The Moon At Midnight

by Charlotte Bingham

  Max didn’t stay to hear any more but bolted after Jenny and his car, the Biba shopping bags swinging from his hands as he did so. When he caught up with her Jenny and the Mini had slid to a standstill on a single yellow line outside the cinema.

  ‘Jenny?’ Max wrenched the driver’s door open. ‘Jenny, what on earth happened? Jenny. Are you all right?’

  There were tears on Jenny’s cheeks but Max couldn’t see them. All he could see was her head, long hair tumbling about her shoulders, her shoulders shaking. Finally she turned her face towards him.

  ‘Oh, Max. That was such a laugh, wasn’t it? Me. Driving. You. The policeman.’ She slid over to the passenger seat, still laughing. ‘I mean if that isn’t funny, what is?’

  Max and Jenny were sharing a small flat off the King’s Road, so it was only a short drive back from outside the Odeon to their front door. So far they had managed to combine their very different lives without too much conflict. Max’s private life was ruled out of bounds after midnight, and Jenny, for obvious reasons, was forbidden to turn up the telly while he was learning lines, or talking, endlessly and often it seemed to her pointlessly on the phone. To avoid claustrophobia Jenny often took her studies to a café along the way where she would sit, nursing an endless cup of espresso, and the occasional doughnut.

  She was loving her new life, and would not have swapped places with anyone, her only difficulty being finding somewhere to practise. On an off-chance she confided this problem to Waldo Astley, who immediately, as was his wont, came up with a solution. He had an unmarried bachelor friend who owned a large house in the Boltons. He would ask him to give Jenny the freedom of one of his three grand pianos.

  ‘After all, he can’t want to play them all at once, can he?’

  Teddy Overton Handley was an extremely languid Anglo-American. An authority on early ragtime – Scott Joplin in particular – he took an instant dislike to the idea of anyone’s playing any of his pianos. Waldo was persuasive. Jenny Tate was a shy girl. Jenny Tate had very quiet ways. She wouldn’t disturb Teddy, any more than Teddy would disturb her.

  ‘Besides, Teddy, you know you owe me one. Remember? Paris? 1945?’

  ‘Oh, very well.’

  As it happened Teddy took to Jenny from the start. In fact he fell in love with her, as elegant, confirmed bachelors sometimes do with young girls, in the nicest possible way. So much so that far from locking himself away in some distant room the moment he knew her to be arriving, unbeknownst to her he would lie in his best silk dressing gown and monogrammed slippers on a day bed in the room adjacent to where Jenny was practicing, listening. Finally he confided to her that he was going to exact a fee for his generosity.

  ‘Friday evening of every week you’re going to come down and play for me on my best Bechstein.’

  Against her better judgement, but mindful of what she owed him, Jenny agreed to this one condition. Every Friday she played for Teddy and his friends. Sometimes she even played requests, but because Teddy was an old friend of Waldo’s and she knew that Waldo loved him, it didn’t seem like performing in public at all.

  Now, however, both having changed at the flat, Max and she were sitting in a candlelit corner of Carlo’s, one of Max’s regular haunts, a first class, if somewhat boisterous, bistro run by a northern Italian whose other interest was driving in car rallies. This meant that the restaurant was more than usually filled with an interesting, cosmopolitan clientele ranging from racing car enthusiasts to pop singers and models.

  Max was shaking his head, smiling.

  ‘I still can’t believe that you, of all people, sat behind that wheel and drove my Mini Cooper. And now I suppose you want to learn to drive?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Are you really that – cured?’

  Jenny sipped her wine, thoughtful for a moment.

  ‘Yes, I think I really must be. Otherwise, surely, otherwise I couldn’t be so sure, could I? I mean I am totally sure that I can drive now, that . . . it’s all behind me, in the past, doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Not nervous?’

  ‘Oh, I expect I will be, but not like that. Not the way I have been, properly nervous, you know, so you feel as if you’re melting, your insides are melting.’

  ‘I know that feeling. Acting’s like that.’

  ‘Oh good, that’s better.’ Jenny smiled, lightly sarcastic. ‘We’re back to you, Max. That is much, much better. I mean.’ She looked at her watch. ‘It must be fully five minutes since we spoke about you, old thing.’

  ‘Acting is,’ Max stated, not paying the slightest bit of attention, ‘acting is, I always think, like being a soldier. You’re going over the top, and beforehand you go green and quite pass out—’

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen you go green—’

  ‘Yes, you have, and I shall doubtless continue to do so.’ Max nodded, serious for a moment. ‘It’s when I stop going green and thinking I’m going to pass out that I shall start to worry.’

  ‘That’s more or less what my teacher says to me. We need nerves to be good. But back to you, love.’

  ‘Oh, God, thank heavens for that. Now. What do you really think about me?’

  They both laughed.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Jenny went on, ‘and just to finish what we were saying, I think I will drive, and if I do I’m going to make sure I do it really well.’

  Max nodded. ‘And what else, Miss Tate?’

  ‘Play the piano, as best I can—’

  ‘And what else?’

  Jenny put her glass down too quickly, spilling some wine on the cloth. She immediately began pouring salt over the stain as a distraction.

  ‘What else, Jenny?’

  ‘I don’t know, what else is there?’

  ‘Stepping out of the shadows, that’s what else. You know what I mean. You are – now – back to how you were.’

  ‘I’m not, Max, you know I’m not.’

  ‘Yes, you are, Jenny. And that’s official. You’re going to drive again, and you’re going to step out of the shadows and start looking in mirrors again.’

  Jenny sat back in her chair, at the same time throwing him a furious look, but she said nothing. She couldn’t, because Max was right. She never looked in mirrors unless she could help it, not since the accident. Just brushed her hair, cleaned her teeth, usually in the dark, and bolted out of the door, clean, tidy, but definitely not glamorous.

  ‘For a start I’ve booked you in for a make-up course,’ Max told her grandly. ‘It’s my gift to you.’

  Jenny went to say something but then stopped. What could she say, after all?

  ‘It’s only a day, and it’ll be the greatest fun. If you don’t go then I shall know that you’re not the person I know you to be. A girl I met the other day has done it, and it’s fantastic; really. They teach you everything.’

  Jenny was proud, but she was also realistic. She felt wounded by Max’s lack of tact, but when had Max ever, ever been tactful? She took a deep breath.

  ‘Thank you, Max.’

  This particular evening Teddy was in no mood to let go of Waldo. He wanted to discuss Jenny Tate and her playing.

  ‘I’ve been talking to her half-brother – Max, isn’t it? And apparently she’s what the kids nowadays call really “hung up” about her looks. So I suggested to him he sends her for some kind of make-up course. You know, there are these professionals who give women lessons. It’s not that her scars are so bad, d’you see? It’s that she feels that they are. I think she carries the image of how she was, just after the accident, around in her head the whole time. You know her grandmother, has she spoken to you about it?’

  ‘No.’ Waldo paused, and he shook his head. ‘No, Teddy, I’m awfully afraid that Jenny’s grandmother is out of bounds as far as I’m concerned at the moment, or rather I am as far as she is concerned. The problem being that I helped the boy who was driving when Jenny had her accident. I sent him out to the Big U – you remember the Big U?’

  Teddy started to
laugh.

  ‘My God, just before the war, wasn’t it? I was told to take you there, by your uncle, I think, to make a man of you. Make a man of you? It made a wreck of me! I had saddle sores for weeks afterwards. Now I come to think of it, I think that so-called holiday at the Big U got me out of the army. March, sir? I can hardly walk.’

  They had just started on their second martini together, but Teddy was drinking his so quickly that in order to give the impression that he was keeping pace, Waldo had started to tip his glass surreptitiously into a nearby pot plant. Teddy was an old friend of Waldo’s bachelor uncle, elegant, and unrepentantly life-loving.

  ‘We must do something for Jenny Tate and her talent, Waldo, really we must.’

  ‘The last time we did something for someone and their talent, Teddy, we regretted it for months after. Remember, if you want to make an enemy, help someone?’

  ‘Sure, and isn’t that the dreariest adage in the whole world? No, of course we’ll do something for Jenny. Even if her grandmother never ever speaks to you again in this world, we must do something for Jenny.’

  ‘Is she good?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘In that case, we shall try to be of assistance, on one condition – she never, ever knows it’s us. We will sponsor her, quite privately, when she finishes at the Academy.’

  ‘I knew you’d see my point. Another martini?’

  ‘I would love it, but one more of those, Teddy, and I will be walking back to Bexham on all fours.’

  Wrenching himself free of Teddy’s company Waldo walked quickly along from his house doing up his mackintosh a little too tightly, as if punishing himself for having drunk two martinis so early. He was actually weighing up the possibility of going to fetch his car and driving back down to Bexham when he passed the front of the Hyde Park Hotel. He stopped, at once tempted by the idea of dinner. He would go in, and he would dine all alone, in splendour, relishing every moment of the meal, and after that he would take himself off to his flat where he would fall thankfully into his own very comfortable bed, and when morning broke he would drive home.

  He was about to step into the hotel when what he thought was a familiar voice spoke his name. Long before he turned he found himself longing for it to be a familiar voice. It had just that hint of uncertainty in it to make it appealing, just that hint of shyness that made him turn. As soon as he saw who it was, he stepped forward and drew the owner of the voice towards him.

  ‘Judy.’

  It was one of those moments which, had he planned it, which he very definitely had not, Waldo would actually have hoped would turn out to be exactly as it was now. He would have had Judy looking pretty as paint in a bright blue coat and dress, he would have had the evening sun around Knightsbridge playing tag among the façades of the shops and houses, he would have had the sound of other guests’ voices laughing and joking fading to a strange kind of background music as he took her hands, and he would have had her lift her face up to him in a way that made her seem quite different. Not Judy as she always was in Bexham with all her worries, her children, her husband, but Judy quite alone, looking younger than he ever remembered her looking day-to-day, looking, for once, completely and astonishingly carefree.

  ‘Waldo.’

  Had Judy planned bumping into Waldo this way she would have had him looking just as he was now, casually dressed, his greying hair setting off his summer-darkened skin, a look of ruffled delight about him as if he too had just come from a bit of a celebration, as she had, but not squiffy or anything, just delighted, and delightful.

  ‘Is Walter with you?’

  ‘No, Walter’s away, all week, until next week.’

  Later Waldo would find himself wondering why he had said this and realising that it had been the only thing on his mind.

  ‘Have dinner?’

  ‘Why not?’

  He held out his arm for her to slip her hand through, which she did feeling oddly wicked as she did so, which was ridiculous. After all if they were in Bexham she would walk along with Waldo and everyone would see them talking their heads off and not think even the tiniest thing, but here in London such a simple act seemed somehow all at once both exotic and sinful.

  ‘Life can be wonderfully appropriate at times, can’t it?’ Waldo stated as they walked along, neither of them really thinking too much about where they were going, or why. ‘Here am I escaping from Teddy Overton Handley’s martinis, and here are you coming out of a wedding, and now here are we both, feeling ravenously hungry.’

  Judy stared in the shop windows as they strolled along Knightsbridge and from there down Sloane Street. Men were always hungry for food, women were always hungry for clothes. Just to look at the beautiful dummies in the windows, their plastic hips thrust forward to show off the latest in dresses and coats, their nylon wigs styled in the endless romantic curls that were becoming so fashionable, was quite enough nourishment for her. She wanted nothing more and nothing less than to press her nose not up to a restaurant window, but up to the windows of the clothes shops past which they were strolling. She would love time to stare at the frills and flounces on display, at the tightly tailored trouser suits with their starched shirts, before sighing over the embroidered boleros, the diaphanous blouses, the waistcoats, the gypsy dresses, but Waldo was intent on finding a restaurant, and was even now standing outside a chic-looking place with a menu card on display. What was more it was a menu written in the kind of large, purple, continental writing that always seemed to promise so much. In fact it was a menu that declared it was going to not only feed them, but feed them excellently well.

  ‘Table for two?’

  Once they sat down Waldo raised his eyes to heaven.

  ‘Why do waiters always ask that?’ he wanted to know. ‘If there are two people standing waiting for a table, would you really be wanting a table for twelve?’

  Judy took off her tightly buttoned jacket, arranging it carefully around her shoulders. It was as deep a blue as the dress underneath. Waldo’s favourite colour, although she wouldn’t possibly know that, any more than she would know that he had kept the lace handkerchief she’d left by mistake the last time she’d called round at Cucklington House, when she was so worried about Kim.

  ‘Don’t let’s talk about anything ordinary, shall we?’ Waldo asked her, after a short pause.

  Judy shook her head. She knew that what he was really saying was ‘don’t let’s talk about Bexham or anyone we both know.’

  ‘No, don’t let’s,’ she agreed.

  Once they had both ordered, and Waldo was busy choosing the wine, Judy’s eyes wandered round the restaurant. It was fashionable, it was beautifully decorated, and it was everything that she had never known. It was neither hotel grand, or café simple: it was, in effect, perfect. Perhaps Waldo always brought women he knew to it? A stab of jealousy shot through her, at the idea that Waldo must know many other women, London women of whom she would know nothing, that just as he knew Teddy whatever his name was, he must also know women whom she knew nothing about. She had hardly embraced this idea when she felt instantly ashamed. How could she possibly dare to entertain a single jealous thought about Waldo when she herself was married to Walter? Walter who, as far as she knew, was at that moment somewhere in the north of England, attempting to defend some poor benighted man who stood accused of embezzling his firm’s funds.

  What would they talk about, if not their interests and concerns which all centred around Bexham? What would they talk about if not Waldo’s concern with the rich man who had designs on building cheap housing around the harbour, and perhaps even caravan sites, as Richards had suggested to Judy only the previous day. But that was a forbidden subject, so Judy searched around for another.

  Her mother had always said, ‘If you ever find yourself stuck for a subject to talk about when you’re at dinner with your husband, darling, just tell him the story of the Three Bears, or Cinderella, anything rather than sit in a growing silence. It works a treat.’


  Judy didn’t think that would work with Waldo. Besides, he wasn’t her husband.

  ‘Now that you’ve lived in England so long, Waldo, do you feel at all English?’

  ‘No. As a matter of fact, if anything I feel much less.’ Waldo laughed. ‘Teddy and I were discussing it only the other day, and we both agreed that nowadays when we’re in England we feel American, but that when we’re in America we feel English, so how’s that for confusion?’

  They went on to discuss nationality, which led to exile, which in its turn led to Europe, and how different it was from America, until, as Waldo called for the bill, Judy realised that they had been together for over three hours and not mentioned one mutual friend or acquaintance.

  He hailed a taxi outside the restaurant. Judy climbed in while Waldo stayed holding the door open.

  ‘I’ve told the driver to take you to Victoria Station, but you’d like me to accompany you, wouldn’t you?’

  This time the stab that Judy felt was one of ridiculous disappointment.

  ‘No, no, at least, yes, of course. Yes, I must take the late train back. Yes, of course.’ Even now she managed to avoid the word ‘Bexham’, sensing that it would somehow spoil the moment.

  As Waldo stepped into the cab and sat back, the light from the street lamps catching first the top of his head and then his face as he stared ahead, Judy turned away, making sure to gaze out of her passenger window, wondering at the shape of an evening, how it would make one sort of shape at one point, and quite another a minute later. Other couples were walking down the streets, other people were catching cabs, or climbing down from them, and their evenings must also have made different shapes at different times, and yet to Judy it seemed that she was the only person in the whole world to be feeling a calamitous sense of put-down, as if she had somehow or another been snubbed, sent on her way, and of course the fact that Waldo was so silent, he too staring out of the window on his side, only served to underline her sense of sudden isolation.

  ‘What a wonderful evening, Waldo. Thank you so much,’ said Judy as they arrived at the station.