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

home, an ornament or two. Now and again, when she came back with a man, she also brought something that had caught her eye in a shop. Once, it was an antique toasting fork – what she intended to do with it was a mystery – and on another occasion she produced an embroidered tea cosy and a pair of sugar tongs. All in all, we were really getting quite ‘refeened’, as Mae put it.
    The toilet we used was down on the floor below, and so that no one could lurk in there or leap out at us, we kept the key for it hanging in the kitchen. Clients who wanted to use the toilet were handed a bucket – ‘Because,’ said Mae, ‘if I let them go down there, they might suddenly change their minds about coming up again and scarper.’
    I was now wearing an apron: not exactly a typical frilly one, but enough to prevent the clients from being confused about my role. Furthermore, I wore my hair primly wound in a tight bun, high on the back of my head. I had reverted to the Sunlight-soap-and-no-make-up image, hoping that this might also help to make me appear just a little forbidding.
    I finally felt I had things under control. By arriving earlier than Mae each day, I could maintain things in reasonable order. By now, I had begun to turn out the drawers in her bedroom, and had mended a mass of various garments. I had also jettisoned about a hundred laddered stockings and was at last able to close the drawers properly.
    Now that I’d tidied up, I had more time to think during Mae’s frequent absences. This wasn’t altogether a good thing. I began to realise just how nerve-racking it was to be alone in that building – especially if Mae was out for longer than usual. The street door was always left open after she’d started work, and there was always the possibility of Rabbits coming up to vent her spite on me. Rabbits, though, was at least a known quantity; what I feared most was the unknown. Whenever I heard the slither of a man’s raincoat brushing against the sides of the narrow staircase when I was alone, I felt a mounting terror, rising to panic the moment before the customer came into view. When they had actually appeared and I could get a look at them and see that they were far more nervous than I was, my fears would subside.
    I had to make sure I listened out for anyone who came up, because, if someone did manage to get past our landing unheard, he could hide round the bend of the stairs above us, listening for Mae to go out, and get me on my own with the cash. There was a lot of money in the place, and the danger grew greater as the evening wore on into darkness and even more accumulated. The clients I had to be most wary of were the first-timers. Some were potentially nasty, and I often prayed that Mae would return before they became unpleasant.
    My anxiety didn’t end when the men disappeared into the bedroom with Mae. Though she always closed the bedroom door, it was left unlocked so that I could rush in if violence erupted.
    What I had come to regard as the ‘Rabbits Regime’ was still in full force, and I was getting used to the constant stream of men in and out. That is not to say I didn’t get the odd jolt. For example, Mae was closeted in the bedroom with a client one afternoon when I heard a tap on the entrance door. There had been no sound of footsteps and I looked up, startled, to see a vicar standing there, smiling benevolently. He looked so pure in contrast to the surroundings, with his honest, open face, fair hair and brilliant white dog collar. I was filled with confusion and felt pangs of guilt.
    ‘Is Mae in?’ he asked with a smile.
    So he knew her! Mae had never mentioned that she had any religious convictions: if she had, it was odd but not impossible. I stammered out that she was engaged for the moment. My hopes that he would go away were soon dashed.
    ‘Well in that case I’ll sit and wait for her, if you don’t mind,’ he said serenely. After a while he added: ‘I haven’t seen you here