by Rosie Thomas
‘Where’s your mum?’ she asked. As soon as she had said it she knew that it was tactless. But Betty was such a fixture in Fairmile Road, with her dusters and her sewing and the Light Programme on the wireless, it was hard to understand the absence of a similar figure for Mattie.
‘She’s in the hospital,’ Mattie told her expressionlessly. ‘She’s given up.’ She waved her hand at the mess as she spoke, so that Julia might have thought that it was just tidiness Mrs Banner had given up on.
‘It’s ready,’ Rozzie announced.
They took their places at the table. Mattie hoisted the baby on to her lap and fed her with spoonfuls from her own plate. The children ate ravenously, and in between mouthfuls they asked Julia dozens of inquisitive questions. Mattie made up silly names for the teachers and the other girls at their school, and Julia turned them into impromptu rhymes. Everyone laughed uproariously. The atmosphere in the steamy room was cheerful, in spite of the mess and the variety of smells. The liver and onions tasted good, and the small portions were helped by piles of potatoes.
It was different from everything Julia knew about.
‘I liked it at your house,’ she said afterwards, and Mattie beamed at her, surprised and pleased. That first afternoon made a bond between the two girls that grew steadily stronger. When Mrs Banner died a year later, Mattie turned to Julia for comfort, and it was Mattie who reinforced Julia in her depressing battles with her parents.
But she never told me about her father, Julia thought.
Not until this week.
If it had been wrong to leave Betty so abruptly, it was unquestionably right to have come away with Mattie. Julia felt a sharp pull of love and sympathy and admiration for her. That, at least, was right.
And now they were here, and there would be no going back.
Together they would make it.
Sitting in her deckchair, frowning a little, Julia fell asleep.
‘I’m half dead,’ Mattie complained.
‘You’ll revive. It’s Saturday night.’
‘Easy for you to say, when you’ve been snoring all afternoon in the park.’
Julia met Mattie outside the shop at closing time. ‘I’ve sold fourteen pairs of shoes. The supervisor says I’ll get a bonus. There’s a perfect pair of black stilettos, you’ll love them. Shall I put them in the back for you?’
‘Don’t try and sell me your shoes, kid. I don’t need ’em.’
They laughed, and Julia put her arm through Mattie’s.
‘So how much have we got?’
With Mattie’s three days’ pay, and what was left of Johnny Flowers’s pound note (‘Why did you let him go?’ Mattie demanded. ‘He sounds just what we need.’) they had almost five pounds. They felt like Lady Docker.
‘Food,’ Mattie said decisively.
They made straight for the nearest fish and chip shop and ordered double portions of everything.
‘That,’ Mattie sighed later as she folded up the last triangle of bread and butter and bit into it, ‘was the best meal I have ever eaten. You’re right. I have revived.’
‘So what shall we do?’
‘We—ll. We could find somewhere to stay the night …’
‘Or we could go dancing, and then we needn’t go to bed at all.’
‘You’re right.’
‘Stick with me.’
It was still early, and they dawdled arm in arm along Oxford Street, then Julia steered them south into Wardour Street.
‘I’ve just thought. Where are the suitcases?’
‘We’re going to get them. This way.’
The strip joint had done its best to shake off its depressing aspect ready for the night’s trade. The coloured bulbs were lit, and flickered bravely. The lights were on inside too, and Mickey was wedged belligerently in the doorway behind a placard reading THE SAUCIEST SHOW IN TOWN.
He spotted Julia at once.
‘Here! Monty doesn’t know nothing about no new girl.’
Julia smiled, trying to dazzle him with charm.
‘I’m sorry. It was a mistake. Can we just take our cases out of your way …’
But Mickey was staring at Mattie. ‘Now you,’ he said, ‘are the sort of girl Monty always goes for. Looking for a job, are you?’
Mattie stuck her chin out. ‘Not your sort of job. Thanks very much.’
Julia retrieved the luggage and they retreated.
‘Come back any time you fancy,’ Mickey yelled after them. ‘You with the hair.’
They turned the corner and then stopped, giggling.
‘I can’t leave you alone for a single day, can I?’ Mattie teased. ‘Without you getting involved in a strip show. Fancy earning your living by taking your clothes off for a crowd of dirty men.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Julia answered light-heartedly. ‘Easier than hammering a typewriter all day. Or selling fourteen pairs of shoes.’
Mattie cocked her head.
‘Listen.’
It was music, drumming out somewhere below their feet.
‘Mmm.’ Julia tried out a few steps on the pavement. ‘And look.’
There was a dingy doorway sandwiched between two shops, with a temporary-looking notice pinned to the door.
NOW OPEN! THE ROCKET CLUB.
That was how they stumbled across it.
They had been heading round the corner to Cy Laurie’s, but the Rocket was there and in its opening week it was offering free membership to girls. Mattie and Julia didn’t need any more encouragement.
A flight of uneven steps led down to a white-painted cellar. There were tables around the walls, a bar selling soft drinks, and travel posters stuck on the walls for decoration. There was a trad jazz combo just hotting up, and people spinning and whirling in the white space.
They forgot everything, and launched themselves into the dance.
It was easy to forget, in those days.
The club filled up, and the heat and the pulsing rhythm and the exhilaration of dancing swept them up and created a separate, absorbing world. They danced with anyone who asked them, not noticing whether they were young or old or white or black, and when the supply of partners temporarily dried up they danced with each other.
It was a long, hot night and it went like a flash.
At a table against the wall, from behind a stub of candle jammed into a wine bottle, Felix Lemoine was watching them.
There were lots of girls a bit like them, he thought, but there was something about these two that singled them out. They were striking enough to look at, although their clothes were grubby and looked home-made. The taller one with the dark hair had an angular, arresting face that was almost beautiful, and a thin, restless body. Her friend was plainer, but her foaming mass of hair shone in the candlelight and she was a better dancer. She moved gracefully, holding her head up.
It wasn’t their appearances that interested him, Felix decided. It was their vitality. He could almost feel the crackle of it from where he sat. The two girls were absorbed in themselves, in their dancing and the world they had created, and they were careless of everything else. Felix liked that carelessness. He had already identified it as style.
He took a notepad and pencil out of his inner pocket, and began to draw.
When the drawing was finished he went on sitting there. It didn’t occur to him to ask one of them to dance.
He just watched, as he always did.
Two
It was quiet in the studio. The Saturday afternoon life class was an unpopular option. The model was a woman, and she had been sitting for an hour. Her face was expressionless and her body looked flaccid, Felix thought, as if she had gone away somewhere and left it behind. Her long hair was pinned up on the top of her head to show the lines of her jaw and throat. He drew carefully, shading in the coils of hair. That was easy enough, but the rest of her body was more difficult. The soft heaviness of it made him feel uncomfortable, wanting to look away instead of spending another whole hour staring at it.
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He glanced around at the handful of other students. They were drawing intently. The tutor strolled between them, watching. When he reached Felix’s chair he stopped and murmured, ‘Your execution is good, Lemoine, but there’s no feeling. Loosen up.’
Felix mumbled his reply, and the tutor looked at the big clock on the wall. He nodded briskly to the model. She stood up, stretching unconcernedly, and pulled on a pink wrap. Then she lit a cigarette and unfolded a newspaper. She would rest for fifteen minutes and then resume her position.
Felix put his pencil away. He waited until the tutor was on the other side of the room, and then he slipped outside. Two of the other students followed him.
‘Coming outside for a fag, Felix?’ one of them asked cheerfully.
‘No, thanks. I think I’m going home.’
‘Yeah. Bit of an old dog, isn’t she? See you Monday, then.’ They strolled away with their jackets over their shoulders and their hands in the pockets of their jeans.
Felix went outside. The air smelt hot and tarry, but the faint breeze was welcome after the enclosed studio. He would walk home, he decided.
Felix liked walking in London. He enjoyed the anonymity of the streets, and the endless variety of faces streaming past him. He set off quickly through the afternoon crowds. When he reached Hyde Park he turned northwards, his pace slowing in the cool beneath the trees. As he crossed the dirt paths little whorls of dust lifted under his feet. He forgot the dislocation that he had felt in the life class, and after a moment he forgot the art school altogether. He wasn’t close enough to home, yet, to need to focus on that either, and his thoughts slid easily, disconnected, as they always did when he was walking. Felix usually felt most comfortable in the vacuum between one place and another. It was being there, almost anywhere nowadays, that was the problem. At Marble Arch he emerged into the traffic again, and turned down the long tunnel of Oxford Street. He was within reach of home now. Another few minutes, and he reached a featureless square to the north of Oxford Street. He paused beside a row of iron railings, and emerged from the journey’s limbo. He thought of home, and Jessie, as he looked across the square at their windows.
Most of the shabby Regency stucco houses in the square were occupied by offices, but a few still housed one or two flats, stranded amongst the solicitors and small import-export companies. Felix crossed to a gaunt, peeling house and went in through the black front door. As he climbed the stairs he could hear a typewriter clicking in one of the offices below, but otherwise the house seemed oppressively silent.
At the top of the last flight of stairs he unlocked a door, and peered across the five square feet of lobby into Jessie’s room. She was sitting in her chair by the window, and the sunlight beyond stamped out her dark, sibylline profile.
Then Felix’s mother turned her face to look at him. ‘Hello, duck,’ she said. ‘You’re early.’
He saw at a glance that the vodka bottle was on the table beside her, and judging by the level in it it was still early in the day for Jessie.
‘Why are you home so early? Not missing classes, are you?’
Still just as if he was a little boy, even though it was Jessie who was the helpless one now.
‘No,’ he lied, ‘I’m not missing classes. I’m hot, I’m just going to change my clothes.’
‘Go on then, be quick. Then come and talk to me. I think it might thunder. I hate thunder. Reminds me of the Blitz, with none of the fun. Oh, you wouldn’t remember.’
Her voice followed him into his bedroom. He took some clean clothes, neatly folded, out of his cupboard. He changed, and combed his black hair.
Jessie went on talking, but she broke off when he reappeared in the doorway. She looked at him over the rim of her glass, her eyes very bright and sharp in her shapeless face.
‘God, you’re a looker all right, my boy,’ Jessie said. ‘Just like your dad. Only a better colour.’ She laughed, her massive shoulders shaking silently.
‘Have you had anything to eat?’ Felix asked.
His mother shrugged.
‘I’ll make some soup.’
Jessie didn’t answer. She wasn’t interested in food any more.
The kitchen was very neat, Felix’s domain. He had made the cupboards and the shelves, and painted everything white.
‘I don’t call that very cosy,’ Julia had sniffed.
‘Well, I like it,’ Felix told her. ‘And you don’t cook, do you?’
He took a covered bowl out of the minute larder now and tipped the contents into a saucepan. He opened a cupboard and peered in at the tidy contents, then took a handful of dried pasta shells and dropped them into the pan. He was humming softly as he worked.
When the soup was simmering he laid a wicker tray with blue and white Provençal bowls. Felix had found the bowls in a little shop in Beak Street, and had brought them triumphantly home. More of his discoveries were dotted about the flat – a tiny still life of oranges in a basket, in an ornate gilt frame, a pair of pewter candlesticks, a batik wall-hanging, contrasting oddly with the battered furniture.
‘Dust-collectors,’ muttered Jessie, not that dusting occupied her at all.
Felix finished his preparations with a twist of black pepper from a wooden peppermill, and carried the tray through to Jessie. He laid the table in front of her, swinging the vodka bottle out of reach. His mother eyed the food.
‘You’ve got to eat,’ he told her patiently.
Jessie ate almost nothing, but her body seemed to grow more bloated and less mobile every day. She could only shuffle round the flat with difficulty now, and she never went outside. She lived for her vodka bottle, for her occasional visitors, who stirred up her already vivid memories, and for Felix. He felt sorry for her, and loved her, and he knew that she kept him prisoner. He watched her like a mother with a child as she spooned up her soup.
‘What did you do today?’ she demanded. ‘Tell me all about it.’
Felix looked out over the plane trees locked inside the railings of the square garden.
‘It was life class today.’
‘Nude model, does that mean? A woman?’
‘That’s right.’
Jessie chuckled coarsely. ‘Must make it hard for you boys to concentrate.’
‘Do you want some bread with your soup?’
She peered at him. ‘You’re a funny boy, sometimes. Are you all right at that college? Doing well at your drawing?’
Felix couldn’t have begun to explain to Jessie that he had no idea what he was doing there. The models embarrassed him, but setting that aside, the aridity of life drawing, and the other exercises that the students were required to undertake, seemed to have no relevance at all to the kind of painting that Felix wanted to do. He needed to shout, and to splash himself on to the canvases in violent colours. At the college he didn’t know how to do anything of the kind. He was silent, and he worked in cramped spaces with tiny pencil strokes. He knew that he had been much happier in the year and a half after he had left school, working during the day in an Italian grocer’s in Soho, and going to night class. But after night class, with his teacher’s encouragement, he had won his place at the Slade, and he had wanted to be a painter for as long as he could remember. Only he didn’t think that any of the work he was doing now would help him with that.
He couldn’t explain any of this to Jessie, who didn’t even understand what painting meant.
‘Of course I’m all right,’ he said softly.
Jessie pushed her food away. ‘Pour me a drop more of the good stuff, there’s a duck.’ Felix filled her glass for her and she sat back with a sigh of relief. ‘That’s better. God, it’s nice to have a talk. I can’t bear the quiet, all day long.’
‘You could listen to the wireless.’ The old-fashioned model in a bakelite case stood in a corner of the room.
‘All that rubbish? Noisy music. That’s what your dad liked. Loud music, all day and all night. We used to dance, anywhere, any time. God, we used to dance.’
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Felix let her reminisce. That was what Jessie enjoyed. It was almost all she had, he understood that. He had his own memories, too, as he sat watching her. They were mostly of upstairs rooms, with the sound of music and laughter, and sometimes shouting, drifting up to him. Felix used to sit for hours, drawing and waiting. When Jessie had finished work, at all sorts of strange hours, and if she was alone, she would bustle in and sweep him off somewhere to eat. In those days she had a healthy appetite, and the meals were the best of their times together. Usually they went to one of a handful of cafés, where everyone knew her and greeted her.
‘Hello, Jess, my love. What’s it to be tonight? Extra portion for that Felix, and we’ll see if we can fill him out a bit.’
They would sit down to huge platefuls of eggs and bacon, or sausages and mash. Occasionally when his mother was feeling flush, it would be a restaurant and Felix learned to enjoy lasagne and tournedos Rossini and kleftiko while she told him stories of the day’s work, and the people who drifted endlessly in and out of the Soho clubs. In the comfortable times they were afternoon clubs, that filled the empty time for their customers between the pubs closing and opening again. Felix had a dim impression from his brief glimpses into smoky rooms of a twilight world where curtains closed out the daylight and where men sat around drinking small drinks under Jessie’s benevolent, despotic eye. For a brief period, he remembered, there had been a club called Jessie’s Place, and his mother had talked about sending him away to a ‘proper’ school. He had refused to go, and one of the periodic upheavals had taken over their life, leaving them with no more Jessie’s Place. She had gone to work in a nightclub then, which meant that there were no more cosy suppers together either. Felix came back from school and spent his evenings alone, in one of the succession of rented rooms that they used as home. He listened to music, and drew. He painted too, when he could get hold of the materials. One of Jessie’s regular friends, a dealer of some kind who was still known to Felix as Mr Mogridge, told him that he could be good. Sometimes he brought him paintings, and canvas. It was Mr Mogridge who had introduced him to the night school, and Felix was grateful for that, even though he disliked the man. The rest of his spare time, until he left school and started work in the grocer’s, Felix filled up with walking in Soho. He rummaged in the strange little shops for decorative treasures, and watched the people as they passed him in the streets.
