The Picture House Girls

by Rosie Archer

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

Eighteen-year-old Connie Baxter works as an usherette at the Criterion Picture House in Gosport. Here she meets Vera, a cleaner at the cinema, and her niece, Babs, who sells ice creams. But when Connie falls for the charming Tommo Smith, her friendships are tested. When Tommo tells her that he's a dancing instructor at a local club her eyes light up. As Connie struggles with the harsh realities of war, she comes to realise that life isn't always like the pictures…

Release date: February 18, 2021

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 352

Sample

Chapter One

May 1942

Connie lay perfectly still in the Anderson shelter, on the wooden bunk bed, listening and allowing her eyes to become used to the darkness. The sound of the engines grew louder as the bombers advanced. Below her, Aunt Gertie snored, the noise almost as deafening as the planes. Stale cigarette smoke hung in the air, diluting the hut’s dankness. It occurred to Connie that, so far, she’d not heard one blast from exploding bombs. Why?

Sliding free of the scratchy blankets, she crawled across the quilt to the end of the bunk and, careful not to wake her aunt, climbed down to the packed-earth floor. For a moment she stared at the comatose Gertie Mullins, satisfied that nothing short of a direct hit on their sanctuary would wake her, then crept past the Primus stove on the upturned wooden crate to the shelter’s entrance. She eased back the oiled bolt, pushed open the metal door a few inches and peered out.

Planes were emerging from behind dense cloud. They reminded Connie of a swarm of bees, although the buzzing was pitched much higher. She could hear in the distance the pop-pop of anti-aircraft guns, and see puffs of smoke, lit by far-off searchlights criss-crossing the sky.

There appeared no end to the German bombers, more than she’d ever seen before, while smaller aircraft danced attendance at their sides, clearly hoping to keep them safe. Now she could make out the shapes of RAF Spitfires and Hurricanes greeting the invaders with thunderous bullets and flaming fire.

Connie had been confused by the absence of exploding enemy bombs. Now she realized clouds had concealed Portsmouth’s Royal Naval Dockyard, preventing Hitler’s planes from shedding their loads and successfully hitting proposed targets.

As if in confirmation bombs began to drop.

The Hurricanes were retaliating against the marauding invaders. Gosport’s anti-aircraft guns reverberated, cracking into the sky, as enemy bombs found targets. Shrapnel fell, like burning hailstones, and the sharp stink of cordite and scorched wood reached Connie. She pulled the door closed to keep it out of the shelter, reached for the bolt and slid it home.

Connie was sweating but her mind and body were under control. She felt a surge of energy that, unlike the last time she’d witnessed a raid, enabled her to accept that what had occurred then was unlikely to happen again. Connie Baxter would never, ever forget the previous raid that had changed her life completely, but neither would she be haunted by fear. She would and could cope with whatever Fate had in store for her.

A racking cough broke into her thoughts. When it subsided, a cracked voice said, ‘As you’re already up, love, light the Primus and make some tea. But first, pass me the matches. I’m gasping for a fag.’

At that, Connie’s face creased into a smile.

 

Ace Gallagher, head in hands, sat on a wooden bench at Gosport’s ferry facing the stretch of Solent Water that looked towards Portsmouth’s dockyard.

The all-clear had sounded.

He didn’t need to look back at his club, vestiges of which were still smouldering, despite the firemen’s best efforts, to know his dream had been shattered.

Ace wanted to cry. He couldn’t remember when he’d last shed a tear and he wasn’t about to start now. Sitting there alone was all he was fit for until his head cleared and he could work out a plan of action. Eventually he’d find a solution, of course he would.

The waves below were gently slapping against the rocks and concrete pilings underpinning the ferry gardens. The sound soothed him. After a while he lifted his head and gazed across the narrow stretch of sea. Portsmouth’s broken buildings stood out against the orange glow in the darkness. It looked as if one of the ships moored at HM Naval Base was on fire, mountainous clouds of flames billowing uncontrollably. The stench of smoke from burning homes surged across the water on the wind, mingling with the brick dust and soot from Gosport’s demolished properties. It stung his nostrils. Bloody war! Bloody Hitler!

Ace’s fingers massaged his temples. It was quieter now the planes had left and the emergency vehicles had gone. But he didn’t think he’d ever block out the terrifying sounds of the explosions that had rocked and destroyed his club, the Four Aces, while he and Jerome had cowered in its cellars.

Another, more familiar, smell reached him. Food cooking? Ace decided it was probably his imagination. But it stirred his memory of Jerome protesting that he didn’t want to leave the cellars for the Dive café, which had miraculously escaped the bombing.

That recollection caused Ace’s mouth to curve into a smile. Jerome, as near to a father as Ace had ever known, had finally agreed to evacuate only if Tom, the café’s owner, provided a saucer of milk and a titbit of fish for the black-and-white stray cat that never left his side.

His smile lingered as Ace remembered that safe, too, were the many boxes of black-market goods stored beneath his building. Those commodities represented money. And more might follow.

Money wasn’t a problem to Ace – it never had been. Either he had it or he didn’t. Losing his beloved club was a setback, though. Nevertheless, luck had still been with him: the club had been closed for the night so there were no deaths on his conscience.

He sighed. His flat above the Four Aces had been decimated so he needed somewhere to stay while he contemplated the club’s reconstruction. After all, Gosport was his home now, his future: German bombs wouldn’t drive him out. Cash passed to local councillors would ensure ‘difficult to get’ building materials appeared promptly. Ace knew money had the loudest voice.

A priority, too, was somewhere for Jerome to live. Another smile lifted his lips. Jerome would do what Jerome wanted. He always had, he always would. But Ace would oversee his safety.

The smell of frying was stronger now. It was making him feel hungry and it definitely wasn’t in his imagination. He stood up, turned, and forced himself to look at the smoking remains of his empire. The once-vibrant business was a sad shell. He shook himself and followed his nose towards the comforting aroma. In his mind’s eye he saw Tom, in his white overalls, hard at work before the gas stove in the Dive. Fried bread? Bacon, maybe. Chips, and perhaps cod if he could get hold of it – at least fish wasn’t rationed. And a cup of strong tea to wash it down. That was what Ace needed to help put his world to rights.

Chapter Two

Clark Gable’s shoulder blades received a final dollop of paste before Connie put down the brush and tenderly fingered his torso, staring at him lovingly. ‘You certainly deserve to be centre stage,’ she said softly, placing the full-page picture of her favourite film star, cut from Picturegoer, face up in the middle of the scrapbook’s empty page. Then she smoothed the paper gently but firmly to make sure the paste was evenly distributed. Sometimes the flour and water mixture was lumpy and didn’t stick so well.

Clark Gable firmly tethered, Connie was satisfied with the result, although his left side appeared slightly distorted where he had been crushed against his co-star’s glittery dress. She had snipped Joan Crawford out of the picture and discarded her: Connie liked to imagine she was the only girl in his life. She wondered what it was like for Clark Gable to be surrounded by so many beautiful women in magical Hollywood.

Ginger Rogers was the star Connie strove to imitate. She spent ages taming her fair hair into the blonde actress’s pageboy style. Alas, the moment she set foot outside the house the wind remodelled it into its wayward tumbling waves.

Connie sighed. How that woman could move, her feet twinkling in shiny slippers! Connie had watched her dance excitingly, sinuously, on film with Fred Astaire. She was sadly aware that she herself had two left feet and little sense of rhythm.

The last dance she’d been persuaded to go to with some of the girls from her previous workplace had been a disaster, a nightmare. Miserable, she’d ended up a wallflower, sitting disconsolately on one of the chairs placed around the ballroom’s edges.

A small cough disturbed her daydreams. She turned from the kitchen table where she was sitting, all her paraphernalia in front of her, to the tall, smiling man in the doorway. ‘Why doesn’t a gorgeous girl like you,’ he suggested, ‘forget about film stars’ pictures in magazines and get involved with a real man, like me?’

Connie laughed.

Ace Gallagher had appeared soundlessly from nowhere to stand between the kitchen and the hallway with one hand on the door-frame as if he, alone, could save the wall if it suddenly tumbled down. His gold watch glittered on his wrist below his initialled cufflinks set in a pristine white shirt-cuff. ‘I could take you into town,’ he added, ‘so you can see how my club’s coming along. The rebuilding’s going just fine. Or . . . you could come out for a drive to the sea shore. Watch the waves through the barbed wire protecting us from the land mines?’

Aunt Gertie’s lodger was, as usual, teasing Connie, or trying to humour her, she could never make up her mind which it was. She shook her head. In another time and another place, she might have been tempted to go with the chirpy club owner but at present Connie had no intention of rushing into a relationship, however temporary, with any man.

To Ace’s credit, his well-meaning banter shook her out of herself and momentarily raised her spirits. It also had the benefit of making her think of something tart she could snap at him in reply. She remembered Gertie’s words spoken within hours of her moving into her terraced home.

‘Don’t take no notice of my lodger, Ace. He tries it on with all the girls. He’s a heartbreaker, a right ladies’ man, that one.’ With a twinkle in her eye, Gertie had added, fiddling with the metal curlers that were hardly ever out of her hair, ‘Mind you, if I was twenty years younger, I’d give him a run for his money . . .’ She’d blown out a cloud of cigarette smoke without removing the fag from the side of her mouth.

Eighteen-year-old Connie was wise enough to know she’d be out of her depth with Ace. He was in his thirties and reminded her of Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind, without the moustache, of course.

She’d had boyfriends and she wasn’t backwards in coming forwards, but carrying on with her childhood passion of collecting film stars’ photographs was a soothing influence while she was grieving. She took a deep breath, put on a mocking voice and asked, ‘What? Me and you?’

Connie thought about the shiny black MG VA Tourer parked outside her aunt’s two-up-two-down house in Gosport’s Alma Street, a car most men would sell their wives for. No doubt girls queued up for a ride in it. ‘Been let down, have you?’ she added.

He laughed, showing very white teeth with a slight crossover in the front, an imperfection that only enhanced his good looks. ‘Never,’ he protested. ‘There’s plenty of girls lining up for me to take them for a drive.’

Somewhere from deep inside her a curl of anticipation began to unfurl as she wondered what the outcome might be if she went out with him. She crushed it. ‘Well, I’d sooner be sick in the lavvy at the bottom of the garden!’

Ace’s smile turned to a throaty laugh. ‘You’re attracted to me, really, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘I can tell!’

She mimed sticking her fingers down her throat and choking. ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’

He was staring at her with those hypnotic silver-grey eyes. For a long moment neither spoke. Then Ace said softly, ‘You’ll want me one day.’ He winked at her as he stepped aside from the door-frame and smoothed his ­brandy-coloured hair, which he wore combed straight back. Connie tried not to stare as he pushed away an unruly lock. It fell straight back to his forehead. The scent of his cologne, a subtle lemony fragrance, wafted towards her.

‘In your dreams,’ Connie said. ‘In your dreams.’

Ace smiled as he turned away. A moment later, the front door slammed behind him, causing the key, hanging on its string, to jangle against the wood.

Then she heard the letterbox being raised, the door opening again and heavy footsteps coming along the passage lino. Once more Ace stood before her. ‘I forgot to say good luck.’ He smiled. ‘You’re starting your new job today, aren’t you?’

And then he was gone again.

Chapter Three

‘Was that Ace I heard?’ Gertie poked her head around the open doorway between the scullery and the kitchen. She gave Connie an enquiring look. Then, without waiting for an answer, she set the enamelled washing bowl on the small table. ‘Thank God that’s the last of it pegged out. All it’s got to do is stay dry today and I’ll be happy.’

‘He’s just left,’ said Connie. ‘I haven’t heard his car start up, but if you want him, I could see if he’s still in the street.’ She rose from her chair.

‘You sit still, love. It’s just that he usually shouts goodbye to me.’ Gertie stepped into the kitchen and went to the black-leaded range. She picked up a metal lever from its place on the hearth and used it to prise up the round hob-plate. With her other hand, she dropped in a log from the pile in the scuttle. Then she replaced the hob-plate. ‘It’s cold out there for May,’ she added, standing up straight, stretching her back and wiping her hands down the front of her flowered wraparound pinafore.

‘He wished me luck for work today,’ said Connie, sitting down again. She began tidying the table, putting the discarded bits of Picturegoer to one side and the star cut-outs she was saving on the other. She couldn’t go on filling her new scrapbook with Gertie hovering: in no time her aunt would be standing behind her, looking over her shoulder and saying, ‘Oh, I like him. I remember him in . . .’ Connie would then have to listen politely while Gertie lit a cigarette, then told her all the ins and outs of where and when she’d watched a particular film, with or without the right actor in it.

Connie’s concentration would be shattered as Gertie would lose her train of thought and fall to gossiping about her Alma Street friends and neighbours.

No one knew how special her scrapbook was to Connie. How she needed to fill its pages while remembering all that had happened when she was younger. It helped her keep alive memories of the many other scrapbooks she’d filled with film stars’ pictures, sitting at a table just like this one while her mother occupied the armchair nearby, reading or knitting.

Those scrapbooks had gone up in smoke the night she’d lost her mother when one of Hitler’s bombs had destroyed their Portsmouth home.

‘He’s not a bad lad,’ said Gertie, breaking into Connie’s thoughts and feeling in her pocket for the packet of Woodbine cigarettes and the box of Swan Vesta matches she kept there. ‘He’s a good lodger. Always gives me the rent on the dot, he does. He’s quiet and very clean – and I should know! I does his washing.’ She laughed, a deep, throaty cackle, enhanced by years of smoking.

Connie watched as Gertie struck a match, then sucked hard at her cigarette. When a bright red tip appeared, she breathed out a plume of smoke. ‘Aah, that’s better,’ she said. ‘Now all we need is a nice cup of tea.’ Connie was slowly getting used to the smell of cigarette smoke, which clung to Gertie like some exotic perfume.

‘I’ll help.’ Connie moved quickly. Her chair scraped on the lino.

‘Don’t bother, love. The day I’ve no strength to make a pot of tea is the day they put me in my box.’ Amazingly Gertie’s words were clear even though the cigarette hadn’t left her lips.

Gertie made her way past the faded green velvet armchair placed by the window that looked down the long thin backyard to the brick lavatory and the Anderson shelter. She winked at the framed picture, Bubbles, as she passed it. It faced The Blue Boy on the opposite wall. Both hung on twine suspended from the dado rail. The table was covered with an oilcloth, in the centre of which stood half a bottle of milk, a glass sugar bowl, with a crusted spoon standing to attention, and a saucer used as an ashtray that always seemed full of dog-ends.

Opposite the scullery doorway was a large wooden sideboard where Gertie kept everything that had no other home. Connie knew the ration books lay in one of the overflowing drawers, nestling among odds and ends, bits of brown paper carefully folded for later use and string, like tangled worms. If anything went missing in the house eventually it would turn up in that drawer. Not the other one: that was for cutlery, a wide selection of mismatched knives, forks and spoons.

Before Gertie disappeared into the scullery, she blew out another cloud of smoke, keeping the cigarette firmly attached to her thin lips. ‘Nice of Ace to remember you was starting work today,’ she said. Connie watched it move up and down as she spoke.

She listened to the swish of water in the kettle as her aunt shook it to see if there was enough to fill the teapot, then heard the flames pop on the gas stove. ‘You’re not worried, are you, love? First day an’ all that?’ called Gertie. Again, without waiting for Connie’s answer, she added, ‘You’ll be all right. I’ve been a cleaner at the Criterion Picture House for years and they’re a good bunch of girls as works there.’

Now Connie could hear the rattle of crockery. Gertie poked her head into the room. ‘Mind you, the manager is the one you got to look out for. Don’t let him take the key out of the lock if you ever gets summoned to his office. Stand with your back as close to the door as you can. Else he’ll turn that key, slip it into his trouser pocket and tell you if you wants to leave the room you’ll have to put your hand in his trousers to fetch it out!’

Connie, shocked, opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it and closed it.

Gertie removed the cigarette, which was now a quarter its original size, and laughed loudly. ‘He’s a randy old bugger, and would be even worse if his missus let him. Just you be firm with him and tell him you won’t stand for any hanky-panky. Queenie, the ice-cream girl and head usherette, has got him weighed off to a T. She don’t stand no nonsense. He really has got the hots for her. If ever you need to go into his office, take Queenie with you.’ Gertie replaced her cigarette in her mouth and her head disappeared back into the scullery.

Connie stood up. Her heart was pounding as she swept up the discarded paper cuttings and scrunched them into a ball. Whatever was she getting into? It sounded as if she was entering a den of iniquity instead of a dream job as an usherette at the local picture house! At the range she picked up the metal lever, lifted off the hob-plate and threw the rubbish into the hole where it flamed immediately.

Was Mr Arthur Mangle really as awful as Gertie made out? He’d seemed polite when Gertie had accompanied her to her interview for the job. But she hadn’t been alone with him, had she? Gertie, of course, had done all of the talking. Mr Mangle had been standing next to the kiosk, and the commissionaire in his gold-braided suit was about to allow in the queue of people waiting to purchase their tickets for the main film.

‘How old are you, dear?’ Mr Mangle’s eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses looked her up and down.

‘She’s eighteen,’ Gertie said.

‘Why do you want to work in a picture house?’ Mr Mangle asked, pushing his face nearer to Connie’s so she could see the hairs gro. . .