Her Ladyship's Girl (26 page)

I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was a private gambling club for members only and there were green baize tables with people playing cards and roulette and dice and all sorts of
other betting paraphernalia. A waiter came and gave us two cocktails off a tray and didn’t ask for any payment. The drink tasted wonderful, like nothing I’d ever drunk before. I thought
this Alan Lane must be very well-to-do to be getting us treated like this. He took me through the club and asked me to sit on a chair in a corner for a few minutes till he ‘did some
business’. Everyone was staring at me, as if I had two heads, and I thought it must be something to do with my limp. Alan joined a table where six men were playing poker. I knew it was poker
because I’d seen them playing it in the Duke’s Head for pennies. But there was no money on this table, just coloured counters. There were other women in the club besides me – two
kinds of women. Ones that came in with a man, like I did, and others scantily dressed, who hung round the tables watching the winners.

Alan didn’t come back after a few minutes, but the cocktails kept coming and I felt a bit tipsy after an hour or so. I was never a big drinker and I wasn’t used to this kind of
liquor either. The waiter came over again with another glass.

‘What do you call this drink?’

‘A manhattan, Madam.’

‘What’s in it?’

‘Whisky, sweet vermouth and a maraschino cherry.’

‘How very erotic.’

‘Don’t you mean exotic, Madam?’

‘That too.’

We left the club at about 3:00 a.m. and I didn’t know my own name. Alan poured me into the back of the car and I didn’t remember much more, apart from him being very happy and lively
and whistling on the way. He saw me to the side door of the White Lion, then got me up the stairs and into bed fully clothed, although he did take my shoes off. He kissed me on the forehead before
leaving and I fell into a room-swirling sleep.

Next morning, there was a hammer in my head, beating an anvil. I threw up in the toilet and swore I’d never drink manhattans again – or any other alcoholic beverage for that matter.
I didn’t remember saying goodnight to Alan Lane or whether I’d made a spectacle of myself in the club or not. And I wondered if I’d ever see him again.

I
needn’t have worried. He was back in the pub the following Wednesday, with his pearly teeth and Clark Gable moustache, drinking his whisky
and water and buying a round for the whole bar – which made him very popular. Lizzie was on with me that night and, just like May, hanging on his every well-considered word. We were quite
busy, due to the lack of other pubs in the area – most of which had been bombed or had run out of drink. But Albert and his black market connections made sure we were able to keep going. I
didn’t get to talk much to Alan that night because I had to keep serving the customers, but before he left he slipped me a note.

What could I say? My heart skipped a beat –
yours adoringly
. Now, I was no pushover for the passionate phrase. I’d heard it all before, from William Harding and Henry Rivers
and Brynn the bicycle boy and others as well. But there was something about Alan Lane – he seemed to have that aura of hazard about him that some men have; men a woman knows she should stay
away from, but is drawn to like a moth to a flame. It was an ideal – an image, a fiction – something I expected him to be from the books I’d read, but which didn’t actually
exist. I showed the letter to the other girls and they were green with envy.

The days passed greyly until my next Saturday off, then he was there, just as before with his Morris Oxford, at 6:00 p.m. precisely. This time we went to a secluded little brasserie in Soho for
a fish supper and he was very quiet to begin with, not saying much at all. When we’d eaten, he ordered a bottle of champagne. It wasn’t real champagne because that would have been
impossible to get, even for him. But it was the gesture that impressed me and I wondered why a handsome, sophisticated man-of-the-world like Alan Lane would want to spend so much time with a Welsh
village woman like me and tell me he was mine
adoringly
.

He leaned across the table.

‘This will probably seem impetuous, Anwyn . . .’

‘What will?’

He took a little box from his pocket and opened it. Inside was what looked like a diamond ring. My hands went to my mouth.

‘Would you consider marrying me?’

I didn’t know how to answer. My jaw dropped down to my chest and my mouth stayed open to catch the startled flies. A moment or two passed before I realised he was waiting for an
answer.

‘Marry you?’

‘I know this is sudden, but let me explain . . .’

He told me he was going to be called up for military service soon and he might be killed on active duty in North Africa. So he wanted to marry me now, because later might never come.

‘I . . . I don’t know what to say.’

‘Will you at least think about it?’

‘Yes . . . yes, I will.’

‘Very well, we can consider ourselves engaged.’

And he slipped the ring onto my finger.

It was a whirlwind engagement. Alan Lane swept me off my feet and showed me all the sights of wartime London. We went to places off the beaten track that few ordinary people would know about and
he seemed to be able to get anything he wanted, despite shortages and rationing. We set a date for the end of April to get married, as he was expecting to be called up in May. I was busy working in
the White Lion and he said his mother and sister would take care of all the arrangements, but I’d have to give up the bar job when we tied the knot, because no wife of his would need to work.
I didn’t object, I’d been at the White Lion for nearly three years and that was the longest I’d ever spent in a job. It was time to pack in the slogging for a living and give
married life a go.

When he said his family would make all the arrangements, I believed it would be a big wedding, with the church swollen with guests and all the trimmings. I dreamed of walking down the aisle to
the sound of Mendelssohn and an entourage of little bridesmaids throwing flowers behind me – a choir singing somewhere in the chancel and the people dressed like they were at the May Ball I
went to with Miranda Bouchard. But it turned out to be a small ceremony in a register office in Waltham Forest. None of my family could afford to come down from Wales, so Albert and Pearl came on
my side and Alan’s mother and sister were there for him. That was it. Afterwards, we went for tea and buttermilk scones at the Bull’s Head Hotel & Tea Rooms in Barkingside. Then
Albert and Pearl had to get back to their respective pubs and I travelled to a house in Clerkenwell I’d never seen before. It was a four-bedroom terraced house in Woodbridge Street and he
lived there with his mother and sister. I had about twenty pounds in savings from Devonshire Place and the White Lion and he told me he’d put it in the strongbox at the house for
safekeeping.

It turned out Alan was actually fifteen years older than me, though he didn’t look it, and the mother and sister doted on him like he was Little Lord Fauntleroy. Alan’s father was
dead, but nobody told me how he met his end and the man’s name was rarely mentioned. His mother was small and slight, like him. Her name was Clare and she was a pinched little woman of about
sixty with a frugal face and grey hair. His sister was bigger, almost my size, with spectacles and a permanent wave. Her name was Geraldine and she was about thirty and heading down the road to
spinsterhood. They waited on Alan hand and foot and he never did a thing for himself. As I’d never actually met them before, I expected that they were in favour of us getting married, but I
soon found out that wasn’t the case.

We didn’t honeymoon anywhere ‘because of the war’, but spent our wedding night in the house on Woodbridge Street with the other two women just a couple of partition walls away.
Despite my close encounters with a number of men, I was still a virgin on my wedding night and I was a little nervous when we went to bed. It was cold in the room even though it was late April and
I got between the sheets first, wearing a floral cotton nightdress. Alan slipped in beside me wearing a white string vest and knee-length drawers and his arm went round me. It wasn’t long
before he manoeuvred himself into position and, after a few grunts and pushes, it was all over and he rolled off me and lit a cigarette. Maybe it was because they were Catholics, but Alan
wasn’t the most imaginative man in bed, despite his playboy persona, and I couldn’t help remembering Mr Harding and the way I felt in the library with him all those young years ago. We
did it again in the missionary position that night and then the honeymoon was over.

The Blitz ended in May 1941 and things got a bit quieter in London, while the Germans were designing their doodlebugs and buzz-bombs. I waited for Alan to get called up and sent to North Africa,
but he never was, and he kept saying it would probably be tomorrow, then the next day, or the day after that. Apart from in the bedroom, he was quite attentive to me, but his mother and sister were
cool and I was more or less left to my own devices for the first week or so. They continued to look after Alan as they’d always done and I looked after myself. I think they believed me to be
beneath them because I was once a servant and then a barmaid, and they thought they were on a higher level because they came from a professional family. As the days went by, I was increasingly
given little jobs to do, like lighting the fires in the morning and cleaning up the kitchen after meals and making the beds and washing the floors. It felt as if I was being treated like their
private maid and I’d gone back to being a skivvy again, only this time I wasn’t being paid. Alan came and went at odd hours. He didn’t seem to have a job like most men that took
him out in the morning and back home in the evening. But he was kind and considerate to me, and his mother and sister kept their superiority complexes under control when he was around.

Alan never did get called up for military service. I found out, from accidentally overhearing a conversation, that his family had paid a doctor to diagnose flat feet for him and he was exempt.
So there was no chance of him being killed in action. I wondered why he was in such a hurry to marry me. Then I found out. After about a month of married life, he insisted I come with him to
another gambling club, even though I didn’t want to because he’d only leave me on my own again and I’d drink too many cocktails. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

The club was down a dark alley round the back of Regent Street. There was just a plain black door set into the wall and you’d have walked past it if you didn’t know it was there.
Alan knocked slowly twice, then three times in quick succession. A viewing slot opened and a pair of eyes looked out. The man inside knew Alan because he opened the door and let us in. It was
obvious to me that this was an illegal gambling den and the clients looked like a rum lot. I’d say most of them were villains of some sort and there were others who looked foreign –
maybe Spanish or North African or even Indian – soldiers and sailors and pirates and pickpockets.

They all stared at me and scowled as I limped across the room, and I wondered why – hadn’t they never seen a woman with a hobble before? Maybe not. Alan kept me closer to him this
time, as he went from table to table and won money at all of them. I wasn’t offered a single drink and Alan had to give me money to go to the bar. When I spoke to the barman in my Welsh
accent, I thought the man wasn’t going to serve me. He gave me a look like I had the plague, but another man in a tuxedo nodded to him and he gave me the drinks. I was nervous in this place.
They were openly hostile to me and they watched Alan like hawks. He was delighted with himself after winning and we left at 3:00 a.m., to the great relief of the ‘management’.

The next day I asked Alan why they were all giving me the evil eye in the club and he laughed.

‘Don’t you know the old saying?’

‘What old saying?’

He told me there was an old Gypsy superstition that had been bandied about for centuries in gaming circles – that a limping woman who spoke softly in the Celtic tongue would bring luck to
anyone she was with. There was a rhyme associated with the superstition that he couldn’t quite remember the words of. He tried to say it.

‘It goes, “the girl who limps . . . speaks with a mysterious voice” . . . something like that.’

I knew exactly what it was –

That was a rough translation that I’d read and I also knew that
teang
meant tongue and
chroí
meant heart or love in old Celtic. Alan laughed
again.

‘It’s some kind of old folklore thing. I never took any notice of it before, until I met you. I thought it was a load of old cobblers, but it’s working for me.’

‘What about the others in the clubs?’

‘What about them?’

‘Do they believe it?’

‘Gamblers are the most superstitious breed of people in the world!’

They all had their individual rituals and lucky charms and would wear odd socks or a certain tie or recite words backwards or turn round three times – anything to give them that edge
– that elusive piece of good fortune. I told Alan he ought to be careful, but he said what could they do, report him to the police? Some of the clubs were illegal and he wasn’t doing
anything against the rules. Alan’s attitude was, they’d been happily taking money off him for years, and now it was his turn to take some of that money back.

Alan made me come to the clubs with him over a period of several months in the summer of 1942 and I came to the conclusion that he married me because he wanted a good luck charm on his arm. I
was more of a mascot than a wife. Word was spreading that there was some kind of sibyl in town and each time we went out it got more frightening, with the management and even the other clients
gathering round to see if the ‘lucky fetish’ would work one more time. And it did – until one night at an illegal gaming club off the King’s Road, Chelsea, that was later to
become the Kray Twins’ Esmeralda’s Barn, when a couple of big bruisers came threateningly over to us.