Lucky Bunny (9780062202512) (20 page)

He leapt up then, and put on the bedside lamp. The bedroom was full of a strange new smell, powerful. It soaked into the sheets and floated up from my skin. This time he wanted to watch my face, he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and slipping his hand under the covers; he wanted me to feel it, too.

I propped my head up on my elbow, turned on my side towards him, smiling.

Yes, in those early days, I was crazy about Tony, too; Tony was a marvel, he could do no wrong.

R
olling isn't much fun when it gets to October and the nights start drawing in, and the gas-lighter is coming by as early as six o'clock to light the lamps in the deepest streets of Soho, where this weird old man with a beard still goes from post to post, flicking open the casements of the lamps with his wand. It's too unpredictable for us to continue rolling for long, good though the money is, and there are too many brushes with the Messina brothers, especially the frightening one, Gino; the one not shy of using electric flex on his girls if they disobey him.

“You saved much, for the rent on the Frampton Park Estate?” I ask. Stella looks like I just asked her if the atomic bomb went off. To change the subject, she wonders where Tony is, didn't he say he'd look out for us, and she's had to fend for herself these last two nights.

“He's on a job,” I tell her, which is as much as he told me, although now that we're officially going together, he has at least admitted what it is: he does indeed work for a firm. He provides and fixes up the cars for blagging—robberies—and he's often the getaway driver. His boss, I somehow picked up, was behind the huge recent raid of gold bullion, valued at forty-five thousand, just outside the Dutch Airline offices, off Theobalds Road, which the papers were full of. Only sign of it for me was that Tony was flush suddenly, peeling off crisp white five-pound notes, in an inexplicable but familiar way. The way Dad used to be.

“Tony doesn't want me going out rolling, anyhow,” I tell Stella, proudly.

“What, bossing you round already, is he?” Stella says, her eyes on the window, watching the pavement outside on Frith Street, cars pulling up, couples arm in arm; five Chinese girls in blue aprons sitting on the steps outside their workplace, smoking and laughing; the place shedding its daytime colors and daytime characters for the darker, smokier ones of night.

“No . . . just taking care of me. I like it actually.”

“Well, I hope he's keeping his socks on in bed, then. If he's taking such bloody good care of you.”

I look a bit wide-eyed, pretending I don't know what she means. I wouldn't dream of asking Tony to use a French letter. In any case I know he'd refuse.

“He's like . . . he's told me about the other way,” I say, wanting to defend him. I don't like Stella's suggestion that he's bossing me around; I don't like her thinking that anyone could boss me around. “You know, the Catholics' way. Safe times. And then, when it's not safe, he can, you know, pull out . . .”

“Pull out!
”

She nearly chokes on her tea. Leaning forward she whispers, “I've heard him, Queenie. I wouldn't want to vouch for his self-control.”

I blush then, and stare down into my omelet and chips. Then we both crack up laughing.

“God—who's that?” Stella blurts.

A silver Rolls Royce has just pulled up on the curb of Frith Street, outside the window of the café we're in: The Caterer's Club. All the while we've been talking, Stella's been only half listening, craning her neck to see the comings and goings outside. We like it here because, though it used to be a place for waiters and chefs coming off their shifts, it's now well known as the hangout of some famous show-business faces from the theaters nearby and some of Arthur Rank's starlets.

I have my back to the window so I can't easily turn to stare. I have an impression of the swanky car sliding by and parking up; and the commotion it's causing; and a black-haired woman in a fur, and a curly-haired little girl.

“Is it Lady Docker?” I ask. The woman steps into the café, holding the little girl's hand, while the car keeps its engine purring, and the man stays inside, fugging it up with his cigar.

“Queenie!” A blast of Chanel No. 5, a froth of fur coat: I realize at once that it's not Lady Docker; it's Gloria.

“How lovely to see you, darling!” she says, beaming, and nodding to Stella. The little girl bats big eyes at us both. Gloria opens her bag and gives the child a shilling, then swiftly flips open her compact mirror to admire herself. Still the glossy black hair, piled on her head in curls, cherry-red lips, and impressive shelf of bust. I'm calculating how long it is since I've seen her. Not since school. She looks . . . older, with a more angular face than I remember. But then, staring at the creases fanning out from her eyes, as she puffs at her nose with powder, staring at herself in a little compact mirror, I think: I just didn't realize how old she was. Older than Mum. Twenty years older than me. So she must be nearly forty now.

Gloria turns to the child and says, “Go ask at the bar for a big glass of chocolate milk, there's a good girl,” and the girl turns on her heel while Gloria squeezes herself into a banquette beside Stella. Her voice, surprisingly posh, reverts to Cockney when she tells Stella to “shove up, gel.”

“That your daughter?” Stella asks, watching the child skip to the counter in her velvet-collared red coat and shiny black shoes.

“Oh, if only . . . we like to think so, don't we, sugar?” Gloria says, loudly, so that the child can hear. “No—it's my Ronald's little girl. Lost her mum, poor love. Ronald's a widower. His loss was my gain.” Gloria gives a little wave, through the window, to the old gent in the car outside. He gives a shy wave back and looks hurriedly forward, as if afraid to catch our eyes.

“He thinks you're working girls.” Gloria laughs.

Stella gives her a sharp look.

“Dear Ronald,” Gloria continues, beaming. “Wouldn't touch a brass with a barge-pole. Not these days, I mean. He'd be terrified I'd leave him. What a treasure! Everyone should have a Ronald,” Gloria sighs, happily.

“What does he do?” asks Stella.

“This is my friend, Stella,” I say.

“How d'you do, dear.” Gloria, quite a bit heavier than she used to be, squirms a little in her seat to try and extend her hand to Stella, to show that she's not offended by the direct question about Ronald, and then pops her compact away in the pink-fur lining of her crocodile clutch-bag. I find myself hoping that she might have a handbag I recognize, or a compact or cigarette case, but everything looks new. Four years. Nearly five. I'm being silly, I tell myself, to imagine that those things would be the same.

The curly-haired child returns with a big glass of milk and stands radiating sullenness towards us. She bangs her glass of chocolate milk on the table so hard that a little puddle spills. Gloria dabs at the splash with a napkin.

“Betty,” Gloria murmurs, “careful, sugar. My Ronald . . . cars. He owns a big company.” She whispers which one, as if the information would cause a riot. Then looks around the café, and back to Betty, dabbing gently at the child's chocolate-milk moustache. “He started life as a used car salesman, did Ronald . . . just like me dear old dad!”

She cracks a huge laugh, her gold earrings jingling as she moves her head. I find myself thinking: how funny, that it never occurred to me you had a dad, back then. Or to wonder about your family at all.

Betty slurps loudly at her drink through the straw, standing up to do so, so that she can blow bubbles in the tall glass and make the maximum noise and fuss. Gloria smiles indulgently at her, patting her on the arm, and then turns her attention to me.

“So—Bleedin' Nora, great to see you! How
are
you, Queenie?”

“I'm fine . . .”

“I heard from Annie you were . . . back.”

“Stella, get us a milk and a dash, will you?” I suggest.

“Huh? Why me?”

“I'll give you the money.”

Instead of getting up, Stella just signals to the waitress, making it clear she's staying put. The waitress, standing idly at the counter, puts her pencil behind her ear and hurries towards us, beaming all her attention to Gloria, obviously under the impression she's famous.

Gloria is staring at me, and opens her mouth as if she's going to speak. I think my eyes must show panic, or something, a silent plea for her not to mention anything, not to mention the subject I'm afraid she's going to mention; because whatever she was going to say, she closes her mouth again; seems to think better of it.

“Well,” Gloria says, after a few moments filled only with the sounds of Betty slurping up the dregs of the chocolate milk. “I only popped in here to get Betty a treat. Ronald hates this part of town. We live in Mayfair now . . . and we've got another place down in the country, you'll have to come to the house, Queenie.”

Standing up to leave, Gloria says formally to Stella, “Lovely to meet you, dear. Look after your friend Queenie for me, won't you? I'm very fond of her. And Queenie—you think about what I said. Everyone needs a Ronald . . .”

When she leaves, she carefully puts some notes under my plate and tells me that dinner's on her. I wait until she's in the car outside before glancing down. Fifty pounds, in brand-new tens.

S
tella and I can't stop talking about her, after she's gone. “Did you see that handbag?” Stella says. She
is
like Lady Docker, Norah Collins; we're always reading about her—didn't she marry that director from Fortnum and Mason first, and then he died, leaving her a quarter of a million pounds richer? And that was before the fella she has now, the Daimler one. Yes, the excess of it all appeals to us: gold-painted Daimlers, mink bikinis, three husbands. “Shame that the Shirley Temple brat comes with it, in Gloria's case,” Stella says, but I disagree. It's clear to me—and again, gives me a sudden new view of Gloria, the Gloria from my childhood—that Gloria loves kids. Probably wanted some of her own.

“Forty's ancient, so it's way too late now. Gloria's—you know—sort of a motherly person. I bet Betty's a real bonus,” I say, confidently.

We've been wasting our time with this rolling lark, we decide, after our glimpse of the gold and fur-lined life of Gloria. Much too dangerous, and at the moment it's too nippy, too. Yes, Soho is lively, and it's definitely a step up from getting ten shillings for giving some old geezer a plate in Cable Street, with the saddest, shabbiest tarts of all, but there are richer pickings elsewhere, we suddenly realize. Stella says she was talking to this girl called Ruth, who was one of the Rank girls, in a film with Diana Dors. She knows her and another girl called Vickie, who works in a higher class place, a club, with members, where not just any old rag-and-bone man can come in and you can meet all sorts: racing drivers, actors, dukes, businessmen.

“My granddad was a rag-and-bone man . . .” I pout, pretending to be offended.

Stella laughs her brilliant throaty laugh. And that's how we move on to our next job, working a little bit further West. Stella's in hearty agreement with Gloria. Everyone needs a Ronald.

I
t takes a while but we track her down. We go and visit this girl Ruth. She's working at the Little Club on the Brompton Road in Knightsbridge. It's winter by then. Soho is still strung with bedraggled leftover bunting in red, white, and blue, but this area of town looks to me like it didn't give a toss about having a new Queen: bunting is common.

It's early evening in winter, before the night takes off. I'd talked to Tony, told him that Stella and I had been talking of getting a proper job, receptionist or something, in a smart West End club and he said he “knew a fella” who owned that kind of place, and would ask around for me.

Ruth lives in the flat above the club on the Brompton Road, where she's employed as the manageress. We can smell the wealth as soon as we get to the door, and the sense of exclusivity is what appeals most; that's what we want. People have to sign in this little black leather book when they arrive. Members only, which keeps out the riffraff.

Stella and I sit with Ruth, smoking and sipping our coffees from these lovely white porcelain cups. Piano music is tinkling up to us from the club downstairs as the pianist warms up. All Ruth's underwear is drying on the little electric fire—every color of the rainbow, bras, lace panties—giving off this warm fresh laundry smell, mingling with her perfume: Christian Dior. Classy.

Yes, she's sophisticated, and smart, I'm thinking, and very pretty in a delicate, fine-boned kind of way. She's been in this film
Lady Godiva Rides Again
with Diana Dors and Joan Collins and she shows us the photo of them all, lined up in their bikinis. We can hardly recognize Ruth: her hair is black and she's plumper than the fine-featured, jittery blonde in front of us.

“I'm pregnant there,” Ruth says, without explaining further.

Diana Dors is easily recognizable: in the middle, of course, hogging the limelight. Joan Collins is the prettiest, with sort of highfalutin eyebrows that make her look the cleverest, too, and a Tahitian flower in her hair. I know Stella is disappointed that her own audition for
Rank
did not go well: she was told she was boss-eyed. (Her eyes
are
ever so slightly close together, come to think of it, but bloody hell, says Stella, so are the eyes of that new child actress everyone's going on about: Susan Bleeding Hampshire.)

Ruth has a black silk scarf tied around her neck and dangling earrings in Whitby Jet. We're laughing like schoolgirls over Ruth's “little black book” and the kinds of people in it. I notice that she has one hand that's sort of crippled looking, and seeing me glance at it, she tucks it under her and sits on it, and I feel guilty, and look away.