Sins

On the other hand, without passengers how would the cabby be able to earn his living? Her conscience momentarily quietened she looked down at her ankles, hoping that her stockings would not be splashed when she got out.

They were halfway to their destination, stopped at a red traffic light, when suddenly the door was yanked open.

‘’Ere, can’t you see I’ve already got a fare?’ the cabby protested.

But the young man getting into the cab and pulling down the extra seat ignored him, shaking the rain off his black hair and grinning at the three girls as he demanded, ‘You don’t mind, do you, girls?’ in an accent that held more than a trace of cockney, before turning to the driver: ‘Trafalgar Square, mate, when you’ve dropped these three lovelies off.’

Ella had shrunk back into the corner of the cab the minute she had seen the intruder. Oliver Charters. She’d recognised him straight away. Her face burned. Of all the bad luck.

Ella had disliked Oliver Charters the minute she had set eyes on him, and she had disliked him even more when he had started to poke fun at her, mimicking her accent, and generally teasing her.

Her boss had noticed and had asked her why she didn’t like him.

‘I just don’t,’ was all she had been able to say. ‘I don’t like the way he talks, or looks, or…or the way he smells.’

To Ella’s chagrin, her boss had burst out laughing.

‘That, my dear, is the heady aphrodisiacal smell of raw male sexuality, so you had better get used to it.’

Remembering the way he had behaved towards her in the Vogue office, Ella could feel herself stiffening with resentment.

Janey, of course, had no reservations about the intruder. Eager to please as usual, she smiled warmly at him as she said, ‘You’re playing that new dare game that’s all the rage, aren’t you? The one where you have to jump into someone else’s taxi and get the driver to take you somewhere without them complaining?’

Oliver flashed her a grin that revealed the cleft in his chin, pushing back his thick floppy ink-black hair and smiling at her with the brilliant malachite-green eyes that mesmerised cute little popsies like this one at sixty paces.

‘Play games? Nah, not me. It’s you posh nobs that do that. Me, I’ve better things to do wiv me time.’

Janey looked so entranced that Ella couldn’t help but give a small snort of disgust. He was putting on that cockney accent, exaggerating the way he normally spoke, and now that he’d got Janey on the edge of her seat, all wide-eyed with excitement, he was laying it on like nobody’s business.

The snort had Ollie turning his head towards the corner of the taxi. Ella, realising her mistake, shrunk deeper into the shadows and lowered her head so that he couldn’t see her face.

Oliver gave a dismissive shrug–the girl in the corner had probably got spots and puppy fat–and turned back to Janey, who quite obviously did not have either, and neither did the little beauty with the Eurasian looks.

‘We’re going to a party–why don’t you come with us?’ Janey offered.

‘No he can’t.’

Now it wasn’t only him who was looking at her, Ella realised, it was Janey and Rose as well, and just then the taxi turned a sharp corner, throwing her forward so that she had to grab the edge of the seat to steady herself, and the light from the street revealed her face to Oliver.

The posh stuck-up girl from Vogue, who was always looking down her nose at him; the one who didn’t just have frigid virgin written all over her, it was probably written right through her as well, like the lettering on a stick of Brighton rock. Yep, that was what she was: a posh virgin, all pink-candy-coated exterior with ‘virgin for marriage only’ written into her pure sexless little body.

He could see the familiar cold dislike in her eyes, and for a minute he was tempted to punish her just a little, to tease her, and put the real fear of God into her and make her cling to her knickers, but he had other things to do, like talking an idiot of a younger cousin from getting involved with one of the East End’s most notorious gangs, daft bugger.

Oliver had trained as a boxer until his widowed mother, who had not liked the thought of her only child ending up with his brains addled, like so many boxers did, had had a word with a chap she went cleaning for. He’d put in a good word for Ollie, who’d been taken on by a local photographer, his mother somehow managing to find the money to pay the indenture for his apprenticeship. No one, least of all Oliver himself, had expected that he’d not only develop a talent for photography but that he’d also become so passionate about it that he’d give up the boxing ring to work for next to nothing, going out in all weathers to take pictures that he then had to hawk round gritty world-weary newspaper picture editors’ offices. He’d got his first break with a photograph of a couple of East End toughs, the Kray twins, at a boxing match. They’d been in the foreground of the shot, whilst in the background there’d been a couple of society women and their partners, the women dressed up to the nines in mink and diamonds.

Now he’d built himself a reputation for photographing society where it met London’s lowlife, as well as photographing fashion models for glossy magazines like Vogue.

‘Wot, me go to a party wiv you toffs?’ he teased Janey, who was wriggling with pleasure. ‘Not ruddy likely. I’d be frown out.’

‘Janey, do come on,’ Ella demanded.

They had reached their destination and Ella was already out of the taxi and standing on the pavement, having handed over their fare to the cab driver.

As she followed Ella, Janey was conscious of the fact that Oliver was watching her or, more correctly, her breasts. She was wearing one of the circular-stitched cone-shaped brassieres that daring girls wore to give them a film star sweater-girl shape beneath their jumpers, and the effect, even beneath her oversized jumper, was making Janey feel very pleased with herself indeed. Ella didn’t approve of her new brassiere one little bit. She had pursed her lips earlier and said that she thought it was vulgar. Sexy was what her elder sister had really meant, but of course, being Ella, she would never be able to bring herself to use such a word, Janey knew. She smiled at Oliver in response to his wink as he closed the door and the taxi shot off in the direction of Trafalgar Square, leaving the three girls standing on the pavement.

‘Janey, you’re going to get soaked,’ Ella complained. ‘Why haven’t you got your coat on?’

Because her coat concealed her newly shaped breasts, was the truthful answer, but of course it wasn’t one that Janey was going to give.

‘Quick, let’s get inside,’ she said instead, darting across the wet pavement, leaving the other two to follow her, torn between feeling guilty and triumphant, and all sort of squishy and excited inside. Maybe tonight would be the night she’d go all the way with Dan.

Janey hadn’t said anything to the others about having even met Dan, never mind that she was hoping that he would be at the party, but Ella wasn’t deceived. Janey was up to something and, what was more, Ella knew instinctively that it was the very kind of something that could lead Janey into trouble.

Ella didn’t like trouble of any kind. Just the thought of it was enough to bring a dreaded and familiarly unpleasant feeling into her tummy. She could remember having that feeling as a very little girl when, on one humiliating occasion in the nursery, when her mother had been in one of her moods, Ella had wet her knickers because she had been too afraid to interrupt her mother to tell her that she needed the lavatory. How cross her mother had been. Ella had been made to wear her wet knickers for the rest of the day as punishment.

Hidden away inside her memory where she kept all those shameful things she didn’t really want to remember were images of the black lace underwear she had once seen her mother wearing. It had been one hot afternoon when Ella was supposed to be having a nap. She had woken up feeling thirsty and, since her nanny hadn’t been there, she had got up to go downstairs to the kitchen to ask Cook for a drink. On the way she had heard laughter coming from her parents’ bedroom and she had paused on the landing outside and then opened the bedroom door.

Her mother had been lying on the bed in her black lace underwear, whilst Auntie Cassandra, wearing a bathrobe, had been fanning her with a black feather fan.

The minute they had seen her the two women had gone very still, and then her mother had screeched furiously, ‘How dare you come in here, you wicked girl? Get out. Get out.’

Ella had backed out of the room and run back upstairs to the nursery.

She desperately wanted to warn Janey how important it was not to emulate their mother and turn out like her, but at the same time she couldn’t find the words to explain just what it was about their late mother’s wildness that worried and upset her so much.

Dougie let the girls in, grinning appreciatively at all three of them, introducing himself and asking their names.

‘Ella and Janey Fulshawe, and Rose Pickford,’ Janey answered.

Fulshawe? Pickford? Dougie knew those names. He’d seen them often enough in the correspondence sent to him by the late duke’s solicitor. The solicitor had set out all the intricate details of the widowed duchess’s family connections in a lengthy letter, accompanied by a family tree, while Dougie had been in Australia. He hadn’t paid much attention to it at first, but since coming to London he had studied the family tree. He hadn’t expected his first meeting with young women listed there to come about like this, though. If it was them and he wasn’t jumping to the wrong conclusion. It must be them, he assured himself, giving Rose a quick assessing look. He remembered now that there had been something on the family tree to show that the duchess’s brother had a half-Chinese daughter, and Rose was beautifully Eurasian. Dougie cursed himself now for not having paid more attention to the finer details of the genealogy, such as the exact names of the duchess’s extended family. The only name he could remember was that of the duchess’s daughter, Emerald. Surely it had to be them, though?

‘You’re Australian,’ Janey guessed, breaking into Dougie’s thoughts.

‘I reckon the accent gives me away,’ Dougie agreed ruefully. He was desperate to find out more about them, to find out if it really was them.

‘Just a bit,’ Janey agreed, smiling at him.

Rose tensed. She knew exactly why the young Australian who had let them in had looked at her the way he had when she had given him her name. He’d assumed, as so many others did, that because of the way she looked she belonged to a different stratum of society, and her upper-class accent had surprised him. He probably thought, as she was aware people who did not know her family history often did, that she had deliberately changed the way she spoke in an attempt to pass for something that she wasn’t.

The year Amber had brought them out, Rose had been shocked and hurt by the number of young men who had taken it for granted that they could take liberties with her that they would never have dreamed of doing with Ella and Janey.

The white-painted sitting room was heaving with people, the pitch of the conversation such that it was almost impossible to hear the swing music playing in the background.

Janey surveyed the room as best she could, disappointed not to be able to see Dan immediately, but then plunging into the mêlée when she finally managed to pick out her St Martins friends, leaving Ella to protest and then grab hold of Rose’s hand so that they could follow her.

Dougie was desperate to keep the girls with him so that he could find out a bit more about their lives. He knew that it was the deaths of both the duchess’s husband and her son that had resulted in him being next in line to inherit the dukedom. The solicitor had implied in his letters that the duchess was anxious to make him welcome in England, but Dougie suspected those words were just good manners, and that in reality she was bound to resent him.

Dougie had never had what he thought of as a proper family, with aunts and uncles, and cousins of his own age, and the obvious warmth and attachment between Ella, Janey and Rose drew him to them. OK, they might not strictly be cousins, but they were ‘family’. Weren’t they?

It would be easy enough to find out–but not by declaring himself. He wasn’t ready for that yet.

He was still clutching the coats the girls had given him and he could see that they were turning away from him and looking into the room. This might be his only chance to find out for sure.

Clearing his throat, he said as nonchalantly as he could, ‘So where’s Emerald, then?’

The effect on all three of them was electric. They turned almost as one to look at him. Well, at least they knew who she was. Dougie had been half afraid that they would look blankly at him and that he’d be forced to accept that he had got it all wrong.

‘She’s still in Paris,’ Ella informed Dougie.

‘Do you know Emerald then?’ That was Janey.

‘Er, no,’ Dougie admitted, ‘but I’ve heard about her. That is, I’ve heard her name.’

They knew Emerald all right, but for some reason the mention of her name had changed the atmosphere from easy warmth to quite definitely very cool.

‘Emerald isn’t like us,’ Janey explained, taking pity on the young Australian, who was now looking self-conscious. ‘You see, Emerald isn’t just Emerald, she’s Lady Emerald.’ As she finished speaking Janey turned to scan the room. Pleasant though the young Australian was, he wasn’t Dan. ‘Excuse us.’ She smiled at Dougie, heading into the centre of the room, leaving Ella and Rose to follow her.

Within a few minutes of joining the party the girls had become separated, Janey deliberately escaping from Ella’s watchful eye so that she could find Dan, Ella ending up in the kitchen where she was asked so often for a clean glass that she had busied herself collecting empties and washing them. At least it gave her something to do and helped her to feel less self-conscious. Nearly all the other girls were wearing the same kind of clothes as Janey. None of them was dressed like her. But then none of them was as big and lumpy and plain as she was. One girl, with hair such a bright shade of red that it could only be dyed, did have large bosoms, which she was showing off proudly in a thin black jumper, but she was the sort who obviously didn’t mind flaunting herself. Ella shuddered over the kitchen sink at the thought of the way the other girl had laughed when one of the men had touched her breast. Ella went hot and then cold with horror at the thought of being subjected to that kind of treatment.

‘’Scuse me…oh, sorry,’ a tall dark-haired young man apologised to Rose as he tried to get past her and ended up almost spilling his drink over her. ‘Blame my friends.’ He indicated a group of young men congregated by the table of drinks. ‘If I don’t reach them soon, they’ll have drunk all the beer we brought with us.’

‘Hey, Jew boy, stop trying it on with the Chink and get over here.’

Just for a second before he masked it with a small shrug of his shoulders and an easy smile, Rose saw the anger tightening his mouth.

‘Sorry about that,’ he apologised to her again. ‘He’s got a big mouth and, like they say, empty vessels make the most noise.’

Rose inclined her head and looked away. She wished she could move away as well, but that was impossible with the room packed so tightly with people.

‘Over a hundred years my family have lived in London, and yet I still get identified as an outsider because of the way I look.’ He was smiling–apparently more resigned than resentful–revealing strong white teeth and a dimple in the middle of his chin.

Her surprise that he should continue the conversation had Rose looking back at him before she could stop herself.

‘What about you? Have your family been here long?’

‘That depends which side of my family you’re asking about. My mother never made it here from the slums of Hong Kong, whilst my father’s family have lived here for many generations.’

‘That must be hard for you.’

‘What must? Looking like my mother when I’m living in my father’s country?’

‘Living here, but feeling like you aren’t accepted,’ he corrected her gently.

Rose stiffened, but either he hadn’t seen how much she disliked the direction the conversation was taking or he didn’t care, because he continued, ‘The trouble is that when you’re like us you’re an outsider wherever you go. I worked on a kibbutz in Israel after I finished my national service. There were Jewish kids there from all over the world, we were made welcome, but we weren’t at home. The thing is that people like you and me, we aren’t the past because we don’t fit in, but our children will be the future. One day we and they will be the past, just like the Romans are, and the Vikings and all those others who came here as outsiders. What’s your name? Mine’s Josh, by the way. Joshua.’

‘Rose–Rose Pickford.’

He nodded, then demanded, ‘So what do you do, Rose Pickford, when you aren’t out partying?’

‘I’m training to be an interior designer.’

To her surprise he gave an exultant whoop of approval. ‘You know what? I think that you and me were destined to meet, because what I need right now more than anything else is an interior designer.’

Rose eyed him suspiciously. ‘I really must go and find my friends,’ she told him coolly, but as she made to edge past him, someone pushed by her, and would have sent her slamming into the wall if Josh hadn’t reacted quickly and scooped her towards himself so that it was his forearm that connected with the wall and not her back.

She could feel his exhaled breath against her forehead.

‘Are you OK?’

This close up she could smell the scent of his skin, sort of citrussy, causing her to clench her stomach muscles. Her gaze was almost on a level with his Adam’s apple and her heart jerked. Rose struggled against a backwash of unfamiliar emotions.

‘Yes, thanks, I’m fine.’ Her response was unsteady. It was impossible for her even to think about trying to stand independently of him, the room was so packed. He was towering over her, his shoulders broad, the prominent hook of his nose casting a shadow over the olive-toned flesh of his face, his hair thick and as dark as her own, although a very different texture with its natural wave flopped over his forehead and curled over the collar of his shirt. He was undeniably handsome and Rose suspected probably very sexy, but there was also a kindness about him that, like his natural ebullience, disarmed her and somehow drew her to him.

He was bending his head towards her ear. ‘Want to guess what I do?’

Rose wanted to shake her head, but without waiting for her response he told her, ‘I’m a hairdresser.’

Now he had surprised her.

‘That’s why I need an interior designer,’ Josh continued. ‘I’m setting meself up in business and I’ve got this salon, see, but it needs tarting up a bit, and I reckon you could be just the person to help me get it sorted.’ He grinned at her.

Josh was aware that a new mood was rushing across the Atlantic from America and sweeping Britain’s youth up into its very own new culture. Rock and roll had arrived, a brand-new form of music that belonged only to the young, and one that demanded that the young changed the way they looked and acted to separate themselves from their parents’ generation. New hairstyles were a part of that culture, and Josh intended to ride the crest of the new wave by opening his own salon so that he could make his name and his fortune.

‘I can’t pay you anything,’ he continued, ‘but I’ll give you a free haircut and it will be the best you’ll ever have.’

He had so much confidence, and so much vitality and energy, Rose couldn’t help but smile.

He was looking at her hair and Rose automatically touched her chignon protectively.

‘I don’t want my hair cut.’

She was a one-off and no mistake, Josh decided, amused by her defensiveness. Normally he had girls pushing eagerly for his attention within minutes of meeting them, even if some of them masked their interest in him by acting all hoity-toity. This one was different, though, with her serious dark eyes and her cautious manner, as though she were afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing. Josh had a large and a very warm heart. He had grown up in the East End in a community where you looked out for your own and protected them. Rose, he recognised, aroused that protective instinct in him. She was looking as though she wanted to get away from him, but he didn’t want her to.

‘All right, I won’t cut it then, but I still want you to sort out the salon for me.’

‘But how can you say that? You don’t know anything about me.’

‘Well, that’s soon solved, isn’t it? Come on, I’ll go first and tell you my life story, then you can tell me yours.’

There was no stopping him, Rose decided with resignation.

‘My dad wanted me to be a tailor, like him, and even now he still doesn’t think that hairdressing is a man’s job, even though I’ve told him that it’s his fault that that’s what I do. He was the one who got me a Saturday job sweeping up hair from the floor of the salon close to where he works, and he’s the one who taught me how to use a pair of scissors, even it was on cloth and not hair. He didn’t speak to me for a week when I told him that I wanted to be apprenticed and learn to become a proper hairdresser. He told me he’d rather disown me, but my mother talked him round in the end, and once he’d met Charlie, who owned the salon where I wanted to train, and realised that he wasn’t a pouf, he calmed down a bit.’

Josh wasn’t going to say so to Rose, but Charlie had been as rampant as a ram and ready to get his leg over anything female that moved, including most of his staff, as well as his younger and prettier clients. But it was the fact that he drove a fancy car and swaggered through the salon, come Saturday afternoon, wearing a sharp suit, eyeing up the birds for a date for Saturday night that had helped to make Josh decide that he wouldn’t mind a bit of that life.

Rose was a cut above the girls he knew, Josh could tell that, not because she talked posh–that would never have impressed Josh–but because she was…he hunted around for the right way to describe her and then gave a satisfied nod when he finally came up with the words…delicate and refined. That was it: Rose was refined, and needed to be treated right.

‘I’d seen Charlie coming into the salon all dressed up in a fancy suit, and I’d reckoned that hairdressing must be a good way to make a bit of money. And, of course, me being a Jew boy, I fancied making a bit meself.’ He grinned at his joke. ‘He worked his apprentices damn near into the grave and paid us peanuts, but I learned a lot whilst I was working for Charlie.’

He certainly had. Josh had quickly learned about offering to do the prettier girls’ hair for free in their own homes on his day off, and getting to have a bit of a smooch with them in payment.

‘Of course, I’d got my sights on better things, even then. I’d made up my mind that as soon as I was qualified I was going to find myself a job as a stylist at some posh West End place and start saving for my own salon. That’s where the money is: owning your own place. Only I had to do my national service first, of course, and then this other hairdresser, another Jewish lad, persuaded me to go out to Israel with him,’

‘To work on the kibbutz?’ Rose asked, remembering what he had said earlier. She was more interested in his story than she had expected.

Josh shook his head. ‘Not exactly. Or at least that wasn’t the original plan, although we did end up doing a spell in one.’

Rose’s eyes widened. ‘You went there to fight,’ she guessed.

‘It wasn’t my idea,’ Josh told her. ‘It was Vidal’s. And by the time I’d realised what he’d volunteered us for, and that it wasn’t a few weeks in the sunshine picking fruit, it was too late. I reckon that Vidal was hoping that would be the end of me, what with us both wanting to open our own salons and me being a better hairdresser than him.’