Free Climbing the Stairs by Margaret Powell Page B

That is if we ever managed to get out with these two remarkable young men.
    One night they began calling out to us asking what tunes we’d like them to play – and that was something that sort of made you feel somebody.
    I forget what sort of numbers were popular at that time or how we knew they were. I suppose the errand boys were our disc jockeys then, because whenever a hit tune came out all the errand boys
would be riding about on their bicycles whistling it.
    I used to like the soulful sentimental numbers like You Were Meant For Me – romantic things – not like these pop things they have now which seem to be full of hidden meanings.
You don’t know whether it’s an exercise in sex or whether it’s a song.
    Anyway after we’d chosen a few tunes, a waiter came over with a note from one of them – I don’t know whether it was the drummer or the pianist – asking if we could meet
them one night.
    Well, you can imagine Gladys and me; we were in a seventh heaven thinking that these beautiful bandsmen had actually invited us out. We sent back a note by the waiter saying that we’d meet
them at five o’clock on the next Wednesday. We said five because that would give us extra time to do ourselves up and make ourselves look attractive.
    And then Gladys said to me, ‘On no account tell them that we’re in domestic service.’
    So I said, ‘Well, they’re bound to wonder what we do because we have to get in at half past nine.’
    We sat there searching our brains. First of all we were secretaries to someone or other and we were doing night work or then we were looking after an art gallery at night.
    I said, ‘They won’t believe anything like that at all, Gladys, so it’s no use coming out with those cock and bull things.’
    At last we settled on a story that we were cousins. We didn’t like to say we were sisters because we were so unlike – and her mother was an invalid and we had to be back at half past
nine because the person who looked after her wouldn’t stay any later. It sounded a bit thin but it would do.
    But after all this planning and scheming we got a horrible shock. There we stood on the corner where we’d arranged to meet at five o’clock and when they came in sight a couple of
more insignificant-looking creatures you’ve never seen in your life.
    In uniform and sitting down they looked marvellous but out of uniform and standing up they were simply ciphers. Both about five foot four. We towered above them. And they were wearing horrible
flashy light-blue pinstripe suits, gingery-coloured shoes and trilby hats. You’ve never seen anything like it in your life.
    I was horrified to think of all the work we’d put in night after night to get this couple to take us out.
    Gladys whispered to me, ‘Let’s get them in the flicks as quick as we can so that nobody sees them.’
    This we did. And while I was sitting there I couldn’t help thinking of all the young men you read about. The favourite novelists at that time were Elinor Glyn, Ethel M. Dell and Charles
Garvice. And I don’t know where they found the type of men that they wrote about: the kind of he-men and yet chivalrous with a kind of power over the women so that they made them do what they
wanted. I’d never then nor since met any men like it.
    Mind you, all these wonderful lovers on the films Rudolph Valentino and Ramon Novarro – they were just pasteboard lovers, weren’t they? I could never understand women raving and
going mad about Rudolph Valentino and sending for his photo. In any case who wants a man that you’ve got to share with a load of other women?
    I used to wish that you could find an Englishman who was a sheikh. And I used to think that with the shortage of men there was it would be nice if a man could have three wives like sheikhs did.
You could all take it in turns to be number one wife, couldn’t you? I wouldn’t have minded waiting my turn at all. But Englishmen have got neither the inclination