London Belles
In the event of the country going to war against Germany plans had already been made for most of the hospital staff and the patients to be moved out of London, partially for safety, and partially to make sure that there would be operating theatres and beds available for the injured should the city be bombed. Only a skeleton staff would remain here in London with Barts doctors and surgeons travelling between the evacuated patients in the country and the hospital here in the city. As a temporary member of Barts’ staff, Sally had volunteered to stay in London for the duration of her one-year contract. Right now she felt that she preferred the anonymity of working hard in a busy city where people came and went without their lives really touching, to making close friends.
It wasn’t easy, though, to think about making a new life and home for herself here in London when her heart yearned for Liverpool and her home. No, not her home any more. Her home, like her father, now belonged to someone else who had far stronger claim on them than she did, despite all the false protestations and pleas that had been made for her to stay.
Stay? When she had been so betrayed? Now she was going to cry . . .
She stared up at the Hogarth scenes as though in doing so she might be able to force back her emotions, oblivious to the fact that she herself was being watched until a quiet male voice beside her remarked, thoughtfully, ‘As a surgeon I can never pass this painting without reflecting on Hogarth’s skill in understanding the needs and desires of the human race.’
Sally whirled round, dumbstruck with chagrin at the familiar sound of the voice of one of the hospital’s most senior consultants, the world-famous plastic surgeon Sir Harold Delf Gillies. Sally recognised his voice so easily because only a matter of days ago she had been on theatre duty when the great man had operated for the benefit of his students on a young child with a hare lip. Now overcome with self-consciousness and the fact that so great a personage should deign to speak to her outside the operating theatre, she could only nod her head.
‘There is a great deal to be learned from history,’ Sir Harold continued. ‘It is said that when Hogarth learned that St Bartholomew’s Founders were going to engage an artist from overseas because they could not afford the fees of a British artist, he immediately offered to provide the hospital with two paintings free of cost, thus echoing the same charitable impulse that had led to the hospital coming into being in the first place, and possibly with the same practical eye for the future, knowing that just as the Founders’ charitable donations to the hospital would carry their names and their charity into the future, so his paintings would be here for us to see and marvel over. It is a foolish or perhaps overproud man – or woman – who does not sometimes reflect on how history will judge them.’
Knowing the pioneering work Sir Harold had undertaken, Sally could only swallow hard and nod again.
‘You have a natural bent for theatre work, Nurse, and I think the temperament for it.’
Sally was still trying to come to terms with the gift of his compliment several minutes after he had gone. Merely to have had the famous surgeon speak to her was more than any well-trained nurse ever expected, never mind being recognised by him and then praised for her ability.
It wasn’t so much Sir Harold’s praise that lingered on in her thoughts as she made her way to the nurses’ home where she was living, though, as much as his comment about how a person might be judged.
Did her father ever worry about how he might be judged? Did her ex-best friend?
‘Take in lodgers?’ Unwittingly repeating the words of their neighbour, Tilly stared at her mother in astonishment, over the deliciously scented and gently steaming serving of fish pie that Olive had just dished up for her.
Her mother was a wonderful cook, and even though they were C of E, not Catholic, they always had fish on Fridays. Fish pie with lovely creamy mash, parsley sauce and peas was one of Tilly’s favourite meals. Now, looking at her mother, her shiny almost black curls – which Tilly had inherited from her, along with her sea-green eyes and pale Celtic skin – caught back in a neat bun, a faint flush warming her skin, Tilly felt the urge to protest that she didn’t want them to have any lodgers, and that she had been looking forward to it just being the two of them after the long years of her mother nursing her in-laws.
But before she could do so her mother told her gently, as though she knew what she was feeling, ‘We have to, Tilly, love. Bills don’t pay themselves, you know, and without your granddad’s pension coming in, I’d have to go back to cleaning or taking in washing, and I reckon that I’d be better taking in lodgers than doing that.’
‘But it will mean you looking after them, Mum, just like you did with Gran and Granddad.’
Olive shook her head, dislodging a small curl from her bun, which she tucked back behind her ear. At thirty-five, her figure as neat as it had been the day she’d met Tilly’s father, she was glad that Tilly had inherited her own looks from the Irish side of her family, and her own trim figure with them. Though with that kind of beauty, Olive would never want Tilly to use her looks in the cheap kind of way that some young women did. A pretty face could bring trouble on a girl who didn’t stick to society’s rules. Even here, on respectable Article Row, there had been daughters who had been married with unseemly haste, and babies born ‘at seven months’ whilst weighing as much as any full-term infant. Not that Olive was in any hurry to see Tilly married. Her own experience as a young wife, a young mother and then a young widow meant she felt it was more important right now that Tilly was equipped with the means of earning her own living because you never knew what the future might hold. Of course, Olive would never share those views with anyone else. Good mothers were expected to want good marriages for their daughters, not financial independence.
‘No, what I’m thinking, Tilly, is advertising only for respectable female lodgers, young women who will keep their rooms tidy and look after them.’
‘But we’ve only got two spare bedrooms.’
‘And an extra bathroom – don’t forget about that. I know I said at the time that I couldn’t see why your grandfather wouldn’t have his bed moved downstairs to the front parlour, which would have been much easier for me, but now I think having that will help us to get the right kind of young women wanting those attic rooms.’
Olive went over to her daughter, smoothing her curls back off her face and dropping a kiss on her forehead as she told her, ‘You’ll see, it will all work out for the best.’
‘But what if there’s a war, Mum, and the lodgers and us get evacuated?’
Olive’s expression firmed. ‘No one’s going to evacuate me from this house, Tilly, I can tell you that, and we don’t know yet that there will be a war.’
‘But what if there is?’ Tilly persisted. ‘I’m not a child any more, Mum. I read the papers and listen to the news. There’s all that blackout material you bought for us to cover the windows with, and our gas masks. No one’s said anything about us handing them back, have they? And boys are still having to do their military training. Clara in the office said only tonight that her Harry is going to be starting his soon. I don’t want you worrying about things and not telling me, Mum. I want to share them with you.’
Olive smiled both sadly and proudly, as she stroked the silky darkness of her daughter’s hair.
‘You’re right,’ she agreed. ‘You aren’t a little girl, you’re a young woman, Tilly, and if there’s to be a war, then we’ll deal with whatever it brings us together.’
They smiled at one another, and then Olive added briskly, ‘Meanwhile, as soon as we’ve finished eating and washed up, you and me are going to sit down and write out an advertisement to let the attic rooms. I was thinking that if you could get permission to type it on your typewriter at work then it would look properly businesslike and attract the right kind of lodger. Now eat your fish pie before it goes cold.’
Later that evening, in her bedroom, cold-creaming her face before she went to bed, Olive paused. There would be those Olive knew who would disapprove of her plans and even be opposed to them. A small tremble, part apprehension and part determination, ran through her body. Her father-in-law had been fond of boasting that he had got this house at a good price because of its number – thirteen. Thirteen was lucky for some, he had often said, giving a wink as he added, ‘Especially for those who have the good sense to make their own luck.’
Now with the respectable silence of the Row settling round its inhabitants, Olive hoped desperately that it would be lucky for her as well in her new venture. Because if it wasn’t then she would face having to sell the house, and she and Tilly would have to take a step down in the world.
Chapter Two
‘David, do come along, otherwise we’re going to be late meeting Emily and Jonathon at the Ritz.’ The sharp female voice was accompanied by an equally sharp and pointed glare in Dulcie’s direction, as the smartly dressed brunette placed a very possessive and expensively leather-gloved hand on the arm of the dashingly handsome man Dulcie had been flirting with from behind her makeup counter in Selfridges cosmetics and perfume department.
‘You’ll be for it now,’ Lizzie Walters came out from behind her own counter to inform Dulcie. ‘You know who she is, don’t you?’
‘No. And I don’t care either,’ Dulcie informed the other girl, tossing the blonde hair that swept down onto her shoulders as she did so, her attention more on her own reflection in the nearby mirror than on what Lizzie was saying to her. And hers was a reflection well worth any man’s second look, Dulcie knew. She was, after all, a looker. Everyone said so. It was her looks that had got her this very desirable job at the department store in the first place. Women customers looked at Dulcie’s flawless complexion, and the way in which the makeup she was wearing emphasised her dark brown eyes and her pouting lips, and wanted to look like her, whilst men listened mesmerised when Dulcie sprayed her wrist with scent and then invited them to ‘test’ the fragrance. It was perhaps no wonder that in the six months she had been working in Selfridges, Dulcie’s sales had earned her praise from their supervisor, but Dulcie herself had become unpopular with some of the other girls. Not Lizzie, though. Lizzie, small, plain and good-natured, worked on a counter selling bath salts, favoured by the store’s more elderly Home Counties customers.
‘Well, you should care,’ Lizzie warned, ‘because her dad’s one of the directors here. Arlene wot works on the Elizabeth Arden counter and whose dad is one of the managers is pally with her.’
Dulcie tossed her head again. ‘You mean that Arlene sucks up to her. Well, I’m not going to. And anyway, it’s not my fault that her beau was gentlemanly enough to pay me a compliment.’
Lizzie gave her an old-fashioned look. ‘Wasn’t it? I mean, the way you put that lippy on yourself and then pouted at him like you did . . .’
‘I was just showing him how it looked on,’ Dulcie defended herself virtuously. ‘So who is he anyway, then?’
Lizzie knew everything about the store and those who worked there. She’d been there herself for over ten years, after all.
‘David James-Thompson, his name is, and he’s proper posh. Lydia Whittingham met him at a house party in Surrey, according to Arlene, and the talk is that she’s going to land him and that they’ll get engaged this Christmas.’
‘Well, good luck to her, but I can’t say as I’d want to get engaged to a chap who’s always going to have an eye for other girls and flirt with them.’
‘You encouraged him.’
‘He didn’t need encouraging; that kind never does,’ Dulcie retorted smugly. ‘You can take my word for it.’
It was true. One look into David James-Thompson’s laughing hazel eyes and she’d known exactly what sort he was. Her sort, with his good looks, his thick wavy brown hair, his dashing man-of-the-world air, and most of all the devilment she had seen glinting in his eyes when he had looked at her so appreciatively. Whatever else David James-Thompson was, it certainly wasn’t good marriage material.
‘I must say, I envy Lydia being taken to the Ritz,’ Lizzie continued.
‘Well, I don’t. If he was to ask me out, I’d want to go somewhere like the Hammersmith Palais where we could have a bit of fun, not the Ritz, with all those posh types and snobs.’
Lizzie laughed at her. ‘The Palais? You’d never get a man like him going somewhere like that.’
‘Want to bet?’ Dulcie challenged her. Everyone knew that the Hammersmith Palais was simply the best dancehall in London. That was why Dulcie was prepared to make the trek from the East End to Hammersmith every Saturday night, instead of going somewhere local.
‘Don’t be daft,’ Lizzie said, but Dulcie persisted.
‘Come on, bet you five bob I can get him to meet me at the Palais, and before Christmas.’
‘You’re never serious.’
‘I certainly am.’ It was just the sort of challenge that Dulcie loved; daring, reckless, breaking the rules, pushing against boundaries, and using her looks to get her own way.
Born into a noisy cockney family, with an elder brother and a younger sister, Dulcie had learned young that she had to fight and use what nature had given her to get what she wanted, and to hang on to it once she had.
Two hours later Dulcie had left Selfridges and Oxford Street behind her, along with her white overall with its pink collar and trimmings. An admiring look from a motorist in a rakish-looking soft-topped car had her pausing to admire her reflection in a nearby shop window, and reflect that the bows she had added to the dress she was wearing, and which she had had copied by a local dressmaker from her own sketches of a dress in Selfridges Young Ladies Models Department looked much fancier than the original. The dress had small puffed sleeves and a close-fitting bodice, the bows adorning the ends of the long seams that ran from the bust down to below the waist. The fabric – silk, no less – had a dark plum background and was covered in a pansy print in a variety of hues from pale lilac through off-white to darkest purple – colours that suited her dark eyes and nicely tanned arms and legs, as well, of course, as drawing attention to her blonde hair.
White opened-toed high-heeled sandals and a white handbag completed her outfit, and Dulcie wasn’t in the least bit surprised that men turned to look at her and other women cast her assessing and very often antagonistic looks. She was nineteen now and she’d known from being fourteen that she was a head-turner. She’d had more boys asking her for dates than any of the other girls in the bustling street where her family lived, but Dulcie wasn’t daft. They could take her out but they weren’t going to take her for a ride. There was no way that she was going to end up married to some no-hoper and a new baby on the way every year, like the girls she’d been at school with and her own mother. She would marry one day, of course – every woman had to have a husband to keep her – but first she wanted to have fun. And fun for Dulcie was flirting and dressing up and going out to the pictures, or a dance hall. Once she agreed to be someone’s steady girl, all that would have to come to an end, and she wasn’t ready for that – not yet.
Gleefully she imagined her triumph when she won her bet with Lizzie. A double triumph since in achieving it she would be getting the better of Miss Hoity-Toity, with her stuck-up airs and graces. Dulcie had no doubts about the success of her plan. David James-Thompson would come back to the shop. She knew men and she knew what that gleam in his eyes had meant. He was up for some fun and so was she, although their ideas of what fun was might not be exactly the same. There was no way she would let him get into her knickers. She wasn’t daft. He was the sort that would run a mile if he thought he’d got her sort into trouble. But that wasn’t going to happen.
She joined the queue waiting for the bus that would take her home to Stepney in the East End. Her father worked in the building trade as a plumber, and the family had a better standard of living than many of their neighbours, with a whole house to themselves, though Dulcie and her sister had to share a room and a bed.
When she did get married she wasn’t going to be like her mother and have three children – six, if you counted the three that had died before being born. Dulcie didn’t really want any children at all.
The bus was crowded and Dulcie had to stand, strap hanging and receiving an admiring look from the young conductor, who had to squeeze past her as he collected everyone’s fares, whilst the bus lurched away from the kerb and pulled out into the traffic.
Dulcie was glad when the bus finally reached her stop and she was able to get off. There’d been an old man coughing away the whole time Dulcie had been standing close to him. A really poor sort he’d looked too, smelling of drink and his clothes shabby. Dulcie wrinkled her nose as she left the bus stop.
There was a pub on the corner of the street up ahead of her. Automatically Dulcie crossed the road to avoid having to walk past the group of men and women standing outside it. There were two families in their street who were notorious for the rows and fights they had when they’d been drinking. The Hitchins at number 4 and the Abbotts at number 9. It was nothing unusual to see both husbands and wives sporting bruises and black eyes. Ma Hitchins, all twenty stone of her, loved nothing better than a good set-to, rolling up her sleeves at the drop of a wrong word, ready to go into battle, and her children, as thin and cowed as she was fat and aggressive, knew better than to approach their mother when she’d had a few drinks. ‘Poor little ragamuffins’ was what Dulcie’s own mother called them.
The house Dulcie’s parents rented was halfway down the street at number 11. Cheaply built and mean-looking, the houses cast shadows over the street that stole its sunlight.
The street was busy with its normal early evening summer life; children playing with hoops and balls, grandmothers sitting on front steps and gossiping, men returning home from work. Dulcie knew everyone who lived there and they knew her.
‘Fancy going down the pictures tonight, Dulce?’ one of a group of young men called out to her as he sat astride his bike, smoking a cigarette.
‘Not with you and them roving hands of yours, I don’t, Jimmy Watson,’ Duclie called back without stopping.
She and Jimmy Watson had gone to school together, and he was a friend of her older brother, Rick.
‘Heard the news, have you?’ Jimmy carried on undeterred. ‘About me and your Rick getting our papers.’
‘So what’s news about that?’ Dulcie challenged him ‘Every lad’s getting called up.’ She had reached her own front door now, which, like most of the doors in the street, was standing open.
‘It’s me, Ma,’ she called out from the hall.
‘About time. I need a hand here in the kitchen, Dulcie, getting tea ready.’
‘It’s Edith’s turn. And besides, I’ve got to go upstairs and get changed.’
Edith and Dulcie didn’t get on. Edith had aspirations to become a professional singer. She did have a goodish voice, Dulcie acknowledged grudgingly, but that was no reason for their mother to spoil and pet her in the way that she did, letting her off chores so that she could ‘practise’ singing her scales. Dulcie suspected that Edith was very much their mother’s favourite.
‘She’s got an audition tonight, down at the Holborn Empire, and with Charlie Kunz, as an understudy for one of his singers,’ her mother told Dulcie importantly. Charlie Kunz was a very well-known musician and band leader, who had made many records.
Dulcie, though, refused to be impressed, puckering up her lips to study her reflection in the small mirror incorporated into the dark-oak-stained hat and coat stand. That new lipstick sample she was wearing suited her a real treat. She’d have to find a way of making sure it got ‘lost’ and then found its way into her handbag, she decided, giving her full cherry-red lips another approving look.
Everyone at home had laughed at her when she had first announced that she wanted to work in the makeup department of Selfridges.
‘You’ll never get taken on by a posh place like that,’ her mother had warned her. ‘If you want fancy shop work then why not ask Mr Bryant at the chemist’s if he’ll take you on?’
‘Work in that musty old place, handing out aspirin and haemorrhoid cream? No, thanks. I will get a job at Selfridges, just you watch.’
And of course she had, even if it had taken her six months of persistence to do so, first turning up and hanging about chatting with the cleaners and the like, finding out what was what and, more importantly, who was who.
Once she’d got all the information she needed, the rest had been easy. Ignoring the disapproving looks of the female lift attendants in their dashing Cossack-style uniforms, every day for a week she’d ‘accidentally’ ridden up in the lift with the manager of the ground-floor cosmetics department, on his way to have his morning coffee in the managerial restaurant, until, via a carefully planned process of acknowledging his presence with a shy smile, through to a welcoming smile that lit up her whole face, he finally asked her which department she worked in. That had been her cue to explain, fake modestly, using the ‘posh voice’ she had learned to mimic, that she didn’t actually have a job at Selfridges, and that she rode in the lift every day hoping to pluck up the courage to put herself forward for one.
The manager had been totally taken in. Her pretty face and perfect skin would be a definite asset to his department. Dulcie had been whisked through the formalities of becoming an employee, but although she might have charmed and taken in the manager, the girls she worked with were not as easily won over. Middle-class girls in the main, and protective of their own status, they were quick to sense that Dulcie was not really one of them. It wasn’t just because they thought of her as lower class that they kept her at a distance, though. In Dulcie’s eyes the truth was that it was because she was by far and away the best-looking girl on the whole of the cosmetics floor. Not that their hostility bothered her. She had wangled things so that her counter, the ‘Movie Star’ range of makeup, was almost the first that people – men – saw when they walked onto the floor, which meant that she got plenty of customers. Traditionally, Selfridges had its perfume counters close to the main doors on Mr Selfridge’s instructions, so that customers coming in would receive a delicious waft of perfume. The idea was that this would tempt them to the counter to buy, as well as adding to the allure and exclusivity of the store itself.
It wasn’t just her pretty face that kept Dulcie’s sales up, though. She knew how to sell, and how to make ‘her’ customers want to come back to her. The reality may be that ‘Movie Star’ makeup was made in a factory not very far away at all from Smithfield Market, but its management, like Dulcie herself, were determined to ensure that their cosmetics reflected the glamour of Hollywood films and encouraged customers to think that by buying it they too could look like their favourite movie star – or, failing that, the pretty girl who had sold them their precious new lipstick. The manager was very pleased with his decision to take her on, and Dulcie was equally pleased with her own success. Even the senior buyer for the cosmetics floor, Miss Nellie Ellit, had made it her business to seek Dulcie out and give her the once-over. It was thanks to Miss Ellit that Selfridges was well stocked with lipsticks ahead of war potentially breaking out, with more orders soon to be delivered.
So much for her brother, Rick’s, teasing that the only job she was likely to get in Selfridges was scrubbing its floors.