by Jan Jones
“Oh, Mark.”
He made a helpless gesture. “I couldn’t think of a single other solution. She must have taken something on top of the booze because I had an appalling time with her. She would have injured herself flailing and raging if I hadn’t hung on to her the whole of that first day at sea. Fortunately, everyone else was too seasick to do any filming, so they didn’t notice. Once she sobered up and... and came down, she thanked me. She was subdued for a day or so, but then sort of clicked back into herself. She was fine making the documentary on board, rang up Vanda from Southampton and arranged to meet them at Portsmouth. That was it. I never saw her again.”
The thought hung between us. Not until I brought her home in an urn two and a half years later.
I cleared my throat. “I still don’t see why you didn’t tell me.”
He coloured again. “She didn’t want anyone to know she hadn’t left as planned.”
As I said, I knew Mark. “And?”
He shot a look of quiet desperation at me. “If I'd told you some of it, I'd have had to tell you the lot. Caro, love, do think. She was strong-willed, disoriented, flushing God knows what out of her system and needed me to distract her. It was only that first day, and she made all the running. I was barely twenty, out of my experience, in a place I didn’t know. And she was gorgeous, you know, even stoned and wild. I didn’t want to resist.”
“Oh.” I was startled - and yet not startled. After all, I’d done something very similar myself later.
A dull red stained his face and neck. “Precisely. I was really ashamed afterwards.”
Lovely upright Mark, always trying to do the right thing. “I don't suppose she was,” I said.
He shook his head. “No. It was just part of life to Jilly. There was never any question of anything more. She was older than me. I was married with a child and another on the way. Jean and Lydia were everyday reality. Jilly was a wild exotic dream. She used me and I... I let her.”
No, he couldn’t have behaved differently, any more than I could have done in the days following Jilly’s death. Those were the 1970s and both of us were too young to challenge the really big things in life. Standards were different then.
“Things once done, eh?” I said, squeezing his hand.
“Something like that. You want to see the rest of the exhibition now?”
“Go on, then. Why not.” We walked slowly through the beautiful glass gallery towards the stairs. I was finding it a struggle to process everything. "I still can't believe Jilly didn't tell me she had problems. She never let a hint drop to you as to who she needed to get away from?”
“No, sorry.”
“It’s weird. And then she just went to Europe as planned. Alessandro said she never did get as far as India.”
“Your tame Italian count?”
“Not mine. Jilly’s. That's something else I've never understood. She sent postcards to me all the time. She wrote saying the van was rubbish. They spent more time repairing it than they did on the road. There are rest areas on the French motorways where you can camp for days without anyone moving you on, did you know? When they didn’t have the money for the motorways and broke down in one of the villages instead, they'd have to pacify the locals until they'd earned enough to fix the engine and travel on. It was mostly Jilly who earned the money, according to her cards. What she didn’t tell me was that the wretched van finally expired within sight of Alessandro’s estate near the top of Lake Garda. He and Maria collected arty types. They both had inclinations that way and wanted to set up an artistic commune so they invited them all to turn the camper static and stay. Jilly made a bargain with Alessandro that she'd run the commune in exchange for board and lodging.”
Mark grinned. “That sounds like her.”
“Absolutely. But not telling me about it really wasn't. She was enjoying the adventure, sending me postcards all down the west side of France (this is such fun, Caro, and I’m sure I’ll get used to the food soon! Don’t tell anyone where I am, I don’t want to have to come back to real life), into Spain (it’s so hot here, you wouldn’t believe it), back up to France and along the Mediterranean coast (dirty, crowded and overpriced - glad we’re not staying), then into Italy (we can leave the camper on this side and get the ferry to Venice. Just think, Caro, Venice!). The next card I got said they’d decided to take the plunge and head for India, so the cards would be thin on the ground, but she must have been at the Castello when she wrote it. She was still there months and months later when someone ran her off the road.”
And that was when my life changed. I’d had just over two years living the carefree bachelor-girl life in the flat. Some rebel I turned out to be.
~~~
The flat was on the fourth floor of Postern Court, a large intimidating Victorian building, situated in the hinterland where Russell Square turns into Bloomsbury. It looked extraordinarily respectable, thus proving that you really shouldn’t judge by appearances.
The first day after Jilly left, her neighbour across the stairwell knocked on my door and asked to borrow the dining table. It was an arrangement they had. Fran borrowed Jilly’s table and chairs when she had dinner guests, Jilly borrowed Fran’s sofa when she threw parties. I helped Fran carry the table across, and she invited me to come back that evening as she was short of a woman. I got lots of invitations like that, mostly from people who’d forgotten Jilly was going away, or who’d never known in the first place. She had masses of friends. It was wonderful, even if some of them did call at the weirdest hours. To reassure Mum and Dad that I wasn’t lonely, I told them about my third night when I’d come out of my bedroom in the morning to find an Aussie stranger asleep on the settee. Apparently, Jilly had given Hannah a key a couple of years back, with an open invitation to pop in anytime during her next European trip. The next thing I knew, Dad had turned up with his toolbox and a new Chubb lock for the flat door.
There were quite a few incidents like that. I smiled wryly now, thinking of one of them. I’d been in the flat two or three weeks when I heard scratching at the door early one morning. I assumed it was Fran running out of milk for her coffee again, so opened up cheerfully, only to find Blake standing there!
“Hi, I’m back,” he said. “Why doesn’t my...?” And then he took in that it was me, still damp from my bath, holding a towel precariously around me. His hand flashed down to his pocket. “Caro, how nice. Staying with Jilly for a bit?”
We’ve laughed about it since, of course, but at the time I didn’t really know Blake except from my original stint in the drama department. He was a writer in those days, just starting to branch out and direct things. He was pleasant enough, but he’d been to university and he went on climbing holidays several times a year with his college mountaineering club, which made him different. He was also older and cleverer than the rest of us. That made it even more embarrassing for me, stark naked under my towel, hair dripping onto the carpet, hankering after my first cup of tea of the day.
“Um, hi," I said. “I’m living here while Jilly’s off travelling.”
Blake’s mouth opened in sheer astonishment. “She didn’t mention that.” He stared at me again, then pulled himself together. “I was going to offer her a lift in. I sometimes do if I’m over in this direction. How long is she away for?”
My eyes widened. I hadn’t realised Jilly had ever gone into work this early in the morning. “As long as it takes,” I answered. “She's gone with a crowd. The idea is to drive across Europe. Maybe even go to India. It could be a year.” I smiled at him politely and clutched the towel tighter, wishing him gone.
He looked even more stunned. “That’s very sudden. I saw her just before I went on holiday and she didn't mention it.”
I shrugged, keeping the towel and my smile in place. It didn’t do to annoy people above you in the BBC hierarchy. “That’s Jilly for you.” Her plans hadn’t been that sudden, so evidently Blake wasn’t in Jilly’s inner circle.
“Well...” He gave a br
ief smile. “Do you want a lift? As I’m here?”
“No thanks. It’s very kind, but I haven’t had breakfast yet.” I didn’t even offer him tea or coffee, just closed the door and collapsed in hysterical giggles on the floor at being seen in a bath towel by such a senior chap from work.
~~~
That was then and this is now, but some things never change. Blake still drives whenever possible, always preferring to be in control himself when travelling, rather than trusting to public transport. Even when he flies, he always hires a car at the other end.
These days, he and I cross distantly in the mornings, leaving each other polite notes and punctilious emails as to where we will be for the rest of the day. It wasn’t how I’d expected marriage to be, but then nothing in my life has turned out how I’d expected. Not since the day I’d picked up the phone at work to hear Alessandro's voice telling me Jilly had been involved in a hit-and-run accident and I was required to come over to Italy immediately.
CHAPTER THREE
To this day I remember the feel of the telephone handset pressing into my palm. It was one of the new square plastic things, not the comfortable curved receiver I’d grown up with.
“Jilly’s dead?” I repeated into it, uncomprehending.
“What?” said Mark, sitting bolt upright across the desk from me.
“We were all very shocked,” continued the sympathetic, velvet voice in my ear. “I will send a car for you tomorrow. You have a passport, yes?”
“Yes,” I said, dazed. “But I have work and...”
“You must take leave.”
“I don’t understand. Who are you? Where is Jilly? What’s happened?”
He told me he was Count Alessandro something di something, and Jilly had been working for him at the Castello di something else, which was his estate near the top of Lake Garda in Italy.
“But Jilly’s in India,” I said.
My head whirled as he said no, she had been working for him in Italy, and I was named as her family contact, and Postern Court was still my address, yes, and the car would be outside my door at eight the next morning and to repeat this back to him, please.
I did so without retaining a single word. It was a good thing Mark was scribbling down everything I uttered.
“What happened?” he asked. He looked white and appalled.
I fumbled the receiver back on the cradle. “Hit and run. I can’t take it in. It can’t be Jilly. Why would she be in Italy? He said she'd been working there. Why wouldn’t I know?” Tears were running down my cheeks. I felt angry and empty, confused, aching and lost. I looked at my desk, wondering what I’d been about to do.
Mark came around to my side and hugged me awkwardly for comfort. “Are you going to be okay?" He handed me a tissue to blot my face. "I’d suggest nipping out for proper coffee, but we’ll never get through the fans.”
I snapped back to my job in shock. That was it. That was what I was doing. David Bowie was flying in from West Germany for an interview. That was why Mark was here. He was the Bowie research expert.
“I’d nearly forgotten,” I said, horrified. “I need to get down to reception. I’ll have to leave a note for Personnel requesting compassionate leave for the rest of the week. There's no time for anything else. Oh, God, Mark, how can this be true?” I grabbed my clipboard and hurtled out, cramming my grief tightly inside me, concentrating on my task with every shred of willpower I possessed.
~~~
“You’ve drifted off somewhere.”
I blinked, focusing on today and the stairs back down to the exhibition and Mark's piloting hand under my elbow. “Sorry. I was remembering the day Alessandro phoned.”
He halted, turning a concerned face on me. “Do you not want to do this? Is it going to bring it all back?”
I squeezed his arm. “Too late, it’s there already. No, I want to go on. It was David Bowie’s show we were doing when we heard the news about Jilly. Do you remember?”
He glanced at me humorously. “Caro, it’s not a day I’m ever likely to forget.”
I felt myself blush, even after all these years, and was glad of the brief moment of dark before we restarted the exhibition.
~~~
In the event, the show had been easy. David Bowie was still the most charismatic guest we’d ever had. I don’t remember now which album he was promoting, but I do remember that for one blessed hour, nothing existed except for him.
This wasn’t everybody’s opinion, of course. We had a new director, one who’d brought in his own presenter and who wanted to make his name with penetrating questions and hopefully a bit of a dust-up. Blow that for a game of soldiers. This was my idol we were talking about. To cover ourselves, Mark and I had devised a few awkward questions, but I’d typed them on a second page and carefully stuck it underneath the first with banana-y fingerprints. It would look like carelessness on my part, but the fact remained that a novice host wouldn’t be able to ease the sheets apart, live on air, without looking clumsy. The questions on the top page - about Bowie’s act, clothes, relationship with his fans and the inspiration behind the songs on this album - had been arranged to chime with his public persona. I knew he’d be able to speak on them for at least the hour allotted.
“For God’s sake let’s at least get some jostling fan footage,” snarled the director behind me as I led David off afterwards.
If our star guest heard, he didn’t give any sign. “How are you, Caroline?” he asked. “We’ve barely spoken. And how is the beautiful Jilly? What’s she up to these days?”
“I... she’s dead.” I gave a great gasp, my perilous shield wall falling apart without warning.
We were passing a side corridor, giving on to a back staircase. The BBC is full of such places. In a flash, David whisked me around the corner and into the blind space behind the door. There was, almost instantly, the sound of speeding footsteps, a confusion of shouts, and then the thud of his entourage pelting down the stairs.
“I could kill for a cup of tea,” he remarked into the temporary silence.
I gulped. “This way,” I said, knowing the quiet wouldn’t last. Fortunately, it didn’t have to. Just one floor up was a locked cubbyhole that I’d fitted out as an emergency kitchen for when guests wanted a hot drink and there wasn't time to get one from the canteen. The tiny room held kettle, mugs, tea, coffee, sugar, powdered milk and precious little else. We squeezed in. I flicked the kettle on.
“What happened?” he asked gently. “Did she take something?”
I must have been in shock all afternoon, because it all tumbled out. How Jilly had gone travelling, it must be over two years ago now. How I’d thought she was in India, but I’d had a call today saying she’d been in a hit-and-run accident in Italy. How I was to go over there tomorrow. How I didn’t understand and I didn’t know what to do and how none of it made sense.
David made the tea and let me weep as we drank it. “She was so vibrant, so bright,” he mused. “So full of life. There’ll be a reason for the way she acted. You’ll find out when it’s time.”
I blew my nose. “Thanks. I’m sorry. Oh God, we’d better get you away. Where’s your car?”
He smiled. “Anywhere I want. The driver will find me. The front will be tricky, won't it? They’ll have staked it out. Questions will be asked. Can we leave via the back?”
“Yes, there’ll still be fans there.”
“All to the good. It’s part of the fame. It’s nice to thank them and it buoys me up.” He kissed me gently on the forehead. “Let’s boogie, girl.”
So I locked the door behind us and took him out the back of the BBC building where he joked and chatted with the dozen despairing teenage girls who’d suddenly had their faith in life restored.
When I went inside afterwards, however, all hell broke loose. Everyone was screamingly cross with me for having spirited our star guest out of the rear entrance.
“I’ve had his manager on the phone,” snarled the director. “Bowie was supp
osed to meet his fans.”
“He did,” I said. “He made their day. He talked to every girl clustered around that door and brushed his hand across theirs. Most of them said they’d never wash again. There was a duty cameraman out there. He’ll have got the footage.”
“But you didn’t tell anyone where you were going,” yelled the director, not mollified by this at all. He didn't want popular stars being nice to their fans. He wanted controversy.
That’s when I lost it. “My job is to make sure the programme runs smoothly and to look after the guests,” I screamed back. “Which I did. And for your information, sir, my cousin has just died and I have to go to Italy tomorrow to identify her, and nothing you say at the moment - nothing at all - can even begin to compare with my grief over her.”
I dashed the tears away from my eyes, crammed things anyhow into my shoulder bag and headed for the door.
Halfway down the corridor, I heard footsteps rapidly catching up with me.
“I’ll see you home,” said Mark. “I’ve rung Jean and told her I’m working late on a rush job.”
I stopped with a punch to my chest. The family. “Oh God, I’ll have to tell Mum. And Aunty Pam. How am I ever going to tell Aunty Pam?” I heard my voice rising hysterically.
Mark put his hand on my back and propelled me forward. “Home and pack first. Eat something. Drink tea. Then you can ring.” He hesitated, a bit shame-faced. “If your family is anything like mine, you’ll only have to tell your mother and she’ll do everyone else.”
“That’s true.” I felt guilty at my cowardly relief. “Thanks. Look, you don’t have to come with me. I’ll be okay.”
“If you could see yourself, you’d disagree.” He stopped a taxi, paid for it at the flat, stood over me while I packed, fed me food I didn’t taste, set my alarm for ridiculous o'clock and made me drink tea. I rewarded him by bursting into tears again.
He pulled me to him. “Oh Caro, hush.”
I didn’t want to hush, I wanted to sob until my chest ached and my limbs turned to tears. So I did and he let me and when I awoke at midnight I was in his arms.
