Two for Sorrow (8 page)

Lettice looked up from the design she was working on and rinsed her paintbrush vigorously in a Staffordshire harvest jug which stood on her desk, chipped and missing its handle like most of the antiques she collected. ‘Cheer up, darling,' she said brightly. ‘It's nearly over.'

‘Is it, though? I know we've almost finished the costumes, but somebody'—Ronnie looked pointedly at her sister—‘somebody agreed to make the do-gooders' evening gowns for them and donate all the profits to the charity. So now we've got to clothe the whole of the bloody Cowdray Club as well as their ridiculous gala night.' Lettice caught her eye accusingly. ‘All right, I know there are only eight of them, but it
feels
like the whole club.'

‘Seven, darling—you can't count Josephine. It'll be so nice to see her.'

‘Of course it will, but I'll never understand how she can bear to rattle around with those harridans in Cavendish Square for weeks at a time.'

‘It's convenient for her, and she couldn't have come to us
this time—it's chaos here and even worse at Maiden Lane. She says the club's very comfortable, though.'

‘I'm sure it is, but all those women in one place …' Ronnie shuddered. ‘It can't be healthy, and they're so
dull
. It's as much as I can do to stay awake for the duration of a fitting. Fittings that your generosity has thrust upon us, I might add.'

‘I thought it would be a nice gesture to make the dresses as well,' Lettice said defensively, sucking the tip of her paintbrush to make a fine point. ‘The nurses are a very good cause, after all, and those ladies on the committee work so hard to raise money for them.'

‘Hard my arse! Swanning around with a glass of free champers in their hand?'

‘Oh, I'm sure it's not all galas.'

‘No—you're right. Twice a year they swap their designer gowns for some overalls and imagine they know what it's like to be a working girl. Jesus!' She held up her hands in exasperation. ‘I can think of a nice gesture, too, but I can make mine sitting down.' She lit a cigarette and demonstrated. ‘It
would
all have to happen when we've got work coming out of our ears, wouldn't it? There's all of Wendy's ballet to do before Christmas and we haven't even thought about
Bitter Harvest
yet—it's only a matter of time before the director asks to see the designs. In fact, we seem to have forgotten that we work in the theatre at all. Celia Bannerman and Amy Coward will be laughing their way to the bank in a haze of silk and chiffon, while our whole business goes to the dogs in tatters.'

‘Oh for goodness' sake, darling—you do exaggerate.' There was a knock at the door, and an attractive dark-haired girl poked her head round without waiting for a response. It was a face which would have been more at home on a cinema screen than
behind a sewing machine, and Lettice smiled at her, glad of some respite from Ronnie's tirade. ‘Yes, Marjorie—what is it?'

‘Mrs Reader says we've run out of black bugle beads, Miss, and someone from the club has just telephoned to see where the samples for the accessories are. Apparently you said one of us would drop them round to Cavendish Square. Do you want me to kill two birds with one stone?'

‘Only if I can choose the birds,' Ronnie muttered sarcastically.

‘Ignore her,' Lettice said, ‘and yes please—that would be very helpful. There might be some other things we need from Debenhams, though—give me five minutes and I'll bring you a list.'

Marjorie shut the door behind her and Ronnie raised an eyebrow. ‘So I exaggerate, do I? Accessories? They only have to snap their expensively manicured fingers for us to jump—and for what? The self-glorification of half a dozen bored women with more time and money than they know what to do with. Go on, admit it—you know I'm right.' She got up and looked over her sister's shoulders. ‘God, that's good,' she said, admiring the delicate image which was just receiving its finishing touches. ‘Please tell me we're not giving it away.'

‘Of course we're not.' Lettice tore the sheet of thick white paper impatiently from its pad and waved it back and forth a few times to dry the paint. ‘While you've been holding forth, I've been hard at it,' she said, and handed the page over smugly. ‘I think you'll find that Wendy's ballet has been taking shape without you.' Enjoying the surprise on Ronnie's face, she continued: ‘Anyway, not all charity is selfless—we took Marjorie on trust from prison and she's turned out to be the best seamstress we've got.'

‘All right, all right—I agree with you completely about that, but rehabilitation is a very different thing from meddling and fundraising. I'm proud that we've been able to give Marjorie a fresh start—she's not even quite such a cheeky little madam as she was when she first arrived.'

Lettice laughed. ‘I'm sure a girl needs a bit of spirit where she's been. Anyway, I always like to meet someone who can give you a run for your money.' She stood up and walked over to the glass that separated the main workroom from the small design studio which the sisters shared. ‘And the other girls seem to like her. I was worried they'd give her a hard time at first, but she settled in right away. It's hard to believe she's only been with us for six months.'

Ronnie stubbed her cigarette out and joined her sister at the window. ‘It's hard to believe that this is here at all,' she said, looking across at the roomful of women, engrossed in a series of small individual tasks that made up a remarkably successful whole—a business which now occupied two houses in St Martin's Lane and kept sixty people on the payroll, including thirty fulltime seamstresses. ‘The last eighteen months have been extraordinary, haven't they? First
Hamlet
, and now
Romeo
—we've never had better notices than the ones we're getting at the moment. Johnny's certainly been lucky for us.'

‘And Josephine—if it weren't for the success of
Richard of Bordeaux
, I'm not sure any of us would have had the freedom we've enjoyed since.'

They watched as their head cutter showed one of the newer girls how to work with a length of beautiful soft crêpe, reassuring her when she got it wrong and patiently starting again at the beginning. ‘Look at Hilda,' Ronnie said affectionately. ‘Do you remember when she taught us to cut fabric and make
up costumes like that? She was the village dressmaker's niece and we couldn't tell one end of a needle from the other—who'd have thought that we'd all end up here?'

‘And thank God she still enjoys it as much as we do. I suppose we could have our pick of cutters and supervisors now, but I honestly think the whole place would fall apart if Hilda left us.'

‘Then let's just pray that she doesn't—and if good works will keep the sun shining down on us, then I suppose we can afford a few free frocks. You'd better get that girl over there sharpish with her samples.'

Lettice jotted some items down on a bit of paper and went out into the workroom to deliver her list. ‘Ask them to put it all on our account,' she said, piling a glut of brightly coloured materials into Marjorie's arms to be parcelled up. ‘And deliver the samples to Miss Bannerman at the club, with this letter. We've only got a few days to make any alterations, so if she can send a couple of the women round this afternoon, that would be helpful. But don't be long—there's still so much to do today. Take the bus, and get back here by lunchtime at the latest.'

‘With the change from the bus fare,' Ronnie called, winking at the girl. ‘We know what you're like.'

‘If you did, Miss, you'd blush,' Marjorie said good-naturedly, winking back. ‘I'll see you later if I don't get a better offer.'

Marjorie went down the corridor to the small back room where the girls kept their outdoor clothes and rifled through the layers of coats and scarves which accumulated each morning, looking for her own modest raincoat. The racks held a hotch-potch of clothing, which functioned as a catalogue of styles from the last twenty years or more—the Motley sisters
were fair with their wages but a good coat, once afforded, was unlikely to be replaced quickly for the sake of fashion, even here. The varying shapes and sizes reminded her of her last day in prison, walking down the line of discharge cubicles to the one where her own clothes awaited her, past a series of outfits which would have been the envy of any jumble sale in London—petticoats, skirts and hand-knitted jumpers, some in preposterous colours, others faded and drab; some torn and stained, others smarter and more respectable. It was a brief glimpse of lives waiting to begin again, and it mattered because it was the moment when women found their old selves, free of the levelling effect of prison and the loss of individuality—femininity, even—which was standard Holloway procedure.

She found her coat and tied the belt tightly round her waist, remembering how, at the end of her last sentence, a fur coat had graced one of the cells, removed from its mothballs and looking as good as new after months of careful storage. A black crêpe de Chine dress was on a hanger next to it and, on the bench, washed and neatly folded, lay a pair of black silk panties, some stockings and a pale pink brassiere. Marjorie had stopped for a moment, transfixed by clothes which were so unfamiliar, and had tried to imagine how the underwear would feel against her skin. What sort of life would she be returning to if she owned clothes like that? she wondered, but the prison officer moved her roughly on to the end of the row before she could decide and she became Marjorie Baker again, equal to the best of them while she was inside but nothing special anywhere else. The sight of her own clothes mocked any illusions she might still have harboured. There was no need for a hanger here: the worn woollen cardigan, second-hand skirt and loose-fitting stockings—mended and torn again, just like her life
sat in a shapeless pile on a chair. She had been brought in to Holloway in winter; now it was May, but no one at home could be bothered to bring her clothes better suited to a summer release and she had been too proud to accept the offer of something from the prisoners' aid store. Shaking off the memory, Marjorie picked up the parcel and envelopes, then, as she noticed a lipstick poking out of one of the girls' pockets, put it down again and helped herself. It would have been easy to take a few bob from these pockets, but the theft would surely be traced back to her and, in any case, she had never had the stomach for stealing from her own sort. She examined her reflection in a small powder compact which someone had obligingly left out, then put the lipstick back where it came from. Even now, six months after her release, she found it hard to get the thought of those other clothes out of her head. But that was her trouble—her mother had often said so, and Marjorie knew she was right. She was never satisfied, never had been. She always wanted something more.

Not that there had been much to be satisfied with until now, she thought, picking her way carefully down the iron staircase which led out into the cobbled courtyard at the back of the premises. Being brought up in Campbell Road—the sort of street you had to lie about living in if you were to stand a chance in hell of getting work—wasn't exactly the perfect start in life. Seven households shared number 35, and the Bakers had a room at the top, across the landing from a knife-grinder and his family. There was nothing unusual about their slum; the pattern was repeated all the way up the street, and she'd had to laugh back in May, just after she came out, when the old Poor But Loyal bedsheet banner was dragged out for the Jubilee, just like it always was for any day of national celebration. There it
hung, amongst the tattered bunting and faded Union Jacks—but loyal to what? she had wondered. To a king who didn't even know they existed? Or to the good old days of community life, when Campbell Road muddled through, immune to interference from outsiders? Surely the only people who truly believed that were the ones who had never lived there. As far as Marjorie was concerned, the only thing the street had going for it was its proximity to Holloway; at least she never had to worry about finding the bus fare home when they let her out.

She crossed St Martin's Lane and cut through Cecil Court, passing between two theatres to get to Charing Cross Road. A bus was already in sight and she had to run to catch it, but the pavements were quiet at this time of the morning and she reached the stop in plenty of time. Although there was scarcely anybody on board, a man gave up his seat for her at the front of the lower deck. She accepted it with a polite smile, then looked steadfastly out of the window, making it impossible for him to benefit from his gallantry by forcing a conversation. If there was one important lesson that her father had taught her, it was that men were not to be relied upon for anything in life, and she had long since perfected a way of discouraging them from believing that her good looks were any reason to be hopeful. He was a waster, her dad—and had been for as long as she could remember. A builder's labourer by trade, he travelled all over north London but they were lucky if he came home with thirty shillings a week and, when he wasn't working, he was in and out of jail on a series of petty charges. He was a philanderer, too—she had known what that was long before she ever heard the word—and he had made the years that followed the war work for him, taking advantage of women who, with a shortage of men and no prospects of their own marriage, were prepared to
lower their standards and settle for a share in somebody else's. She hated his weakness and his cheap opportunism, but despised her mother even more for allowing it to happen. In her mother's unquestioning acceptance of her lot, Marjorie had seen the image of her own future. It rang a warning bell in her head, louder and more lasting than any deterrent which an institution could throw at her, and it told her to make self-reliance her guiding principle—no matter how much trouble that brought or what the consequences were.