Free West End Girls: The Real Lives, Loves and Friendships of 1940s Soho and Its Working Girls by Barbara Tate Page A

bastard Charley has just had twenty-five quid out of me for electricity.’
     
    During the course of the following mornings, I spring-cleaned the bedroom and waiting room, polishing the furniture and the floor, shampooing the rugs and cleaning the paintwork. What had appeared to be brown lino in the little hallway and kitchen turned out to be cream tiles.
    With rubber gloves and a strong stomach, I turned out the cupboards and drawers in the kitchen. I found milk bottles with thick mould swimming on an inch or two of liquid; potatoes rotting among their own tendrils; smelly, lumpish dishcloths and other things I couldn’t even put a name to.
    After cramming all this into other people’s dustbins along the alleyway, I scrubbed everything in the kitchen and arranged my new cleaning materials on the shelves under the sink. Of provisions I found nothing, beyond the half-empty packet of tea, the tin of milk and the tiny amount of sugar that were in use, so I wrote out another shopping list and presented it to Mae.
    ‘You’ll break me!’ she said affably.
    The next time she went out, she dropped the order in at the nearest grocer’s. He soon turned up in person to satisfy his curiosity as to what had prompted this unprecedented demand.
    His first words were, of course, ‘You’re new here, aren’t you?’
    He scrutinised me carefully. ‘Haven’t seen you around the area before neither, I don’t think,’ he said, continuing his bird-like examination. I made no reply, and he rambled on. ‘Well, let me tell you, you’re on to a right gold mine with that one. They call her the Queen of Soho round here, you know. They say she can earn more than any other two of ’em put together. Must say, I’ve never known anything like her – and I’ve been around a good few years. Heart of gold, too: real ray of sunshine. Oh well, better be off; this won’t buy the baby a new bonnet, as they say!’
    With this, he nimbly trotted off down the stairs. Though I made allowances for exaggeration, I felt impressed and pleased with what I’d heard. To me, Mae had seemed to be special from the start, and it gave me great satisfaction to know that others regarded her that way too. So I, with my complete lack of credentials, was working for the Queen of Soho!
    Still musing on my new position in life, I began stacking the groceries into the meat safe. As I put the last couple of things away and stood admiring the effect, I heard Mae’s voice behind me:
    ‘You’re just like a bloody squirrel, you are!’
    I swung round in surprise. She had crept out from the bedroom and had been watching me. The way I saw her then is the way I so often see her now in my memory. It was such a characteristic pose: she was leaning against the door jamb, pulling on her gloves – she never went out without them – and squinting through her cigarette smoke. I will never forget her careless elegance. She was wearing a beautifully cut suit of mushroom gabardine, but whereas most women would have chosen a smart frilly blouse or a turtle-necked sweater to wear with it, all Mae had on underneath was a bra; between the immaculate lapels, her wonderful creamy cleavage was visible. Consequently, although she was dressed in the clothes of a lady, she looked like a tart – which, after all, was what she intended.
    ‘You look so nice,’ I told her.
    ‘But of course I do!’ she said with mock haughtiness, striking another elegant pose. Then, twirling the bunch of keys she always took with her, she was gone.
    I put some sugar in a bowl, made some sandwiches and cut the cake the grocer had brought. Later that afternoon, we sat down to tea like ordinary, respectable people. Laughing at the scene, Mae said that perhaps she’d been wrong about her flat being like a hospital: it was more like a vicarage.
    Despite her jokes, she must have caught the home-making bug too, because she started to bring in little things to improve the place – a couple of scatter cushions from