and said, ‘All right, love – just to please you.’
Ten minutes later, we were sitting side by side in the casualty department of St Thomas’s. It was just forty-eight hours since she’d drunk that awful cup of tea, but it seemed like weeks ago to me. There were several rows of chairs in which people were dotted about; I gently pushed Mae into one in the front row, instructing her to stay there while I went and spoke to the nurse in charge.
‘All right, Mum!’
She grinned at me. Her new soubriquet for me might have been meant as a joke, but it seemed accurate all the same. The dark hollows of her eyes showed clearly now through the make-up, but she still tapped out a rhythm on the floor with her heels and drummed her fingers on the vacant chair next to her.
I gave a few slightly vague particulars to the nurse, who nodded, looked over my shoulder towards Mae and wrote some notes on a card. She told me to sit down; she’d get someone to see us, so I returned to Mae and collapsed into the chair beside her, relieved that she had stayed put.
The tapping and drumming continued, broken by the occasional ‘Bu . . . u . . . t . . .’ Suddenly she leaned forward, craning her neck to look past me. Then she gave one of her deep, infectious chuckles and clutched my arm.
‘Just look who’s coming,’ she gurgled.