wanton arrangement of limbs.
I walked in. My usual table to the rear of the tea room was occupied, and I was forced to sit by the window. I dug into my Stationery and Publications Pockets, and set to work making notes on the findings of the Bishops’ Conference in Liverpool, until I saw the young girl on the chair cease her conversation, and I felt able to intervene.
‘Good evening, my dear,’ I said, giving a grave bow. ‘Am in the presence of Miss Marlene Dietrich?’
‘You what?’ said the girl, blankly. ‘Who’s that? Who’re you?’
‘I see I am mistaken,’ (I smote my brow theatrically), ‘but surely you must be aware of Miss Dietrich, the German actress. Why, you resemble her so closely, I could have sworn it was she sitting on this chair.’
‘You mean I look like her?’
‘It is not just the look, my dear. It is the pose. You must have seen Miss Dietrich’s new film, The Blue Angel, in which she plays a nightclub entertainer, who sits, upon the stage, in precisely the same attitude in which you are sitting now?’
‘No I haven’t. I can’t afford to go to the flicks.’
‘Dear girl, are you destitute? Have you no work to bring you a living wage?’
‘I work here,’ she said, coolly. ‘Only, I’ve just come off duty and now I’m going home.’
‘How fortunate. And do you find the work in this tea room congenial?’
‘What you mean, congealing?’
‘Congenial, my dear, do you find the work pleasant?’
‘Yeah, it’s all right. It’s nice when everyone’s friendly. But we get some right tough characters. The other day, this bloke, he comes in throwing his weight around, he looks at me and goes, “Oi, you! Get me some hot chocolate!” like he’s ordering some squaddie around.’
‘And did you retaliate?’
‘We’re not supposed to say nothing, in case they turn nasty. So I just got his drink and brought it over. Yvonne, my friend, she reckoned I should have upended it into his lap.’ She beamed wickedly at the prospect.
‘I hope you are not abused by gentlemen on a regular basis?’
‘What? No chance. Miss Tewkesbury here, she doesn’t take no cheek from people who’re rude.’
She was a sweet-faced young thing, not a beauty but a healthy, clean-skinned innocent girl, nervous of men. Yet, given a moment’s rest from her labours, she falls into the wayward, legs-apart posture of Lola in The Blue Angel, like the most shameless poule de luxe! Something must be working upon her; some malign influence has her in its grip. I have an antenna for when a girl is going to the bad – or, if not yet going, then disposed in time to slide towards corruption.
Her parents were in Evershot, she said, a village near Yeovil, in Dorset. They had (thoughtlessly, I feel) allowed her to leave school and travel to London with her older sister, to seek employment. The girls live in Camberwell, off the Dog Kennel Hill, and the sister, Delia, has a ‘young man’ who takes her cycling at weekends. She herself (Sandra) has no young man, she says, though she is all of seventeen. Some of the gentlemen who came in for tea made rough jokes about taking her ‘up the town’ one night, but they never (she says) mean it and she wouldn’t wish to. I asked how she spent her evenings. At the Camberwell room, it seems, reading and listening to the radio, although sometimes she and Delia go to the nearby park and drink cider with her gentleman friend and his associates. ‘It reminds us,’ she said, ‘of home.’ My godfathers. I know a girl in imminent trouble when I hear one. But one small light gleamed out from her blank revelation of a blank life. Every so often she goes to the Quakers Hall on Camberwell Church Road, to watch girls from the local school rehearsing their end-of-term drama.
The dear child. So bleakly comforted by so little! Impetuously, I leaned forward.
‘Would you do me the honour of accompanying me to the theatre?’ I asked. ‘I am fortunate to have two tickets to The Young Idea by Mr Coward at the Hippodrome this Friday, and I would like you to come.’
‘Well, I dunno,’ she said, untwining her legs from the back-to-front chair, ‘I don’t know you. You might be a murderer for all I know, mightn’t you?’
I gave a light laugh. ‘I am a clergyman, my dear, and I assure you that murder is the last thing on my mind. To speak plainly, I feel you may have a considerable future as an actress. Please do not smile. I am perfectly serious. Before I took to the cloth, I was a professional actor in London, in Kent, Surrey and Hampshire, and I know talent when I see it. You have no business waiting at tables where boorish men speak to you roughly. There is a world out there of achievement, of glamour and fame, where a girl like you will not have to fetch and carry for a pittance. Perhaps on Friday you will let me introduce it to you?’
She stood before me in her mackintosh, her mouth open (to reveal charmingly white but crooked teeth) in surprise.
‘Call in tomorrow, and ask me again,’ she said, ‘and I’ll see.’
‘I appreciate your caution,’ I said, delighted. ‘And I’m glad to say that you are about to enter, come Friday, a world of sublime happiness.’
When I left she was smiling. A splendid evening’s work. I must look in at the Hippodrome later, to acquire some free tickets from dear Ivy, whom I rescued from a life of vice only last spring.
London 9 July 1930
THINGS TO DO:
1. Elsie Teenan to Mrs Teasdale, 15 The Close, Bermondsey. Rent 3/9 wk. No dogs. Persuade E to part with Biscuit. Poss work at Vincent’s seamstress factory? Must ask.
2. Check employment roster at Labour Exchange, Stratford Road, Battersea. Maids, cooks, etc. in good houses. Lily Beane, Sally Anstruther, Joanna Dee still unplaced.
3. Boots pharmacy. Fresh supplies of rash salve, shingles ointment, gingivitis balm, surgical spirit, bathroom tissue, etc. Wrights Coal Tar soap for Elsie. Special offer beauty soap/shampoo still avlbl? Box set to Marina Carter – bthday 28 July. Mauve ribbons for Patricia. Soft toy for Pamela.
4. Lunch, Monsignor Coveney, Mount St, Weds. We need cash for Christian Rehabilitation of Immoral Youth fund or will surely go under.
5. Visit Fenella Royston-Smith, Ch X Hotel. NB bring Dream of Gerontius for her. Urge her to join Virtue Reclamation League and enlist Kenya friends.
6. Sandra from Strand T-rooms to The Young Idea, Friday, Hippodrome. Tickets from Ivy Bareham.
7. While at it, tkts to see Journey’s End at Her Majesty’s. Cheap dress-circle seats to 1 Sept.
8. 6 p.m., meeting with Eddie Bones & Howard Shiner, Runaway Boys’ Retreat.
9. New girl, Jezebel (!) friend of Dolores Kt. In danger. 16 Fournier St, Whitechapel.
10. Ring Mimi. There must be emergency
