Bad Girls Good Women. Rosie Thomas

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.

      Jessie sat in state in her chair, presiding like a queen over the stream of people who came to greet her. Felix had done a wonderful job in searching them all out. Mattie and Julia danced, talked and laughed, and drank whatever was put into their hands. Even Felix, for once, was more of a participant than an observer.

      Johnny Flowers was drunk, but Julia thought she must be drunker. Everything seemed wonderfully funny and her legs kept twisting around themselves inside the tight kimono.

      ‘I saw you first,’ Johnny complained, as he tried to extricate her from the arms of one of his friends. ‘And you still owe me a pound.’

      ‘You said we were quits. Dance with Mattie.’

      ‘Everyone else in the room is falling over Mattie.’

      It was true. Mattie was in the middle of a tight circle. Her face was flushed, but she was in perfect control. She was very good at keeping the onslaught at arm’s length.

      ‘Sit down here with me, then.’

      Julia and Johnny slid down to the floor together. They sat with their backs propped against the wall, their knees drawn up to keep there feet from being trampled on. Felix saw them, but he didn’t let his attention wander from his conversation with a friend of Mr Mogridge’s.

      ‘You two,’ Johnny said admiringly. ‘Have you always been friends?’

      ‘Mattie and me? Yes, for ever. Since I was eleven and she was twelve. Do you know where I first saw her?’

      Johnny let his head fall on to her shoulder. ‘Mmm? Tell me.’

      ‘Blick Road Girls’ Grammar School. My first day. I can see her now.’ At the other end of a long corridor, Mattie had turned a corner, with the sun behind her. It shone through her hair, turning it into a pale and glamorous halo. But as she came closer, Julia saw that the halo had come to rest on the wrong head. Julia’s own uniform was pin-new, correct and proud in every fold and button. Mattie’s gym-slip was short and cinched in at the waist with a wide elastic belt. She had real breasts. There was no sign of the hideous bottle-green and chrome-yellow striped tie that they were all supposed to wear. Mattie’s grubby shirt was open at the neck, showing a deep V of milky skin powdered with freckles. Her white socks were as dirty as her shirt, and longer than the regulation ankle-length, emphasising the swell of her calves. Her shoes were the triumph. They were bright red, with pert little heels. ‘I thought she was wonderful. I wanted to be her. But I just said, “Excuse me, I’m lost.” Mattie looked me up and down, very very slowly, and then she put her head on one side and smiled at me. She said, “You don’t look lost. In fact you look as if you were manufactured here. Made in Blick Road.” I wanted to rip off my tie, and stuff it in my stupid shiny satchel, and throw the whole lot into the canal.’

      ‘But I did show you the way.’

      They looked up and saw Mattie leaning over them. Her breasts swelled inside the black taffeta and Johnny Flowers groaned. He reached up to cup one of them, but Mattie slapped his hand down.

      ‘Hands off the goods,’ she grinned.

      ‘And after that there was the Christmas Party,’ Julia reminded her. ‘Then I knew we had to be friends.’ They laughed delightedly at the memory of it. Fifty little girls in organdie dresses and white socks. And Mattie, with her hair up in a French pleat, done up in a bright blue shiny low-cut dress of her mother’s, with wedge-heeled peep-toe shoes, and real nylons. Most of the little girls giggled at her. It didn’t occur to them that Mattie might not have a party dress of her own to wear.

      There was a talent contest. Most of the contributions were piano duets, or recitations. And then, at the end, Mattie had jumped up on the stage to sing a song.

      The song was ‘Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me’.

      Mattie’s singing voice was unremarkable, but the enthusiasm of her delivery made up for that. She went through the volume range from whisper to shout, with a supporting repertoire of winks and smiles. The performance was absurd, but her confidence and a hint of real talent carried it off for her.

      The last line of the song, delivered at full-throated roar, was ‘Mama, he’s kissing me!’ In the crescendo of chords that followed as her pianist tried for her share of the limelight, Mattie pursed her red lips and blew a lingering kiss at the girls and teachers.

      There was a terrible silence.

      ‘It was Julia,’ Mattie remembered, ‘who jumped on to her chair and clapped her hands until they nearly fell off. It was after that that we made friends.’

      ‘And slid down together all the way to here.’

      They looked so young, and fresh, and pleased with their loucheness, even to Johnny who was hardly any older, that he laughed and draped his arms around their necks and kissed them.

      ‘C’mon, you two. I can’t handle you both. Let’s have another drink. By the way, who won the talent contest?’

      They stared at him, and then dissolved into giggles. ‘A girl with pigtails and glasses. Who recited Walter de la Mare.’

      Later, they weren’t sure how much later, they saw Jessie being helped to her feet, supported by two waiters from their favourite Italian restaurant. Julia was ready to run forward to help her, thinking that she must be overcome by heat or vodka, and then she saw that Jessie was beaming with pride. She held up her hand.

      ‘Albert’s asked me to sing. I couldn’t say no, could I?’

      There was an instant storm of cheers. Freddie Bishop wriggled forward and cupped his hands to his mouth yet again.

      Jessie sang.

      She loved all the old songs, of course, ‘We’ll Meet Again’, and ‘Tipperary’, and ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’. Everyone, all the people crowded in the smoky rooms, sang with her. Felix saw the rekindled light in her face, and he knew that in her heart she was back in her club bar, with the curtains tightly drawn, and her friends and customers around the piano. He looked across the room, and his eyes met Julia’s.

      ‘Thank you,’ he whispered to her through the singing, and she dipped her dark head at him.

      Jessie held up her huge, pale arms. ‘I’ve got two new friends,’ she called out, ‘who made this party for me, with my Felix. Come over here, both of you, and sing with me.’ She beckoned to Julia and Mattie. When they reached her Julia whispered, ‘I can’t sing. Mattie’ll do my bit for me. Jessie, do you know “Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me?” ’

      ‘Of course I know it,’ Jessie roared.

      They sang it together, the two of them, as if they had been rehearsing it for years. Julia saw that Mattie had grown into the ripeness that she had caricatured at Blick Road. The eyes of every man