Bad Penny Blues

by Cathi Unsworth

  Pete had found the details of that out from the newspaper archive in the library. Jennifer's good looks had landed her a big splash in the Daily Mail. She explained how she and her fellow St Martin's School of Art students were disgusted that the post-War rebuilding effort had come to such a pass, and the fact that her own father was inflicting such eyesores on the nation had only spurred her on to lead the parade of duffel-coated beatniks to make their views felt. Clearly smitten, the journalist concurred with her.

  The other papers were quite keen on this story too. It was from the Daily Telegraph that Pete had found the picture that included Giles Somerset marching along and waving his banner outside a building site in Hornton Street, Kensington. NO MORE UGLY it read. Seemed that he was an art student too, best place for him, as he was clearly illiterate. Yet again, Somerset came up short compared to his blonde-haired lady friend, who had clearly mastered the class on how to embarrass your father publicly a long time before his own pathetic attempts came to nowt.

  A knock on the door cut through Pete's brooding.

  “Who is it?” It was a constant source of pain to him that they didn't allow locks on the doors in the station house. Anyone would think they were a lot of children in here, not grown men who had been in the army and then passed a rigorous load of exams to earn the privilege of a uniform.

  “Dickie Willcox, secret agent,” came the reply.

  “Come in.” Pete closed the magazine and rolled himself up of the bed. Dick strode in, looking dapper, his best suit cleanly pressed and Brylcreem in his hair.

  “You're not reading that toff's mag again are you?” His eyes missed nothing. “I don't know Pete, look at you, sitting here in your string vest reading about High Society.”

  Pete gave a rueful smile. “What are you all dolled up for anyway?” He brushed biscuit crumbs off his chest.

  “Oh don't tell me you've forgotten?” Dick looked mortified. “It's the dance tonight. With the nurses from the hospital.”

  “Oh.” Pete vaguely remembered Dick enthusing at the prospect at some point in the not so distant past. It was a fairly regular affair, at the social club downstairs, bringing together the two most abundant sources of bachelors and spinsters in West London. He had so far managed to avoid it, not fancying himself as the type who could impress a sophisticated London nurse in such loaded social conditions.

  “Come on, Pete, you've still got time to spruce yourself up. It don't start for another half hour.” Dick sat himself down on the end of Pete's iron bed, picked up the crumpled magazine.

  “Don't you ever stop working?” he asked. “Give yourself time to relax?”

  Pete looked at himself in the shaving mirror above his sink. His skin was sallow from a long run of night duty and there were the beginnings of bags under his eyes. His hair – which grew in unruly curls if he didn't have it razored off every two weeks – was beginning to sprout out at all angles.

  “I can't remember,” he said. Tentatively, wondering if he should give in and make a night of it, Pete picked up his shaving brush.

  “Well I'll tell you what.” Dick watched his friend slowly work up a lather from his block of soap. “You won't get out of this place unless you find yourself a wife. And I don't want to have to come up here to meet my old mate the sad old bachelor Bradley in another 15 years’ time…”

  Pete picked up his razor. “I suppose you've got a point,” he conceded. Policemen were not allowed their own properties unless they were married and he certainly didn't want to be stuck in this cell without a lock forever.

  “They're a decent lot of birds that come here,” Dick enthused. “Plenty to choose from. Not quite Marilyn Monroe, mind, but there's a couple that come close to Diana Dors, if you squint at them in a certain light. Or, there's plenty of those Maureen O’Hara types, if you fancy one of them Irish colleens. They ain't stupid neither. That's what I like about ’em. You gotta have brains to be a nurse. I don't really mind what colour their hair is but I couldn't bear a bird that didn't have brains. Imagine having to talk about Cliff Richard or Tommy Steele the whole time. Cor, dear me no.”

  “Me neither,” Pete agreed. “Although I'd take Lana Turner over any of your Marilyns. I prefer a bit of mystery to mine.” He tried to sound like a man of the world, never mind that the only women he'd really spoken to over the past year were the prostitutes on his beat. And there was seldom any mystery to them.

  “She might even take you,” Dick considered, “if you put some decent strides on and smarten yourself up. Chuck a bit of aftershave on after that, will you? You'd be quite a catch if you gave yourself the chance. Like that Albert Finney you are, one of them Angry Young Men. The birds all go for that, you know.”

  Pete only had one suit that met with Dick's approval. Unfortunately, it was his funeral suit, but Dick didn't reckon that mattered, said it was a step up from the baggy tweeds that Pete preferred. He demonstrated how to do up a tie so that it went in a smart thin line, and even went back to his own room to fetch some Brylcreem to tame Pete's unruly locks. Pete had never had such a fuss made over his appearance in all his life. Made him feel like a bloody girl, he said, as they finally made their way downstairs.

  “I know what you mean,” Dick quipped. “I feel like a girl myself. And tonight we might just strike it lucky…”

  There was a jazz band playing on the stage at the back of the hall, some kind of Twenties revivalists they looked with white tuxedos, dickie bow ties and plastered down hair. The singer was a tall, effeminate type, singing ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’ in falsetto, clear-cut vowels. There were a few couples waltzing around the dancefloor, but mainly, at this early stage of the evening, the two factions sat at tables facing each other across the great divide. Dick strode across to the bar, nodding at friends, taking in the scenery with an easy smile. Pete followed warily in his wake. As they waited for their drinks, Dick tapped his foot along to the band.

  “You like that, do you?” asked Pete doubtfully.

  “The Temperance Seven? Yeah, they're great. They've done a few of these dances here, I think they're local chaps, something to do with the art college scene. Great fun.”

  Dick passed a pint of ale over. “I thought you liked jazz?” he said.

  Pete took a sip. “Aye,” he said. “That's right.”

  His heavy frown just made his companion laugh.

  “Come on old son, lighten up. Here, I can already see a couple of birds looking over. I told you you'd be a hit in that suit, you grim Northern bugger. Makes you look even more dark and Satanic than you did before.”

  To Pete's surprise, Dick was actually right. Although his friend did most of the talking, leading the way into conversations with his easy charm and knack for smalltalk, it seemed to be Pete who they all looked at with hopeful eyes, asking polite questions which he did his best to answer without appearing too gruff or monosyballic.

  After a while, Dick persuaded the Diana Dors blonde he had his eye on to take to the floor, while the band played an annoyingly chirpy version of ‘Let's Call The Whole Thing Off’. Pete watched how they moved together. Tall and lithe, Dick had as much ease and grace on the dancefloor as he did in conversation, the pair of them affecting their own take on the Charleston, laughing through every moment. Pete wondered if he would ever feel so at ease, so carefree as that.

  “Excuse me,” came a voice beside him. “Do you have a light, please?”

  Pete turned. An elegant young woman had taken the empty seat next to him. Not quite Lana Turner, although her opening gambit struck a chord of amusement. She was very tall, very slim, her honey blonde hair cut short and neat with just the hint of a bouffant at the back. Her wide face was handsome, rather than pretty, but honest and strong and there was a look of purpose, challenge even, in her clever blue eyes, which exactly matched her soft wool pullover.

  “Certainly.” Pete fumbled inside his jacket pocket, hoping to God that somehow he did look like Humphrey Bogart or Albert Finney or someone like t
hat. Because for the first time in what seemed like an age, he felt an overwhelming surge of attraction.

  “Thank you,” she said, looking up at him through the smoke. Most of the women he'd been talking to all night were Irish, as Dick had predicted, or native Londoners. This one had something else to her voice, a rural burr, that added to her air of intrigue.

  “What's your name?” she continued, her eyes sparkling. But not with nervousness, like the others who'd tried to engage Pete in conversation all evening. With a sense of mischief instead. She crossed her long legs. She was wearing cream slacks, wide at the cuff, but they didn't disguise how shapely she was underneath. She was different to every other woman in the room, with their rigid hairdos and strappy gowns, far more stylish and far more at home with herself.

  “Pete,” he said, “Pete Bradley.” He cracked a smile to match hers, a genuine one, and offered her his hand. Around the table, the other women traded scowls.

  “I'm Joan,” she said. “Joan Wyles.”

  Suddenly, Pete could see the end to his lonely room in Hammersmith.

  10 PLEASE DON’T TOUCH

  Against the greyness of the December day, they were a sudden splash of colour. They came bouncing down the steps of a townhouse on Kensington Park Road, luminous orbs spilling out onto the pavement. As the oranges rolled towards me down the hill, I instinctively reached down to try and catch them.

  It was a bit of a fiasco – there were so many of them and they were moving fast, bouncing off my feet – and without a bag to put them in they were quite difficult to keep hold of. But once I had corralled them, fishing one out of the gutter and another from under the railings of the gardens, I looked up to see who had dropped them.

  She was standing at the top of the steps with one hand on her open mouth, the other limply hanging onto a broken string bag. Huddled inside an ancient fur coat and hat, she looked like a little bird that had puffed out all its plumage but was still losing the battle against the icy chill of the wind. My heart jumped when I realised who it was.

  Mya.

  “My dear girl,” she said and her face crinkled into a delighted smile as I trudged up the steps towards her. “How very kind of you. This silly bag has broken and I don't know what I would have done if I had lost them. It's getting so hard for me to bend down these days and my poor husband's gone down with a terrible cold, he needs all the vitamin C he can get. Would you mind just helping me get them inside?”

  I wondered if she recognised me. I had, after all, been wearing a ridiculous outfit the last time I had met her, and today, hidden under a duffel coat, a beret and one of Toby's old school scarves I scarcely looked like the same person.

  I followed her into a hallway, where the diffuse light straining through the grimy window over the door cast a dull pallor and the air smelt of mothballs, damp and dust. A staircase stretched up into the gloom ahead of us.

  “This way,” she said, turning around to smile at me again. “If you would be so kind.”

  The stairs were difficult for her, I could see. Her thin hand gripped the banister with whitening knuckles as she hauled herself up each one, her breath steadily becoming more laboured as she did so. A wave of sympathy washed over the anxiety I had at first felt about running into her. Now I was just glad that I had stopped to help an old lady in need.

  “Here we are,” she said, catching her breath outside the doorway of the first floor flat. She produced a bunch of keys from her crocodile handbag and began working her way down a series of locks.

  “I'm afraid our landlord,” she said, “isn't the most reasonable man. We've had to put on a couple that he doesn't have the copies for. Thankfully we were registered as Sitting Tenants before the Conservatives got back in. Ah, now, here we are. Cedric, dear,” her voice trilled, reedy and high, “I'm home.”

  Her hallway was just as I would have imagined it to be. Pots of aspidistras, an elephant's foot umbrella stand, a brass coat rack and a big, full-length mirror at the end of it. Aside from the framed circus posters and the stuffed lion, it was just like stepping into my Grandparents’ house.

  “Are you all right, girl?” I heard her husband's voice from the next room.

  “Yes dear, but I had a bit of an accident with your oranges, the bag broke and they tried to escape. Luckily, this lovely girl was here to help me. We'll just put them away and I'll be straight through.” She turned back to me. “If you don't mind just leaving them in the kitchen for me, I'll let you get on your way.”

  Her eyes were bright and kind but I still couldn't detect any hint of recognition in them. I followed her through to a small kitchen and deposited the errant oranges in a china fruitbowl on the sideboard. Then she led me back out into the hallway.

  “Well dear,” she said, opening her front door. “Thank you again, that was very kind of you, many's the person who would have walked straight by. You won't mind if I don't come back down the stairs with you?”

  “Of course not,” I said, strangely disappointed now that she hadn't asked me to stay for a cup of tea. But she was right; I had been in a hurry just before the oranges stopped me. I was headed to the bus stop to get the 52 into Kensington and put the finishing touches to my end of term show.

  “Now then.” She opened her handbag and I was about to protest, thinking she was going to give me some kind of reward money. But she extracted a small card, which she pressed into the palm of my hand. “Take this,” she said, “and if there's anything I can ever do for you in return, this is where to find me.” Her hand closed over mine for a moment before I stepped out into the gloom of the landing.

  “Goodbye dear,” she said, closing the door.

  I ran back across the road to the bus stop, wondering whether she had recognised me or not. The 52 was pulling in and I only just had time to jump on board and find myself a seat, absent-mindedly putting Mya's card into my bag. I promptly forgot all about it.

  “By heck.” Jackie's eyebrows shot up and her eyes widened. An expression of grudging admiration filtered through her down-turned mouth to curl back her top upper lip.

  We had reached the last night of our end-of-term exhibition, an extravaganza over three floors of the Fine Art annex in Exhibition Road which had been attracting a steady stream of viewers all week. Toby and his fellow Fine Artists were on the top floor; Graphics, Fashion and Textiles took over the second; and us General Art and Design bods got the bottom rung to ourselves. It was the Thursday before Christmas and events had turned distinctly festive since the GAD boys had put the contents of their cocktail cabinets together to produce some dubious-looking punch for the guests and gone around sticking sprigs of holly and mistletoe in inappropriate places over people's work.

  As the only girls in the room, Jackie and I had spent much longer than our peers carefully setting up our work to be viewed to its full advantage. We had canvases and collages galore, but it was our special projects that had really made us stand out.

  I had my jigsaw blocks and my dress. Jackie had the Cubist curtain print designs that she'd made in Textiles and a fantastic piece of stained glass. I had shied from the option of learning that arcane art, but when I saw what she'd come back with, I wished that I hadn't. She had made her most brilliant piece in indigo, turquoise and amber, a woman reclining in a bath, with all the colours of the beach and sea running through it. People had been stopping dead in front of it all evening.

  But now the gaze of the room followed Jackie's.

  “Oh my Lord,” I said, swivelling my own eyes in the same direction. Right on cue west London's very own Brigitte Bardot appeared, modelling my dress.

  Jenny had been reinstated at Vernon's Yard by the next time Toby and I had visited, sitting on a pile of Chinese silk cushions at Dave's feet, smoking languidly and looking more bored than ever. It was not long after the incident at Lenny's and Toby was still so amazed by what had happened that day that he'd instantly launched into a full dramatisation of the Buddy Holly séance. Wishing he hadn't, I told the others ho
w helpful Lenny had been with my dress. As soon as those words left my lips, the lights had come back on in Jenny's eyes.

  “She's got some attitude,” Jackie said, shaking her head. The two of them had only met for the first time that day and I wasn't sure if they were going to get on.

  Jenny came sashaying towards us, with dark black eyes and stark white lips, her hair dramatically cut into a bob. Now I could really see why Lenny had been so enthusiastic about my eye for the cut. As Jenny moved, the lines on the dress became a dazzling optical illusion, as if they themselves were dancing in front of your eyes, moving in waves, pouring in and out of the black hole printed on her left shoulder.

  Jenny's face lit up with a triumphant smile. “You see,” she said, stopping in front of us to pirouette round full circle. “I told you you could be a dress designer, Stella.”

  “Ain't it gorgeous?” Lenny stood behind her, beaming like a proud father.

  Jenny looked down through her false eyelashes at Jackie, amusement playing across her face. “I mean,” she said, “how could anyone resist?”

  Jackie grunted. “You scrub up a treat, love,” she said and turned back to her exhibit with a shrug, started talking to somebody else.

  Jenny laughed, turned her gaze back to me. “You wait, Stella,” she said. “They'll all come running.”

  She was right, too. Shortly after Jenny's grand entrance, I got a tap on the shoulder.

  “Excuse me.” It was a woman in an elegantly cut black suit. “Are you the designer of this dress?”

  It turned out she was a buyer from Dickens & Jones who was looking for new talent. She thought my dress was highly original and gave me her card, promising that she could set up a meeting as soon as was convenient. The moment I'd finished talking to her, someone else came up and asked me if it was possible to buy the dress off Jenny's back. Several others followed suit. By the end of the evening I had a fistful of business cards in my hands.