West End Girls: The Real Lives, Loves and Friendships of 1940s Soho and Its Working Girls (30 page)

‘It’ll break the old girl’s heart if he’s sent away for several years,’ he said. ‘And that’s what he’s facing if you say he socked you on the jaw. Perhaps you can say in court that you sort of walked into his hand in surprise.’

The bearded monster was a most unlikely art student, and I wasn’t persuaded by the idea of his widowed mother, but Mae agreed on my behalf. For people in our position, any suggestion from the police was best taken as an order.

In due course the trial came up at Marylebone Police Court, with Mae looking very fetching, in her Kravetz coat and me trying to look dowdy and – as there was a public gallery – anonymous. As witnesses, we were put in a little room together with the two policemen, who, after a few pleasantries, went into a conference with each other. They could, of course, have done this before and in private, but they needed to make sure that we’d heard their plan and wouldn’t say anything in court to contradict their story.

After rehearsing the fiction, the first policeman briskly knocked his sheaf of papers together, then looked at us and grinned. ‘Got to get our homework right,’ he said.

I did my stint in the witness box. To make things a bit lighter for the accused, it was made pretty clear what sort of business Mae and I were engaged in. I was uncomfortably aware of the public gallery, which appeared enormous and filled with intently watching faces. Fortunately the case was not a long one, and the outcome was that the phoney art student was placed in corrective custody for six months and recommended for psychiatric treatment.

But this incident wasn’t enough to scare Mae off the drugs. That summer and autumn is forever tinted in my memory by their shadow.

Twenty-Nine

Drugs or no drugs, the aspect of Mae’s work that troubled me most was her extensive dealings with masochists. In the beginning, I had found it difficult to believe the proof of my own ears. Even amongst Mae’s ordinary clients, one in three would want to be caned. These men were so mild and constant in their regular demands that I didn’t consider them to be masochists in the true sense. I found them tolerable and sometimes even funny. On occasion, not wanting to spoil the pleasure of the punishment by actually asking for it, they would bring little notes of instruction – ostensibly written by someone else.

Dear Miss Angela Brown,

Here is Richard’s school report for last term.

Position in class: Bottom
Attendance: Very bad
Truancy: High

I am afraid I cannot have him back next term unless he is taught some manners and punished for his bad behaviour. I understand you are a big strong lady and I know that you will be angry with him for this behaviour. I could strongly suggest that when you speak to him about this you might consider the assistance of a hairbrush or a wooden spoon.

Yours truly,

Miss Williams (Form Mistress)

What I found harder to accept were those who experimented with pain to greater and greater degrees. Some of them seemed hell-bent on self-destruction. Talking a deep breath, I dive back into memories that even now I find disturbing to recall.

Perhaps it was my art school training to treasure creativity that made the destructive nature of masochism so acutely unpleasant. It horrified me that such a beautifully made and miraculous thing as the human body should be so wilfully damaged. Every punishment I saw inflicted, every cut, bruise or burn, became almost my own personal pain.

It was impossible for me to hide from these episodes, for they generally took place in my domain – the kitchen or waiting room – to keep the bedroom free for Mae. I was often an unwilling witness to the long build-up necessary to achieve the right degree of degradation and pain.

Even when they arrived, they would be trembling and perspiring at the thought of their coming ordeal. They wore an expression that I learned to know at a glance: a look that spoke of the terrifying, exquisite possibilities before them. Soon these men would be in agony again, and though they could avert it, they knew that they would not. After a long period of such obsession, that look became habitual, and I am not able to forget it. I have often met it since, in all sorts of unlikely places. I can recognise it across a crowded room and I wish that I couldn’t, for I feel as guilty as an eavesdropper.

Up to a point – but only up to a point – the man Mae and I nicknamed Houdini was amusing. He arrived regularly, once a week, bringing a holdall with him. He visited of his own volition, but he might as well have just been forced through Traitors’ Gate in a barge. He was a young man with prominent eyes and the ruddy, open-air face of a farmer’s son. On arrival, his character switched for a few minutes to that of a brisker, more businesslike person as he explained any new items in his bag and how they were to be employed. Then he would hand over ten pounds and immediately revert to the prospective martyr.

After he had stripped off, he would be trussed up tightly and gagged. This done, Mae would batter him about the head and then leave him, while she got on with other clients. He would immediately begin to writhe and contort in efforts to free himself from his bonds. After about half an hour of superhuman struggle, he always succeeded in doing so. When he was at last standing up, panting and exhausted from his exertions, it was my duty to inform Mae of the fact. She would then come and retie him, beat him again – harder this time, as a punishment for escaping – and leave him once more.

This would go on for the whole evening, with the beatings growing more brutal and the young man weaker and more abject, until Mae, getting fed up with the procedure, would drag him by his increasingly purple ear into the bedroom, where even worse would happen.

This, for him, was what the whole evening had been slowly building up to. He would then wash, dress, pack his gear and depart, with Mae shrieking after him – all part of his original instructions – that she would kill him next time. She would then collapse into a chair and say, ‘Thank God that’s over. Give us a cup of tea, love.’

This performance was carried out week after week, with a few variations invented by Houdini. One day, well into the Purple Heart era, Mae, on being told that he had broken free once more, gave a gusty sigh and exclaimed, ‘Oh, sod it!’ Then, pleadingly, ‘Could you throw a few ropes round him, Babs, and I’ll come in later?’

She had disappeared down the stairs to get another client before I had a chance to say, ‘But . . .’

I slowly returned to the waiting room and found him standing as I had left him – wide-eyed and trembling. He had obviously heard what Mae had said, and was highly nervous about this unexpected change in his programme.

On reflection, I suppose the fact that I didn’t just leave him standing there until Mae returned speaks volumes for the force of her personality. As I approached him, my legs were like jelly and I felt sick. His ropes were strewn all over the place and bits of adhesive tape were everywhere, some trodden underfoot and others hanging and flapping from various parts of his anatomy.

While I was unravelling some of the ropes, Mae came back with another client. I went and took the money from her, then pottered about, procrastinating, waiting for her to emerge, but whether out of devilment or from a desire to make sure that I became broken in to yet one more task, she was taking ages, and so, reluctantly, I began applying the first rope.

Thereafter, of course, tying up Houdini became my job and his beating up Mae’s. I found myself lying awake at nights trying to think up methods of knotting. Whichever way I tied him, he still managed to squirm free in about his usual time.

Once, I very nearly took a couple of swipes at him myself. It had been a bad evening, commencing with a strenuous half-hour trying to prevent our drunken stockbroker, Mr Tucker, from falling off his chair whilst at the same time endeavouring to avoid his groping hands. This had been followed by a solid procession of men wanting to use the spyhole – which meant that I hadn’t been able to get into the kitchen for a couple of hours. On top of that, Vera had been ineffectually flicking around me all evening with a particularly frivolous and stupid-looking feather duster. When Houdini shed his tethers for about the fourth time, I drew in my breath with a sharp hiss and bounded across the room, arm raised.

Simultaneously I heard a little giggle from Vera and spun round. ‘Oh, temper, temper!’ she said, grinning from ear to ear and wagging her feather duster at me. Houdini had the light of anticipation in his eyes and I let my hand drop. I made a mental note to watch my character, for I could sense that it was changing.

Mae told me that on one occasion a punter had persuaded her to leave him overnight, locked in a cupboard, sitting on a bottle with his hands and feet tied.

‘He gave me fifty pounds for that,’ she said, ‘but I’d never do it again, although he keeps asking. He was unconscious when I came in the next day and it took Rabbits and me about half an hour to bring him round. Think what it would be like for his family if he pegged out like that.’

She laughed suddenly and her tone changed. ‘Did I ever tell you what happened to my friend Coral?’ she said. ‘She had this geezer one night – great big chap and eighty if he was a day – and he kicked the bucket while he was on the job. Smashing way to go, I suppose. She had to get her maid to help get him off her and then she came tearing round to me in a panic. “What shall I do? What shall I do?” she kept saying. “I don’t want the law nosing around – and what about the poor old boy’s family? They’re not gonna like it, knowing he pegged out stuffing me.” I said, “Hold your horses and I’ll pop round when it gets a bit quieter and we’ll do something about it.” So later on, I went round to her gaff. Me, Coral and her maid carted this bloke downstairs and round the corner of the street. We dumped him in a phone box and put tuppence in his hand. Then we went to another phone box and dialled 999. We scarpered back to Coral’s flat but we left her maid with him, to see that no one picked his pockets. No one was any the wiser. Poor old boy! Still, that’s life.’

If there is any lesson in all this, it’s the infinite variety of the male appetite. Once that autumn, for example, Mae had gone out to look for a client, leaving the previous one – a kink, presumably – in the bedroom. This wasn’t unusual, and I went in to tidy up. I had expected that he was probably roped up in the wardrobe, but as I straightened the bedspread, my toe hit against something soft under the bed and a masculine voice said, ‘Watch where you’re stepping!’

When Mae returned with the next man, she hung back and whispered to me: ‘Seeing is believing. Look through the hole.’

I did what she told me, and when the man on the bed had finished his mission and collapsed, I saw Mae quickly remove the rubber and dangle it over the side of the bed.

The head of the man below emerged, with mouth wide open like a fledgling bird, and Mae dropped the rubber in. There was a gulp, the rubber went down like an oyster and the head withdrew into concealment again. This transaction was accomplished so swiftly and dextrously that the donor was completely unaware of it – which was just as well. The lurker under the bed repeated this audacious performance throughout the evening, and when he finally left, Mae said to me, ‘He’s already had one operation when one swelled up inside him and caused a blockage.’

I wondered what the surgeon who had removed it had thought; but then, with my growing knowledge of the peculiarities of men, I reflected that he probably had habits of his own that were just as funny.

Thirty

Mae invited me to Slough for Christmas. The thought of spending the festive season in Tony’s company was not a happy one, and I wriggled out of it as gracefully as possible with the quite truthful excuse that I needed a rest.

‘Resting? At Christmas? Can’t take it, eh?’ said Mae, bright-eyed and full of Purple Hearts. ‘Well, if you get fed up, give us a ring and we’ll come over and fetch you.’

Several other invitations had come my way – including one from Rita – but as they were all from members of the sisterhood, I couldn’t accept without Mae hearing of it and feeling hurt. I spent that Christmas on my own and was happy to do so, because although I was only twenty-two, I felt as old as Methuselah. On Christmas Eve, I rushed home laden with exciting boxes of provender from Lyon’s Corner House. I swiftly undressed and threw on the dressing gown that I’d decided to remain in for the whole of my two days’ holiday.