Georgia Read online

  ‘Is it something at work then?’ Helen could be so persistent. ‘Is it too much for you?’

  ‘I’m just tired and cold,’ Georgia tried to smile, even though she felt a lump coming up in her throat. ‘I’ll go to bed early tonight.’

  Helen said nothing more, just watched anxiously as Georgia finished her soup.

  She hadn’t believed Georgia would last a week in Soho, let alone seven. When she sent her up to Pop’s workrooms to ask for a job, she hadn’t expected her to even go in, let alone get the job and stick at it.

  ‘Pop’ as everyone called him in the market was a fiery Greek, his sweatshop a place you had to be desperate to work in. Four tiny rooms over his material shop, stinking of paraffin, engine oil and damp cloth. Five industrial machines and a huge steam press assaulted the ears and if you were capable of dealing with that, there was still his other employees to cope with.

  Janet and Sally, two vicious-tongued women, ruled the roost, with Irene, Iris and Myrtle as their dim-witted sycophants.

  Helen had spent a week in the workshop herself, before moving on to what she considered a far easier life in the market, but somehow Georgia had not only managed to master the sewing machine, but she’d also made friends with the other women.

  Helen pulled two oranges out of her bag and tossed one to Georgia.

  ‘You see I didn’t stuff myself with fruit all day,’ she chuckled. ‘Now, in return I want all the gossip.’

  Georgia was such a child. Helen saw the way her big eyes lit up with glee, grubby fingernails digging into the thick peel, tearing it off and biting into the juicy flesh like a savage.

  ‘Iris isn’t Pop’s mistress,’ Georgia said slurping at the fruit, juice running down her chin. ‘She just kind of hints he’s in love with her. I reckon she’s got delusions of grandeur. She told me her boyfriend is a count!’

  Iris, the cutter, was in her forties, still attractive in an overblown rose style. Flame-red hair copied slavishly from Ava Gardner, given to fox furs and the kind of glamour that related more to the war years than now.

  ‘What did Janet have to say about that?’ Helen giggled.

  Georgia wiped her mouth on her sleeve, she got up quickly and turned her back on Helen, returning moments later with two pairs of socks shoved up under her jumper in a parody of the busty Janet.

  ‘The Count of Monte Cristo?’ she put her hands on her hips, imitating the tarty stance, wiggling across the room. ‘Famous for his disappearing acts!’

  Helen’s laughter pealed round the shabby, cold room. Georgia with her slim hips in tight jeans couldn’t possibly look like the woman with her blonde bird’s nest hair, tight low-cut dresses and ample curves, but she’d got the essence of her as she always did with people she imitated.

  ‘I suppose Iris went into one of her sulks?’

  ‘Not half,’ Georgia reported gleefully. ‘She cut out the dresses so fast we couldn’t keep up. She kept banging the shears down on the cutting table so often I thought she might stab Janet.’

  ‘Are you keeping up with the others?’ Helen fished, still convinced Georgia was hiding something. ‘It must be hard when you aren’t experienced like them.’

  ‘I’m not doing too bad,’ Georgia stacked up the plates and took them over to the sink. ‘Pop makes allowances for me, besides Myrtle always unpicks the bits I’ve done wrong. You know what she’s like.’

  Myrtle was the sweet, uncomplaining one in the workroom. She perched in front of her machine all day like a drab little sparrow, offering very little in way of conversation. Her clothes were carefully pressed and mended but old and shabby. She rarely volunteered any information about herself, preferring to sit on the outskirts, looking in.

  ‘Is she still with that man?’

  ‘She must be,’ Georgia looked round from the sink. ‘She’s got a huge bruise on her arm. I saw it when she took off her cardigan to wash before going home. I wonder why she doesn’t leave him?’

  ‘Two kids and a council flat in Hackney, that’s why,’ Helen said, slowly nibbling the last segment of her orange. ‘I don’t suppose she thinks life has anything else to offer.’

  ‘But Janet and Sally left their husbands,’ Georgia frowned. ‘I can’t see why anyone would stay with a man who beats you.’

  ‘That’s easy for you to say,’ Helen smiled. ‘You are young and pretty. What chance has Myrtle got of finding a new man?’

  ‘I don’t see why women need men. As far as I can see, they are nothing but trouble.’

  Helen picked up her knitting. She had noticed how often Georgia made disparaging remarks about men. Was it the influence of Sally and Janet? Or was it part of the chain of events which led Georgia to Soho? She still wouldn’t open up fully, in seven weeks all she had was a sketchy vision of a comfortable middle-class home, dancing and singing lessons, then an unexplained row which led to her leaving it. Yet she had asked Helen to get someone to post a letter in Manchester to her foster mother. Why would she even bother if she didn’t care, and why did she cry out in the night so often?

  ‘You’re getting to be a right little cynic!’ Helen said gently. ‘To think I was hoping you’d introduce me to Mr Right!’

  Helen dreamed of men constantly. At night in her cloakroom job at ‘Squires’ she would smile at the smart men who came in, hoping against hope one day someone would overlook her limp. Only the thought that the operation she was waiting for would be successful kept her going. It was all very well to be liked for yourself, but she wanted romance and love, a husband and children. To dance in a man’s arms, to walk without a limp down the aisle, to be desired.

  Georgia knew Helen guessed there was more to her than she had revealed. She yearned to open up but she was afraid. It would be like opening a door, forcing herself to look at everything all over again. It was almost over now. She no longer jumped and ran when she saw a policeman, she had even adjusted to living in this place without television, music, or dancing and singing lessons. Maybe in time she could forget Peter, stop wanting his kisses. But if she told Helen now because of her fears it would all come back, and if her period was just late, she would have burdened Helen with it all for nothing.

  ‘We’ll go out dancing when you’ve had the op,’ Georgia smiled as if there was nothing on her mind. ‘We’ll make ourselves beautiful dresses and take London by storm.’

  ‘You’ve got to teach me to dance first,’ Helen laughed. ‘Anyway, I’d better get ready to go to work. Will you do my hair for me?’

  Helen couldn’t imagine life now without Georgia. She filled the lonely hours before her night-time job with chatter and laughter. Sharing meals, shopping and cleaning the room was a pleasure where once there had only been a lonely void. When she came home tired from the club it felt secure to see her friend tucked up in bed and Sundays flew by with her company.

  But Helen was a realist if nothing else, maybe Georgia was content to stay in now, but what would happen if she made new friends? Had it already happened? Was Georgia’s troubled look because she was tired of living with a cripple who worked so many hours?

  Yet if Georgia was growing weary of this place and her, it didn’t show in the way she did her hair. Brushing it till it shone, coaxing curls round her fingers with an almost loving touch.

  Georgia got up slowly the next morning, waiting for the expected feeling of nausea. Helen had gone out early as she did every morning, regardless of how cold it was, or how late she finished work. The gas meter had run out last night, she couldn’t put the fire on, have a cup of tea or even wash in hot water. But she didn’t feel sick and it was payday.

  The window was frosted over on the inside. She scraped a small hole and peered out. Fridays were good. At lunchtime she could go into Sid’s and have steak and kidney pie and tonight she could turn the gas fire on full and bask in front of it with a library book, knowing she could lie in tomorrow. Janet had promised to take her to a jumble sale up in Primrose Hill in the afternoon, she might find some dresses they could
alter on Sunday, or if it was nice they could go for a walk in St James’s Park.

  She was still feeling cheerful when she arrived at work, bouncing up the stairs the way she did when she first started there.

  ‘Well that’s a good start to the day,’ Pop turned round from dumping some bales of cheap tweed on the floor. ‘Let’s hope the good mood lasts beyond tea-break!’

  Georgia grinned impudently at him, a manner she’d learned from Janet and Sally. She’d been so frightened of him, and his machines on her first day that she almost wet herself, but now she knew his gruff manner hid a kind heart she often took advantage.

  Pop still had a strong Greek accent despite living in England since he was eighteen. Portly, with thinning heavily-oiled hair it was hard to see him as the slim, handsome youth he was rumoured to have been. His dark eyes had faded a little, a melancholy olive face, thick fleshy lips and a large rubbery nose made Georgia think of an old clown. Yet perhaps it was true he’d been a hit with the ladies in his prime. He did have a comfortable, easy manner with women.

  ‘Can I make some tea now?’ she fluttered her eyelashes at him. ‘Our meter had run out so I couldn’t have one at home.’

  ‘You girls!’ Pop shrugged his shoulders. ‘One of these days I’m going to make you work like they do down at Switalski’s. On to that seat at half eight, standing over you till one. Maybe then I’d be able to get myself a decent car.’

  Georgia took that as agreement, sliding into the staffroom before he changed his mind.

  The staffroom was a joke. It was no bigger than a cupboard, the toilet adjoining it. A shelf for the kettle, three rickety chairs and the cracked window stuffed up with old rags.

  From behind her in the main workroom she could hear Pop and Iris discussing the cloth and which patterns should be used. She had been excited when she first came here, imagining she would make good clothes, but instead to her disappointment Pop specialised in making frumpy, cheap things for old ladies. Sometimes Janet and Sally would dress up in them during the lunch hour. Drab, shapeless dresses with white collars and cuffs, always in browns, dark blues and greens. Then the pair of them would do a striptease, peeling them off, more like pantomime dames than the show girls they pretended to be.

  While the kettle boiled Georgia watched through the open door. Janet was threading her machine, a cigarette hanging out the corner of her mouth, her blonde hair still in curlers with a shocking-pink chiffon scarf tied round them. Next to her was Sally her close friend, leaning forward whispering something.

  They were both thirty, without husbands, and three children each. They even lived in the same block of tenement flats down near Charing Cross Road. Noisy, vulgar and aggressive, the pair had seemed like dragons on Georgia’s first day, yet now she viewed them almost with admiration.

  Sally’s raven black ‘beehive’ stood up an alarming six inches from her head, a slick of greasy black fringe across her forehead, with lacquered kiss-curls fixed like cement on her ruddy cheeks. Her make-up was as startling as her hair. Heavy eyeliner and several coatings of thick mascara. Lips dark red and lustrous, a beauty spot painted on her cheek. Voluptuous and wanton, she scrutinised every man who had the misfortune to come into the workshop, dark, lust-filled eyes sparkling at their embarrassment.

  Sally might be the one with the startling appearance, but it was Janet who had the real character and personality. By night she worked as a stripper, something she made no secret of. She could turn the most mundane of stories into comedy, and her observations about other people were bitingly astute.

  Her daytime appearance, the headscarf, shapeless sweater, crumpled skirt and no make-up, was at odds with the glamour snaps they’d all seen of her. Once the curlers were out, the warpaint and false eyelashes on, the metamorphosis from plain Janet Willoughby to exotic dancer Nicole was complete. If Pop and Sally were to be believed she bore more than a glancing likeness to Marilyn Monroe when she wiggled seductively onto the stage.

  If it wasn’t for the humour of these two women, Georgia might never have made it through her first week. They teased her, shouted, even swore at her, but an underlying sense of fairplay made them help and encourage her too, and when she was close to tears they had a knack of turning it to laughter.

  ‘You dun’alf talk posh!’ Janet had remarked on her first tea-break. ‘Why don’cha learn us to speak proper and I’ll show you how to strip?’

  Georgia blushed scarlet, twisting her hands in her lap as minutes later Janet came out of the toilet wearing only a length of fabric and proceeded to do a peek-a-boo dance routine with it. She was convinced Janet was naked under the material, as first one shoulder was bared, then the other. The other women sang for her, clapping their hands and stamping their feet and as Janet dropped the fabric as a climax, Georgia covered her face with her hands.

  Sally grabbed her hands away, and to Georgia’s astonishment Janet was standing there wearing a pair of pink, old ladies’ bloomers and two paper roses pinned to a large brassière. The sight was so unexpected and hilarious Georgia almost fell off the seat with laughter, and she’d known then she could stand working at Pop’s.

  ‘Isn’t that kettle boiling yet?’ Pop glanced up from the cutting table at her. Iris at his side sniffed loudly in disapproval. She was supposed to be the forewoman, but her instructions were never carried out by anyone other than Myrtle. Iris was wearing a flame-red two-piece which clashed with her red hair, a silk rose was pinned to her lapel as if she were going to a wedding.

  ‘That’s not how it was done in my day,’ was her favourite whine, covering everything from Georgia making tea so early in the morning, to the way Irene swept the floor.

  ‘When was that? Domesday?’ Janet always retorted, sending Iris’s heavily pan-sticked face into a vivid flush of frustration. She spoke vaguely about having a man ‘in high places’, alluded mysteriously to ‘cocktails’ after work and sometimes to ‘our nest’ in Brighton.

  Georgia still had no clear picture about where the woman really came from. It was all snippets with no substance, even her carefully cultivated accent was a fake, as sometimes in anger she dropped it, and sounded more of a cockney than Janet or Sally.

  The kettle boiled behind her and Georgia turned to make a big pot for everyone. She heard Myrtle turn on the steam press and at the same moment Irene came through the door late.

  ‘Do you know what the time is?’ Iris’s high voice rose above a belch of steam. ‘This isn’t how it was done in my day. We thought ourselves lucky to have a job, you could be dismissed at a moment’s notice for unpunctuality.’

  Irene didn’t answer, but by her shuffling gait coming into the staffroom to hang up her coat, Georgia knew it was one of her bad days.

  Irene was not quite right in the head, as Janet put it, ‘A penny short of a full quid.’ No one seemed to know what exactly was wrong. She could turn up on time for a week at a stretch, neatly dressed, and chat about her elderly mother in the Oval, books she’d read, and television programmes, as normal as everyone else. But then suddenly she’d change for a few days, like today, coming in late wearing men’s trousers with a huge shapeless sweater thrown over the top, her dark hair all tousled as if she hadn’t brushed it, top teeth missing, lipstick up to her ears, her eyes blank. She would say the oddest things at these times, about men who followed her. Strange spirits in her house, and odder still she would profess to live in Kensington with a man called James.

  But whatever she was like, she worked harder than anyone, sweeping up, pressing, sewing on buttons at twice the speed of everyone else. Sally said she was over forty, but to Georgia, the smooth, unlined face was that of a girl, only the missing teeth suggested Sally was right.

  Georgia gave everyone a cup of tea and sat down at her machine with her own. In front of her was a pile of grey wool skirts, her job was to do merely the seams, then pass them over for pressing. Later Sally would do the waistbands and zips.

  ‘You coming to the jumble tomorrow?’ Janet shouted at h
er over the noise of her machine. ‘Our Lyndsey’s gonna take the other kids to the park for a bit so we can have some peace.’

  ‘Peace at a jumble?’ Sally roared back. ‘Have you warned her about the scraps you get into?’

  Georgia felt suddenly dizzy as the hot tea went down in one long gulp. She sat back in her chair, wiping her brow with one hand. The paraffin stove seemed to smell much worse than usual and the hiss of the press sounded as if it was right in her ears.

  The workroom was spinning. One moment Pop was standing on her right, the next on her left and the sickly smell of Iris’s perfume caught her in the throat.

  Weakly she got up, groping almost blindly across the room, and as her stomach churned she put her hand over her mouth and ran the rest of the way to the toilet.

  ‘What’s up with ’er?’ she heard Sally shout, but her head was over the pan, vomiting as if her entire insides were coming up.

  On and on it went until there was nothing left but green bile. She stood up and leaned against the toilet wall, so weak she felt she could slide to the floor.

  ‘Ow long’s this bin goin’ on?’ Janet’s voice behind her startled Georgia.

  For a moment Georgia just stared at the older woman. There was no laughter now in those dark almond eyes, no hint of malice or sneering. Just sympathy and understanding.

  ‘About a week.’

  ‘Does ’Elen know?’

  Georgia shook her head.

  ‘When did you last get the curse?’

  ‘Just before Christmas.’

  ‘When did you go with ’im?’

  Tears came then. The sickness was going now but Janet had voiced her own fears and made it reality.

  ‘It was my birthday, January sixth.’

  ‘Is that why you left ’ome? Did yer ma find out?’

  One moment Georgia was just hanging her head in shame, the next she was caught in Janet’s soft arms. Her head on her shoulder, crying out all the fear and pain.