Page 27 of The Words Beneath the Noise

“Only a bit? With an eek like that, you should be fluent. I am Dilly, and this great lump is my intended, Maurice.”

“Charmed,” Maurice said dryly. “Ignore him. He flirts with everyone. It is a medical condition.”

“It is called having taste, you philistine.” Dilly turned back to me. “First time here?”

“No. But it has been a while.”

“The war makes everything harder.” His voice softened, losing some of its theatrical edge. “Finding time. Finding courage. Finding latties that have not been bombed to rubble.”

“You are from London?”

“Whitechapel. Was, anyway. Nanti left now but memories and dust.” His voice was matter-of-fact, the way all of us had learned to speak about loss. “Came out here to stay with my sister. She does not know about...” He gestured vaguely at the room, at himself, at everything. “But she does not ask questions either. Small mercies.”

Small mercies. Yes. That was what we survived on, those of us who lived in the margins. The people who did not ask questions. The rooms where we could breathe. The moments, stolen and fleeting, when we could stop pretending.

The lanterns dimmed. A ripple of anticipation moved through the crowd.

“Oh, here we go,” Dilly whispered, clutching Maurice's arm. “She is fantabulosa tonight, I can feel it.”

And then Madam Fortuna took the stage.

She was magnificent. There was no other word for it. Tall, broad-shouldered, draped in a gown of deep purple velvet that must have cost someone's entire clothing ration. A wig of elaborate blonde curls framed a face painted with theatrical precision, lips red as blood, eyes rimmed in kohl that made them seem enormous and knowing.

“Good evening, my darlings.” Her voice was a purr, pitched to carry without shouting, intimate even in a room full of people. “What a bona gathering we have tonight. So many dolly eeks in the crowd, I hardly know where to vada first.”

“Vada me, Fortuna!” someone called from the back. “Vada me!”

“Oh, I vada you, sweetheart. I vada everything about you, including those cod shoes. Did you lose a bet, or are you genuinely colour blind?”

Laughter rippled through the room. The target of the joke, a young man with indeed questionable footwear, bowed theatrically and blew a kiss.

“Now then,” Madam Fortuna continued, arranging herself on a chair that had been draped in fabric to look like a throne, “for any fresh meat in the audience, any omis or palones who have trolled in for the first time and are wondering what language we are speaking... welcome to the parlyaree, darlings. Welcome to the secret tongue of the marginalised and the magnificent.”

She spread her arms wide, the purple velvet catching the light.

“Polari is how we find each other. How we speak truths in plain sight while the straight world walks right past, deaf to our music. When I say an omi has a bona cartes, I mean he has a lovely body. When I say someone is naff, I mean they are dull,dreary, not one of us. When I say the riah on that palone is absolutely stunning, I am admiring her hair.”

“Your riah is absolutely stunning,” Dilly called out, and Fortuna preened, patting her blonde wig.

“This old thing? Please. I found it in a skip behind the Palladium. But thank you, darling, you have excellent taste.” She winked. “Now, shall we have some music? I feel a song coming on. Something tragic and beautiful, like my love life.”

The pianist, a thin woman with fingers like spider legs, launched into an introduction. Madam Fortuna rose, the velvet pooling around her feet, and began to sing.

It was an old music hall number, but she had changed the words. Where the original spoke of a woman pining for her soldier boy, Fortuna's version spoke of an omi pining for his, using Polari to transform a heterosexual lament into something that belonged to us.

“My bona omi went to war, left me crying at the door, with nanti but his picture and his ring. Now I vada other trade, but none of them have got it made, none of them can make my heartstrings sing...”

The room swayed together. Some people sang along, voices joining on the chorus. Others simply listened, faces soft with recognition, with the particular kind of grief that comes from having your experience articulated for the first time.

I found my eyes burning. I blinked hard, refused to let the tears fall, but the tightness in my throat remained.

This was what we had. What we would always have. Not acceptance, not safety, not the right to exist openly in the world. But this. These rooms. These people. This language that belonged to us alone, that let us speak truths in plain sight, that bound us together across class and geography and all the other divisions that should have kept us apart.

The song ended. Madam Fortuna took her bows to thunderous applause, then held up a hand for silence.

“Now, my loves, a moment of gravity before we return to our regularly scheduled frivolity.” Her voice had changed, the theatrical purr giving way to something rawer. “Some of you know that we lost one of our own last month. Billy Marsh. Caught in a raid on a cottage in Soho. The lily law took him away, and they gave him two years.”

The room went quiet. Somewhere, a glass clinked against a table.