Bad Girls Good Women. Rosie Thomas
a long way.’
They turned away from the black river and the necklace of lights lacing its banks and started to walk. After a few hundred yards they realised that the suitcases were impossibly heavy.
‘All this junk,’ Mattie grumbled. ‘We don’t need it. We should throw it away, and then we’d really be free.’
‘You could throw it away if it was yours,’ Julia pointed out. They went on in silence, irritable with one another, and then stopped again. A huge building blazed in front of them, its tiers of windows opulently draped. Julia peered at the big silvery letters on the sweep of canopy that faced the river.
‘It’s the Savoy Hotel,’ she whispered.
‘Oh, that’s perfect. Let’s take a suite.’
For no particular reason they turned their backs on the river and walked up a tiny, steep side alley. There was big, recessed doorway in the wall of the hotel, with heavy padlocked bars holding the doors shut. A ventilator grille was set high up and warm air that smelt of cooking pulsed out of it.
‘I’m not going any further,’ Mattie said. ‘We can lie down here.’
The alley was lit by one old-fashioned street lamp, and it was completely deserted. Mattie sank down on the step and drew her legs up. She curled up sideways and closed her eyes.
To Julia, she looked suddenly as if she was dead, a body abandoned in a huddle of clothes.
‘Mattie! Don’t do that.’
The sharp note of fear in her voice brought Mattie struggling upright again.
‘What’s the matter? It’s all right. Look, there’s room for us both. Come in here behind me and I’ll shield you.’
Julia looked up and down the alley. The city waiting beyond its dark mouth seemed threatening now. Reluctantly she stepped past Mattie and hauled the suitcases into the grimy space. She opened one and took out some of the least essential clothes, bunching them up to make pillows and a scrap of a bed. She lay down with the suitcases wedged behind her for safety, and Mattie squeezed herself in too. Julia tucked her knees into the crook of Mattie’s and hunched up to her warm back. Mattie’s mass of curls, still surprisingly scented with her Coty perfume, fell over her face.
‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ Julia whispered.
‘You helped me to get away,’ Mattie said simply. And then, ‘We’ll be all right, you know.’
‘I know we will,’ Julia answered.
They lay quietly, hoping to sleep. After a while a smartly dressed couple came up the alley. The yellow light from the street lamp glittered briefly on the woman’s necklace. They glanced at the figures in the doorway as they passed, and looked quickly away again, separating themselves.
‘I’ve done that,’ Mattie whispered, when they had gone.
‘Me too.’
It seemed such a small step, now, from that world, padded with food and insulated with little tokens of security, to this doorway.
I’m so hungry.’
‘We must save the money for breakfast.’
The smell of food wafting from the ventilator made them feel ravenous, and sick at the same time. There were other smells lingering in the doorway too. Mattie and Julia clung together, and after a while they drifted into an uncomfortable sleep.
Mattie had no idea how long she had been dozing for. She woke up, confused and aching, with the panicky certainty that someone was watching them. She lifted her head from the nest of clothes and a gasp of terror shook her. A man was leaning over her. His face was covered with grey whiskers and his matted grey hair hung down to his shoulders. He was grinning, his lips drawn back to reveal black stumps of teeth. It was his breath that frightened Mattie most. It smelt rawly of drink and she recoiled, trying to escape from the memories that that close, fetid smell stirred in her. She felt Julia go stiff behind her, and her fingers digging into her arms.
‘Two lassies,’ the apparition mumbled and then cackled with laugher. ‘Two lassies, is it? Ma’ pitch, ye know, this is. Mine.’ He thrust his face closer and they tried to edge backwards.
‘Please go away,’ Julia whispered. ‘We’re not doing any harm. We’ve nowhere else.’
‘Ah can see that.’ He cackled more raucously still. ‘Well, seein’ it’s you ye can be ma guests. Just fer tonight. ’Tis the Savoy, ye know. Act nice. They serve breakfast, just round the corner, first thing.’ He picked up a filthy sack and shuffled away down the hill, still hooting with laughter.
Mattie was shuddering with fright and shock. Julia put her arm over her shoulders. ‘He was only an old tramp. We’ve pinched his place, that’s all. Come on, we’ll change places so that I’m in the front. You can hide behind me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Mattie mumbled.
They scrambled stiffly to their knees and lay down again. Mattie stopped shaking at last, and she let her eyes close. It wasn’t the tramp who she saw at once against her eyelids. It was only his smell that had frightened her, and repelled her so deeply that all her flesh screamed and crawled in case he touched her.
He had made her think of her father, and of what she had really run away from.
She had been to see East of Eden, just as she had told Vernon and Betty Smith. She came blindly out of the Odeon in the High Street with the image of James Dean more real than the windows of Woolworths across the street, more flesh and blood than the two boys from the technical college lounging in front of them. For a few minutes more, while the spell lasted, the hated suburban shopping street and the teds whistling at her were nothing to do with Mattie.
For two whole hours she had escaped from home and her younger brothers and sisters, from work, and from everything that surrounded her. It was her fourth visit. Julia had come with her three times, but even Julia had balked at a fourth visit. So Mattie had gone on her own, and afterwards she drifted to the bus stop, lost inside her own head with Cal Trask.
The enchantment lasted until she reached home. She walked through the estate, where every avenue and turning was the same as the last and the next, and reached her own front gate. It creaked open, brushing over the docks and nettles sprouting across the path. She stopped for a second outside her own front door. The house was quiet. It must have thundered while she was in the cinema, Mattie thought. It had been a dusty, muggy day but the air was cool and clear now.
She put her key in the lock and opened the front door.
Ted Banner was standing in the dim hallway.
‘Where the bloody hell have you have been, you dirty little madam?’
Mattie smelt sweat and whisky and the indefinable, sour scent of her father’s hopeless anger. She knew what was coming. Her stomach heaved with fright, but she made herself say, calmly and clearly so that he couldn’t possibly misunderstand her, ‘I’ve been to the Odeon to see a picture. It was James Dean in East of Eden. It finished at a quarter to ten and I came straight home.’ As conciliatory as she could be, with as much detail as possible, so that he might believe her. But he didn’t. He came at her, and she glimpsed the patch of sweat darkening his vest as he lifted his fist.
‘Bloody little liar.’
He swiped viciously at her. Mattie flung up her arm to protect her face, but the blow still jarred and she stumbled backwards.
‘Been out with some feller, haven’t you? Taking your knickers off for anyone who asks you in the back of his car, like your sister. All the same, all of you.’
‘I haven’t. I told you, I’ve been to the pictures.’
‘Again?’
Some evenings, Mattie didn’t have the protection of the truth. But it made no difference anyway. Her father hit her again,