Something Quite Beautiful (14 page)

Dot chose to ignore her mum; she wasn’t particularly bothered if she never brushed her hair again as long as it was bouffant enough at the back. She yanked the lid from the large, dented, flat-bottomed aluminium kettle, filled it with water and plonked it on top of the gas cooker. As she waited for the whistle, she walked through to the adjoining back room, her hand now pressed flat against her forehead and her arm sticking out at a right angle. ‘Mum, do I really have to come to work with you tonight?’

Joan sank down into the chair across from her husband’s and delved into her make-up bag. She juggled the magnifying mirror in her left palm and her mascara in her right. She spat onto the cracked cake of black until some of it stuck to the clogged bristles of the brush and proceeded to comb it onto her lashes. She spoke with her lips tucked in, trying to keep her eyes still.

‘Yes, you do have to come with me! It’s not as though I ask much of you, Dot, and not as if anything you might have planned in your hectic schedule can’t wait an hour or two!’

‘But, God, it’s Friday night!’

‘I’m sure the Lord above knows what night it is and using his name in vain won’t help you, Friday night or not! Now go and wash your face and make that tea.’

Dot trudged through the back room to the kitchen sink.

Her dad looked up from the Standard. ‘Why’s she got her hand stuck to her bonce?’

‘She’s trying to make her fringe flat.’ Joan spat again onto her little brush.

Reg shrugged and shook his head with incomprehension. ‘You’ve only been in five minutes and now you’re back off to work. What time’ll you finish?’

‘I don’t know, Reg. When it’s done. I’ve worked bloody hard on this buffet; I hope it all goes all right. Dot better not do anything stupid.’

‘Why d’you need her anyway?’

She sighed heavily. ‘Oh, don’t you start. I’ve told you, it’s a big do for some new family moving into the Merchant’s House, military or something, I don’t bleeding know! I just know it’s overtime and they are paying good wages for someone to waitress, and that someone may as well be Dot! Any more questions?’

‘No.’

‘Good.’

Joan lifted the brush and started to apply the dark goo to her lower lashes.

‘What’s for tea?’

‘What’s that if it’s not another question, Reg?’

‘Are you asking me a question now?’ He smirked.

Joan picked up a multi-coloured crocheted cushion and lobbed it at his newspaper. He ducked and the cushion thumped against the radio speaker.

‘Blimey, girl, steady! You just hit Cliff Michelmore in the cakehole!’

‘I’m sure he’s had worse.’ She giggled.

They both laughed as a slow waltz drifted into the room. Reg threw down his paper, struggled to his feet and pinged his braces over his vest, which always made his wife laugh. He hummed along as loudly as he could. ‘Come on, Joan, reckon we’ve got five whole minutes before her fringe is flat and she’s made your tea. Let’s have a dance.’

He pulled his wife by the arms, she slipped from the green vinyl seat of her chair and he spun her around the back room, trying not to trip on the rug that sat on the tiled floor. Gathering her into a close waltz, he whispered into her hair, which was stiff with lacquer. ‘I’ve just been reading about that Lady Chatterley book trial,’ he said. ‘It’s bloody filth that they are trying to pedal, disguised as literature. It’s disgusting. I’ve been following the case quite closely…’ He pulled her into him and they swayed around the room in an intimate clinch. She felt the scratch of his stubble against her cheek. His breath came in wheezy bursts, partly from lust and part due to his exertion. ‘And I reckon we should definitely get a copy!’

‘Oh, behave!’ Joan pushed him away, glancing at the cuckoo clock on the wall. ‘Gawd, look at the time. Dot!’ she yelled in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Forget the tea. Come on, we’ve got to leave right now or we’ll miss the bus!’

Dot came in, leading her little sister by the arm, who sported a large orange stain on her white frock. ‘She’s had an unfortunate incident with a Jubbly. Over to you, Dad!’

‘Oh for Gawd’s sake, Diane – you’re supposed to drink it, not bloody wear it! What are you, a baby? Do we need to put your drinks in a bot bot?’

Dee grinned. ‘No! I’m five, I not a baby!’

Reg looked at his wife and eldest daughter as they buttoned up their macs and tied their scarves. ‘Is that it then? Are you two off gallivanting and leaving me to it?’

‘Looks like it.’ His wife smiled as she pecked him on the cheek.

‘But this is women’s work! And you never did tell me what was for tea.’

‘That, my darling, is cos I don’t know what will be left over tonight. Might be salad, might be steak! Who knows?’

‘Yeah!’ Dot added, for no reason other than to join in the fun.

‘And you can keep your oar out of it. And by the way, Dot, your fringe n’arf looking curly!’

Dot’s parting shot was to poke her tongue out at her dad.

‘If the wind changes you’ll be stuck like that!’ He laughed.

‘Oh, well, that explains it, is that what happened to you then?’ She managed to have the last word, this time.

The kitten heels of mother and daughter clicked their way along the Limehouse pavement.

‘You working tonight, Joan?’

Their neighbour, Mrs Harrison, leant heavily against her open front door. She took a deep drag on her John Player Special, the smoke from which swirled upwards, further discolouring the yellow fringe that she kept permanently wrapped in two plastic curlers, imprisoned behind a blue hair net. Mrs Harrison ran the grandly named ‘Ropemakers Fields Guest House’, which for a couple of quid a night provided a bedroom full of clashing florals and mismatched furniture and use of a Goblin Teasmade for weary dock workers who were far from home. Her tall, thin, stooped frame was clad, as usual, in a flowery wrap-around pinny. Her mouth curved into its familiar downward slant and her eyes roamed over Joan and Dot with the usual look of sour disappointment. Dot used to wonder what it would be like if Mrs Harrison ever received some good news – which hadn’t happened in all the years she had known her. Would she whoop, shout and yell? She thought not. Dot peeked through the door to the grotty boarding house; it always looked dark and gave off the faintest odour of boiled cabbage. Their neighbour stood with one arm across her flat chest and the other lifting her fag to her thin lips.

‘Yes, Mrs Harrison, unfortunately. No rest for the wicked!’ Joan hurried past, not wanting to engage any further than she had to.

‘That’s what they say,’ Mrs Harrison replied.

Dot found Mrs Harrison’s company boring and depressing, but she was her best mate’s aunty, so she had to be careful.

‘You seeing our Barb later, Dot? I’ve got her mum’s Avon catalogue here that wants collecting. I’m running low on me night cream.’

Her skin was pitted, furrowed and a little grimy. Dot thought, uncharitably, that it would take more than a jar of night cream to fix it. ‘I might be, I’ll tell her when I see her.’

‘Thanks, love.’ A smile threatened to crease her face but was gone before it was fully formed. Audrey Harrison did not have much to smile about. Her life had been a series of disappointments, starting with the feckless, unfaithful husband that had gone and got himself killed in the war. Although, strangely, once he was dead, his fecklessness and infidelity seemed to have been quite forgotten. As Dot’s nan once pointed out, they never seem to bury any crap or useless husbands, only the ‘loving and devoted’ ones, if the gravestones in the churchyard were anything to go by.

‘She’s such a nosey old cow,’ Joan whispered. The two women laughed as they quickened their pace towards Narrow Street. Just in time to see their bus pulling up to the kerb. Dot screamed and ran ahead, waving her arms and running as fast as she was able in her silly heels on the icy pavement. The conductor waved back and waited until mother and daughter, their faces flushed, had plonked themselves down on the narrow seat that ran along the side of the bottom deck. They laughed as their breath blew clouds into the number 278 that would take them up the road.

Joan Simpson licked her fingers, then wiped them down the front of her starched white pinny, leaving a long smear of mayonnaise across her front. Her mouth mumbled with the inaudible calculations that ensured her pastry always puffed to perfection and her aspic chilled to a fine wobble.

‘Tenminutesmoreshoulddoit, thenicanplateitup, getitallout…’

She blew her blunt fringe upwards and wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. Her eyes darted between her daughter, who was standing in front of her, fiddling with the collar of her white blouse and pulling and twisting at her black pinafore, and the plate of devilled eggs that she now arranged with deft fingers on the counter top.

‘Right, love, listen. The main buffet is all laid out on the trestle in the corner; everyone will help themselves a bit later on. Serviettes, plates and whatnot are already on the table. Just keep an eye out, make sure that no platters run empty, we can refill them in here. Look for anyone that’s missing a serviette or cutlery, that kind of thing. You know what’s what; it’s not as if you haven’t done it before. These are just bits to pass around until they eat proper, so let’s get them out there and served or they’ll be on the turn and I haven’t been slaving away all day in this bloody kitchen so that you can ruin my food!’

‘I hate doing this, Mum!’

‘Really? You haven’t mentioned it.’

‘It’s just so embarrassing. They’re always old-timers who smell like lavender and tell me how lucky I am to be a teenager now and not twenty years ago. I know I’m lucky, I don’t need reminding by some stinky pensioner every five minutes.’

‘Dot, please, just shut up and take the bloody food in!’

‘I am! It’s just so unfair and anyway, in three years I’ll be twenty-one and then I’ll be free to do what I bloody want.’

Joan dipped into the metal tray under the counter top and lifted a large serving spoon in her direction. ‘Oi! Less of the “bloody”, missus. Until you are actually twenty-one, you are not too old for a ladling!’

‘A ladling? You just made that up! And you say “bloody” all the time!’ Dot concentrated on her outstretched arm, grappling with the wide silver platter that threatened to slide off the folded white linen cloth on which it sat.

‘Yes I do, because I can, and when you’re as old as me you can swear as much as you like. In the meantime, get that food out!’

Dot drew a deep breath and faced the double swing door that would reveal her in all her shame to the awaiting guests. ‘I’m never going to be old,’ she offered over her shoulder.

‘You’re right, Dot. If you carry on defying me and those canapés spoil, you won’t make twenty-one – I’ll bloody kill ya!’

Mother and daughter laughed until they snorted. Dot shook her head to compose herself. It was bad enough having to go out looking like a prize plum, trussed up like a Christmas pudding, without snorting her way through the crowd as well.

‘What are you waiting for now?’

‘I’m just composing meself!’

‘Composing yourself? Christ alive, Dot! Just get that food out now!’

‘All right, all right – I’m going.’

‘And come straight back for the vol-au-vents!’ Joan bellowed at her daughter’s disappearing back.

Dot pushed against the plushly padded velour door with its brass studs, which reminded her of a sideways sofa. She strained to hear the music that was coming from the grand piano in the corner; the sultry tones of Etta James drifted from the gramophone and the musician played along with the record. She glimpsed the bowed head of the black pianist, who with eyes closed and neck bowed was tickling the ivories.

‘At last

My love has come along

My lonely days are over

And life is like a song’

She loved the song and she hummed it inside her head as she wandered among the thirty or so guests. This room had always fascinated her: the polished dark-wood floor and the light from the huge chandelier meant everything sparkled. Vast oil paintings hung on the walls, each one of a military man either on horseback or with his weapon of choice held aloft. It intrigued her how such a large group of people could be gathered in one room and yet the loudest sound was the chink of glass against glass, with only the faintest hum of background chatter and the odd tinkle of delicate laughter. In the Victorian terrace where she lived with her mum, dad and little sister it was never quiet. If not loud music from the radio and the bashing of pots and pans in the kitchen, then the whistling of the kettle and the shouts of questions and instructions up and down the stairs:

‘CUP OF TEA?’

‘ONLY IF YOU’RE MAKING!’

‘WHERE ARE MY CLEAN SHIRTS?’

‘IN THE AIRING CUPBOARD!’

The fact that someone might be a whole floor away from you was no reason to exclude them from the conversation.

‘Would-you-like-a-devilled-egg?’ Dot lowered her natural volume and used her posh voice, just as she had been taught.

A bushy-moustached man in naval uniform with flash gold epaulettes practically dived onto the tray. She watched him scoop a handful of delicate white ovals from the platter and cram them into his gob. At least she could tell her mum that someone appreciated her cooking.

‘Not for me, dear.’ His wife raised her white-gloved hand. A pity; the poor woman looked like she would benefit from the odd devilled egg. She was stick thin and her paisley-print, bat-wing frock hung off her tiny frame. She had drawn her eyebrows way too high on her forehead; like a dolly peg, Dot thought.

Next she infiltrated a group of elderly men and women who collectively smelled of dust and fish paste. ‘Would-you-like-a-devilled-egg?’ She proffered the tray in the direction of one old bloke.

‘Would I what?’ he yelled at her.

Dot bit the inside of her cheeks, praying she wouldn’t get the giggles and immensely glad that Barb wasn’t around; if she had caught her friend’s eye, she would have been in hysterics. She gave a small cough and tried again in her low, posher-than-usual voice. ‘Would-you-like-a-devilled-egg?’