Only Dancing

by Jan Jones

  Now he leant across the counter and charmed the receptionist into directing him to the correct greenroom by the shortest route. Then he turned and saw me. Miraculously (to me at least), a real smile flashed across his face.

  “Caroline. Love the clothes. What are you doing here?”

  I beamed at him (yes, I know, but that was how he always affected me). “I work here!" I said. "I’m a production secretary. Jilly got me the job. Right now I’m chasing a box of wigs. That one there,” I added, pointing to a crate behind the counter with the name of a well known firm branded across the top.

  The receptionist expressed astonishment. “So it is,” she trilled, and gave the box to me without a struggle.

  David bent his mouth to my ear. “Sounds dead boring to me,” he breathed. “How about if I ask for you as my personal runner on the show tonight?”

  I squeaked, even while my heart was thumping at the thought that he just might. “You can’t! There are rules and procedures. It would cause administrative chaos!”

  He grinned impishly into my eyes. “But would you do it?”

  “Oh God, would I!”

  He waved a hand. “Take us to where I should be and I’ll sort it.”

  After which, I had precisely ten minutes to race back to the drama department clutching the box of wigs and tell them of my temporary secondment to Current Affairs. Where, and I say this with all modesty, I blossomed. Organising guests, sorting out cars, meeting people properly in reception, remembering all their little quirks and foibles for the dressing rooms... I was in my element. By the end of just that first evening, my old job was a thing of the past. By the end of the week I might have been working there forever.

  ~~~

  Memories. Exciting, full of life, full of colour. Everything was coming back to me, that sharp wonder of finding something I was born for, something I could excel at. The blazing joy I'd felt at that particular discovery filled me again, lanced through with the bittersweet knowledge that without even realising it, I'd blown it.

  I moved on through the exhibition, knowing my brief co-existence with it was coming to an end. The rest would be David Bowie alone. Life on Mars. Ziggy Stardust and the Earls Court concert in 1973. Another at the Hammersmith Odeon - with Jilly ever more flamboyant - then 1974 and Diamond Dogs and David’s departure for the States.

  ~~~

  Jilly’s departure too. To everyone’s astonishment, she decided out of the blue in May that year to go globe-trotting. This time, my parents didn’t let her take me with her.

  “No?” she said to them. “But Caro would love it. Travel is very mind-enhancing. Okay, tell you what, I don’t want to lose my flat while I’m away. Caro can take it over for the year and look after it for me. That’ll be better in any case for her than commuting from home to the BBC. It’ll do her good to stand on her own two feet for a bit.”

  My parents looked grave and doubtful. I looked sensible and attentive and crossed every finger I had behind my back. They said, oh, all right then, as it’s a respectable block in a nice part of London. I expressed suitably humble gratitude. And when we were out of earshot, Jilly and I whooped aloud like nobody’s business.

  “Told you that’d do it,” said Jilly complacently. “Nothing like presenting the oldies with a big bad threat to make them give in to a little one like lambs. Bring everything you’ve got with you, babe. Once away, you’ll never want to return to the fold.”

  I moved in the weekend before she left, helping her decide what to take and what to store. Unusually for Jilly, she hadn’t wanted a big going-away party and a fuss, so it was just her and me.

  “I can’t believe you haven’t packed yet,” I said, looking at the chaos in her bedroom.

  “Too busy. Best way to be.” She briskly folded two dresses, then picked up her green zigzag platforms.

  I eyed them covetously. “You’re not really taking them, are you?”

  She hesitated. “Yes, I’d better.”

  “But, Jilly, they’re too small, you know they are. They'll warp your toes and give you blisters. I’ll look after them for you.”

  “I might need to sell them for food.”

  “Sell them to me!”

  “Caro, I can’t. They were a gift.”

  My eyes widened. “Who do you know who gives you shoes from Biba?”

  “Someone.” She looked again at the lack of space in her case, then thrust them at me. “Go on then, you have them. Don’t wear them at work though. You’ll ruin them, all the racing around you do.” She grinned. “I’m glad you’re not in Drama any more.”

  “Me too,” I said, putting the shoes on. They fitted perfectly.

  “Skedaddle for ten minutes, can you? I need to make a private phone call.”

  About the trip, I supposed. She knew I didn’t much like her friends Bob and Vanda. They were what Dad called dodgy and Mum described as ‘away with the fairies’. Neither did I have much faith in their camper van.

  “Are you sure the van will get you to the Mediterranean?” I asked later as we turned off the television and rinsed out our mugs of hot chocolate. “It’s all rust.”

  “It’ll get us somewhere.”

  “Can you get you to the Med?” Jilly’s geography was even worse than mine.

  She grinned. “It’s the journey that counts, not the destination. If we end up in India, that's all right too." She stopped teasing me. "Don't worry, Caro, Bob will be navigating, not me. Listen, I’m off really early tomorrow. Night, honey. Live it up big time for me.”

  “Ciao, Jilly,” I said, hugging her. “I will.”

  If I’d known it was the last time I’d ever see her, I’d have remembered every detail of that hug. As it was I just let her go, thinking almost entirely of my own good fortune and the exciting prospects in store. Oh Jilly.

  ~~~

  I blew my nose and moved on. The exhibition was all about the States now. Everyone had gone and Britain was a greyer place. Diamond Dogs played on the headphones. I looked at the montage of Bowie’s new life. Photos, designs...

  Wait. Photos. One in particular.

  I stared at it, rooted to the spot. It was unmistakeably Jilly. She was wearing a pink and purple paisley dress that I still had in the loft, and she’d thrown her head back to laugh, her tawny hair cascading across the arm of a man behind her. I don’t suppose he’d have minded, they never did, but that wasn’t the point.

  New York studio party, said the caption. 1974.

  “That’s wrong,” I said aloud. “It has to be wrong.”

  Because in 1974, Jilly had been driving through France with a bunch of pals on the first leg of her Mediterranean adventure.

  Hadn't she?

  CHAPTER TWO

  I don't know how long I stared at the photo of the studio party. It was impossible. To my knowledge, Jilly had never been to America. Besides which, in May 1974, she had only just left Britain for France. She couldn’t have been in New York - and yet there she was. After an aeon of just standing there staring with people passing around me, I finally pulled back to look at the other people in the photo. David Bowie was there of course, and I vaguely recognised several of the faces surrounding him in a last-seen-many-years-ago way. Then my heart really did stop, because there was one person I knew very well indeed. I went back outside in a semi-trance, sat on the sunshine-flooded steps, and dialled his number.

  “Mark,” I said into my phone, my voice sounding odd, “are you doing anything special today?”

  ~~~

  There had been a large, loose group of us working at the BBC back in the 1970s. All young, clever as paint, knowing the world was ours for the taking. Mark was a researcher on the current affairs team, about the same level as I was in production. In other words, we both raced around madly at other people’s bidding, well aware that without us the programmes would never get made. Of the whole crowd, Mark was a proper friend. We smiled at the same things. We caught each other’s eye and tried not to laugh if we happened to be in mee
tings together. We covered each other’s back if one of us wanted to take an extra break or a longer lunch.

  The BBC has always tended towards the hierarchical. In those days, with all the work done in-house, we had our place and were expected to keep to it. Mark and I were both happy enough on the bottom rungs of our respective ladders. We knew we’d move up when it was right and proper for us to do so, and that there was all the time in the world for it to happen.

  Mark was different from the rest of us in that he was already married, though he was only a couple of years older than me. There had been a miscalculation with the girlfriend he’d grown up with (a sharp-featured, fair-haired girl called Jean who seemed resentful of us the few times she came to parties or to the pub), meaning they had to get married. Being Mark, being honourable, he’d done the right thing, even though he told me privately one slightly tipsy evening that he’d waited at the altar knowing they were both much too young. The point is, all the time I’d known Mark, he’d been off-limits, meaning we were free to be friends without sexual attraction getting in the way. It was such a comfortable thing you wouldn't believe. And I was young and in love with life and... ah well.

  ~~~

  “Hi Caro," said Mark in my ear now, in response to my question. "I was going over to the Bekonscot model village for Lilliput Endings today. Why do you ask?”

  “How would you like to come to the V&A instead? There’s something I want to show you.”

  “If it’s the models in the Architecture gallery, I’ve seen them.”

  “It’s not about work, Mark. It’s something else.”

  “Can we pretend it’s about work for the expenses?”

  Mark and I had our own company these days, him providing the research for independent film and TV companies while I managed the production projects. We’d combined bank loans many years ago to rent the ground floor of a converted warehouse in Camden Town, sharing a receptionist, kettle, fridge and photocopier. Now we had the entire building and separate teams of staff, but still often worked together.

  It’s so funny how things turn out. Back when we started, the area was dirt cheap. Carnaby Street was the place to go, the place to be seen. It used to take Jilly and I a whole afternoon to get from one end of the road to the other. These days Carnaby Street was bland and boring and I could do it in under a minute. If you wanted hip, you came to Camden. Walking to and from the tube, I was frequently transported back to the 1970s with its bright colours, the ethnic mix, the intense young things, the joy. Mark said it kept him young, working where we do. I tended to agree.

  “We-e-e-ell,” I said now, “there are some very nice architectural models on the fourth floor...”

  “I’ll be there in half an hour,” he said. “Bekonscot can wait until tomorrow.”

  I remained on the steps and saw him before he saw me, loping up Exhibition Road with the semi-eager, long-legged stride that characterised him. He was nearly sixty now, but he didn’t look it any more than I hoped I did, still the same Mark I’d met in my first week of work aged sixteen. Had I even noticed when his fair hair turned that rather attractive ash grey? It had happened gradually, his maturing face becoming a part of him, part of the fabric of my life. There had been just two or three years when we hadn’t been friends and colleagues, and I'd been the poorer for them. I knew him better than I did my own husband. Certainly I laughed more in the office than I ever did at home. We’d celebrated the good times together and talked endlessly through the bad times, most recently when Jean announced she was leaving him after more than forty years of marriage. Mark had got quite remarkably drunk, raged about wasting half a lifetime, fallen asleep between one word and the next, and the following day had got on with life again, albeit with a hangover that had taken him the rest of the week to shift.

  “Hi, Caro,” he said now, bending his head to kiss my cheek in greeting. “What have you found?”

  “David Bowie Is...” I said. “Have you seen it yet?”

  “No, I...” Like me, he hesitated.

  I met his eyes. “I know,” I replied. “Come on.”

  We flashed our V&A membership cards at the attendant and put our headsets on. I saw Rebel, Rebel hit him the same way it had me.

  “Oh lord,” he muttered. “Caro, I’m not sure I...”

  “I know,” I said again, taking his arm.

  We went around the start of the exhibition in a remembering silence. I pointed out Jilly in the early photo and asked Mark if he realised she’d known Blake.

  He frowned. “I don’t think so. Not especially. People were just around, weren’t they? He's never mentioned it to you?”

  "Not really, no. Not well enough to argue with her."

  We moved on. I watched his eyes widen when Jilly's voice appeared on the soundtrack. He agreed it sounded like her, but couldn't swear to it. “It’s a long time ago, Caro,” he said.

  I stopped him when we reached the photograph of the 1974 New York studio party. “There,” I said. “There’s Jilly again.”

  “So she is,” said Mark, warily.

  “And there’s you,” I said.

  There was a pause of half a heartbeat. “Oh. Yes. I didn’t recognise myself with so much hair.”

  “Stop fishing. You look very nice. Mark, this photo was shot in 1974. What was Jilly doing in the States when she was supposed to be on her way to the Med with Bobby and Vanda?”

  He expelled a long breath. “I took her.”

  “You took Jilly to the States?”

  We were upstairs in the V&A Members’ room, side by side on a sofa, two pots of tea untouched in front of us.

  “You took her?” I repeated. “Why? And why have you never told me? You couldn’t have done, Mark, I had postcards from her from France.”

  “We weren't in New York for long. A couple of weeks at the most. She went to Europe as soon as we got back."

  "I don't understand."

  "It wasn’t planned, Caro. Jilly was all set to drive to the Mediterranean with Bobby and Vanda’s crowd, but they weren’t ready and she said she needed to get away right then and there. She knew I was going over to New York to do that documentary on Bowie, the one that came to nothing. She came to me all strung up and tense and asked me to get her on the team, despite having resigned from the BBC. She said it was crucial she left the country straight away. She said we didn’t have to pay her or anything, just get her on the strength and don’t tell anyone.” He shrugged apologetically. “All of us were fools for Jilly. You know that. I persuaded the director to let her join us as free production backup and off we went.”

  I stared at him. “She had to get away?” Even forty years on, I was enormously hurt that I hadn't known. “Jilly told you she had to get away? She didn’t say anything to me and I was with her the weekend she went! I hugged her goodnight and when I got up in the morning, she'd left. Away to the Med, as I thought. Why would she have to go that urgently? I could have waited a couple more weeks before moving in. And why ever wouldn't she have told me she was going to New York? Normally she'd be bursting with excitement at that.”

  Mark gestured helplessly. “I don’t know, Caro. Maybe she didn’t want you to know Bobby and Vanda were messing her about, because you'd made it clear you didn’t approve of them and she didn't want to give you an I-told-you-so opportunity.”

  I looked at him disbelievingly.

  He massaged his temples. “No, you're right, it was more than that but I don't know what. I got the impression it was to do with a man. I think she’d got herself into a situation and she was scared. At any rate, she was convincingly desperate about the need to disappear.”

  Jilly could do convincing like no one’s business, I knew that. And I also knew Mark had always had a thing for her that she would have exploited without question if she'd needed to. A kind of medieval chivalry. No words ever spoken, no possibility it would be requited or done anything about, just a steady flame borne for her.

  I swallowed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”


  Mark coloured. “Ah.” He pulled a teapot across and poured our tea. “She asked me not to. That was before we went. Then, when we got to New York, it was weird. The people around Bowie weren’t being cooperative, despite all the preliminary work we’d done. They were welcoming in a vague, uncommitted way, but there was no structure. We got some rehearsal footage, some conversations - you couldn’t call them interviews...”

  I knew those situations. “Infuriating,” I murmured, sympathetic despite the roaring worry inside me about why Jilly had acted so out of character.

  He shrugged. “It happens. Anyway, the director decided to cut our losses and pull the plug. He had something else in the pipeline, that fly-on-the-wall documentary on the cruise liner across the Atlantic, remember? He made a few phone calls and a week later we were on the SS MoreMoneyThanSense out of New York bound for London.”

  I drank my tea slowly, filtering what he was saying, listening to the tone behind the words. Mark is my best friend. I’ve worked with him, on and off, for forty years. “What are you not telling me?” I asked.

  “Jilly didn’t want to leave New York. She was... I don’t know. She was in a strange state. Far too lively, jumpy as anything, and blanking it out by throwing herself into every distraction going.” He met my eyes. “She scared me, Caro. If we’d left her there, I could see her in a couple of months as a statistic on the sidewalk, having thought she could fly out of the hotel window or something.”

  I was dumbstruck and appalled. I hadn’t known. Caught up in my glorious escape from home, I hadn’t picked up on my favourite cousin’s state of mind even though I'd shared that last weekend with her. How unutterably selfish I'd been.

  Mark put his hand over mine. “Don’t blame yourself for not seeing it. She kept a tight lid on herself until we were actually in New York. When she let go, I was horrified.”

  The roaring was even louder inside me now. “How did you persuade her to leave?” I asked dully, feeling a failure.

  He made a face. “It’s not pretty. The night before we sailed, I got her so drunk she passed out. I carted her to the ship, barely conscious, with the hangover from hell.”