Bad Girls Good Women (12 page)

The woman from the Council had announced to Ted that there was evidence of neglect. Either the young ones must go to live with a relative, in more suitable circumstances, or a place would be found for them in a council home.

Ricky relayed the details with matter-of-fact calmness. He had worked out a way of living for himself, Mattie understood. Ricky would be all right, and Sam too. Sam was the family survivor, happy so long as he could play football on the scuffed fields beyond the estate. The younger ones, the girls, were living with Rozzie.

‘They’re okay,’ Ricky said. ‘It’s better than here.’

‘I know that,’ Mattie said heavily.

‘The council woman asked about you. Dad said you’d done a runner. He didn’t know where to, and didn’t care either.’

Mattie stood up quickly and put her cup with the rest of the dirty dishes. It seemed a pointless gesture to bother to wash it out.

‘I’m going to Rozzie’s to see them. Walk round there with me?’

Rozzie lived a mile away, further into the estate. They walked together, past the effortful gardens bright with zinnias and lobelia, and the rows of windows guarded by net curtains. Rozzie’s house was almost identical to the one they had just left, but better kept. The window frames and the door were painted maroon and there were marigolds growing under the windows.

Rozzie opened the door to them. Her flowered nylon housecoat hardly buttoned up over her stomach. She was eight months’ pregnant and her two-year-old son, runny-nosed, peered out from the shelter of her skirt. She didn’t smile.

‘So you’re back, then?’

Mattie nodded. Her sister had every right to be sullen, and Mattie had been expecting it. Rozzie was nineteen, and she had had to marry her car mechanic boyfriend two and a half years ago. The enchantment with one another had worn off almost before the wedding, and now they were confined here together with their baby. Then, suddenly, they had found themselves responsible for Rozzie’s little sisters, as well. ‘Just to see that you’re all right.’ Mattie added awkwardly, ‘And to say I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry?’

There was a silence, and then Rozzie jerked her head. ‘Well, you’d better come in. Phil? Marilyn? Mat’s here.’

They had been in the garden at the back, and they came pelting through to leap on to Mattie. She hugged them fiercely, pulling them close and burying her face against them.

They were well, and they looked happy enough. That was something.

For half an hour, they took all of Mattie’s attention. Then suddenly they were off, taking the little boy and Ricky with them. Mattie and Rozzie sat in the kitchen, drinking more watery coffee. The house was bleak and under-furnished, but it was clean. Mattie suddenly thought of Felix’s flat, with its simple, definite style and the bright touches of pottery and exotic Soho vegetables. She had got away, after all, and Rozzie hadn’t. Guilt dropped around her, weighty and sour with familiarity.

‘Do you need money?’ she blurted out. ‘I can send you my wages.’

‘We always need money, Barry and me. But Ted’s giving us plenty for the girls. Guilt money, isn’t it?’ They both knew that it was, of course. It would last for as long as he could hold on to the job. ‘You keep your wages. Until your plans work out, that is.’ Rozzie was teasing her, and they both laughed.

It was the right time for Mattie to leave. She didn’t want to stay to say difficult goodbyes to the younger ones.

‘Give them a kiss for me,’ she said abruptly. ‘Tell them I’ll be back to see them as soon as I can.’

She left Rozzie lighting another cigarette. The Orioles, ‘Cryin’ in the Chapel’, was on the wireless.

Mattie walked quickly, with her head up. The old widower in the house on the corner was cutting his square of grass and the scent of it mixed with the faint smell of flowers from the gardens. She looked past him as he paraded carefully with his mower, and she saw a man coming round the corner.

It was her father, and he saw her in the same instant. Mattie whirled round, looking for somewhere to run to, and he saw that too. He came towards her, past the old man and the patchy gardens. He was carrying a white paper bag, and there was a bottle under his arm. It wasn’t whisky, she saw. It was Tizer. He was bringing pop and sweets, an offering for his children.

He came closer, never taking his eyes off her, and then he stopped. He was so close that his body almost touched hers. Mattie stood rigidly.

‘You were going to run off, without even speaking to me. I’m still your dad, you know.’

There it was, the old, cajoling mock-severity. But less sure of itself now. There was wariness in his face. He was afraid, but he was still greedy. Mattie knew, and she shrank from what she remembered. He was guilty, and too weak to stop himself from compounding the guilt.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she whispered.

‘Where to? You’re here, aren’t you? You set the welfare people on me, didn’t you?’

She tried to square up to him. ‘I couldn’t leave Marilyn and Phil with you.’

‘Mat, what do you think I am?’

She knew him so well. His anger fronting his pathetic desires.

‘I know what you are,’ she said quietly.

She felt a momentary, viciously physical hatred of all men. But it was gone as quickly as it had come.

‘I wanted to say I was sorry, but you haven’t given me the chance,’ he said.

The creases in her father’s face touched her, and the sight of his big hand, dirty from work, still gripping the pop bottle. She loved him too, and she was exhausted by the obligations of love that pinioned her here amongst the boxy houses.

‘I’ve got to go.’ She was shouting, and the old man on the corner peered towards them.

Ted stared at her, stupidly. ‘Go where? I thought you were back. We can’t manage the place without you. We …’

‘You’ll have to manage. All of you.’

I’m not giving myself to you. I’m not going to sink down like Rozzie. I won’t. I can’t. I deserve better than that. I’m free now, aren’t I?
In her head she was already running, the words pounding with her.
I’m free, aren’t I?
Ted hadn’t touched her, but she felt as if she had to wrench herself out of his grasp.

‘I’ll come and see the kids when I can.’ Mattie was breathless with the effort.

‘What about me?’ Like a baby, his face puckering.

‘Nothing about you. Don’t you understand? Nothing.’

She broke past him then, and started to run. Her legs carried her around the corner and away. She ran as far as she could and then walked, not wanting to stop and wait for a bus, all the way to the station. She took the return ticket out of her pocket and held it in her clenched fist, the torn edge of it digging into her palm. The train came almost at once and she climbed into it and stumbled to a seat. The dust puffed out from the cushion behind her head.

Sitting there, watching the backs of the houses and the factories and warehouses peel away past her, Mattie promised herself,
I will do it. I’m going to be successful, and rich, and happy, and I won’t let that place pull me back again. None of the things that have happened matter at all, from now on. Only the things that are going to happen
.

She felt the resolution stiffening her, as if her spine was a steel shaft. She leaned forward to peer through the grimy carriage window, as if she could see more clearly what was coming.

The party was originally Julia’s idea, but Mattie seized on it with insistent enthusiasm. She seemed to light on everything now, Julia noticed, making whatever they did important just by concentrating very hard on it.

‘Give a party for Jessie? Of course we must do it. Listen, we’ll make it just like the old evenings that Jessie talks about. Squeeze everyone in, make sure everyone has a good time …’ Mattie snatched a piece of paper and a pencil, and began making a list. ‘Friends of ours, not too many, but enough. Felix will have to help us to round up Jessie’s friends. As many as we can. We’ll have singing, and vodka martinis …’

Mattie had been taken out once or twice by a dubious club owner, and he had introduced her to vodka martinis. Under the influence of three or four of them Mattie had had more trouble than usual in fending him off, and she had only managed the last time by jumping out of his Ford Zephyr and running away. The girls thought that the cocktails were the height of sophistication.

Plans for the party took off with surprising speed. Slightly to their surprise, even Felix plunged into them. ‘We’ll have to have it at home,’ he agreed. ‘Jessie won’t go out anywhere else. Leave it to me to invite the people she would like to see.’

They kept it a secret from her as long as they could, but they were too excited and the girls wanted to share the pleasure of anticipation with her.

‘Don’t be so silly,’ she snapped. ‘I’m past the age for all that nonsense.’ But they knew from the way that her eyes brightened that she was delighted.

Felix said that he would provide the food. Julia and Mattie, without thinking much about it, had imagined sandwiches.

‘Meat paste sandwiches, I suppose?’ Felix scoffed.

They realised that all the vodka martinis they could afford wouldn’t go far either.

‘Tell everyone to bring a bottle,’ Felix advised.

‘And what about the music?’ Felix’s record player was unreliable, and there was no piano in the flat so there was no point in Mattie and Julia dreaming of the kind of pianist who thumped out the old songs in Jessie’s stories.

‘Don’t worry,’ Felix answered. ‘Bish is coming.’

Jessie had told them all about that. Freddie Bishop played the mouth-organ to compete with a twenty-piece dance band.

On the day of the party, Felix went out very early, to Soho. He came back with two bulging shopping baskets and shut himself in the kitchen. Mattie and Julia contented themselves with pushing back the furniture in Jessie’s room, the only decently sized space in the flat. Then they turned their attention to Jessie herself. They rummaged mercilessly in her wardrobe, exclaiming and pulling out dresses and holding them up against her.

‘You’re wasting everyone’s time,’ Jessie said. ‘None of those things will go anywhere near me now.’

‘This red skirt will, look, it’s loose.’

‘And this coat with the sequins. You’ll look like Ella Fitzgerald. When did you wear all these wonderful things?’

‘In my heyday, dear, in my heyday.’

Mattie wound Jessie’s hair up on to rollers, and they practised painting her face with their Outdoor Girl cosmetics. By early evening she was giggling with them, as over-excited as a schoolgirl. Felix emerged from the kitchen with a blast of spicy cooking smells, and helped them to lay out the glasses and plates borrowed from a restaurant, one of Jessie’s old haunts. The proprietor and his wife had promised to come to the party after closing time. Then, when everything else was ready, Julia and Mattie retired to prepare themselves.

Mattie had made herself a dress, from a bolt of greeny-black shot taffeta with a bad flaw in it, picked up for a few shillings from one of the stalls at the top end of Berwick Street market. The bodice was strapless, and she had sewn it tight to show more of her cleavage. The skirt was full, puffed out with layers of net petticoats. Using her staff discount, she had bought herself a pair of wicked black stiletto-heeled shoes. They were so high that they made her almost as tall as Julia. Mattie brushed her hair out into a froth of curls, and then spun round, admiring herself, until her skirts whirled up to show her black stocking tops.

‘I just hope the top stays up,’ she murmured, hitching at it so that the creamy skin with its faint powdering of freckles bulged even more precariously over the taffeta.

Julia hated sewing. She had planned to make do with one of her own or Mattie’s dancing outfits, but in Jessie’s wardrobe she had discovered a red embroidered silk kimono. She wound it round herself, tighter and tighter, until it was a twisted column of scarlet splashed with fronds of abstract colour. She found a black silk shawl and tied it around her waist, letting the fringed ends trail down at the back. And, with a touch of last minute inspiration, she fasted her hair up on the top of her head, and stuck the poppies from an old hat into a comb at the back.

When they emerged, Jessie was sitting in her chair, dressed up, ready to hold court. Felix had been sitting beside her, filling her glass. He looked at Mattie and Julia, his eyes travelling critically up and down, while they held their breath.

And then he smiled.

‘At last,’ he pronounced. ‘You’re getting the idea.’ Mattie was like Turkish Delight, he thought. Scented and powdery and overpowering. Julia was a tall, white-skinned geisha, as clean and sappy as a peeled willow wand. His eyes slid back to her.

There was a moment’s silence and then, from far down at the bottom of the house beyond the empty offices, they heard the bell ringing.

‘People!’ Mattie yelled, and ran to the door.

By some miracle, the party, so casually and sketchily planned, was a roaring success from the very beginning.

The people flowed in and filled Jessie’s room, and overflowed into Felix’s bedroom and the kitchen and even the bathroom. Freddie Bishop perched on Mattie’s bed and played the mouth-organ, someone else had brought a guitar and a banjoist arrived after the pubs closed, and the guests danced and swayed and spilled down the stairs past the deserted offices. Most of them were Jessie’s old friends from her club days. There were men who brought their own whisky bottle and held firmly on to it, women who laughed a lot and shook their lacquered heads, singers and barmen and waiters and painters, and even one or two policemen. They mixed with big black men in trilby hats and coloured shirts, regulars from the Rocket, Felix’s student friends, and Johnny Flowers and his coterie who devoted themselves to pursuing Mattie and Julia, all together in a big, hot, happily drunken mêlée.

That first party became the prototype, in their memories, for all the others that followed it through the short Soho years.

There was never enough food. That night Felix had made chilli, in a huge saucepan, with red kidney beans and chopped steak, hot chorizo sausage and chillies, and it vanished in an instant, with a great vat of rice. But there was always drink, from the bottles brought in instead of invitation cards, and noisy music, familiar faces and beguiling new ones to focus on.