Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection

by Rosie Thomas

  There were other men of Jessie’s too, of course. There were plenty of them when Felix was young, fewer as Jessie aged and her body grew more cumbersome. Felix knew for sure that his mother had once been a singer, and then, because she had not been quite good enough, she had become a club hostess. Not a prostitute. He knew most of the real girls by sight, and quite a lot of them by name, because he saw them in Old Crompton Street and Frith Street, and down at the bottom end of Wardour Street. Jessie wasn’t one of them. She had men friends, that was all. Felix ignored them as far as he could. He had never been able to bear the thought of what they did together. Now, looking back over the years of moving with Jessie from one set of cramped rooms to another, waiting and watching and drawing in exercise books, Felix realised that he must have been a strange, withdrawn, prim little boy. How different from Jessie herself, and how baffling for her.

  She had done her best for him, he saw now, through what must often have been difficult times. He had been lonely, but he had never felt neglected. They had never had much, but he had never gone without.

  Felix had no memories of his father at all.

  He knew that Desmond Lemoine and Jessie Jubb had been married, because Jessie always kept her marriage certificate with her. The wedding pre-dated his own birthday by two and a half months. Apart from that, Felix only knew what Jessie had told him. The wedding certificate stated that he was a musician, but Jessie was unreliable about exactly what sort of musician. Sometimes he was the greatest sax player there had ever been, the forgotten star of every big band of the Thirties. At other times he was a trombonist, once or twice even a trumpeter.

  ‘He played that sax – or trombone, or trumpet – like an angel,’ Jessie would say mistily. And then she would snort with laughter and add, ‘He looked like an angel, too. God, he was beautiful. A big, black angel.’

  Desmond had come from Grenada. Felix knew that he must have been tall, because he had grown to six foot himself, towering over Jessie. But the colour of his skin was only a dim reflection of his father’s blackness.

  What would I be? Felix wondered. An angel the colour of cold English coffee? He also wondered if it was his half and half-ness, the awareness of being neither one person nor the other, that gave him his sense of separation.

  Desmond and Jessie had met when they were both working in a club off Shaftesbury Avenue. Within a few months Jessie was pregnant, and a few months after that her musician obligingly married her. He had also insisted on the boy’s Christian name, although Jessie had preferred Brian.

  ‘It means the lucky one, girl,’ he told Jessie. ‘We all need a bit of luck, don’t we?’ He disappeared for good about a year after Felix was born.

  ‘He went on tour, with a new band, up north somewhere,’ Jessie said. ‘Going to be his big break, it was. He never came back.’

  ‘Why not?’ Felix would demand. When he was small boy his father’s absence made him silently, unnervingly angry.

  Jessie would only shrug. ‘Liked his drink, Des did. And pretty faces, especially if they were white ones. Plenty of those in Manchester, or wherever he was. Fell for someone else, I expect. He’s got two or three wives to his name by now, I should think.’

  At sixteen, Felix had calculated, he could move away from Jessie and begin to live his own life. He dreamed of going to Rome, or Florence, to find some kind of menial job that would still give him time to paint.

  Then, in the same week as the King died, Jessie fell ill.

  She had double pneumonia, and for five days Felix was sure that she was going to die. He sat by her bed, waiting again, and all the waiting he had done all through the years of his childhood, seemingly for nothing, welled up out of the past and crushed the hope out of him. Later, he remembered the stillness of that week. All the music had been silenced for the King, and the faces in the street outside the hospital were sombre.

  He didn’t believe the doctors when they told him that his mother would live. She seemed so fragile, with all the energy and liveliness that he had taken for granted drained out of her.

  Jessie did recover, very slowly, but it was as if her illness had quenched some hope of her own. She struggled back to the current club as soon as she could, but the work exhausted her. The customers noticed and commented on her low spirits. They were allowed, even expected, to have their problems, but Jessie had to be cheerful for them. Not long afterwards she was ill again, and missed more days off work. At last the boss, the latest in a long line of owners to whom Jessie had devoted her energy, took her aside. She would have to be more like her old self, he warned her, his special girl, our Jessie, or he couldn’t promise to keep her on.

  Felix was incandescent with anger when Jessie told him. He wanted to burst into the club and hit the man square in his puffy face.

  ‘Don’t upset yourself, love,’ Julia advised him wearily. ‘It isn’t worth it.’

  Two months later Jessie was fired. A salvo of bouquets and fulsome good wishes followed her into exile from the only world she knew.

  ‘There are other places. Other jobs,’ Felix said savagely, but Jessie only shrugged.

  ‘It isn’t worth it,’ she repeated.

  Already she was drinking heavily, and her bulky body seemed more of a burden for her to propel to and fro. But Jessie had dozens of friends and they rallied round her now, almost against her will. One of them, a man like Mr Mogridge but even shadier, owned a block of property to the north of Oxford Street. It was out of their old territory, but Jessie and Felix gratefully accepted his offer of a short tenancy, at a tiny rent, of the flat overlooking Manchester Square.

  ‘It won’t be for ever,’ Mr Bull said crisply. ‘It’s due for development, all that. But you can have it for now, if it’s any help to you.’

  They moved into the flat, and Felix decorated it. He enjoyed arranging the cramped space more than he had enjoyed anything since Jessie fell ill.

  ‘You’ve done a good job,’ Mr Bull said. ‘Made the place look like something.’ He looked hard at Felix, and then smirked.

  By that Saturday afternoon, they had been living in the flat for two and a half years. As a temporary measure, it felt more permanent than anywhere they had ever lived before.

  Felix heard his mother’s chair creak, and a long, exhaled breath. He looked across at her and saw that she had fallen asleep, with her chin on her chest and her glass tipped sideways in her fingers. He took it gently away and put the top back on the bottle. His face was expressionless as he lifted her swollen legs on to a low stool, and slipped a cushion behind her head. Then he brought a blanket from her bed and tucked it securely around her.

  Felix carried the wicker tray of dirty dishes back into the kitchen, and washed up. He put each plate and bowl back in its proper place, and dried the old-fashioned wooden drainer. When everything was satisfactorily tidy he went into his bedroom and put on a dark blue sweater.

  He looked at Jessie once more, and then he went out and closed the door softly behind him.

  The threat of thunder had lifted, and the sky was clear. The lines of chimneys and rooftops were sharply defined against it. Felix walked for a long time, watching the darkness as it gathered softly in narrow alleyways and in the corners buttressed by high buildings. He enjoyed listening to the hum of the city changing as night came and the lights flickered and steadied.

  He had been idling, not thinking, when he passed the Rocket Club. He loitered for a moment, incuriously, reading the notice on the door. Then he heard the music, drifting up to him through the cellar grating at his feet. He hesitated, and then he thought that there was nothing to hurry home for. Jessie would certainly be still asleep, and the little flat would be quiet and dark. He could go in for an hour, to drink a Coke and listen to the music. Felix went to the door and handed over his entry money.

  ‘Just one?’ the doorman asked, without interest.

  Felix had to duck his head under the low ceilings as he went down the stairs into the cellar. He bought a drink, and found a
place at a table against the wall.

  He noticed the two girls almost at once.

  Felix was impressed by the club itself, too. He liked the blurred distinctions of night-time in these places, and he quite often visited the other clubs in the nearby street. He had a loose network of acquaintances based on them, and that suited him because it didn’t trespass on the rest of his privacy. There was a sprinkling of faces here that he knew, and more that he didn’t. It was a pleasing mixture of beats and bohemians, ordinary kids and blacks and Soho characters packing the steaming space. He hadn’t intended to stay but the atmosphere, and the two girls, made him linger. The two of them were dancing with intent, almost fierce enjoyment. It was, Felix thought, as if they were afraid to stop.

  The crowd grew thicker and wilder as the night wore on. Felix danced with a girl he knew a little. He bought her a drink, and talked to a group of her friends. All the girls liked Felix, as well as admiring his looks, but they were used to his evasiveness. He glimpsed the girl with the hair laughing, through the press of people, and then he lost sight of them both. The dancers were leaping and shouting now, and the walls of the cellar itself seemed to run with sweat.

  In the end it was the exhausted musicians who gave up. They played a last, storming number and then began to pack up their instruments. The crowd booed and protested, but they knew that there was going to be no more that night. They started to flow reluctantly up the stairs, and Felix went with them.

  Outside it was already light, a still, pale summer morning. The air was cool and sweet after the smoky cellar. He walked a little way, and then stopped to watch the pearly light lying along the street.

  Something made him look back.

  The two girls were standing outside the club doorway. There were two suitcases at their feet. All the wild enjoyment had drifted away with the music. They looked tired, and dejected, and very young.

  Without knowing why he did it, Felix turned and walked back to them.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  The dark one lifted her head. ‘We’ve got nowhere to sleep. We thought we’d just stay up all night. But the night didn’t last quite long enough for it to be day again.’

  She gestured, wearily, at the sleeping city. The first car of the morning, or the last car of the night, purred past them. The crowd from the club was disappearing, and they began to feel as they were the only people left between sleeping and waking. Mattie looked up too. She noticed that he was tall and slim, with black hair that curled close to his head. He looked foreign and handsome, and exotic, but she was too tired to work out whether that was threatening or not.

  ‘Do you know anywhere we can stay?’ she asked. ‘Just for tonight? What’s left of it.’ They were both watching him.

  Felix thought of home, and of Jessie who would now be prowling heavily, wakefully, in her room.

  All his instincts warned him to offer nothing, but the memory of how they had looked inside the Rocket Club made him fight back his instincts. He sighed. ‘There’s a spare room where I live. It isn’t much.’

  ‘After last night, anywhere with a roof will be a palace,’ the dark one said.

  ‘Which way?’ the other one demanded. Felix pointed, and they began walking. He noticed that they were both almost falling over with exhaustion. He held his hands out for one of the suitcases, then the other.

  ‘Hey, what have you got in here?’

  The dark one shrugged her shoulders. They were thin and bony, he saw, like a young boy’s.

  ‘Everything,’ she said.

  They came into the square as the light changed from grey to gold. Felix looked up at Jessie’s window. The curtains were open.

  ‘I live with my mother,’ he said baldly.

  The one who called herself Mattie smiled. ‘Mothers tend not to like us very much.’

  ‘Mine’s different.’

  But it was Mattie’s expectations that were proved right. Felix unlocked the door at the top of the stairs and they crowded together into the awkward hall. There was hardly room for the three of them and the two suitcases. There was a slow creaking noise, and Jessie appeared from her room. Her bulk seemed to block out the light. Mattie was at the back, and she saw only an old woman, very fat, who breathed with difficulty. But Julia was closer and she saw that Felix’s mother had quick, sharp eyes that were at odds with her size. Her expression was closed, and hostile. Felix’s heart sank. He had seen Jessie confront unwelcome customers with that face.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  He told her.

  ‘They can’t stay here. This isn’t a rooming house.’

  Jessie was suspicious, and defensive, and she didn’t like strangers any more. The little lair perched at the top of the offices was all she had, and she didn’t want it to be invaded. Felix understood, and he wished that he hadn’t dragged these waifs back here with him.

  ‘It’s just for one night,’ he soothed her. ‘There’s not much of it left, anyway.’

  Jessie peered at the two girls. They were hardly more than children, and she thought that she recognised the type. And then the one with the terrible ratty tangle of curling fair hair said softly. ‘Please.’

  Jessie was angry, but she knew that she had lost. She couldn’t deny that appeal. It was characteristic that she accepted her defeat and moved swiftly on.

  ‘You’ll be out of here by twelve o’clock sharp. There’ll be no noise, no waste of hot water, and no funny business of any sort.’

  Mattie grinned at her. Their relief was like a light being turned on.

  ‘We’re the quietest sleepers in London. And we’re too tired to wash or think of anything funny, I promise.’

  Jessie turned her massive back and shuffled away to her chair.

  The room that Felix showed them into had one single mattress and a sleeping bag. He brought them some pillows and blankets, and they murmured their thanks and burrowed into them, fully clothed.

  They were asleep, like small animals, even before he had draped a blanket over the dormer window.

  ‘Well, where do you live?’ Jessie demanded.

  The girls had slept for six hours, and they only woke up at midday because Felix rapped on their door. They tried to slip into the bathroom, but Jessie was too quick for them.

  ‘Don’t sneak around,’ she shouted from her room. ‘Come in here and let me have a look at you. Then you can be off and leave us in peace.’

  They stood in front of her, like schoolgirls facing the headmistress. Glancing round the room, Julia saw that it was full of photographs. There were dozens of laughing faces and raised glasses, and most of the groups showed a younger version of Felix’s mother beaming somewhere in the middle. It was hard to reconcile that conviviality with this huge, formidable woman.

  ‘You must live somewhere,’ Jessie was insisting. ‘Why d’you have to turn up at my place in the middle of the night? Although that boy’s just as much to blame for bringing you.’

  They looked round for him, but Felix was prudently keeping out of the way. They could hear him rattling plates in the kitchen. The homely noise reminded them that they were hungry.

  ‘Well?’ Jessie demanded.

  Julia decided rapidly that there was no point in attempting anything but the truth. Jessie would certainly recognise anything that wasn’t.

  ‘We haven’t got anywhere to live,’ she said. ‘Just at the moment, that is. The night before last we slept on the Embankment. Last night we were going to stay up, dancing, but somehow there’s a gap between night and morning, you know?’

  ‘I remember,’ Jessie said, a shade less grimly.

  ‘Felix rescued us, and brought us here.’

  ‘I know that already. What I’m trying to find out is why you had to sleep on the Embankment in the first place.’

  Very quickly, putting in as little detail as possible, Julia told her. In Julia’s version of the story, Mattie had had an argument with her father about staying out too late. That was all. But Jessie’s little roun
d eyes, sunk in the cushions of flesh, were shrewd as they darted to and fro. They lingered on Mattie for a minute longer.

  When Julia had finished her speech, Jessie said, ‘I see. And now you’ve done your running away and found out how nasty it is, you’ll be going back home where you belong, won’t you?’

  Mattie spoke for the first time. ‘No. We can’t do that.’ Her voice was quiet and steady and utterly definite, and Jessie’s glance flickered over her again.

  ‘We’ve both got jobs,’ Julia told her quickly. ‘Well-paid jobs. As soon as we’ve got some money we can rent a flat. Everything will be all right then.’

  Jessie had seen enough. They looked so vulnerable, both of them, still sleepy, with their eyes smudged round with their unnecessary make-up, and their strange, young-old clothes all rucked up with the weight of sleep. But they weren’t so young, either, Jessie thought. A shadow of something, the beginning of experience perhaps, had touched both their faces, and sharpened them out of the softness of childhood. And they had a defiance in them, a determination, that touched her. The way they stood, the way they looked around, stirred memories in Jessie. They reminded her of friends she hadn’t seen for a long time, most of whom she would never see again. And, just a little, they reminded her of herself.

  Jessie sighed.

  ‘Oh, bloody hell. You’d better have a drink and something to eat before I really do kick you out. Felix! Bring that bottle and some glasses in here.’

  And Felix came in, awkwardly tall in the low room, but moving as gracefully as a cat in his black jersey. The girls watched him and he smiled at all three of them, as triumphantly as if he had called the truce himself. With a flourish, he took four glasses off a tray.