8

THE ONLY TIME I nearly lost a girlfriend over a boyfriend was when Gladys and I shared one between us. We picked him up one Sunday afternoon in a Lyons’ teashop; the place was so crowded that the only empty seat was next to us and he came up and said with a rather attractive accent, ‘Could I please sit down at your table? It is the only place available.’ From the way he spoke we could tell he was a foreigner.

Gladys, who was never at a loss where the opposite sex was concerned, got into conversation with him. We found out that his name was Jan de Beers and that he came from Amsterdam. He assured us that he was no relation to the diamond people of that name. He needn’t have bothered, because what with his appearance, which was by no means smart, and the fact that all he was having was one bun and a cup of tea, we knew that already.

We were rather wary of foreigners, particularly Italians and Spanish, because we knew they came from very hot countries and the passion and heat went together. We felt they wouldn’t respect English girls. I know it sounds trite now, the word Respect, but it was a word that was continually drummed into us so we took notice of it then. If we met foreigners from the more temperate climates like America, New Zealand, or Australia these were quite all right because obviously they were more affiliated to us. They had the same colour of skin as we had. In those days, as far as we were concerned, anyone who had got the same colour skin as we had got must be all right. Mind you, we thought Indians were all right because they had lovely coffee-coloured skins and there was always the chance that they might be sons of rajahs or princes or things.

Opposite the place where we were working the house had been taken over by the Government for Indian students; we never got any further than waving to them at night because of the caste system. They were educated enough to know that we were only servants and that it wasn’t going to do their prestige any good to be seen out with people like us. Apart from his bun and cup of tea Gladys and I weren’t surprised to find that this young man was no relation to the diamond people because we never found any young men who had got any money and we never expected to. For us it was enough that he was good-looking. He said he had been a steward on a ship that had gone backwards and forwards to and from South Africa but that the last time it had docked in Southampton he decided not to sign on again but to work in England for a while. I was a bit sceptical about this explanation because he seemed young to be a steward. I assumed that by the time you got to be a steward you would be at least twenty-five to thirty.

Anyway he went on to say that he was working in a factory on night shift, the nature of his work he was unable to explain for some reason or another. Gladys said, ‘Is it secret work?’

‘Well, no,’ he said, ‘it’s not secret.’ But he wouldn’t explain what it was. He said his English wasn’t good enough. Later on I suggested to Gladys that he was probably only a night watchman. She got annoyed with me when I said that so I knew that she had already begun to like him – she always got annoyed if you made any detrimental remarks about a fellow whom she had begun to like. Even if he had a face like the back of a bus and no money or education this meant nothing to Gladys if she took to him.

The moment Gladys met a young man she never failed to start weaving a romance around him. This I found strange considering how hard-headed she was and the fact that she came from Stepney; maybe Stepney was a place where you have got to weave romances and have a strong imagination because it was the only thing that enabled you to live there.

Anyway this Jan de Beers took us to the pictures that night. He sat in the middle and bought us identical boxes of chocolates and after that the three of us went out together about half a dozen times.

The occasion of the rift between Gladys and me was when she said that she was going to meet this Jan on her own one night. This meant I was to go out by myself. I was up in arms immediately, not because I had fallen for him but because I felt she was assuming that he would prefer to go out with her rather than me. And I couldn’t see that he’d shown any inclination to do this.

Mind you there were the intervals when we each had to dive off to the loo and when I was gone he may have said something to her. I’ll agree he never said anything to me when she had gone to the loo, but that doesn’t mean to say he hadn’t said anything to her to the effect that a twosome might be better than a threesome.

As regards looks there really wasn’t much to choose between Gladys and me, as neither of us was particularly good-looking. The only thing was with Gladys coming from Stepney as she did she could usually produce some very colourful stories about her life down there. This Jan was a very sober and sedate young man; he neither drank nor smoked and he told us he was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, which meant nothing to us, in fact Gladys shocked him because she said if the Church needed reforming there wasn’t much hope for the congregation. But perhaps because he was such a very moral young man he used to lap up all these lurid tales that Gladys would tell about life in Stepney.

I used to think he was a spy compiling a book in secret about the social life of the working-class people in England: telling of the seamy side of life, and showing it wasn’t such a land fit for heroes as everyone was led to believe.

However the funny thing about this fellow was that he didn’t really understand what Gladys was saying. Although he thought her tales were dreadful and immoral they didn’t have the same implications for him as they did for Gladys. For instance she used to tell about a woman who lived next door to where she did. This woman’s husband was a deck hand and whenever he came home it seems he got her in the family way, but while he was away she took on another man and they used to sleep together in the same room as the children. Jan said, ‘Oh, how awful,’ and you could tell he was shocked. Gladys said, ‘Yes, wasn’t it, but you see they had no other rooms.’ Jan thought it was awful them being immoral but Gladys thought it was only immoral because they were doing it in the same room as the children.

Anyway I reckon I must have made my feelings pretty plain about Gladys and him going out without me, because on our very next evening out she told me he was bringing a blind date for me.

I wasn’t very pleased about that because my experience of blind dates was that you really needed to be blind to be seen out with one. With all the surplus females about any young man who couldn’t get a girl by himself had something wrong with him. But I was wrong, for when we did meet my blind date he wasn’t too bad. Charley his name was and he was an under-steward with the P&O line. This Jan was lodging in this Charley’s house and Charley’s mother was Jan’s landlady.

When we met, Charley said we were all invited to a party because his mother had just got married again, the third time this was, and the party was in a large room in a pub. I wasn’t too keen on parties as not only did you meet a lot of people you’d never met before and you fervently hoped you were never going to meet again, but whenever we went to a party we’d got to leave by nine-thirty just when things were warming up, which killed everything stone dead. Still we agreed to go. When we got there it was like all other parties, the usual seething mob of people meeting for the first time in what they think is a convivial atmosphere and feeling they’ve got to add their quota to it by drinking, laughing, singing, and talking, and putting on a complete change of personality from what they have in their own homes.

Anyway we were taken up and introduced to this Charley’s mum and her third husband. I was astounded that she had ever been able to get one husband never mind three. I’d never in all my life seen such a fat woman; she must have weighed fully twenty stone. She’d got arms like legs of mutton, several double chins and great mounds of flesh in front. The appendages that nature had endowed her with were resting somewhere down on her waist. This was mainly because she wore nothing to stop them. In those days bras were never heard of for the working class; you wore a thing called a liberty bodice which was very much like a strait jacket. All it did was suppress the mass of flesh and make it flat, but if you didn’t wear one at all, which she didn’t, anything you had was left hanging around in all directions.

And yet all this massive weight was supported on the most slender pair of legs you have ever seen. She had lovely legs and she only took size four and a half in shoes so really if you just looked at her feet and legs, which was maybe all her husband intended to do, it wasn’t too bad.

The new husband wasn’t at all a bad-looking specimen. You couldn’t help wondering what he saw in her, whatever induced him to marry this mountain of flesh. Leaving aside the physical difficulties of any amorous interludes, there was the fact that she had already got through two husbands. I’d be very suspicious of anyone who had got through two husbands.

The first one had succumbed to an attack of influenza and the second fell off a ladder. He was a window cleaner. Later on, after I had got to know Charley’s mother a bit better, she showed me photos of her first two husbands. Unlike her third, they were certainly no oil paintings – a fact that she freely admitted.

The first one, Henry, had a very short upper lip like a rabbit. I’ve seen children like that and it looks quite attractive on them but when they’re grown up it looks ludicrous. She said to me, ‘Henry not only looked like a rabbit; he was like one in bed, too. Our first night together could have been a fiasco because on our honeymoon when we got to the boarding-house they were full up and the only way they could make room for us was to turn their children out and give us their room. Unfortunately the beds were bunk beds.’ ‘Still,’ I said, innocently, ‘even from bunk beds you could hold hands.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘Nature had endowed him so generously that I held a lot more than that. Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘and we managed. Of course I wasn’t as fat as I am now but I weighed all of fourteen stone even then.’

I decided it was time to change the subject. ‘How did you meet your second husband?’

‘It was very soon after Henry died, in fact I met Frank at the funeral. He was a friend of Henry’s and he came round several times to console me for my loss. I’ve always been the sort of woman who must have a man around to cook and clean for; I’m lost without one. So we got married after four months. But then,’ she added, ‘I know that Henry would have wished it.’

You know, it’s peculiar to me how many widows always seem to know just what their departed husbands would have wished for them. I knew a woman once who never listened to a word her husband said nor ever took his advice when he was alive, but once he had removed himself from this world (via a rapid descent from a cliff) based the rest of her life on what he would have said or thought. Being as she never gave him a chance to express any thoughts in life I wondered how she knew what his wishes were now he was dead. Anyway to get back to Charley’s mum.

‘How did you get on with Frank, your second husband?’ I asked her. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘he was a sad disappointment to me. No go in him at all, no stamina. He was always on about what a friend Henry had been to him, how much he missed him and the comfort he felt in being in Henry’s home amongst all the things he’d loved. I don’t know whether he included me amongst the things Henry had loved. If he did, perhaps he felt he shouldn’t show any enjoyment at using Henry’s property. No,’ she said, ‘Frank was always so mournful, in some ways it was a happy release when he fell off that ladder cleaning windows.’

I don’t know if she meant a happy release for her or for Frank. I was interested to know how she would make out with her third husband but I got fed-up with waiting around for Charley to come back from his trips at sea. And so did Gladys because her Jan and my Charley teamed up on the same boat together and calmly sailed out of our lives. I mean it’s all very well saying absence makes the heart grow fonder but it’s got to be given a chance to get fond to start with. Otherwise it just makes the heart grow accustomed.