felt a momentary, viciously physical hatred of all men. But it was gone as quickly as it had come.
‘I wanted to say I was sorry, but you haven’t given me the chance,’ he said.
The creases in her father’s face touched her, and the sight of his big hand, dirty from work, still gripping the pop bottle. She loved him too, and she was exhausted by the obligations of love that pinioned her here amongst the boxy houses.
‘I’ve got to go.’ She was shouting, and the old man on the corner peered towards them.
Ted stared at her, stupidly. ‘Go where? I thought you were back. We can’t manage the place without you. We …’
‘You’ll have to manage. All of you.’
I’m not giving myself to you. I’m not going to sink down like Rozzie. I won’t. I can’t. I deserve better than that. I’m free now, aren’t I? In her head she was already running, the words pounding with her. I’m free, aren’t I? Ted hadn’t touched her, but she felt as if she had to wrench herself out of his grasp.
‘I’ll come and see the kids when I can.’ Mattie was breathless with the effort.
‘What about me?’ Like a baby, his face puckering.
‘Nothing about you. Don’t you understand? Nothing.’
She broke past him then, and started to run. Her legs carried her around the corner and away. She ran as far as she could and then walked, not wanting to stop and wait for a bus, all the way to the station. She took the return ticket out of her pocket and held it in her clenched fist, the torn edge of it digging into her palm. The train came almost at once and she climbed into it and stumbled to a seat. The dust puffed out from the cushion behind her head.
Sitting there, watching the backs of the houses and the factories and warehouses peel away past her, Mattie promised herself, I will do it. I’m going to be successful, and rich, and happy, and I won’t let that place pull me back again. None of the things that have happened matter at all, from now on. Only the things that are going to happen.
She felt the resolution stiffening her, as if her spine was a steel shaft. She leaned forward to peer through the grimy carriage window, as if she could see more clearly what was coming.
The party was originally Julia’s idea, but Mattie seized on it with insistent enthusiasm. She seemed to light on everything now, Julia noticed, making whatever they did important just by concentrating very hard on it.
‘Give a party for Jessie? Of course we must do it. Listen, we’ll make it just like the old evenings that Jessie talks about. Squeeze everyone in, make sure everyone has a good time …’ Mattie snatched a piece of paper and a pencil, and began making a list. ‘Friends of ours, not too many, but enough. Felix will have to help us to round up Jessie’s friends. As many as we can. We’ll have singing, and vodka martinis …’
Mattie had been taken out once or twice by a dubious club owner, and he had introduced her to vodka martinis. Under the influence of three or four of them Mattie had had more trouble than usual in fending him off, and she had only managed the last time by jumping out of his Ford Zephyr and running away. The girls thought that the cocktails were the height of sophistication.
Plans for the party took off with surprising speed. Slightly to their surprise, even Felix plunged into them. ‘We’ll have to have it at home,’ he agreed. ‘Jessie won’t go out anywhere else. Leave it to me to invite the people she would like to see.’
They kept it a secret from her as long as they could, but they were too excited and the girls wanted to share the pleasure of anticipation with her.
‘Don’t be so silly,’ she snapped. ‘I’m past the age for all that nonsense.’ But they knew from the way that her eyes brightened that she was delighted.
Felix said that he would provide the food. Julia and Mattie, without thinking much about it, had imagined sandwiches.
‘Meat paste sandwiches, I suppose?’ Felix scoffed.
They realised that all the vodka martinis they could afford wouldn’t go far either.
‘Tell everyone to bring a bottle,’ Felix advised.
‘And what about the music?’ Felix’s record player was unreliable, and there was no piano in the flat so there was no point in Mattie and Julia dreaming of the kind of pianist who thumped out the old songs in Jessie’s stories.
‘Don’t worry,’ Felix answered. ‘Bish is coming.’
Jessie had told them all about that. Freddie Bishop played the mouth-organ to compete with a twenty-piece dance band.
On the day of the party, Felix went out very early, to Soho. He came back with two bulging shopping baskets and shut himself in the kitchen. Mattie and Julia contented themselves with pushing back the furniture in Jessie’s room, the only decently sized space in the flat. Then they turned their attention to Jessie herself. They rummaged mercilessly in her wardrobe, exclaiming and pulling out dresses and holding them up against her.
‘You’re wasting everyone’s time,’ Jessie said. ‘None of those things will go anywhere near me now.’
‘This red skirt will, look, it’s loose.’
‘And this coat with the sequins. You’ll look like Ella Fitzgerald. When did you wear all these wonderful things?’
‘In my heyday, dear, in my heyday.’
Mattie wound Jessie’s hair up on to rollers, and they practised painting her face with their Outdoor Girl cosmetics. By early evening she was giggling with them, as over-excited as a schoolgirl. Felix emerged from the kitchen with a blast of spicy cooking smells, and helped them to lay out the glasses and plates borrowed from a restaurant, one of Jessie’s old haunts. The proprietor and his wife had promised to come to the party after closing time. Then, when everything else was ready, Julia and Mattie retired to prepare themselves.
Mattie had made herself a dress, from a bolt of greeny-black shot taffeta with a bad flaw in it, picked up for a few shillings from one of the stalls at the top end of Berwick Street market. The bodice was strapless, and she had sewn it tight to show more of her cleavage. The skirt was full, puffed out with layers of net petticoats. Using her staff discount, she had bought herself a pair of wicked black stiletto-heeled shoes. They were so high that they made her almost as tall as Julia. Mattie brushed her hair out into a froth of curls, and then spun round, admiring herself, until her skirts whirled up to show her black stocking tops.
‘I just hope the top stays up,’ she murmured, hitching at it so that the creamy skin with its faint powdering of freckles bulged even more precariously over the taffeta.
Julia hated sewing. She had planned to make do with one of her own or Mattie’s dancing outfits, but in Jessie’s wardrobe she had discovered a red embroidered silk kimono. She wound it round herself, tighter and tighter, until it was a twisted column of scarlet splashed with fronds of abstract colour. She found a black silk shawl and tied it around her waist, letting the fringed ends trail down at the back. And, with a touch of last minute inspiration, she fasted her hair up on the top of her head, and stuck the poppies from an old hat into a comb at the back.
When they emerged, Jessie was sitting in her chair, dressed up, ready to hold court. Felix had been sitting beside her, filling her glass. He looked at Mattie and Julia, his eyes travelling critically up and down, while they held their breath.
And then he smiled.
‘At last,’ he pronounced. ‘You’re getting the idea.’ Mattie was like Turkish Delight, he thought. Scented and powdery and overpowering. Julia was a tall, white-skinned geisha, as clean and sappy as a peeled willow wand. His eyes slid back to her.
There was a moment’s silence and then, from far down at the bottom of the house beyond the empty offices, they heard the bell ringing.
‘People!’ Mattie yelled, and ran to the door.