This Lovely City. Louise Hare
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on Saturday.’
‘Hilda?’ Delia pulled a thoughtful face, pretending she didn’t know who she was. Hilda and Mildred were thick as thieves, each as spiteful as the other. ‘Is she one of the typing pool girls? They all look the same to me.’
Evie saw Mildred’s face flush.
‘Are you going to put anything in or not?’
‘I think I can spare a bit of change.’ Delia reached for her purse and dropped a few coins into Mildred’s palm.
Mildred scowled and closed her hand around the loose pennies. ‘Don’t worry, Evie, I don’t expect you to chip in. I know you’re hard up.’
Evie’s jaw dropped as Mildred smirked, disappearing before Evie could think of a smart retort.
‘I’d love to give her a good smack,’ Delia said.
Delia had been Evie’s best friend since the first day of school. All the little girls and boys had been dressed up in new uniforms, drowning in oversized clothes that their mothers prayed they would not outgrow before year end. Agnes Coleridge knew well by then what the other mothers would whisper about her at the school gates, and she wouldn’t give them more ammunition than they already had. A talented seamstress, she had sewed Evie’s hem so that she had a properly fitting skirt that could be let out as she grew. Evie had cried that morning as her mother cursed and plaited her hair, pulling tighter until she’d quashed its rebellion. Ma had wiped her daughter’s tears with a damp flannel and kissed her forehead roughly.
At the school gates Evie had been unsure. Most of the children seemed to know one another but the Coleridges had only just moved to Brixton from Camberwell the week before. Ma had given her a little shove towards the teacher and told her she’d be back at the end of the school day. Miss Linton was young and smiley, her glasses making her hazel eyes look like giant marbles. She was too young to know what to do when Mildred had thwarted her seating plan by refusing to sit next to Evie. Delia was the one who shoved her hand straight in the air when Miss Linton asked for a volunteer to change places.
Like a bad smell Mildred had always been there in the background, impossible to get rid of. Nothing wound Mildred up more than knowing that Evie and Delia occupied privileged desks upstairs while she languished down in the typing pool with her poor WPM and tardy timekeeping. Evie had caught her before, sneaking around her desk when she thought that Evie had left for the day. She fingered the key to her desk drawer lightly and dropped it into her pocket.
‘Usual?’ Delia asked.
Evie nodded as they pulled on their coats and went downstairs, emerging onto St John’s Road, just up from Clapham Junction station. The street was busy as usual, buses piling down in both directions, but they were only heading to the café next door.
‘Egg and chips twice and tea for two, please.’ Delia waved the menu away as they sat at their usual table, delivering their order to the waitress. ‘Honestly, I don’t know why she bothers asking. Are you seeing Lawrie tonight?’
Evie shook her head. ‘The band got a regular Thursday night gig in Soho. It’ll be just another evening in with Ma. She’s taken on too much piecework again and I said I’d help out.’ Not that she’d have been given a choice but it felt better to imagine that her mother was like anyone else’s.
‘What about tomorrow after work? Fancy coming shopping? I need to get some new shoes. These ones are worn through.’ Delia stuck her leg out from under the table so that Evie could see the stretched leather, her big toe almost through at the front as she wiggled it around.
‘All right but it’ll have to be quick. I want to see Lawrie before he goes into town – Friday nights they play at the Lyceum.’ She barely saw Lawrie during the week these days; a musician in great demand, their relationship was becoming a series of stolen moments between their day jobs and the band’s growing popularity.
Delia smiled wryly. ‘I see how it is. Lawrie comes first. You’ll be getting married before long and I’ll never see you no more. You’ll be spending your days baking pies for Lawrie’s tea and popping out beautiful brown children for him. And you’ll remember that once you had a friend who you used to have fun with but now she’s a dried-up old spinster and you don’t have time for her.’
‘Stop it!’ They were both giggling now. ‘Besides you’re a long way off becoming a spinster. And if I do get married then you’ll get to be my bridesmaid.’
‘I’ve been a bridesmaid. Twice. It’s not as exciting as you seem to imagine.’ Delia’s nose wrinkled.
They both fell silent while the waitress plonked down a heavy tray laden with teapot, cups and saucers, milk, sugar.
‘Tell you what we should do.’ Delia lifted the lid to check on the tea, determining that longer was required. ‘Let’s go to the Lyceum tomorrow night and see Lawrie play.’
Evie bit back her immediate response, to say that her mother wouldn’t let her. She was eighteen after all. She could leave home any time she wanted, marry Lawrie if she felt like it without having to ask permission. And she’d rather face up to Ma than lie.
‘Yes, let’s do it,’ she said, with more resolution than she felt.
Their food arrived and Delia wondered aloud if a dress the colour of her vivid egg yolk might not suit Evie. Evie laughed and shook her head, looking up to see their waitress standing at the door just behind Delia, deep in conversation with a local bobby. The policeman had popped in to grab what looked like a sandwich, parcelled up in paper, but something in the urgency of his manner made her stop and listen in closer, tuning out Delia.
‘… don’t know what the world’s coming to,’ the waitress was saying, holding out the bag.
‘Not the sort of thing you expect round here,’ the policeman agreed. ‘Something’s changed, and not for the better.’ He glanced at Evie as he spoke, his face flushing crimson as she held his gaze. He grabbed his paper bag and left with a nod to the waitress.
‘… and of course even bloody Mildred’s waltzing round on the arm of a chap these days,’ continued Delia, oblivious to Evie’s wandering attention. ‘Jack flipping Bent of all people.’
‘You wouldn’t want to be stepping out with him though, would you?’ Evie turned back to her friend. ‘Nothing much going on between them dirty ears of his.’ It was Evie’s turn to wrinkle her nose.
‘But there’s been no one decent since Lennie,’ Delia complained.
‘Really? You’re saying that man’s name in the same sentence as the word “decent”?’ Evie laughed. ‘You could do so much better, Dee. You’ll see, I bet you, tomorrow night you’ll be batting them away. And if not you can come backstage, meet the band.’ She said it as a joke but regretted it immediately.
‘Oh no, no penniless musicians for me, thank you,’ Delia said, before quickly looking down at her yolk-smeared plate. ‘I mean, Lawrie’s one of a kind, ain’t he? He’s got a proper job, not just scraping by playing a few tunes.’
‘Everything all right?’ The waitress came to clear their plates and broke the awkward silence that had descended upon the two friends.
‘Lovely thank you,’ Evie told her, remembering what she’d overheard. ‘Excuse me, sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but that policeman who was just in – did I hear him say that there’s been a murder?’
The waitress leaned down to speak in a hushed voice. ‘They found a baby drowned in one of the ponds on Clapham Common. Terrible, ain’t it?’
The girls nodded, wide-eyed, and the waitress carried off their empty plates.
‘Who’d do such an awful thing?’ Evie exclaimed, as Delia pulled a packet of Player’s cigarettes and a box of matches from her bag. ‘I suppose it’ll be in the papers tomorrow.’ She took the cigarette that was offered.
‘People