No Business of Mine

Raymond Marshall No Business of Mine

Chapter One

My name is Steve Harmas and I am a Foreign Correspondent of the New York Clarion. During the years 1940-45 I lived in the Savoy Hotel with a number of my colleagues and told the people of America the story of Britain at war. I gave up the cocktail bar and the comfort of the Savoy when the Allied Armies invaded Europe. To get me to go was like peeling a clam off a wall, but my editor kept after me, and finally I went. He told me the experience would give me character. It gave me a pain you-know-where, but it didn’t give me character.

After the collapse of Germany, I felt I had had enough of war and hardship, and I changed places with a colleague without him knowing anything about it, and returned to America and two-pound steaks on his ticket.

Several months later I was offered an assignment to write a series of articles on post-war Britain. I didn’t particularly want the job: there was a whisky shortage in England at the time, but there was a girl named Netta Scott who used to live in London when last I was there, and I did want to see her again.

I don’t want you to get me wrong about Netta Scott. I wasn’t in love with her, but I did feel I owed her a great deal for giving me such a swell time while I was a stranger in a strange country, and quite unexpectedly I found myself in the position to do so.

It happened like this: I was reading the sporting sheet on my way to the office, still in two minds about going to England, when I noticed that one of the horses running in the afternoon’s race was named Netta. The horse was a ten to one outsider, but I had a hunch and decided to back it. I laid out five hundred dollars, and sat by the radio with butterflies in my stomach, awaiting the result.

The horse won by a nose, and there and then I decided to split the five-thousand-dollar winnings with Netta: I caught the first available plane to England.

I got a big bang out of imagining Netta’s reaction when I walked in on her and planked down before her five hundred crisp, new one pound notes. She had always liked money, always grumbled about being hard up, although she would never let me help her once we got to know each other. It would be a great moment in her life, and it would square my debt at the same time.

I first met Netta in 1942 at a luxury night club in Mayfair’s Bruton Mews. She worked there as a dance hostess, and don’t let anyone kid you dance hostesses don’t work. They develop more muscles than Strangler Lewis ever had by warding off tired business men who are not as tired as all that. Her job was to persuade suckers like me to buy lousy champagne at five pounds a bottle, and to pay her ten shillings for the privilege of dancing her around a floor the size of a pocket handkerchief.

The Blue Club, as it was called, was run by a guy named Jack Bradley. I had seen him once or twice, and I thought then he looked a doubtful customer. The only girl working in the club who wasn’t scared of him was Netta: but Netta wasn’t scared of any man.

The story goes that all the girls had to do a night shift with Bradley before they could qualify for the job of hostess. They told me that Netta and Bradley spent the night reading the illustrated papers when she qualified, but that was only after she had blunted his glands by wrapping a valuable oil painting around his thick neck. I don’t know whether the yarn was true: Netta wouldn’t talk about it, but knowing her, I’d say it was.

Bradley must have made a packet out of the club. It was patronized almost entirely by American officers and newspaper men who had money to burn. They burned it all right in the Blue Club. The band was first class, the girls beautiful and willing, and the food excellent; but the cost was so high you had to put on an oxygen mask before you looked at the bill.

Netta was one of twelve girls, and I picked her out the moment I saw her.

She was a cute trick: a red head with skin like peaches and cream. Her curves attracted my attention: curves always do. They were a blue print for original sin. I’ve seen some female hairpin bends in my time, but nothing quite in Netta’s class. As my companion, Harry Bix, a hard-bitten bomber pilot, put it, “A mouse fitted with skis would have a grand run down her, and would I like to be that mouse!”

Yes, Netta was a cute trick. She was really lovely in a hard, sophisticated way. You could tell right off that she knew her way around, and if you hoped to get places with her it was gloves off and no holds barred; even at that she’d probably lick you.

It took some time before Netta thawed out with me. At first she considered me just another customer, then she regarded me with suspicion, thinking I was on the make, but finally she accepted the idea that I was a lonely guy in a strange city who wanted to make friends with her.