by Alison Bond
‘Dante,’ she said. ‘I love that you think I’m beautiful. But please shut up and let’s do it again.’
The weeks that followed were by far the most exciting of Ruby’s life. This is what she’d been seeking, that feeling of living rather than simply being alive. Something to live for.
She existed in a state of permanent anticipation, waiting for the next time they could be together. They stole time whenever they could, sometimes meeting at four in the morning or slipping away from a party for half an hour. Sometimes fifteen minutes in the hostess’s bath-room would satisfy them while Ella carried on dancing or talking downstairs. It felt like everything Ruby had expected her first love affair to be. Everything the movies promised it could be. Dangerous, invigorating and sexy as hell.
Sometimes, usually late at night when the reassuring dark gave her courage, Ruby would mention Ella. Dante always said the same thing. That Ella was important to him but that she had nothing to do with his relationship with Ruby.
‘You are so conformist in this country. So uptight,’ he said. ‘You live by these outdated moral standards. The sooner you realize that the world is changing, the less likely you will be to be left behind.’
‘But Ella…’
‘Ella would be happy for us,’ he said. ‘She understands me.’
Ruby twisted a curl of his hair. Was he implying that she didn’t? And she had serious doubts about how Ella would react if she knew the truth. She would feel betrayed and angry, yes. Happy? Not so much.
Dante stretched back on the bed and lazily reached out for Ruby’s hand to place it where he wanted it. Obediently, Ruby stroked him. ‘London is starting to bore me,’ he said.
‘But you won’t leave?’ The thought of life without him made her feel ill.
‘I might,’ he said. He groaned as Ruby’s hand moved faster and he pushed her down on to the bed.
‘Dante, I’m so tired,’ she said. It was almost morning and he had made love to her three times already. She needed to sleep.
‘Here.’ He pushed a small black and white capsule into her hand.
She took it, washing it down with the last of a bottle of lukewarm wine. ‘Thanks.’
Black and whites were her favourite. She was quite fond of Dex too and would be happy on ephedrine if there was nothing else around. After the first time it had been easy. Drugs weren’t evil, they were a doorway into a part of herself she might never have explored; they were a revelation.
Every so often Ruby would take stock. She was living and working in London. Well, actually, her work standards were steadily declining; she’d taken five sick days from the office in the last two weeks and was about ready to quit and see what happened. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, something in the arts perhaps, or politics, but sitting in an office at the beck and call of dreary superiors was definitely not her heart’s true intent. She had hundreds of friends. Well, maybe not hundreds but a few dozen at least. She’d seen some of the best new bands play live, standing so close that if she’d wanted to she could have reached out and touched Keith’s guitar amp; she’d met some of the most celebrated faces of the era and one of them, a fashion designer, had said she liked her scarf. She had tried all kinds of drugs, knew how to mix the perfect martini, and was having a passionate affair with one of the most notorious men in town. To Ruby such things measured sophisticated success.
She spoke to her parents once a week and the conversations felt fake, as if for twenty minutes every Sunday afternoon she became the person she had left behind, who talked of work and weather and enquired politely after pets and neighbours. They asked her repeatedly when she would visit and she would make excuses, eventually deciding to say that she was saving up for her own flat.
One weekend her parents came to town, and they had lunch in Highgate, a long way from the places Ruby loved but the sort of traditional restaurant that served proper vegetables and would appeal to her parents.
After lunch Ruby suggested a walk around the nearby cemetery, but her mother thought the ground beneath their feet was too damp and it was too cold to walk among gravestones of long-dead strangers.
‘Karl Marx is buried there,’ said Ruby.
‘Who?’ said her mother, and they didn’t go.
As soon as she had waved goodbye to them at the train station and they were safely on their way back to Wales, Ruby threw herself into the nearest taxi cab, a rare luxury. She was anxious to reach the Regal and her friends and Dante as soon as possible, to reclaim the person she had become. The person she was destined to be.
It was busy in the bar, hazy with sweet-smelling smoke and the hum of conversation. Ruby inhaled huge mouth-fuls of the charged atmosphere, and even though her parents would be only a few miles away on their sluggish train she felt their worlds were light years apart once again.
Dante and Ella were sitting on big cushions around a low table with a few other people, some of whom Ruby recognized. She was welcomed with kisses and smiles and space was found for her to sit between Dante and Sean. Half a lager and lime miraculously appeared for her to drink and Sean passed her a smouldering joint as soon as she had settled.
This is my family nom
Dante had a new toy, a cine-camera, and was busy discussing its possibilities with a man Ruby knew only vaguely. She listened for a while but they were using lots of technical terms that she didn’t understand and for once, she couldn’t be bothered to ask for explanations. She caught Ella’s eye across the table, similarly lost in the film talk, and they both giggled like schoolgirls. Ella shuffled round so that they were next to each other and took Ruby’s hand in both of hers. ‘I love you,’ she said. Her pupils were dilated so that her grey eyes looked like inkwells; she was so close that Ruby could see her own reflection.
‘I love you too,’ said Ruby. ‘Let’s dance.’ She knew that when Ella was high she liked to dance. She wondered what Ella was on and if there would be more. The afternoon with her mum and dad had been laborious and she wanted to get smashed and forget all about it.
The music was loud, a beautiful black guy was doing things with a guitar that made her head spin, and the sweaty dance floor was overflowing with high spirits. Ruby closed her eyes and let the guitar riffs fill up her senses, moving her body slowly despite the frenzy alongside her. I’m so lucky to be a part of this, she thought. And then she corrected herself. It wasn’t luck that had brought her here, it was her own choice, her own achievement. But being in London at this time in history was special; nobody ever really said it out loud but they all felt it. It was like riding the crest of a wave, a wave that had no shore to reach, a wave that just was.
When Ruby could dance no more she grabbed Ella, who would dance all night unless somebody stopped her, and retraced her steps back to the table.
‘How’s she doing?’ said Sean, nodding his head towards Ella.
Ella had thrown her head back and was fascinated by Dante’s cigarette smoke floating towards the yellowing ceiling. She blew gently into the plume of smoke and seemed delighted when it drifted away from her.
‘She’s fine,’ said Ruby.
‘Do you want some?’ said Sean. ‘New stuff from the base, I dropped some last night and it’s something else. Clean lines, a sense of the aesthetic, quite beautiful really’
Ruby loved the way Sean sounded when he talked about his drugs, as though they were paintings in an art gallery. She’d never been offered acid before but she didn’t hesitate. Sean explained the drug to her with a reverent respect and suggested all sorts of ways to make the trip enjoyable.
It felt like several hours but in reality was probably only forty minutes later that she turned to Sean and said, ‘You’re right, it is beautiful.’ Her mind was racing so fast that she couldn’t keep up with her consciousness; she kept thinking that she was touching the edge of a profound realization then losing her grip on it. It should have been frustrating but it wasn’t. The club, and her friends’ faces, took on a mystical splendour. She couldn’t
remember ever feeling this free.
Sean grinned and his smile stretched out to touch his earlobes. It was weird. She laughed, and Sean smiled again, which only made her laugh more. She was gasping for breath, hearing her own giggles as though they were somebody else’s. Then suddenly she was quiet again and Sean’s smile resumed its usual proportions. As he reached out and stroked her face, his fingertips felt like downy feathers.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he said, and then he kissed her.
In the middle of the kiss Ruby forgot for one second how soft and warm his lips felt, and how her insides felt as though they were dissolving, and she thought, Sean is kissing me, I’m kissing Sean. She heard a strange noise in her ear and looked up to see Dante with a camera pushed to his eye, filming their kiss and saying ‘Don’t stop,’ so she didn’t. The minutes went by. Unseen hands reached out and embraced her waist. She twisted around, vaguely surprised to see Ella. Dante captured it all on a camera. When Ella lifted her face for a kiss it seemed the most natural thing in the world to place her lips on her friend’s and for them to lazily explore each other.
Girls kiss nice.
Dante circled them, making Ruby dizzy, and it was easier to close her eyes and allow the feelings to consume her. She didn’t know who was kissing her now, Sean, Ella, even Dante or someone else entirely, it could have been anyone. And even when she did open her eyes there was too much heat, too many hands and kisses melting together, and she still didn’t know. All she could feel was the welling desire inside her, spiritually intense, the feeling of loving and of being loved that surged in her so violently that a tear slipped down her cheek.
‘Are you okay?’ A whisper, laced with gentle concern. Sean, she thought, but when she opened her eyes it was Ella. Ella had skin like velvet. Ruby reached out and stroked her back.
‘This is amazing.’
‘I know.’
There was space on the cushions to lie down and Ruby and Ella lay back together, both discarding some of their layers of winter clothes, continuing to whisper to each other – is this okay? – until their voices didn’t sound like real words any more. Ella reached for Ruby’s breasts and her nerve endings throbbed like a series of tiny electric shocks under the caress.
What would her mother say?
Dante’s camera whirred and Ruby surrendered to pure sensation.
6
Three weeks later, Sean asked Ruby to pose for him. ‘I need to work on my portfolio,’ he said. ‘Right now there’s just a whole bunch of trippy abstract stuff. I need to find something more classic. Can I? I’d let you keep copies.’
‘Me?’
‘Well, yeah.’
‘Not Ella?’
‘You.’
They arranged to meet the following day and that night Ruby didn’t go out. She stayed at home and smothered her hair in olive oil and her face in cold cream. She put two used tea bags on her eyes and tried to relax. Her room felt strangely empty without Ella. She was growing used to her constant chatter. She’d been concerned that she’d find it hard to hear Ella talk about Dante but as their relationship always seemed on the edge of something cataclysmic she was pleased to listen. It gave her hope. She still offered Ella sound advice, or so she thought. Pointing out that Dante didn’t like needy women and that she should give him space made perfect sense. The fact that space also gave Ruby and Dante a perfect opportunity to be together was just happy coincidence.
She rinsed the gloop from her hair and smoothed her face clean with a square of muslin. She was excited about being photographed. Everybody said that Sean was good. This could be the start of something.
She toyed with the idea of waiting up for Ella to hear in detail everything that Dante had said that night. But Dante and Ella had been getting on better than usual and there was a good chance that Ella wouldn’t come back tonight at all. Ruby might be a fool but she wasn’t fool enough to stay awake waiting for someone who was sleeping in the arms of the man she loved.
An early night would guarantee that she looked her best.
Sean had hired a studio and everything. Ruby was impressed. There was a short rack of dresses for her to wear, but only one fitted, and by the time she came out from behind a changing screen in the final dress, spilling out over the ruffled neckline, Sean was mortified.
‘You’re bigger than I thought you were,’ he stuttered.
Ruby took offence.
‘I mean… up top.’
‘Sean,’ she said, ‘you mean you never noticed?’ She was acting coquettish. Getting into character, she hoped. Wasn’t this the right attitude for a successful model? From the look on his face she was only scaring him. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She pulled the best dress from the rack. ‘This is lovely.’
It was plain black with a forgiving cut. It wasn’t anything special but on Ruby it suddenly looked like a designer outfit.
Sean squeezed off a few shots as she got into position but then stopped himself. He had taken enough candid photographs. They were little more than snapshots when you got right down to it. Fabulous snapshots, but still. He wanted an image that would not look out of place in a magazine. There was just something about Ruby’s face, the way she carried her beauty, casually unaware of the impact she had on those around her. She turned to face his lens and smiled, her hands clasped neatly in her lap. She looked so innocent.
After forty minutes or so they were both bored and pretending not to be. Ruby had thought that modelling would be glamorous and stimulating but the truth was that she felt as if she was only half of a person, the physical half. Trying to convey emotion and thought without words was frustrating. Sean had thought that photographing a beautiful woman like Ruby would be inspiring, but in fact he found it too easy. It was impossible to take a bad shot of her, so where was the challenge? It occurred to him then that she would do well on screen. She was a gift to any cinematographer and he had no doubt that the photographs would be sensational. When you looked in those eyes it was almost as if you could tell what she was thinking, whether that was ‘Come to bed’ or ‘Go to hell’. But the truth was he was dissatisfied.
Just then Ruby looked up at the clock on the wall behind him and started to laugh. His finger danced over the trigger. Magic.
‘I thought we’d been here hours!’ said Ruby. ‘But it’s not even three o’clock.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Sean.
What for?’
‘You must be tired.’
‘Modelling isn’t tiring,’ she said. ‘Speak to a waitress at the end of her twelve-hour shift, she’s tired. Me, I’m just sitting here having my picture taken.’
‘I think we’re almost done. You should keep some of these, get your own portfolio together. I think you’d do well.’
‘At what?’
‘Modelling maybe. But I think you’re an actress.’
‘That’s crazy,’ said Ruby ‘I don’t know the first thing about acting.’
‘Really? What about when you first got here and you were scared of everything but pretended not to be? That was acting.’
‘I wasn’t scared.’
‘It’s a compliment. Nobody would have known.’
So acting was just telling lies in costume? There had to be more to it than that. People went to drama school for years, they talked about craft and motivation. Were they just practising telling really good fibs?
‘What about when you act like it doesn’t bother you that Dante’s with Ella?’
Ruby looked up sharply. Sean’s hand went to the trigger once more. Ruby made such a habit of keeping her guard up that its immediate loss could always be seen in an instant on her face All that vulnerability was enough to break your heart. ‘Why should it bother me?’ she said.
‘Don’t worry.’ Sean replaced the lens cap on his camera and started packing up. ‘Like I said, you’re very good at it.’
She didn’t feel like lying any more. ‘Tell me honestly,’ she said. ‘Do you think he’ll ever leave her?’
&nbs
p; ‘For you?’
She nodded.
‘I know that if I had even the slightest chance of being with you I’d do anything you asked.’
Was it her imagination or was that Sean’s attempt at a pick-up line? By the way he was dodging her eyes she thought he was nervous. Sean liked her, how sweet. But no, obviously, she was with Dante. Sweet was not her style.
He snapped down the lid of his camera. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘You did great.’
‘Will you be at the UFO next week?’ said Ruby, as she slipped back into her street clothes behind the screen. Then she hesitated, hoping that didn’t sound like more than friendly interest.
‘Front row,’ he said. ‘With this.’ He tapped the case.
‘So I’ll see you then if not before.’
‘Seeya.’
He kissed her cheek and Ruby tried to shake off the feeling that something subtle had changed between them. As if she’d given something away along with her image. Her brave face, perhaps.
Several hours later, when Sean had developed his film, he studied the contact sheets with the help of a magnifying glass. He’d been right. Every single frame was sensational.
On the night of the big concert at the UFO, Ruby left work early faking a migraine (she’d never had a migraine in her life) and spent over an hour preparing for the evening ahead. By five in the afternoon it was dark like midnight. Earl’s Court glistened with lights strung across the crowded streets and festive spirits were reaching new heights.
Ruby ran across the street to hammer on Ella’s window.
When Ella came out her cheeks flared in the crisp air. ‘Cold, innit?’ she said, hugging her green mackintosh close around her.
They went to an Italian restaurant near the tube station, and for a half a crown each they feasted on spaghetti and meatballs, insulation against the night ahead.
