by Rosie Thomas
‘Oh, yes,’ Mattie assured him.
‘Typing, of course …’
‘I’m afraid I can’t type.’ I can’t pretend about that, Mattie thought desperately. Mr Willoughby glanced at her jumper again and ran his thumb to and fro over his thin moustache.
‘Well. Perhaps you could pick it up as you go along?’
‘I’m sure I could.’
‘The job pays six pounds ten a week.’
Less than at the shoe shop. Mattie looked over Mr Willoughby’s shoulder and through the sweaty green walls. Beyond them was the stage.
‘Could you make it seven pounds?’
Mr Willoughby’s smile showed his teeth, too white and even to be real.
‘Lots of girls want to do theatre management, dear. It’s not like ordinary office work, is it?’
‘All right,’ Mattie said quickly. ‘Six pounds ten.’
She started work with Headline Repertory Companies the following Monday, leaving the shoe shop without a backward glance.
While Julia listened to the clamour inside herself and waited, trying to contain it, Mattie went out to explore the limits of her new job. It seemed to consist mostly of explaining to angry-sounding voices on the telephone that Mr Willoughby was auditioning and couldn’t speak to anyone now.
Mattie quickly understood that most of the anger related to the non-appearance of money. Francis would look up from his desk, squinting against the smoke from his cigarette, and hiss, ‘Cheque’s in the post, tell ’em.’
Mattie knew that there was nothing of the kind in the post, because she did Francis’s few letters too, but she made a convincing job of lying for him, and he grinned approvingly at her.
One caller was particularly insistent. His voice was deep and resonant, the perfect actor’s voice as far as Mattie was concerned. His name was John Douglas, he told her, and he was the manager of Francis’s number one company, currently on tour in the north of England.
‘Tell fucking Francis,’ the rich voice issued from the telephone mouthpiece, ‘that unless I get fucking paid in full and unless I get cash in hand to pay the fucking company every Friday night as well, I don’t take them or sodding Saint Joan to fucking Gateshead next week. Got that?’
‘I think so,’ Mattie murmured.
Wincing as if it hurt him, Francis at last unlocked the big company cheque-book from the safe.
‘It’s all cash-flow, dear,’ he told her as he wrote a cheque. ‘If you don’t get the takings during the week, it isn’t there to pay the actors at the end of the week, is it?’
When she bent down to find the company’s current address in the filing cabinet, Francis put his hand up her skirt. His fingers squeezed her thigh and then slid up over her stocking top. Mattie jerked away from him.
‘Six pounds ten a week doesn’t cover that, Francis,’ she told him wearily, and he chuckled. A large proportion of Mattie’s time was spent dodging his hands, but the more brusquely she shook him off the more Francis seemed to enjoy it. Sometimes, especially after one of his lengthy lunches, the atmosphere in the little office was so highly charged with his erotic tension that Mattie was half-afraid the spurt of flame from his cigarette lighter would set fire to it. But most of the time she felt sorry for Francis and his beleaguered existence. Were all men pathetic, she wondered, under the armour plate of their aggression?
Mattie sighed and directed her attention back to whatever non-task Francis had set her between fumbles and phone calls. This was the theatre, that was the thing to remember. However marginally, she was involved in the magic world at last.
At the end of the third week, Josh came. Mattie opened the door to him, and Felix saw Julia’s face when she heard his voice. It was as though a soft light had been turned on under the skin of her face. It shone out of her eyes and glowed through her bones. The blurring of familiarity lifted for an instant, and Felix saw her as if she was a stranger again. She’s beautiful, he thought.
He went on calmly slicing the aubergines he had been preparing for their meal. Their rich colour made the backs of his hands look ashy by contrast.
‘You see?’ Julia whispered, to nobody. ‘I knew he would come.’ A moment later Josh stood in the kitchen doorway with his arm round Julia’s shoulder. He seemed to fill the space with his height and the breadth of his shoulders, although in reality he was no taller than Felix. Julia was laughing at something he had said to her in the hallway, gasping a little, as if she was short of breath.
‘Hi, there, Felix,’ Josh said easily. ‘What’s new with you?’
The kitchen was so tiny that Felix noticed the sun-bleached tips of his eyelashes. He looked down at the worktop and saw the dark moon of his own face reflected in the blade of the knife.
‘Hello. Nothing new.’ He sounded stiff, but Julia and Josh were too engrossed in each other to notice. Josh swung her round so that he could look at her.
‘I’ve come to take you out. Is that okay? Or have you got a date already?’
‘If I did, I’d stand him up for you. Shall I change?’
Julia had learned from Felix. Her clothes were simpler now, and she took more care with them. She was wearing a vivid green polo-neck jumper and tight black matador pants with flat black pumps. Jessie had lent her a pair of jet earrings that Julia coveted, and they swung when she turned her head.
Josh touched one of them with the tip of his finger. ‘Don’t change,’ he said softly.
Felix felt their intimacy like an electric charge. In the second’s silence he leaned against the sink, hating the scummy detritus of potato peelings, hating his own jealousy.
‘Let’s go, then,’ Julia said.
Felix went on standing at the sink after they were gone. He saw that the enamel was badly chipped, and the shelf above it where he kept his saucepans was speckled with city soot. Suddenly he swept the potatoes and the aubergines and the chopping knife in a pile on top of the peelings in the sink. The clatter of the knife against the enamel didn’t change his feelings.
‘What the bloody hell’s the matter with you?’ Jessie shouted from her room.
‘I don’t feel like cooking tonight, that’s all.’
‘Don’t cook, then. Mat and I don’t care, do we, duck? And I don’t suppose Julia and that young man have got their dinners on their minds right now, either.’ Jessie laughed, her deep, coarse laugh, and Felix smiled in spite of himself and went through into her room. She was sitting with her bottle, and Mattie beside her with her nose in a film magazine.
‘Don’t be a dog in the manger, son,’ Jessie ordered. ‘If you were going to do anything with Julia you’d have done it by now, wouldn’t you?’
Yes, Felix thought. Yes, I would. Jessie’s right, as usual.
‘So you let her go off and enjoy herself while she can, without pulling a long face.’
Mattie lowered the magazine. ‘While she can?’
‘That’s right. What did you think I said? The boy’s big and beautiful, but he’s not a stayer. Any more than your old man, Felix Lemoine. Let Julia go while he’s here, that’s all.’
Mattie and Felix didn’t look at each other. Mattie stood up and said, ‘I’ll do the tea, if you like. You’ll have to tell me what needs doing, Felix.’
‘Supper,’ he corrected her, automatically.
Josh took Julia to an Italian restaurant where they sat and let their plates of fettucine go cold in front of them. They drank Chianti from a bottle with a raffia case, and stared at each other, sometimes not even talking.
When the bottle was empty Julia said, daringly, ‘I was afraid that you weren’t going to come. Three weeks is a long time.’ Josh’s face changed, darkening a little, and she wished immediately that she hadn’t said anything.
‘I was flying,’ he said. ‘For Harry Gilbert. I needed the money, but Harry expects good value for it.’
It was partly true. Harry’s air-freight business was doing well, and Josh had flown several trips to the Mediterranean for him, lifting materials for
a hotel development in Malta. But the real reason was that Josh had been disturbed by the strength of the attraction he had felt for the thin dark girl he had watched in Leoni’s. Josh liked his girls to be willing, decorative accessories who didn’t ask too much of him. By choosing carefully, Josh could be sure of a warm welcome when he needed it, and no fuss when he didn’t. Julia clearly didn’t belong to the right category. She was hungry, and eager, and too vulnerable. Julia meant trouble for both of them, and Josh thought that she was too young for it.
But he had thought about her, as he watched the instruments in the Lancaster’s cockpit. He had decided that he wouldn’t go looking for her, but he still hadn’t forgotten her. Harry Gilbert asked him, and he shrugged. ‘She’s only a kid. When I need a kid of my own I’ll get one the interesting way.’
And then, without letting himself think about it, he had found himself at the door in the square. It was the first night he had been back in London since the dinner at Leoni’s.
As soon as he saw Julia, Josh didn’t want to think anyway. He wanted to look at her, and listen to her voice, and smile at her mixture of naivety and wilful, calculated knowingness.
He lifted her hand from the tablecloth and kissed the knuckles.
‘I’m here now.’
‘Yes. I don’t care about anything else.’
She looked at him, her head on one side, the absurd earrings winking in the candlelight. Josh imagined how he would lift the green jersey over her head and fit his hands around the narrow ridges of her ribcage. He would taste her skin, quartering it inch by inch with his tongue. Josh shifted in his chair, and let go of her hand again. She was sixteen, he reminded himself.
After their dinner, he took her to a party. It was in a flat in Bayswater, and the high rooms with their peeling cornices were packed with people. Everyone seemed to know Josh. He cut an avenue of welcome through the crowd.
‘Hey, Josh. How ya doing, man?’
‘Josh, darling. Why so long?’
Julia might have been shy amongst so many smart strangers, but with Josh she felt that they were all friends.
‘Who’s this? Your kid sister?’
‘I’m nobody’s sister,’ Julia said briskly, and a man laughed and put a drink into her hand. She floated through the party, made invulnerable by her happiness. Sometimes the crowd carried her away from Josh and she talked, or danced, and then across the room she saw his blond head turning to look for her.
I love you, Julia thought again. The happiness was so perfect that she didn’t question it. It fitted around her, as if it had always been there.
She had no idea what time it was when the party ended. Josh took her home and she watched the street lamps flick past the taxi window, shining their brief nimbus of gold light through the glass, with her head against his shoulder. Outside the door in the square Josh put his arms around her. They stood without moving, their faces not quite touching. They seemed already to have travelled a long way from the nightclub, from the streets where they had walked and talked on the first evening.
Julia knew where they were going. She felt certain of it, her certainty like a warm, pleasurable weight under her ribs.
‘Can I see you tomorrow?’ Josh asked formally.
She nodded, smiling at him.
‘Be ready early and wear warm clothes. We’ll be away until Sunday.’
A night, away with Josh.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Flying.’
He kissed her, his mouth very warm against hers.
‘Until tomorrow.’
Julia went slowly up the stairs. The flat was in darkness, but the blackness seemed full of stars.
Felix’s door was closed, and when Julia turned the light on in her bedroom she saw Mattie curled up under her bedclothes with her arm up over her face. Julia watched her, trying to imagine going to sleep herself. It seemed impossible, the surrender of what she felt now to wasteful unconsciousness. She turned off the light and went out, closing the door with a soft click behind her. She stood in the hallway, hesitating, wondering whether to perch in the kitchen or to go down and walk under the trees in the square. Then she heard Jessie, calling out to her.
Jessie was sitting up in bed. She had slept for a few hours, numbed by vodka, but now she was awake again, facing the empty time until daylight. Until recently she would have levered herself out of bed and shuffled up and down the room to ease the restlessness, but now she felt too heavy and too exhausted to get up. Insomnia was like a grub inside her, gnawing, exposing her tiredness. This was the time when her memories assailed her, so vividly that it was hard to distinguish between what was real and what was remembered.
‘Julia?’ she begged. ‘Is that you? Come in here to me, will you?’
Or was it Felix, a little boy pattering in the night, or Desmond, creeping in from she didn’t know where …
Julia slipped into the room. Of course it was Julia. Back from her night out. She brought the old scent of cigarettes and closed rooms and perfume with her, and Jessie felt the past stirring like a massive body in the bed beside her.
‘Can’t you sleep?’ Julia whispered. She saw that Jessie’s face was grey, mottled with mauve, and her scalp showed through the strands of grey hair. In the daytime, with her face painted and her glass in her hand, Jessie was like a rock. It was a shock to see her so clearly at the night’s mercy. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
Jessie shook her head. ‘Just sit with me for a bit.’
Julia sat down on the edge of the bed. She felt the mattress dip sharply away from her, sagging under Jessie’s weight.
‘Well? How was it?’ Jessie demanded. That was more like her, and Julia’s anxiety ebbed a little.
‘I had a wonderful time,’ she said simply.
‘Dear God, I can see that. Tell us about it.’
Julia told her and Jessie listened, Julia’s talk interweaving with her own times, the fair-haired American boy with his ready smile and his man-like evasions all mixed up with a big black man who played the saxophone under a blue light and a boy from a long time ago who came knocking on a terrace-house door in Hoxton with a bunch of marigolds in his hand …
Jessie’s eyelids had dropped, but they opened again as soon as Julia leaned forward.
‘I thought you’d gone to sleep.’
‘No. Go on.
‘That’s all. Jessie, he’s going to take me flying tomorrow.’ Just like a little girl, promised a treat. The seaside, or a film show. Jessie looked at her face. Her mouth, and her eyes, belonged to a woman. But the way her arms wrapped round her chest, to keep the excitement in, that was what a child did. Jessie thought of the little woman in her brown coat and hat who had come to look for a child, and had found Julia.
‘D’you ever think about your ma?’ she demanded roughly. Julia stared at her, and then she said, ‘Yes, I think about her.’ In the silent, feverish weeks that had gone by since meeting Josh, Julia had tried to imagine her mother. Why had she made her a dirty little baby? Why hadn’t she wanted her? Perhaps she had been in trouble, not just that ordinary trouble. Or in some kind of danger, and so had given up her baby rather than let her inherit that. Perhaps she was someone special, nothing to do with the world of Fairmile Road. How much had it cost her, to give her daughter away to Betty and Vernon? Julia had let herself imagine a big house at the end of a curving avenue of trees. Even a face at one of the windows, a pale but exact replica of her own. She wondered if her mother was looking out, praying for a sight of the child she had lost.
‘I wonder about what she’s like. Why she had to give me away.’
‘I didn’t mean her,’ Jessie said.
Julia bent her head and picked at a loose thread in the bedcover. ‘My adopted mother?’
‘Of course. She counts as your mother, my girl, whatever other nonsense you’re letting yourself run away with.’
Julia flared back at her, ‘They’ve tried to turn me into someone else. Tried to turn me into themselves. A
reflection of themselves. They didn’t want me. If they’d just loved what they got, it would have been different. Wouldn’t it?’
Jessie saw the hurt then. Julia had kept it to herself, but it was there. They had rejected each other, the mother and the daughter. No one’s fault, and everyone’s fault. She felt sorry for the little brown woman with her pulled-in mouth, and she felt a different sadness for Julia, who was just beginning everything.
The weight of Jessie’s memories heaved again beside her, pulling her down. She wanted to cry, for herself and Felix, and for the two silly, fresh, blank young women who had been washed up here with them.
The tears felt greasy under her eyelids, and then on her cheeks.
‘Jessie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’ Julia moved quickly, putting her arm round Jessie’s big, doughy shoulders, hugging her. ‘I’ve got you. I don’t need Betty or the other one. Don’t cry, do you hear? You’ve got us two, me and Mattie, as well as Felix. What else do you need?’
Jessie wiped her face with the corner of the sheet, an angry scrubbing movement. ‘Need? Nothing. Everything. Oh, don’t listen. I’m just an old windbag with indigestion and insomnia. And you can’t sleep because you’re too happy. Funny, isn’t it?’
They sat and looked at each other, and then suddenly they laughed. The daytime Jessie was there again.
‘Look at the time,’ she said sharply. ‘If you’re going flying with that boy tomorrow, and I’m glad I’m not, you’d better go to bed for a few hours first. Go on. Do what I tell you.’
Julia leaned over her first and kissed her cheek. Jessie’s skin was cold and dry. ‘Goodnight. Jessie …?’
‘What is it now?’
‘Thank you for letting Mattie and me, you know, do what we want.’
‘Go to the bad, you mean? That’s up to you. Nothing to do with me. Go on.’
Julia went, and Jessie lay back against her flattened pillows to watch the window, where the light would begin again.
Josh came in the morning. Julia ran down the stairs to meet him, the bag containing her overnight things bumping a tattoo against her legs. There was a little black open MG parked in the square, and Josh held the passenger door open for her with a flourish.
