by Maureen Lee
His parents had been in show business, he told her. They were dancers and called themselves Antonia and Antonio. ‘There are loads of stage pictures of them at home. They danced in theatres all over the country, from the very top ones to the very bottom. They never had a proper home, so when my father dropped dead on the stage of the Rotunda Theatre in Liverpool, my mother found a flat and stayed here.’
‘Whereabouts in Liverpool is the flat?’ Maggie asked, wishing she could feel more certain that she believed him.
‘Everton Valley. Nowadays she makes clothes for dancers. You should see some of the dresses she turns out.’
‘I’d really like to see them,’ Maggie said.
‘Then you shall,’ he said grandly. ‘I’ll ask her to invite you to tea.’
‘And what do you do?’ she asked.
He sold a lotion called Kure from door to door, he told her, in such a dramatic, impressive way that it made him seem as if he was on his way to curing the entire world of every known disease, internal and external, starting with Liverpool. ‘It only costs one and ninepence a bottle.’
He insisted on accompanying her back to Bootle on the tram. Outside the front door of her house, he kissed her on the cheek and invited her to the Grafton on Saturday.
‘Only if Nell can come too,’ Maggie said. ‘Saturday, we always go dancing together.’ She couldn’t possibly desert Nell.
‘I would love to see Nell again,’ he assured her, with the utmost sincerity.
Chapter 3
‘I think she’s going to marry him,’ Nell said.
Iris gasped. ‘Really! Has she said anything to that effect?’ Sometimes she felt as if she and Nell were like leeches, using Maggie’s fascinating life to provide excitement to their own dull ones. Unlike them, Maggie had put army life behind her and become absorbed in the world as it was now.
‘Her actual words were,’ Nell continued breathlessly, ‘ “We’re going to get married one day soon.” They’re waiting until Chris gets a better job and they’ve got somewhere to live.’
‘Well, both the job and the house could take a while.’ Male unemployment was increasing as more and more men were demobbed and returned to civilian life. Not only that, due to the air raids having destroyed so much property, there was a desperate shortage of houses. ‘Once we have the National Health Service, Chris isn’t likely to sell any more of that dubious medicine,’ Iris went on.
Iris hadn’t met Chris, but she had a picture of him in her mind; rather bohemian, with laughing eyes and a daring expression. Sometimes she imagined him wearing a short black cape and a wavy hat, not exactly the uniform of a door-to-door salesman.
‘Anyway,’ Nell continued, ‘they’re considering getting engaged at Easter.’
‘That’s only a few weeks off,’ Iris mused. ‘What sort of ring does she fancy?’
‘A diamond solitaire. Apparently, Chris’s mother said she can have hers.’
Iris examined her own diamond solitaire engagement ring. The day Tom had bought it had been tremendously exciting. She recalled going to lunch at Frederick & Hughes afterwards and waving her hands all over the place in the hope that people would notice the way it sparkled. These days, she often forgot to put it on. ‘Oh, Nell, there’s something I must tell you: Tom has agreed to make Thursday the day he has his afternoon off, so you and I can go into town to the pictures or the theatre and afterwards have afternoon tea.’
Instead of looking pleased, Nell’s pleasant, good-natured face fell. ‘That’s nice,’ she mumbled, though it was obvious she didn’t mean it.
‘What’s wrong?’ Iris asked gently.
‘Well, I haven’t got any money, have I? I mean, not enough for cinemas or theatres or meals in restaurants. Me dad only gives us half a crown a week.’
‘Half a crown! But that’s disgraceful. It’d cost him at least fifteen shillings to get a woman in to do what you do.’ Iris had conjured up a picture of Nell’s father in her head too. He looked very much like Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. In other words, as ugly as sin. She remembered at Christmas having vowed to do something about Nell. Now seemed to be the time.
She discussed her idea with Tom that night. He was the most easy-going of men. As long as it didn’t interfere with his duties as a doctor, he was inclined to agree to anything Iris suggested, leaving her to wonder why she didn’t love him considerably more.
‘It sounds as if it’s something that will be of benefit to both you and Nell,’ he said when she told him what she had in mind. He had met Nell and liked her very much. ‘Go ahead, by all means,’ he finished with an approving nod.
‘I’ll have a word with her when she comes next week.’
‘What we would like,’ she said to Nell the following Thursday, when they were both seated at the table in the kitchen over a pot of tea, ‘is for you to come and make our evening meal for us five afternoons a week, and sometimes on Sundays when we have Tom’s relatives to lunch or dinner. You’d only have to be here at the most two hours a day. The pay would be ten shillings, and extra if you came at the weekend.’ Ten shillings meant little to her and Tom, but was a small fortune to someone like Nell.
To her dismay, Nell frowned. ‘You’re asking because last week I said me dad only gave us half a crown,’ she said crossly. ‘That’s charity, that is. I don’t want charity off nobody, thanks all the same.’ She jumped to her feet, knocking over the chair and making a terrible clatter. ‘I think it’d be best if I never came again.’
Iris wanted the floor to swallow her up. ‘If you didn’t come again, I don’t know what I’d do, Nell. You are the person who keeps me sane. I can talk about things with you that I can’t with anyone else, certainly not Tom. I can’t discuss with him the lovely time we had in the camp at Plymouth. And I do want a cook, honestly I do. I’m hopeless with food; I really hate cooking.’ She burst into tears and buried her face in her arms.
‘Oh dear, Iris. I’m sorry. Of course I’ll cook for you, but you don’t have to pay me.’
‘To have making dinner taken out of my hands is worth a fortune to me,’ Iris said passionately. ‘But I don’t want you to come if I can’t pay you.’
Nell shrugged helplessly. ‘Oh, all right, I’ll do it. But I’ll have to ask me dad first. Y’see, I’m not supposed to leave me mam for all that long.’
Maggie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when Betty Conway showed her the engagement ring. Of course, she did neither, just took it politely and thanked her extravagantly.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said in an awed voice, ‘absolutely beautiful.’ It was also incredibly tiny, little more than a pinprick in the narrowest of gold bands. Thank goodness she hadn’t mentioned the ring to her family. She’d feel too embarrassed to let anyone see it.
‘Try it on,’ Betty urged.
Maggie did so, hoping it would be much too big or too small and she could refuse it, but it fitted perfectly. ‘I can’t thank you enough,’ she said, in the same awed voice.
‘It looks magnificent, darling,’ Betty said huskily. This must be one of her Marlene Dietrich days. She also had Greta Garbo and Katharine Hepburn days. Once Maggie married Chris, she would have the most interesting mother-in-law in Liverpool, except Betty was moving back to London and bequeathing Maggie not only her ring, but her flat and her handsome son.
Since her husband, Antonio, had died on stage in Liverpool and her own dancing days had come to an end, Betty had lived on the top floor of a four-storey house in Everton Valley. From the window, the tops of ships could be seen on the distant river. The main room had a sloping ceiling and was at least thirty feet square, while the two bedrooms, the rough-and-ready bathroom and the kitchen were exceptionally small.
About a quarter of the main room was taken up by a large table heaped with glorious dresses. Because there was a shortage of material in the shops, along with everything else, Betty was turning old dresses into beautiful new ones by taking yards of net off one to put on another, switching
frills and bows, adding sequins here and fancy buttons there, and coming up with a differently styled garment altogether.
According to Chris, she had become as well-known and successful in the dancing world as a dressmaker as she had been as a dancer.
There were posters of Antonia and Antonio on the walls, including an overlarge one, a painting showing a magnificent couple dancing the flamenco, the woman wearing brilliant scarlet and the man with a black mask over his eyes just like Tyrone Power in The Mark of Zorro. Whilst this wasn’t an exact likeness of the pair, it had been on show outside the theatre the only time they’d been top of the bill.
‘It was in a place called Stoke Newington,’ Betty had told her.
Betty was about fifty and still magnificent. Today she wore a long navy silk gown patterned with orange poppies, an orange sash around her narrow waist, bangles on both wrists, and glittering earrings that skimmed her shoulders. Her brown hair, liberally streaked with grey, was piled untidily on top of her head.
There were footsteps on the stairs. ‘Ah, here is Chris now,’ she said.
Maggie had been invited to tea, and Chris had been sent to buy fish and chips. There were bottles of wine and vinegar on the table – a different table to the one with the costumes on – along with three highly ornamental glasses, three beautifully embroidered napkins and an assortment of fancy cutlery, none of which matched.
Chris entered the room and Maggie could have sworn that her heart stopped beating. She was so much in love that she could hardly concentrate on anything else, not her family, not her work, not her friends. He smiled right at her and her heart stopped again. One of these days she was sure she’d have a heart attack, or her heart would stop beating altogether.
‘I like him,’ Maggie had heard her mother say after the first time she’d brought Chris to the house. She’d been sitting on the stairs quite shamelessly eavesdropping on her parents discussing her new boyfriend. ‘He’s a bit out of the ordinary, just right for our Maggie.’
Dad had begged to differ. ‘He’s a funny sort of bugger. Hasn’t got a trade. I can’t figure out a man without a trade.’ Paddy O’Neill was a centre lathe turner and proud of it.
‘He’s interesting,’ Mam claimed. ‘We talked for ages about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. He’s seen every one of their pictures.’
‘So have a lot of people. That’s nothing to boast about,’ her father growled. ‘It might be a good idea if he found something more useful to do with his time, like earn a proper wage instead of selling that vile mixture that’s probably ruining the health of the nation.’
‘I had a letter today from my friend Susan in London,’ Betty said now, waving a sheet of mauve notepaper. ‘She’s really looking forward to us living together in Crouch End. She’s been a theatrical agent for years, but started off as a dancer like me and Antonio.’ She always referred to her husband by his stage name rather than his real one, which was Gordon.
Betty had wanted to move away for a long time, but Chris was attached to Liverpool and not at all keen on London. She didn’t like the idea of leaving him behind, but now he had met Maggie and would have a wife for company when she went.
Maggie was thrilled. ‘I’d love to live here. It’s so bohemian. Oh, but I’ll really miss you, Betty,’ she added fulsomely.
Later, after Betty had gone to the pub on the corner with her friend Eunice, Maggie and Chris lay together in the room where he slept, which was just about big enough for a single bed and a chest of drawers.
‘I love you,’ he whispered.
‘And I love you. I love you so much it hurts.’ She could actually feel an ache in the bothersome heart that kept switching itself on and off these days.
He stroked her neck, then her breasts through the thin material of her blouse. She didn’t protest when he pulled the blouse out of her skirt and slid his hand beneath it and her bra until he was touching her naked flesh. Everything inside seemed to explode in great spasms of pleasure, but when he reached under her skirt and his hand touched the skin at the top of her stockings, she made him stop, though it took an enormous amount of determination.
‘No,’ she said firmly, if a trifle shakily. ‘No, not yet. Not until we’re married.’ She struggled to a sitting position and pushed his hands away.
He groaned. ‘Lord knows when that’ll happen.’
‘Now we’ve got somewhere to live, all you have to do is get a better job – a proper one.’
His face lit up. ‘I met a chap today who said that a new picture house is opening in Walton Vale. Actually, it’s an old one being done up and reopening, but showing nothing but foreign pictures. It’ll be called I Continental. As soon as I find out who’s running it, I’ll apply for the job of manager, though assistant manager would do for the time being.’
‘Oh, Chris! That’d be the gear.’ She got up and went into the big room, away from the dangerously enticing bed. Having spent three years of her life in an army camp and emerged still a virgin, she wanted to stay that way until she and Chris were married.
She glanced at the glowing fire, the table full of gorgeous materials, the posters on the wall, and the gas lamp with its multicoloured glass shade that cast a rainbow of colours over everything. It was like a stage set for the most wonderful play ever written, a play that would never end. And she and Chris would be the stars.
She hadn’t imagined it was possible to be so monumentally happy.
The man wore a grey worsted overcoat with an astrakhan collar, a grey trilby hat and a navy suit, and carried a walking stick with an ivory handle. The effect was spoilt rather by his brown boots. He was tall, with a red face, a vast moustache and a straight, imperious stature, and Iris could tell he was the sort of man who didn’t suffer fools gladly.
‘Yes?’ she enquired when she opened the door. He didn’t have the apprehensive expression of a patient. If it hadn’t been for the boots, she would have thought him a salesman.
He lifted his hat. ‘Mrs Grant?’
‘That’s me, yes.’
‘I’m Alfred Desmond. I’ve come about our Nellie, me daughter.’
It took Iris a moment to realise he meant Nell. He didn’t look anything like she’d expected. She had thought Nell’s family were poor, but this man looked relatively prosperous. Nell didn’t mention him often, but when she did, it wasn’t in exactly admiring tones, which was why she’d built up a picture in her mind of him looking very different.
‘You’d better come in,’ she said tersely. It was early afternoon and surgery was due to begin soon. In fact, a woman carrying a baby was walking through the gate. Iris took Alfred Desmond into the kitchen, returning briefly to show the woman into the waiting room. She left the front door on the latch so that from then on people could let themselves in.
‘What can I do for you?’ she asked when she went back into the kitchen. He had undone his coat and was nursing his hat and stick on his knee.
‘About this job you’ve offered our Nellie, I’d like to know more about it.’ He actually sounded suspicious, as if Iris intended selling his daughter on the white slave market.
‘It’s just preparing dinner for my husband and myself. I know what a good cook Nell is from the army. As I’m hopeless at cooking, I thought I’d ask Nell to do it for us.’ Iris considered it, but decided not to offer him a cup of tea. There was something about the man that she didn’t like.
‘Do you consider ten shillings sufficient recompense for that?’
He’s after more money! She imagined how upset Nell would be if she knew. ‘Nell would only be here for at the most two hours a day for five days,’ she pointed out. ‘Ten shillings works out at a shilling an hour. That seems a fair wage to me, considerably fairer than the money she gets from you.’
He didn’t look annoyed, just paused and considered the matter. ‘I suppose you’re right. Her poor mam’ll be left by herself while Nellie’s out, and we’ll all have to wait for our own dinner, but we’ll just have to put up with it.’
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‘Nell’s entitled to a life of her own.’
He got rather ponderously to his feet. Iris had a strong feeling that he hadn’t really come about the money, but to inspect her and have a look inside the house. ‘I’ll call round Friday dinner time for our Nell’s wages.’
‘You’ll do no such thing!’ Iris slammed her hand on the table and he jumped. ‘Nell will have earned it and I shall give it to her and no one else.’
He looked mildly surprised, but Iris reckoned he’d only said it to irritate her. ‘But I’m her da.’
‘True, but you won’t be making me and my husband’s dinner; Nell will, and she’s the one who’ll be getting paid.’
He had the nerve to smile, even if it was only a flicker, as if he admired Iris for standing her ground. ‘Is there anything you need?’ he enquired.
‘Need?’
‘I’ve got quite a collection of stuff at home,’ he said boastfully. ‘Max Factor make-up, sugar, a china dinner set decorated with rosebuds, umbrellas, a selection of size six leather court shoes in a nice tan colour – brand new, of course – a coffee table. Oh, and I managed to get me hands on a whole dozen bottles of scent the other day, Shalimar. I understand it’s dead expensive, but I’m only charging ten bob a bottle.’ He winked. ‘Anything you fancy – I could have it back here within the hour.’
Iris shuddered with desire. She would have given her eye teeth for a bottle of Shalimar and a Max Factor lipstick, any shade would do. As for the dinner set . . .! ‘No thank you,’ she said stiffly. He was a spiv, a horrible, revolting spiv selling stuff on the black market. She’d known people who were of the view that spivs should have been strung from the lamp posts when the war ended, just like Mussolini. She wondered if she would have had the willpower to turn down a pound of butter!
She showed him out. He lifted his hat and strode down the little drive. Once on the pavement, he lifted his hat again and winked. Iris shuddered for the second time. She had a horrible feeling that he rather liked her.
