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A Novel
by Kate Atkinson
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The photographer transcribed the beauties' names into a notebook he excavated from a pocket somewhere so that they could be identified faithfully in the paper the next day. Nellie Coker had a hold on the pictures editor. An indiscretion of some kind on his part, the photographer presumed.
"Ho there!" he shouted to someone unseen. "Ramsay, come on! Join your sisters!"
A young man appeared and was brought into the huddle. He seemed reluctant but gave a rictus grin on cue for the camera flash.
Then, with no fanfare, a small door set into the great gates of the prison was opened and a short, owlish woman emerged, blinking at the oncoming light of freedom. The crowd cheered, mainly the toffs, shouting things like, "Well done, old girl!" and "Welcome back, Nellie!" although the boy also heard the cry "Jezebel!" go up from somewhere in the middle of the crowd. He suspected the drab gaberdine.
Nellie Coker seemed lacklustre and the boy could see no likeness to what he had heard of Jezebels. She was almost dwarfed by the enormous bouquet of white lilies and pink roses that was thrust into her arms. One of the beauties was carrying a large fur coat which she threw around the released prisoner as if she were trying to smother a fire. The boy's mother had done much the same thing when his baby sister had fallen in the grate, her loose smock catching the flames. They had both survived, with only a little scarring as a reminder.
The beauties crowded around, hugging and kissing the woman—their mother, the boy surmised. The younger one clung to her in what in the boy's opinion was a rather hammy fashion. He was a connoisseur of the theatrical, his round took him to all the stage doors of the West End. At the Palace Theatre, the stage doorman, a cheerful veteran of the Somme, let him slip into the gods for free during matinée performances. The boy had seen No, No, Nanette five times and was quite in love with Binnie Hale, the luminous star of the show. He knew all the words to "Tea for Two" and "I Want to Be Happy" and would happily sing them, if requested. There was one scene in the show where the chorus and Binnie (the boy felt that he had seen her enough times for this familiarity) came on the stage in bathing costumes. It was thrillingly scandalous and the boy's eyes nearly popped out of his head every time he witnessed it.
As a drawback, in order to gain free entry he had to listen to the long-winded wartime reminiscences of the doorman, as well as admiring his collection of Blighty wounds. The boy had been one when the war began and, like sin, it meant nothing to him yet.
Ramsay, Nellie's second son, was made to relieve his mother of the burden of the bouquet and was caught by the photographer holding the flowers like a blushing bride. To the annoyance of his sisters (and himself too), this would turn out to be the photograph that graced the newspaper the next morning, beneath the heading Son of notorious Soho nightclub proprietor Nellie Coker greets his mother on her release from prison. Ramsay hoped for fame for himself, not as an adjunct of his mother's celebrity. He started to sneeze in response to the flowers, a rapid volley of atishoo-atishoo-atishoo, and the newspaper delivery boy heard Nellie say, "Oh, for heaven's sake, Ramsay, pull yourself together," which was the kind of thing the boy's own mother said.
"Come along, Ma," one of the bevy said. "Let's go home."
"No," Nellie Coker said resolutely. "We shall go to the Amethyst. And celebrate." The pilot was taking the helm.
The crowd began to melt and the newspaper boy continued on his way, his spirits lifted by having been a witness to something historic. He suddenly remembered an apple, old and wrinkled, that he had squirrelled away first thing that morning. He retrieved it from his pocket and chomped on it like a horse. It was wonderfully sweet.
The toff with the cigar spotted him and said, "Good show, eh?," as if he valued his opinion, and then cuffed him amiably on the side of his head and rewarded him with a sixpence. The boy danced happily away.
Excerpted from Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson. Copyright © 2022 by Kate Atkinson. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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