by Maggie Ford
Cissy gazed from one to the other, tears in her eyes, wondering how this argument had transferred from Bobby to herself. Bewilderment made her tone harsher perhaps than it should have been.
‘Can’t you both understand? I want some life before I settle down. I want to see things, meet people, nice people. No one seems to want to understand. I don’t want to be like you, Mum – nothing more than a housewife, a family of kids around my feet. I want to see a bit of life first.’
‘Then yer’d best leave and find yer bit of life!’ her father burst out, rising out of his chair, his hands on the table supporting his weight. ‘Obviously yer can’t find it ’ere. And if yer can’t find it ’ere, yer’d better go elsewhere to find it.’
Cissy too had sprung up. ‘All right – I will!’
‘Cissy, Dad!’ Her mother had her hands out, appealing to the pair. ‘Don’t be silly the both of you. Sit down and finish eating.’
‘I don’t want to eat!’ Cissy shouted. ‘If he wants me to leave, then I shall leave.’
With that she pushed past May to get out, almost knocking her onto the floor. In the passage, her heart beating sickeningly, she grabbed her hat, coat and an umbrella, swept up her handbag from the front room sofa where she had left it on coming in, and, ignoring Mum’s worried calls, ran out into the rain shutting the street door behind her with a colossal crash.
She hadn’t meant it to happen like this. Having taken herself off she had no idea where she might go on a wet Tuesday night. But there could be no question of going back indoors to make herself look a fool. The only solution that came to mind was to see Daisy and unload herself onto her, hoping she might be a sympathetic listener.
‘I’ve had the most terrible row at home,’ she said as Daisy took her into the front room by permission of her parents who usually kept this best room for guests and Sunday afternoons.
Daisy’s house just the other side of Barking Road was a different shape to her own with a large kitchen where the family could live as well as eat, the front room used only for high days and holidays, and it had three bedrooms, the third box-like where her brother slept.
The rain and Cissy’s frame of mind had made the walk seem longer than it was, threading her way through the dark deserted streets on a Tuesday night when sane folk found it better to stay indoors, but now she was glad she had come, Daisy was all sympathy as she’d hoped.
‘Dad’s thrown me out,’ Cissy continued as they sat down together on the sofa. Daisy stared at her in horror.
‘Thrown you out? Why? What have you done?’
‘Nothing actually. Well, not actually thrown me out. I walked out, I suppose. It was a row with Dad. He told me to go if I wasn’t satisfied with the life I had. Can you imagine, satisfied with that? So I just walked out.’
‘What are you going to do?’
For a moment, Cissy gave herself up to silent debate. Just what did she think she was going to do? Her shoulders sagged in defeat. ‘Go home again, I suppose.’
‘Well, that’s a relief.’
‘Not just yet, though. Is it all right if I stay for an hour or two, then go home? Everything might have calmed down by then.’
Daisy was all for that. Soon they were wrapped up talking about dresses, latest fashions, make-up, thumbing through Daisy’s mass of magazines and squeaking longingly over clothes they would like to be seen in but couldn’t afford, planning where they’d go next Saturday.
‘I’ve bought some absolutely divine fringe,’ Daisy told her, already aping West End idiom. ‘I’m putting it on that yellow dress. You know, the one I bought down Petticoat Lane a few weeks ago. It’s gold, the fringe. Matches the yellow a treat. I’m going to put three rows round the bottom, and if there’s enough I shall put a piece across the bust. You just watch it shake about when I’m doing the shimmy. What do you plan to wear? Hope we get lots of partners on Saturday.’
Heads together, short hairstyles identical, Daisy’s dark, Cissy’s fair, Daisy brown-eyed, Cissy’s blue-grey, they studied the garment, visualising how it would look. Around eight-thirty, feeling a lot better, Cissy made her way homeward, letting herself in. She had her own key, not waiting for her twenty-first; trusted by Mum if not Dad, Mum’s quiet will dominating his as it did in most things.
‘Should have her own,’ she said firmly. ‘She always comes ’ome at reasonable times and I don’t want to keep getting up out of me chair to let ’er in.’ Meaning that he, working hard all day for his family, wasn’t expected to get up out of his to answer a knock at the door.
Dad wasn’t speaking to Cissy. Neither was Bobby, and the atmosphere was tense throughout the rest of the week. She was glad for Saturday and her brief escape to the environment she was sure was made for her.
No one could feel more a part of it than she did, surrounded by the glitter and the glamour. She and Daisy would perch on spindly-legged, gilt-painted wicker chairs near to the huge shiny grand piano where they might be more easily seen, the slim, flashing fingers of the pianist tinkled out dance music, backed by a trumpet and saxophone, while the drummer beat a rhythm to set the feet tapping, the heart racing.
Lips bright red, cigarettes fitted into slim bone holders – Dad ought to know – allowing the smoke to wreathe elegantly. Both of them pretty, vivacious, putting on the accent, exhilarated by their once a week jaunt where others more used to West End life looked perhaps a fraction bored with it all, she and Daisy never lacked for partners.
‘What a devastatingly lively gel you are.’ This from a long streak of Knightsbridge elegance who pronounced ‘gel’ quite differently to the way her father did with him leaving the ‘l’ out altogether.
Cissy allowed her eyelids to flutter as she wallowed in her current partner’s attention.
‘I’m never anything else.’
‘How smashing. I say, do you think we can…’
The remainder of his question was interrupted by a firm tap on his shoulder. Startled, he looked round at the culprit, a little affronted.
‘I say, old man…’
‘This is an excuse-me, isn’t it, old chap?’
The voice was light but commanding, and faintly derisive.
‘Er…I suppose it is. Oh, blast!’
Thanked, he walked stiffly away, leaving Cissy to be passed on as slavishly as the slave bangle on her upper arm signified. But she went willingly, this new partner far more acceptable than the one wandering off already looking for someone else to excuse.
‘May I ask your name?’ The bluntness of it took her breath away.
‘Cissy Farmer.’
It sounded smart on her lips, stylish, and she was gratified to have her partner confirm that point with a small appreciative nod.
‘Delighted to know you, Miss Farmer. Langley Makepeace.’
‘How do you do?’ she said, hoping she didn’t sound too formal for the situation.
Madam Noreah had taught her introductions. And she practised it to the full on the social world into which she occasionally stole, but never with so handsome a man as this. Dancing close to him, she noted he had grey eyes, unusual with such dark well-groomed hair, shiny with expensive brilliantine, but it was his smooth, regular features, certainly making him out to be younger than his mature demeanour and full voice would have him seem, that made her ecstatic young heart do a little flip. Surely not much older than she, but so very certain of himself that she wondered if he might not be of some titled family.
He was a lovely dancer too. Her heart flipped again, and she dared to hope, as he guided her expertly through the fast foxtrot without her faltering once, that he might ask her for another dance. Maybe even to have her as his partner the whole evening. If he did, she could ask him more about himself.
The foxtrot coming to an end with a crash of cymbals, he escorted her back to her seat, her arm on his. He would ask for the next dance, surely. But it wasn’t to be.
With a polite bow, a small appreciative smile and a deep-voiced thank you, he moved away.
Not a word about the next dance or any other.
‘Who’s he?’ Daisy was all goggle-eyed as she joined her.
‘He excused me.’
‘He didn’t! My God, he looks like he owns Buckingham Palace.’
Cissy shrugged. If he owned half that, to have been excused by him was marvellous in itself. Her hopes grew greedy, but while others came to invite her to dance, Langley Makepeace was seen only from afar, partnering with girls whose shingles and curls were expensively styled, whose dresses came from Chanel not Commercial Road, whose shoes hailed from Paris rather than Frieda’s Footwear, Whitechapel.
Suddenly it was not fun any more, dancing with this one and that. Perched on the grand piano with Daisy nursing an abused foot, their previous seats taken by others, their light weight going unchallenged by the pianist who had music on his mind, Cissy cast a glance at the large gilt clock above the entrance door. Ten past ten.
At twenty-five past they would have to leave this glittering place and make their way back home by tube to the dingy districts of Canning Town and Plaistow.
Daisy was still nursing her foot, the short skirt of her dress with its new addition of gold fringe almost up around her hips, her face, with its diamanté circlet gracing her forehead, pouting as she bent over to ease off the shoe. She didn’t see the handsome young man approach them as the musicians struck up a ragtime with renewed gusto. But Cissy did.
Her heart gave a leap of dismay. For most of those here, the night was still young. But for her, there were only fifteen minutes left – like Cinderella she must leave the ball, only Cinderella would have had another hour and a half to go before she cast her glass slipper on the marble steps of the prince’s palace. This particular prince coming ever nearer was doomed to even earlier disappointment.
Cissy forced herself to brighten and smiled. Langley Makepeace bowed.
‘Shall we?’
Despite her own aching feet, Cissy slipped easily and lightly off the piano, her lithe slimness apparent beneath the pale blue georgette dress with its diamanté dress-clips and the swinging row of artificial pearls. Her dangling pearl earrings joggled brightly and she prayed he wouldn’t notice the fake from the real thing.
‘I’d love to,’ she gushed, to be whisked away in his arms.
Would she hear midnight strike? Would she run from those strong arms into the night, her splendid dress replaced by rags? Would she see the golden coach shrink to a mousetrap, one glass slipper left on the marble steps of this palace to be picked up by this prince to go searching through the poor districts of London for the one whom the slipper would fit, to be whisked off to rule beside him as his bride?
But all that happened, as the minute hand of the gilt clock moved on towards the fateful ten-thirty above the crowded dance floor full of noisy young things jerkily gyrating to ragtime, was that as the band ceased its crazy staccato rag, she thanked Langley Makepeace with what little breath she had, and went and grabbed Daisy. The two of them ran to the tiny cloakroom for their hats and coats, changing into their street shoes in a flurry of haste, thrusting their dance shoes into cotton drawstring shoebags and hurrying off into the damp November night to the tube station, coats clutched around them with one hand, fishing in their handbags for the ticket money with the other.
No prince. Cissy’s shoes were firmly on her feet. Already he would have forgotten her. But oh, what a wonderful prince he had been. She would dream of him in her sleep tonight. They’d be lovely, romantic dreams, she knew.
Bobby too had lovely, romantic dreams that night. But his were based on reality.
For quite a while now, he and Ethel had been growing fonder, their kisses becoming more ardent, but hitherto she had always backed away should his embrace become too urgent.
Then this evening he had taken her to a party. One of his mates, Frank Bottomly, previously an apprentice like himself, had received his Freeman’s papers, necessitating a family celebration. Frank had invited him, along with his girl.
With plenty of drink flowing, Ethel, whose family had nothing like enough cash to spend on wines and spirits, did a grand job on every glass she was offered, to the extent that later she didn’t care what Bobby asked of her. Besides that, she was in love with him, as he was with her.
At the start it had only been a bit of breast-fondling, pausing near the quiet recreation ground on their way back to her home. But as he began to get up steam, so did she. Before they realised it, caution had been thrown to the wind.
Hidden from the street lamp by the shadow of a privet hedge and with no one around, he pressed her hard against the recreation ground railings and they came together awkwardly, Ethel sighing, he puffing, the pair of them fit for nothing afterwards but to walk home slowly, saying little, each wrapped in their own private thoughts.
He did love her and wanted so much to marry her, but he couldn’t yet afford to, not on an apprentice’s pay. Not even on a three-yearman’s pay. Not for another two years at least. He’d told her this, and she had understood; was willing to wait. After Christmas, perhaps, if he went careful with his money, he’d buy her a ring. But first he must convince Dad that nothing was going to tear him and Ethel apart. They were made for each other.
None of this worried him. For love conquered all, and they would emerge victorious. And so Bobby’s dreams were sweet and romantic.
Chapter Five
‘Do you know what I’d really like to do?’ Daisy asked, after going on about how sick and tired she was of running up seams for Cohens Garments, day in, day out. ‘I’d like to go on the stage, that’s what I’d like. I’ve got a good enough voice.’
‘I know that,’ answered Cissy, as they stood in the short queue for clocking on, but Daisy was already chattering on.
‘It’s such a waste, all that hard-earned money going on lessons – nothing being done about it. I want to sing properly.’
The clocking-on machine pinged the time against Cissy’s card. She paused to stare at Daisy.
‘Opera, you mean?’ She put her card back in its slot. ‘That will take you years yet.’
‘Not opera. I mean proper singing. You remember that singer at the pictures last week? If I could be like her.’
Cissy remembered. Between parts one and two of the main film, the projectionist had got the reel upside down, tried to correct it amid cat calls and whistles and had mixed up the reels. It had taken some several minutes to sort it out, peanuts and orange peel being tossed around as a diversion. The singer booked for the interval had gone on to keep the audience quiet and she soon had everyone singing along with her, the film forgotten until it came on again.
‘I’d love to be able to do that,’ Daisy went on. ‘I really could, you know. I wouldn’t feel a bit nervous, because I know I could do it. That’s what I’d really like to do.’
There was no chance to say more. Eight o’clock and time to start, the two of them parted company, each going to sit at her respective machine. All conversation ceased as the power wound up. The burr and buzz of fifteen sewing machines on piecework would drown all but the loudest shriek anyway. Such a cry came around eleven o’clock, bringing Miss Jakes, their beak-nosed forelady, hurrying over with an irritable and imperious frown to see what the matter was.
Rosy Goodman’s thumbnail had caught under the power-driven needle and automatically stopped her machine, which of course held up production and Miss Jakes wasn’t at all pleased by that.
With Rosy yelling and sobbing, the whole floor came to gaze in horror at the slow dark blood oozing all over one of Cohens pale garments – pale as the victim’s face – while Miss Jakes lifted the foot with unusual gentleness to ease the needle up.
Sometimes the needle would break, leaving part still in the nail. Then it was a job for pincers and the sal volatile. Fortunately for Rosy, it came out smoothly, leaving the pierced and aching nail to be bound up with a bandage from the grubby first-aid box and Rosy to be comforted in the tiny closet they called the rest room.
; It was said in the trade that you weren’t a machinist until you’d had your nail under the foot. It had happened once to Daisy, but not yet to Cissy and she lived in terror of her finger being caught, even though she was one of the fastest workers there. Her eyes would ache at the end of the day from training them on each short or long burst of that sharp, furiously piercing machine needle.
‘You’re not the only one wishing you could get out of this trade,’ she said to Daisy, taking up their earlier conversation at lunch time. ‘Just think, never having to come back here. At least you could make a living on the stage. What could I do just learning to speak nicely? I should have taken Madam Noreah’s advice to take up singing as well.’
She toyed miserably with her cheese and pickle sandwich.
‘It’s all a waste of time. I can’t keep it up here. The women all think I’m stuck up whenever I try. Eddie goes self-conscious on me, trying to improve the way he speaks and making a mess of it. Then I get embarrassed for him. And Mum and Dad never stop telling me that I’m wasting good money.’
Daisy nodded understandingly, her family too queried the money she spent on singing lessons. As for wanting to put her talent to use, when she’d mentioned her wish to go into the theatre, they’d been horrified. Only loose women went on the stage.
‘You’d think I was telling them I wanted to be a street walker,’ she said, glumly stirring her tea. ‘It would serve all of them right if we left home to seek our own fortunes.’
She stopped stirring to look up, eyes shining. ‘We could, you know. I’ll be twenty-one after Christmas. I could do what I like then.’ But Cissy wasn’t so happy.
‘I’m not twenty-one until March. I can do nothing until then.’
Daisy frowned. ‘Why not? You’re the one always going on about making your own way in the world, not wanting to settle down. But the moment I suggest it, you back out. All that talk. I don’t think you’ll ever leave home. You haven’t got the nerve. Talk about empty drums.’
