It had always been my job – as soon as I was tall enough to reach it, that is – to turn the ‘Closed’ sign to ‘Open’ in the mornings. Almost as soon as the key turned in the lock, the cafe door would open and a steady trickle of early morning punters would come in for their breakfasts. Bacon, egg, fried bread, bangers, fried tomatoes and, for the discerning, fried mushrooms would flow effortlessly from Uncle Bert’s hands.
Auntie Maggie stayed out front, dispensing teas, coffees, observations about the weather and an endless stream of opinions about juicy bits of local news. I would eat my breakfast at the corner table, then Auntie Maggie would leave the teas and coffees to Mrs Wong while she took me to school. Once I was safely delivered to the playground, she headed for the market and Ronnie’s stall to order the day’s veg.
Sometimes she would nip in and out of various shops, picking up odds and ends as she needed them. The last port of call was always the newspaper shop, where she picked up Bert’s Daily Mirror and had a chat with old Mrs Roberts before returning to the cafe. By then the breakfast rush was over. Uncle Bert would settle down with his paper, his beloved pipe and a cuppa for a well-earned break before the dinner trade piled in.
This particular morning, however, was different. Instead of taking me to school, Auntie Maggie peeled off her flowered pinny and headed straight for the market with me in tow. The order was handed over with the minimum of civilities and we made our way briskly to the paper shop. Once back in the cafe, we settled down at the corner table to discuss my problem.
After much gentle questioning it was decided that the root of my trouble lay not so much in the knowledge that I wasn’t their child – I’d always sort of known that – but that I was afraid my real mum would take me away from Maggie, Bert and the cafe just as readily as she had left me there.
Uncle Bert was a man of few words but those few were always to the point. ‘Get Sharky Finn down here, Mag. We need a word.’
Sharky Finn was the lawyer who kept a dingy office next door. His front door, painted a sad shade of green, nestled grubbily between our cafe and Mamma Campanini’s delicatessen. His brass plate gleamed dully between a card boasting that Paulette gave French lessons and a sign proudly announcing that Madame Zelda was ‘Clairvoyant to the Stars’.
Actually, Paulette’s real name was Brenda, and she’d never been any nearer France than Wapping, while Madame Zelda also answered to Enid Fluck and was a martyr to her feet. They were regulars at the cafe.
Sharky himself was into everything. He needed to be. He had a gambling habit, a couple of mistresses and, rumour had it, a wife, two children and a mother-in-law to keep, although nobody had ever actually seen them. There wasn’t a spiv in Soho that Sharky hadn’t represented at one time or another when their luck ran out. He cooked books, drew up contracts – both straight and otherwise – arranged alibis and choreographed divorces in seedy hotel rooms with professional co-respondents. In short, Sharky was as bent as a two-bob watch, but clever and well qualified with it.
Now our cafe closed for nothing and nobody. It would no more have occurred to Maggie and Bert to close in order to keep an appointment with Sharky in his office than it would have occurred to Sharky to book one. When Uncle asked Auntie Maggie to get him, he did not mean to suggest for one moment that she heave her bulk up to the second floor to get him herself. It was more a suggestion that she should arrange to have it done. She cast her eye around the cafe, looking for a likely messenger. She couldn’t send me because my eyes were puffy, my nose was red and I needed some earnest mopping up. Her eye lit on Luigi, Mamma Campanini’s youngest son.
‘Luigi, nip upstairs and ask Sharky if he would care to drop in when he’s got a minute. The sooner the better, if he would be so kind.’ Luigi nodded amiably and got to his feet, whistling faintly through his teeth as he strolled out to do her bidding.
While he was away I was whisked into the back of the cafe. My face was washed and a hanky produced, into which it was suggested that I ‘blow good and hard’. A brush was dragged through my curls, then I was free to return to Uncle Bert’s welcoming lap. I snuggled in, burrowing my face into his rough waistcoat, breathing in the familiar smell of pipe tobacco and fry-up. I was given a comforting squeeze and a large gobstopper appeared by magic from my left ear. Somehow, in hard times, Uncle Bert always seemed to magic something out of thin air or one of my ears. It could be anything: a gobstopper, a sherbet dab, a tin whistle with bright stripes or a fluorescent yo-yo. He could do other magic too, card tricks and all sorts at Christmas and family knees-ups. I was very proud of Uncle Bert’s magic, and grateful too. I was contentedly slurping on the gobstopper when Sharky Finn appeared.
Auntie Maggie placed a coffee, liberally laced with brandy, in front of him. Some might think that ten in the morning was a little early to indulge in strong liquor, but Sharky wasn’t one of them. He liked a drink, did Sharky, preferably one that lasted from sparrow fart to sack time. There was very little evidence of this. He rarely appeared to be drunk and the stuff never seemed to fuddle his wits during office hours, but just a hint of the wrath of grapes showed in the puffy white skin around his moist blue eyes and the tiny broken veins that darted across cheekbones and hooter.
He took a good swig of the coffee, struck a match and lit the stub of cigar that hung from his lip. The blue, aromatic smoke drifted around his sparse blond hair on its way to the ceiling. He let out a deep sigh of satisfaction and tipped his chair back before he spoke. ‘You called and, as you can see, I came. What can I do for you good people, hm?’
Uncle Bert took charge, an unusual occurrence in our household but not unheard of. ‘It’s our Rosie. As you know, Sharky, she has lived with us ever since she was bollock high to our Tom’ (this was a reference to our lace-eared old cat who patrolled the cafe and its surroundings) ‘but it’s always been a sort of loose arrangement.’
Uncle Bert continued to outline the problem: namely, the sudden realization by all parties concerned, with the possible exception of my real mum who was probably ‘too Brahms to give a monkey’s’, that our situation was far from satisfactory, and that it was seriously upsetting not only ‘the rug-rat’ (me) but everyone else. ‘We’ve got used to her, like, and anyway we need her to see to the signs and that.’ He gave me another reassuring squeeze.
‘We don’t reckon we could part with her now. So, you see, Sharky, it’s time we did something about it. We’ve decided to check it out with you and see if you have any suggestions.’
Sharky had been listening carefully without interruption and now there was a long pause as he pulled on his dead cigar and stared at the ceiling. Everyone waited in silence for his answer: our little group at the corner table, the punters, who had long since given up all pretence of not listening, and Mrs Wong. At last he seemed to reach some sort of conclusion. He tipped forward until all four legs of his chair were on the floor and looked meaningfully at his empty coffee cup. Mrs Wong glided over to refill it, brandy and all. He took an appreciative slurp, coughed and spoke.
‘It seems to me,’ he said slowly, ‘that you need some kind of adoption agreement that will hold up in court if it ever comes to that. Also, of course, you will have to get her mother to sign it, in front of witnesses, preferably me and one or two others. I can start drawing up the agreement, if you like, ready for when she next blows in, assuming it’s not in the next day or so. Do you reckon she’ll play ball and sign the thing?’
All eyes in the place turned to Auntie Maggie and Uncle Bert.
‘I reckon, if she’s sober enough to write but Brahms enough to be amiable,’ Uncle Bert said. ‘That’ll be the hard bit, getting her in just the right frame of mind. Best get the agreement written and then we can put the word out for her to show up here. The little ’un likely won’t settle till it’s in the bag and neither will Mag. Will you, love?’
Auntie Maggie shook her head, eyes moist. She heaved a great sigh and lumbered heavily to her feet. ‘Well, this ain’t getting no baby bathed, is it? Time you was in the kitchen, Bert, limbering up for dinner. Thanks, Sharky. If you could get them papers ready, quick as you like, we’d be grateful.’
She turned to me, eyes soft. ‘Now, what do you want to do, young lady? Stay for dinner and back to school? Or help your auntie Maggie for the afternoon?’
Of course, there was no contest: I opted to stay put and help. With that, the little party at the corner table broke up, Uncle Bert headed for his kitchen, Sharky took the last gulp from his coffee cup and made for the door, and Auntie Maggie asked Mrs Wong to hold the fort while we went upstairs for ‘a bit of a chat’.
The ‘bit of a chat’ made me feel tons better. My auntie Maggie told me how much she and Bert loved me and how they had come to rely on me being there every day. She explained how much she had always wanted a little girl but how, somehow, she and Bert had not been ‘blessed’ and then I had come along and made everything all right.
Then she asked me if I wanted to ask her anything, anything at all. Of course, at the time I couldn’t think of anything much, I was too busy revelling in the warmth of her cuddles and the smell of her as I buried my nose in her ample bosom. Auntie Maggie had a smell all of her own; a warm smell with a hint of face powder and soap. I was snuggled up in her lap for a long time, thumb in mouth, basking in the comfort of it while she talked.
She told me all about the day I came to stay, near Christmas. She explained how she and Bert hadn’t been expecting me, how they had had to borrow nappies, bottles and food from one of Mamma Campanini’s brood to see us over the first night and how I had slept in a drawer. She told me how she and I had had a lovely time hunting around for clothing coupons and baby clothes. She told me how Mamma Campanini’s lot had had a whip-round and had come up with a cot, a pram, toys and loads of clothes. I asked what happened to it all and she explained that once I grew out of it, it went back to the Campanini tribe for the next new baby.
She also told me all about the big knees-up held in the cafe to welcome me in, once we’d all settled down a bit and got used to things. How Paulette, Madame Zelda, Mamma and Papa Campanini, their kids and their kids’ kids, Mrs Roberts, Ronnie from the market and his missis, and Sharky and loads of others had all come and brought me things. Being a greedy little bugger and wanting to prolong this lap-time, I demanded a list of everything and who brought it. Amazingly enough, Auntie Maggie remembered it all, or at least she pretended to.
By the time she had reeled off the complete list, I had gathered my wits a bit and thought to ask about my real mum. That was when I realized that the woman I always thought of as ‘the Perfumed Lady’ was, in fact, my mother. She visited the cafe now and then and sometimes she brought me presents. I liked her. She laughed a lot and wore princess clothes. She would bring me wonderful things like silver shoes, glittery jewellery to dress up in and satin ribbons. I thought she was a Fairy Godmother. Sometimes, though, she would sort of blubber over me and call me her baby and try to cuddle me too hard. I didn’t like that and would get frightened and hide behind Maggie or climb on to Bert’s lap.
I had just about had time to take all this in when Mrs Wong appeared in the doorway to ask if Auntie Maggie could lend a hand with the dinners. I was left feeling that all the worry of the past few weeks had been a waste of time. Now I knew who she was, I realized that my mum wouldn’t try to hurt me. Everything was going to be fine.
Uncle Bert, Auntie Maggie and Sharky had it all under control.