Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection

by Rosie Thomas

  He spoke with an accent, Yorkshire or perhaps even further north. Harriet turned round. She was irritated by his suggestion, but at the same time she saw how she must have looked, back turned to the room and arms plunged in the sink.

  ‘I have mingled,’ she said. The man was very good-looking. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed him before, then tried briefly to work out how much wine she had drunk before abandoning the calculation. ‘Then I saw that this needed doing. I thought I’d help Jane out a bit.’ There was no need to justify herself; she hoped she wasn’t doing it because he had black curly hair and a face that made her think of a prize-fighter’s before the puffy disfigurement.

  ‘Jane?’

  Harriet was startled. ‘This is Jane’s party. Jane’s house. You were dancing with her an hour ago.’ She felt lighthearted. She didn’t immediately connect the lightheartedness with relief at finding that he didn’t know who Jane was.

  ‘That Jane. I’ve just met her. I’m staying with some people and they brought me along. I didn’t know anyone when I arrived, including Jane.’

  He shrugged, an attractive, apologetic shrug, and Harriet smiled at him.

  ‘I’ll stop washing up if you can find me a drink.’

  He rummaged amongst the half-full bottles and poured out two glasses of wine. They stood in the corner by the fridge, where Harriet had found Charlie at the beginning of the evening, and made the conversation of strangers meeting at a party. The man’s name was David. The more Harriet looked at him, the more attractive he appeared.

  ‘Are you married, Harriet?’ David was looking down at her hands.

  ‘I was,’ she said neutrally.

  ‘So was I.’

  A moment ago they had been talking about restoring houses. The mutual admission seemed at once to put them on a different footing. Harriet felt breathless and then surprised. The music from the other room had stopped for a while, but now it suddenly began again. The party was in its last, noisy throes. David took her glass out of her hand.

  ‘Come and dance with me.’

  The living room was darkened, almost empty now. One other couple was dancing, with the music booming around them. David took her hand and they began to dance. He held her differently from the drunk teacher. The difference was that he did it right. Harriet closed her eyes, letting the music take her over. David was humming under his breath, his face close to hers. She thought how good it was to be held. How good, and how easy. They danced for quite a long time, and then something happened. David shifted his position slightly, moving from one side to squarely in front of her. He put his hands round her waist, and she knew that he was going to draw her hips against his. Then he would kiss her.

  Harriet opened her eyes. The music became just a noise, although The Police were singing the same song. She didn’t want anyone to kiss her. It was a long time since anyone but Leo had done so, and she didn’t want this now. But all the time she was thinking don’t, Harriet also knew that it would be exciting to take this man home with her, and let him warm her bed and her body. It was a long time since she had done anything of the kind, but she hadn’t forgotten. They would steal into a dark room, and then blink at each other in the unwelcome light. They would take hold of each other, and their clothes would drop in tangled heaps as the two of them fastened together.

  She remembered how imperative it was, and all the myriad welcome demands that came afterwards. Not just for a night and a day, something told her, but for a long time afterwards.

  Only Harriet was impatient. She didn’t have any time, now, to give to the absorbing conspiracies of love.

  She looked carefully at David’s face. It was a good face, one that would have stared out of a crowd at her. And behind David she saw two more of her friends, preparing to leave. Harriet slipped neatly and definitively out of the grasp of his hands.

  ‘I must go and say good-night.’

  In the good face, the undamaged pugilist’s face, she saw a shadow of irritation. It was like a man, Harriet thought. At the same rebuff a woman might have revealed hurt, or anger, or anxiety. In a man, it was simply annoyance. She crossed the room quickly and rather unsteadily. She told herself that she had had a lot to drink, that she mustn’t drink any more.

  After she had said goodnight to the couple who were leaving, Harriet went upstairs. She locked herself into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath. She studied Jane’s asparagus and spider plants grouped in their wicker basket, the bowls of soap and jars of cosmetics and creams, and the moon-face of the bathroom scales. She breathed deeply and evenly, remembering that she had felt breathless, like a silly girl. She decided that she had had a fortunate escape, and ignored the steady impulse to run downstairs and find the man again. That would be the first of the inevitable steps that would lead them back to her borrowed flat. When they reached it she would unbutton the blue shirt and wind her fingers in the black curls. It would be good and it would hurt nobody.

  ‘Shit,’ Harriet said aloud.

  She stood up and looked at herself in the mirror over Jane’s washbasin. Then she rummaged in Jane’s quilted make-up bag and found the plum-coloured lipstick. She applied it to her own mouth, and found that it didn’t suit her either.

  She didn’t know how long she had been locked in the bathroom; it was absurd to cower in there any longer. She flushed the lavatory unnecessarily and unlocked the door.

  In the kitchen Jane and the last stragglers were drinking coffee.

  ‘I’d love some,’ Harriet said. She took the wedding mug that Bernard the vegan had used earlier and tried to interest herself in a conversation about gender bias in nursery education. She was looking out of the corner of her eye for the blue shirt, hoping that it wouldn’t reappear. When it did, there was a thick, dark sweater over it. David had come, with the couple who had brought him, to say good-night to Jane. He kissed Jane on the cheek and thanked her, but he held out his hand to Harriet. She shook it, with the certainty that he was laughing at her.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll meet again,’ David said. The northern accent seemed pronounced now.

  ‘Perhaps.’ Perfectly straightforward, neither encouraging nor unnecessarily chilly. Harriet was proud of herself but although she couldn’t see his grin, she knew it was there. She formed some words experimentally in her head, smug and arrogant amongst them.

  As she watched him go, ducking his head in the doorway, she discovered that she was quite strongly tempted to run after him. She stood absolutely still, and heard the front door open and close.

  Then she let her shoulders drop. It had indeed been a narrow escape. Was this going to happen, then, this knock-kneed surge of barely focussed lust, whenever she met a new man, just because Leo was no longer glowering at her side? Harriet smiled at the thought. She didn’t have time to indulge herself with anything of the kind. Tonight was an aberration, and the man’s impact was fading already. She couldn’t even remember the configuration of his boxer’s features.

  ‘I’ll make another pot of coffee, shall I?’ Harriet volunteered to Jane.

  At last, the stayers drifted away. They engaged themselves, as late guests always did, in vehement conversations held half in and half out of the front door. But finally only Jane and Harriet herself were left to survey the damage in the kitchen.

  Jane shoved a line of dirty glasses to one side and sank down on one of her pine chairs.

  ‘I’m not doing anything with any of this until tomorrow,’ she announced. Her hair had half-freed itself from its plait, and the last vestiges of the plum-coloured maquillage had disappeared. She looked as if she was relieved. She rested her chin in her hands and beamed across the table at Harriet. ‘Isn’t this always the best bit of a party? When everyone’s gone, and you can sit back and talk about them?’

  ‘I had a good time. Did you?’

  Jane gave a long sigh. ‘I don’t, usually, not at my own parties. All that scurrying about with drinks and dips. Husbands are useful for that, at least.’

 
Harriet grinned. ‘Leo was never much good at it. You’d do better to hire a butler.’

  Jane wasn’t listening. ‘But I did enjoy tonight. Did you see him, in the blue shirt? Yes, of course you did. You danced with him, didn’t you? What did you think of him?’

  Harriet opened her mouth but she heard the warning bells. She had felt relief that Jane didn’t know him a little prematurely, it seemed.

  ‘About who? Oh, yes. Him. Quite nice, I suppose.’ Harriet stretched her feet out on the chair next to her. She saw that someone had neatly dropped ash in the suede folds of her boots.

  Jane was listening carefully enough now. She looked narrowly at Harriet. ‘Did you fancy him?’

  ‘What? No. Or only from afar.’ She had locked herself in Jane’s bathroom, run through the entire future sequence of events, and decided that she couldn’t spare the time. That was all. ‘I’m too busy for that sort of thing.’

  ‘Hmm. He’s staying with the Greens. He’s some sort of a builder.’

  ‘So I gather.’

  ‘You talked to him as well?’

  Harriet held up her hands, laughing, defending herself. ‘Only for five minutes. He’s yours, take him.’

  Jane sighed again. ‘I’d welcome the chance. Well, he knows where to find me.’ She frowned at Harriet, not quite soberly. ‘What do you mean, you’re too busy for that sort of thing? Perhaps a short sharp affair is just what you needed at this point?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I haven’t told you what I’m going to do. Can we forget the builder for a minute?’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I’m going to start a business.’ Harriet jumped to her feet, unable to keep still while she talked. She began to clear up, cutting a swathe through the debris. Jane watched her, blinking, her chin still resting on her hand.

  At the end, Harriet leaned back against the sink and folded her arms. ‘So what do you think?’

  Jane pondered. ‘I think …’

  Harriet waited, knowing that Jane’s approval was as important, in its different way, as Charlie’s had been, and also knowing that she would go ahead with her plan whatever Jane said.

  ‘I think it sounds a fine idea.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Harriet bent down and hugged her, and the fraying plait tickled her cheek.

  ‘So put that bloody tea towel down, and tell me how you’re going to get started.’

  ‘Homework. Lots of homework, and then trying to raise the money. Charlie made it quite clear that it wouldn’t be easy.’

  Jane thought for a moment. ‘I’ve got some money saved. A couple of thousand, that’s all, but you could have that if it would help.’

  Harriet was amazed. Jane’s generosity was on a far grander scale than her embryo plan called for, and she was touched by it. To hide her feelings she teased, ‘It might be a good investment. You’ll get a healthy return on your money, I promise.’

  Jane was scandalised. ‘I offered it for you, not because I want to make money out of you.’

  ‘I know that,’ Harriet told her. ‘And I’m grateful.’

  ‘I hope so. Oh God, look at the time. It’s nearly four o’clock.’

  ‘I’m going home alone to Belsize Park.’

  ‘To slip between the balance sheets.’

  Their laughter acknowledged their singleness, and their affection for each other.

  ‘Won’t you stay the night?’

  ‘I’d rather go home. I’ll come back and help with this in the morning.’

  Harriet was thinking about the game, propped up against the wall in the empty flat. It drew her back, as if they needed one another’s protection.

  ‘You’ve done more than half already. Call me.’

  Jane stood in the circle of light from her porch to watch her go.

  The streets were empty as Harriet reversed her zigzag journey. The gangs of youths had filtered away and even the few cars that swept past her seemed to travel without human intervention. It was as if she was alone in the world. It was pleasant to be warm and safe and isolated in the darkness. Harriet smiled. She wasn’t thinking about Charlie Thimbell reaching up to touch her breast, or about the man in the blue shirt. She was thinking about friendship, and the evening’s confirmation of it. She hummed as she drove.

  Six

  The shop was empty, at the end of a rainy Monday afternoon, except for two girls trying on leotards in the mirrored cubicles at the far end. Harriet knew that they might end up buying headbands, or leg-warmers at the very most, most probably nothing at all, but she left them in peace because that was the shop’s policy. They would come back, perhaps, when they did have money to spend. Besides that, she liked the look of them. They were young and skinny, with their hair done up in asymmetric tufts like plumes on the tops of their heads. They admired the diminishing perspectives of their own back views in the mirrors, then collapsed into choking giggles.

  One of them emerged from behind the curtains in a shimmering tube of bright pink Lycra. She made a few stiff movements at the barre that ran around the shop, the plume of hair nodding in a dozen mirrored reflections.

  ‘Makes me look like a horrible ice-cream,’ she sniffed.

  ‘The leopardskin one would be better,’ Harriet encouraged her. ‘Go on, try it on.’ It was the first time she had spoken to them, and at once they looked startled and guilty. Harriet went to the rack where the folds of leopardskin print lay and shook one out.

  ‘Go on,’ she repeated. ‘I’d like to see you in it.’

  The girl was thin. Her spine was a chain of knobs, and her hipbones jutted out. When she put the leopardskin on and sidled out between the curtains, she was transformed into a cat. A small, hungry but confident cat. The girl pirouetted and her friend whistled between her teeth. Harriet tried to remember what it felt like, to be just their age, not a woman nor quite a girl any longer. It seemed a long time ago.

  ‘It suits you, she told her.

  Without making any more suggestions, Harriet went back to her place behind the counter. She looked out of the tall shopwindow at the rain. The street lights were just coming on, and the light refracted off the raindrops on the glass in tiny, optimistic sparkles.

  ‘Perhaps tomorrow,’ Harriet thought. ‘This time.’

  There were dozens of boxes of soft leather dance shoes waiting to be unpacked and checked in the stockroom, as well as a delivery of new Italian body creams and oils. Harriet knew that the cosmetics would sell well, and she was looking forward to displaying them. But on Mondays she was alone in the shop, without one of her three part-time sales assistants. She couldn’t leave the till, and there was nothing that needed doing within reach of it. The clothes lay in colourful folds in their pigeon-holes or hung tidily on the chrome rails. The boxes and bottles and packets of the other stock were neatly arranged; the whole shop was a warm, shining cavern of mirrors.

  At the far end, the girls were whispering together. Harriet reached under the counter, and took out the new game.

  One of her tasks in the last four hard months had been to seek out a manufacturer who would do what she wanted. At length, not very many miles from where Simon lived, she had found a small plastics factory. By travelling up to work alongside the owner, Mr Jepson, cajoling him and chivvying him and making promises that she had no certainty of being able to keep, she had encouraged him enough to produce a prototype that very nearly satisfied her.

  It was smaller than Simon’s original, made in heavy, glossy black plastic that looked almost like lacquered wood. The gates were Y-shapes in glistening white plastic, and how bitterly Mr Jepson had complained about the difficulties of getting those just right. The four balls and their matching discs were brilliant blobs of colour against the stark black and white.

  Harriet dropped the discs at random into the slots, and fed the balls into their groove, ready to roll. She made a quick calculation and flipped the gates.

  Because the board was smaller, the balls didn’t make quite the same musical cadence as they dropped.
Harriet frowned, listening and watching. The bright spots of colour zigzagged down the path she had chosen for them, and fell one by one to their predestined places. Automatically Harriet scooped them up, and scattered the counters again.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  The two girls were standing at the counter. They were clutching the scrap of leopardskin fabric between them, offering it to her.

  ‘Can we take this, please?’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  Harriet took it and wrapped it in tissue, and put it in one of the silver Stepping carrier bags. The girls’ heads were bent over their purses. Harriet saw that they were coloured plastic ones, reminding her of the kind Lisa had hoarded in Kath’s old handbags, playing shopping. They were pooling their resources. After counting and recounting the money, most of it coins, they pushed it across the counter to Harriet. She found that it was right to the penny.

  ‘Have you left yourselves enough to get home?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘Yeah, it’s expensive, isn’t it? But we had to get it, once we’d seen it on, didn’t we? We’re going to take it in turns wearing it.’

  Harriet felt the glow of pleasure that selling always gave her. There was a positive satisfaction in fitting customer and merchandise together, as she had just done, and the recognition that the girls could hardly afford their purchase increased rather than diminished it. She knew from her own experience that she always loved most the things that she didn’t really have the money for, and she imagined the girls taking turns to appear at parties with the leotard swathed under a black skirt, their hair in ever more exotic dressings. They would get their money’s worth from it.

  Earlier in the day she had sold the same leotard in the biggest size to a fat woman who could clearly afford to buy it fifty times over. The only pleasure she had derived from that had been in an efficient transaction.

  ‘Enjoy wearing it,’ Harriet said.

  ‘What’s this, then?’

  One of the girls ran her fingers over the inclined tracks of the game. She picked out the gates, like white bones, and jiggled them. She dropped one, and it slid across the polished floor.