Even though she was very late to her bed most nights, Freda still was up long before Vanda. On waking, the first thing she did was to fill the kettle before placing it on the single gas ring, a dangerous affair that perched precariously on the wooden draining-board of the sink. Then Freda cut a thick slice from a loaf of bread, buttered it and ate it while she was waiting for the kettle to boil. There was always bread and butter in Vanda’s flat, but unfortunately that was all there ever was. Vanda didn’t shop for food or cook it, something that had contributed to her hasty departure from Grantham apparently.
“What about the baby?” Freda had dared to ask eventually and Vanda said, “Had to leave the little tickler behind. Believe me, it’s the best thing for him, Freda. Walter’s got an army of sisters and cousins that couldn’t wait to get their hands on him. I did my best, but…no regrets,” she had added cheerfully.
Freda chewed vigorously on the bread; it was stale. She could hear Vanda snoring in the next room. She did seem surprisingly content with her new life.
Today, Freda decided, she was going to find a grocer and buy jam and a lump of cheese and maybe some ham, too, so that Vanda didn’t waste her money by always eating in cafés. Tinned fish would be handy as well and perhaps corned beef. Vanda also brought plates of food in from restaurants and then never returned the plates. Cutlery, too, all cluttering up the place. Freda thought she might take them back if she had time today.
Once the tea was made, she took it through to Vanda, who always looked a fright first thing. Make-up all smeared and her eyes glued together, wayward tufts of hair everywhere. Clothes were draped all over the place and the room smelt ripe and salty and perfumed all at the same time. The occasional slight whiff of dead rat entombed in the wall added an unpleasant top note.
Vanda woke with a snort and, still half-conscious, murmured, “You’re an angel, pet,” when the cup and saucer were placed on her bedside table. She groped her way out of her shambled bedsheets and reached for her cigarettes. Freda wasn’t allowed to open the curtains. Vanda behaved as if a bit of fresh air and daylight at this time of the morning might kill her. She breakfasted and lunched on tea and cigarettes instead.
Joan, next door, followed the same slack routine as Vanda. If she ran out of tea or cigarettes she would wander in (she had a key) in her tatty housecoat and cadge off Vanda. Vanda reciprocated. “It’s good to have a friend,” Vanda said. It was. Freda could attest to that. The trick was not to lose them.
After Freda had delivered the tea and drunk her own cup, she readied herself for the day, washing and dressing and setting about the satisfying job of cleaning and scrubbing and tidying the flat. The squalor seemed to spring up anew every day—plates and cups were piled up in the sink, cigarette butts everywhere, not to mention the trollies and big pink satin bras that festooned and garlanded the kitchen. Freda didn’t remember Vanda being so haphazard when they did the Knits, but she supposed they had had Adele to keep them in order. “What a bitch,” Vanda said with a nostalgic sigh.
Freda often came across some strange items in the flat—riding crops and rubber masks and washing-line rope. “Joan’s specials,” Vanda said. She didn’t have enough room in her own flat for all the “accessories” she needed. Freda had previously thought the word referred to articles like gloves and stockings. “Mm, them too,” Vanda said vaguely.
Vanda and Joan chatted endlessly about renting somewhere bigger together where they could have “a waiting room.” “Like in a railway station?” Freda asked and Vanda said, “Exactly like that, pet.”
They certainly needed extra room. Freda had come back in the middle of the afternoon last week and found a man tied to a chair next to the sink, his mouth stuffed with a large handkerchief. She wondered if she should remove the handkerchief, but when she approached him he went bug-eyed with horror and shook his head vigorously. Vanda appeared at that moment and said, “Put the kettle on for a brew, will you, pet?” as if it were perfectly normal to have to manoeuvre yourself awkwardly around a man who was bound and gagged in order to get at the tea caddy. Freda wondered if she should pour him a cup as well, but a stern Vanda said absolutely not, he didn’t deserve anything except a good slap. He belonged to Joan, she said, one of her specials. “Keeping any eye on him for her,” Vanda said.
No one was lurking in the flat this morning, thank goodness, and once she’d cleaned and tidied, Freda sang out, “I’ll be off now!” and Vanda shouted back in her gravelly morning voice, “See you later, pet. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t!,” which gave Freda a pretty broad canvas to work on.
* * *
—
“Cherry! Cherry!”
It was unmistakeably Cherry Ames. An eager Freda ran after her along St. Martin’s Lane, calling her name.
Cherry Ames seemed to have grown deaf since Freda last saw her, but she turned at last and stopped. “Freda! Freda Murgatroyd,” she said (very cool, Freda noticed). “Fancy bumping into you. How are you?”
Freda was not cool at all, in fact she felt mildly delirious at coming across a familiar face. “I’m fine, thank you,” she said. (Or “better” anyway, she thought.) “How are you?” Cherry certainly looked well. She had always dressed with flair, but now she was very smart, in the kind of clothes that you only got in West End shops. Freda said, why didn’t they go and get a cup of tea somewhere, there was a Lyons just around the corner, and Cherry sighed and drawled, “There’s always a Lyons just around the corner,” as if it were the most tiresome thing in the world. Oh, I get it, Freda thought, she’s playing the part of the jaded metropolitan girl. Well, we’ve all been there. She had played that part herself for Owen Varley, and for Ramsay Coker, too.
Reluctantly, Cherry agreed to the Lyons, although she hardly touched the tea in front of her, preferring to smoke. “It keeps you thin, you know. Not that you need that.”
Hesitantly, Freda asked how things were at the Vanbrugh. “Oh, that place,” Cherry said dismissively, “I wouldn’t know, I left ages ago.” Well, it wasn’t that long, Freda thought, it’s only a couple of weeks since I left myself. She was on the stage, Cherry said. She’d had an audition for The Co-Optimists at the Palace, “And I got the part!”
“Well done,” Freda said. The word “audition” made her flinch.
“It’s a tiny part, of course, but I’ve had a review—Ingenue sparkles and so on. What about you?”
“Me? Dancing. In a nightclub.”
“Oh, poor you. Is it terribly frightful?”
Who was this person, Freda thought? Was the real Cherry Ames—sweet and kind and perfectly normal—trapped inside this brittle imposter? Freda was about to ask her if she had heard anything about Florence, but Cherry stood up abruptly and said, “I’m awfully sorry, Freda, but I have to go,” stabbing her cigarette out in the ashtray. “I’m frantically busy. We’re rehearsing all day, they’re always adding new stuff to the show. It’s a crashing bore.”
“It must be.”
“I have to have dinner with one of the investors in the show afterwards at the Café Royal. I’m going to be exhausted.”
If you looked carefully, beneath the heavy make-up and the strained, tired eyes, the real Cherry was probably still in there trying to protect herself. Freda wondered what she’d had to do to get the part in The Co-Optimists. Although she didn’t need to wonder, she knew. “Well, lovely to catch up,” she said with a false cheerfulness.