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Dublin Flo
There was a persistent rumour going round the Ducks and Drakes
that she had dumped a newborn baby in the dust bins
out the back, but no one ever reproached her for it, or, indeed, ever mentioned
it to her at all.It wasn’t meant to be
a vicious sort of rumour; rather, it was just the kind of idle speculation that
attached itself easily to Florence.
No one that I ever met actually disliked
Florence.Even one girl who was quite
sure that Florence had helped herself to
one of the girl’s Goulamine bead necklaces when she was staying with her
temporarily couldn’t bring herself to
accuse her of purposeful wrongdoing.Perhaps she misunderstood me, the unintentional benefactress said, later;
perhaps she got it mixed in with her things by mistake.That type of excuse making was quite common amongst
those of us who knew Florence.
Most of the crowd had done Florence
favours of one kind or another.They’d
let her sleep on their floor a night or two, bought her meals and drinks in the
pub or the Wimpy Bar next door, given her clothes they’d done with, or, as in
my case, actual money to keep her going until her next casual job.For her part, she would offer to help around
the flat, do the dishes or some such; and if there was a baby or toddler
around, she might take it for a stroll round Kensington Gardens or baby-sit in
the flat while the mother went out for the night.The baby-dumping rumour had no apparent effect upon the level of
her hostess’s trust.
Most of the time, however, Florence’s
offers of assistance as repayment for ours to her were declined.It seemed enough that she was just
there.Not that her presence was
terrifically stimulating, by any means.She was far from being a brilliant conversationalist, her Irish heritage
notwithstanding; but she did have a good line of patter, mostly somewhat
gossipy stories about various persons who frequented the Ducks and Drakes.Those of us who had helped her at one time
or another were fully aware that we ourselves were likely to be fodder for
these tales told in someone else’s flat, but no one minded much, possibly
because Florence related them in such an innocent manner.It clearly never crossed her mind that
anyone would take offense, and consequently no one did.
It was this apparent artlessness that struck
me when first I met Florence.Here, I
had been told by mutual acquaintances, was a girl who had lived by her wits
since coming to London at the age of sixteen.She had no steady means of support, and only took short-term
positions- chambermaid in lesser West
End hotels, counter girl at hamburger joints, and such- whenever she became bored with doing
nothing all day long.I knew that she
cadged drinks and cigarettes from friend and stranger alike in the Ducks, and
would take a chance on going home with nearly anyone if it meant a bed for the
night.This reckless daring, even in
the bohemian atmosphere that Bayswater and Notting Hill possessed in the early
‘70s, did not seem to tally with her ingenuous demeanour.
“D’ya know Glasgow Joe?” she introduced
herself with one evening.As I was
sitting with two Glaswegian bricklayers and the person in question was himself
a labourer, it was a fair guess that I did.
“Yes, but I don’t think he’s in yet
tonight,” I answered, making a pretense of looking around for him.I had already been warned, half-heartedly,
by my companions, that Florence had her eye on me as a potential new
benefactor.I’d only been in London for
two weeks by this time, and my contacts were limited to fellow labourers in the
construction trade.Plenty of them were
Irish, like myself, but mostly from Cork and the country.Florence was pure Dublin.
‘B’Jasus, I’m knackered,” she confided,
as she wedged herself into the booth beside me.My friends smiled knowingly.“Have y’ got a fag? Oh, ta,
thanks very moch,” she gasped, as I handed her one.“I’ve been dyin’ all day fer one.”
So, what
have you been doin’ all day, hen, that’s wore you out?”Willie, to my left, asked her.I was surprised by the sound of genuine
interest in her voice.
“Well, I’ve been after tryin’ to fetch my
things, like, from Paddington Station.I was sure I had the ticket from the left luggage place in me handbag,
but I couldn’t find it, so I says to meself, ‘y’ feckin’ eejit, y’ve gone and
left it at the Cumberland.’That’s
where I was workin’ last week.”This
last was directed to me, as, presumably, the others were more aware of her
movements than I.
“So didn’t I have to go all the way back
to Marble Arch- no bus fare o’ course- and that took the better part of an
hour.Then, I get there, and that
bastard of a doorman says I mayn’t use the front entrance!I been walkin’ a feckin’ hour and that wagon
says I have to go round the back like a skivvy.”She paused to take a drag on her cigarette.
“And did you get y’r ticket, then?”
Willie asked.
“Did, I shite!”Florence ejaculated.“That cow of a supervisor I worked for on the fourth floor said she
hadn’t seen any such thing.And that if
I expected personal items to be saved for me I oughtn’t to go quitting without
giving notice!”She pronounced the
second half of this sentence in a falsely snooty English accent, then shook her
head in disbelief.
“Och, tha’s a rotten shame, hen” the
other Scotsman consoled her.“But have
a drink, anyway.P’raps you’ll think of
a way to get your gear back tomorrow.”
The rest of the evening was spent in our
usual form of self-entertainment- we
took turns buying rounds of pints and halves, made frequent trips to the
gents’, and amused each other with competing tales about the rigours of that
day’s work.Florence joined in, or not,
as the occasion demanded, with her own little anecdotes about life on and off
the streets.No opprobrium attached
itself to Florence’s seemingly lazy lifestyle.Even though my mates and I all worked fairly steadily, we didn’t judge
her for not doing the same; far from it, we admired her for getting away with
it, as we saw it, for so long.She was
still only eighteen, after all, and had plenty of time to get sensible and
grown-up later.We were in our early
twenties, quite adult by our lights, and had been working since leaving school
at fifteen or sixteen.
Florence came home with me that
night.My friends had gone off with a couple
of girls who’d invited us all to a party, but I’d begged off on grounds of
fatigue, and Florence asked if I minded putting her up for the night.There was no embarrassment or hesitation in
her tone, and certainly no sexual innuendo, so I didn’t have any hopes in that
direction.Not that I would have at any
rate.Dublin Flo, as my mates called
her, wasn’t considered a good risk, living ‘rough’ as she did.She wasn’t a bad-looking girl, taller than
most Irish women, and a natural blonde, with an open, un-made-up face.She was more Nordic looking than anything
else-an Irish throwback to the Viking invasions, no doubt.She managed to keep clean, she told me as
we walked up the Queensway, by using friends’ baths or, sometimes, the hotel
baths that were set aside for guests without private bathrooms.When I marveled at her audacity, she just
laughed and said it was easy.She
didn’t look Irish, she said, so the porters and other staff assumed she must be
a tourist and never questioned her presence in the guest areas.
I told Florence she could take my single
bed for herself and I’d kip on the floor, but she wouldn’t have it.She grabbed my extra blanket and made
herself a nest in the one armchair that graced my tiny bed-sit.By the time I came back from the lav down
the hall, she was snoring gently, her blonde hair tousled against the back of
the chair.
Somewhere in the middle of the small
hours, I was suddenly, but not disagreeably, startled to find that Florence had
climbed in beside me.The bed was
narrow, so I couldn’t help but feel that she had taken off all of her clothes;
her skin was warm and rough next to mine.I don’t know if she felt she owed me something or if she was interested
in the act for its own sake, but we had a gratifying half hour or so of
intercourse.There was nothing stiff or
awkward about our coupling, as I would have expected in doing it with a
near-stranger.Whether it was because
it had begun in the dark, unexpectedly, and so there was no time to build up
the usual apprehensions; or because of Florence’s matter-of-fact behaviour;
whatever it was, it was altogether relaxed and without the guilt I knew, as an
Irish Catholic, I ought to feel for having sex without love and marriage.
I let Florence stay in my bed-sitter for
three more nights.I should say that
she let me let her stay, for she wasn’t one to light anywhere for long.By the end of the week she had gotten herself
another job, this time at a second-hand clothing stall in the Portobello Road.The owner of the stall said she could sleep
in a squat he knew of in Ladbroke Grove, and she was satisfied.I helped her get her case of clothes from
Paddington Station- the left luggage
attendant finally accepted her story of the lost ticket when Florence proved
able to describe everything in the case.
She took it
from me as she boarded the Number 15 bus in Westbourne Grove.(I had given her a few quid to keep her in
food for a couple of days.)
I didn’t see Florence at the Ducks and Drakes
or any of the other Queensway pubs for some time after that.Friends said she would most likely be doing
her drinking at the Notting Hill pubs now, and I wasn’t sufficiently curious to
make the walk just to verify the likelihood.By the following month, I had gotten a steady girl of my own- an English girl from the North- who moved in with me, so I had less
interest in unattached Irish girls.Early in the next year, perhaps five or six months since I’d seen her
last, I caught a glimpse of Florence when I was working on a block of flats in
Hammersmith.A tall, blonde woman came
out of a pub next to my building site, at lunchtime, and began to walk away.
“Oy, Flo!Dublin Flo!” I called, impulsively.She turned and came back towards me with a smile.
“Well, me old flower,” she chimed.“And what the divil are you doin’ away out
here?”She had put on some weight, I
noticed, but still had the same feckless bearing.
I was about to go on my break so I
steered her back into the pub and we chatted for a while.She was living in Shepherd’s Bush now, she
said, but working at a greasy spoon here in Hammersmith.We only spent a quarter of an hour together,
but I got the feeling that she was grateful for my bothering.When I asked her if she was alright for
money, she gave me a wry smile and said she “wouldn’t say no” if I could spare
a bit, so I slipped her a few quid under the table.After all, I told myself, a fellow countrywoman.....
“Be good, and if you can’t be good, be careful!”
I called out as she headed for the door.
“...and if you can’t be careful, I’ve a
pram you can borrow,” she returned.The
timeworn saying of our homeland made her laugh.
Another month or so passed without sight
of Florence; then, suddenly, she became a fixture at the Ducks and Drakes
again.Now, though, she was always in
the company of another Irish girl, a tough beauty from Belfast who called
herself Penny Blood.Penny was
dark-haired and voluptuous, and it was common knowledge that she worked at
least part-time as a prostitute.She
had a flat right above the Queensway, in a well-serviced building that was far
too expensive for most of the people I knew.Florence had moved in with Penny, I learned from one of the lads, and
the talk round the Ducks was that Florence had herself turned
semi-professional.I neither believed
nor disbelieved the story.When I was
in the company of my girlfriend, I would buy Flo a drink, just to show that we
didn’t care about any rumours; but when I was on my own, I tended to avoid her
a bit for fear that my girl would get the wrong idea if someone saw us together
and mentioned it to her.Florence
didn’t seem to notice the difference and went about her business, cadging
drinks and talking to all and sundry.
Since moving into Penny’s orbit, Florence
had come under the protection of a band of muscular Northern Irishmen who
seemed to serve their pulchritudinous compatriot as a sort of informal
bodyguard.A couple of these lads were
supposed by my friends to be on the run from the police, as they had U. V. F.
connections.Although that group was on
the Protestant, pro-British side of things in Ulster, and thus posed no threat
in London as did their Catholic, England-hating counterparts, the I. R. A.,
still, they were technically an outlawed organization, which gave Penny’s
followers a certain impressively sinister cachet.Florence, however, couldn’t have seemed less intimidated by their
reputation, as she teased and joked with the lot of them as though they were
fellow Dubliners.And, in truth, I
never saw any of the Belfast boys, as we southerners called them, discreetly,
behave any more aggressively than the rest of us did on a boozy Saturday night.Only when an unwitting new-comer or tourist
approached Penny or Florence with insufficient respect did the Orangemen make
any noticeably threatening moves, and even then, it was fairly subtle: their
sheer bulk and a quiet word were enough to inspire courteous behaviour.
While Florence’s open, casual manner
showed no change, her outward appearance was quite transformed under her
flatmate’s influence.The beauteous
Penny clearly did not trust to Mother Nature for her attractions, even though
that good lady had endowed her with a stunning figure and the perfect
complexion typical of the Irish race.Penny believed in augmenting her considerable charms with plenty of
cosmetics- and she had bent Florence
in that direction, as well.The plain,
fresh Nordic look of old had been supplanted by a far more dramatic, if a touch
too colourful, made-up Florence.Apart
from the greens and blues that appeared nightly above her eyes, and the varying
shades of rust and purple that sensualized her mouth, Florence had let Penny
talk her into applying henna to her fair hair.The effect wasn’t altogether displeasing; it was just that it didn’t
look like Florence.Still, she seemed
happy enough, so who was I to judge.Penny had also given Flo some of her trendy cast-offs to wear, which
heightened my impression that she had taken her less sophisticated friend on as
a project of some sort.
As I was staggering home rather late from
a boys-only night at the pub, I saw Florence for the last time.She was coming out of a semi-high-class
strip club that was tucked away in what was otherwise a respectable residential
section of Bayswater.The squad of
Ulstermen were standing in the entryway, arguing about where to go next.I didn’t recognize Florence until she called
out to me.
“On your tod, then?” she asked, in a
mocking, seductive tone.She laughed as
she saw my surprise.“It’s only me, y’
sausage!” she cried, now in her usual voice.“And how’s me little egg?”She
came up close to me and took my arm.I
had sobered up sufficiently by this time to be concerned about her escorts’
reaction, but they were still some distance from us so I felt free to talk.
“Florence, darlin’, and how have you been
keeping?”I was truly curious, now it
came to it.
“Well, enough, pet.And yourself?Still with Maggie?”
I nodded assent, trying to think of some
news that might interest her, even though I felt that her inquiry had been from
politeness only.
“I’ve been wanting to tell you for some
time now, Paddy,” she said, with a suddenly lowered voice. “It wasn’t yours, you know.”And she gave a glance back towards the
club.Her friends had ceased their
argument, apparently, and were now approaching the pavement.
“What are you talking about, Flo?”I managed to get out, before Browner, the
largest of her guardians, took her arm out of mine and steered her towards a
waiting taxi.
“Let’s go, love,” he said.“Penny’s got some blokes waiting.”They began to get into the cab.
“Never mind, Paddy,” Florence called back
to me, just before the door closed.“Not to worry.”
I heard later that Florence had
eventually married one of the Belfast brigade and moved back to Ireland.Another story had it that she’d been seen
in Earl’s Court, selling newspapers at the tube station.I even fanciedI saw her myself, once, years later, walking through Camden Town
with a small child in tow.But when I
went up to them, it turned out to be a German au pair.
I still live in London, but in Highgate
now.I haven’t been to the Queensway in
decades, which is no loss as it isn’t what it was, I hear.The Ducks and Drakes isn’t even the Ducks
anymore.I think it’s called The
Albert, or some godawful name like that.
Eileen Fay is a freelance writer and former elementary teacher who is working only part
time at home now as she looks after her 91-year old Mother full time. She has lived abroad
(British Isles) for five years, and in Las Vegas and Southern Calif., as well, although
she is a native New Yorker with an intermittent hankering for life in B. C. and/or the Maritimes.
Email: Eileen Fay
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