One Secret Summer

by Lesley Lokko

  Julia quickly did the same. ‘Cheers,’ she said, swallowing more than she intended in order to hide her confusion. She was sitting with Harriet Peters in a booth in the private bar underneath the High Court … drinking wine. Had the world suddenly turned itself upside down?

  ‘What a day.’ Harriet rummaged around in her expensive-looking handbag and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. ‘Want one?’

  Julia shook her head. She was almost too astonished to speak. Harriet Peters smoked ? ‘No, I … I don’t smoke,’ she stammered.

  ‘Good thing too. Don’t start. Silly habit.’

  ‘My dad smoked,’ Julia offered suddenly, she’d no idea why.

  ‘Mine too. Bloody miner. Died of lung cancer, the silly bugger.’

  Julia stared at her. A miner? Harriet Peters’s father was a miner? No, she’d misunderstood. ‘Did you say he was a miner?’ she asked faintly, just to be sure.

  Harriet nodded. ‘Mmm. We’re from Snaresborough. Mining town. All miners up there.’

  Julia was too astonished to speak. All of a sudden, the north was back in Harriet’s voice. ‘I … I’d never have guessed,’ she said finally, practically draining her wine in a single gulp.

  Harriet smiled, blowing a cloud of smoke away from her face. ‘No, I don’t suppose you would. Oh, we’re not so different, you and I. We’re more alike than you think.’

  ‘You don’t sound as though you’re from Snaresborough,’ she said finally, unable to think of anything else to say.

  Harriet signalled to the bartender for another round. ‘Years of practice, my dear.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘It was different in my day. When I did my pupillage, there were sixteen of us and I was the only woman and the only one from a working-class background. Things have changed a bit since then … perhaps not as much as we like to think, but that’s another story. I’ve been doing it so long I’ve forgotten what I used to be like. I don’t know you very well, Julia, but you don’t seem to have changed a thing about you. It’s an admirable quality. Let people take you as they find you. I didn’t have the confidence for that twenty years ago, but you have. Don’t lose it.’

  All of a sudden, Julia found herself close to tears. It was the hardest thing about losing both her parents – there was no one to talk to, not the way she and Harriet were talking now. Her father had always been full of stories and anecdotes, small snippets of information, homilies that at a deeper level were really instructions to his only child. He was the one who’d always told her to be proud of her roots, proud of who she was. How many times in the past few years had the longing to talk to him overwhelmed her? It was the cruellest twist of fate that just when she needed him the most, he was no longer there. She muttered something incoherent to Harriet and ran into the toilets. She had the strong intuition that unexpected confidences aside, tears would not be welcome in front of Harriet. She was right. When she emerged five minutes later with reddened eyes and nose, Harriet was gone.

  ‘She left this for you,’ the bartender said, handing over a scrap of paper. Trial application for Hardy vs Matthieson at 9 a.m. tomorrow. Hand in at High Court. Julia gave a rueful smile. There was a reason why Harriet Peters had the reputation she had. She had a feeling it would be a very long time before she caught a further glimpse of the woman behind the façade. A miner’s daughter from Snaresborough? She shook her head in disbelief as she collected her coat. She would never have guessed. You don’t seem to have changed a thing about you, Julia. Don’t lose it. Harriet’s words rang loudly in her ears. It was the closest anyone had come in the past few years to understanding just how hard it was to feel perpetually out of place. Harriet, of all people. Clever, smart, über-professional Harriet. Julia felt suddenly buoyed by the unexpected confession. If Harriet could do it … well, why couldn’t she?

  28

  MADDY

  New York, November 1996

  ‘Maddy? Cover for me, will you, honey. Table 12. I gotta go take a pee!’

  ‘No, no … Carla, don’t. I’ve got my hands full … I can’t—!’ Too late. Maddy looked on despairingly as Carla whacked down a plate on to the counter and disappeared down the hallway. Carla was three months pregnant; you couldn’t argue with that. Maddy sighed and picked up the order. Her own table had been waiting for fifteen minutes – a lifetime in the service lexicon of most New Yorkers. Not only would she not get a tip, she’d be lucky if the boss didn’t deduct the cost of their much-delayed breakfast from her salary. She held the plate above her head and pushed her way through the crowded bar area towards Table 12, where a man was sitting, his face hidden by a large salmon-pink newspaper. ‘Good morning,’ she sang cheerfully, setting the plate down carefully. ‘Sorry about the wait. I’ve taken over from your waitress for a minute. I’ve got eggs-over-easy, bacon on the side, grilled tomatoes and hash browns.’

  ‘Thanks. Um … could I possibly trouble you for some ketchup?’ The man lowered the paper. He was English.

  ‘Absolutely. Back in a second.’ She turned and hurried back to the bar. ‘There we go. Anything else I can get you, sir?’ She blushed even as the words came out. She’d slipped into character without even thinking – an English character to boot!

  ‘You’re English?’

  Maddy shook her head, aware that the colour was still up in her cheeks. ‘Sorry, no. I was just showing off.’

  He looked puzzled. ‘Showing off ?’

  He was really rather good-looking, Maddy thought to herself, trying not to stare. Blond, blue-eyed; a square, determined chin, broad shoulders, finely tapered fingers … There was something oddly familiar about him, but she couldn’t place him. She dragged her eyes away from his face. ‘I’m an actress. Well, sort of. I played an English girl once, at drama school …’

  ‘Well, you sounded pretty convincing to me. You must be quite an actress.’

  Maddy had to smile. ‘Oh, absolutely. So much so, in fact, that I’m a waitress. I’m just waiting for my agent to call.’ She was a little taken aback by her own lightness. There was something easy about him, she thought to herself. His face was full of boyish charm. She was quite used to customers flirting with her – it seemed part and parcel of the job. She’d studied the part of a waitress diligently – the gum-chewing, wisecracking sassy redhead with a sharp retort and a sexy, swinging walk. After nearly three years, she had the repertoire down pat.

  ‘Well, I hope he does.’

  ‘She. Thanks.’ She gave him a quick, jaunty wink and made her way back to the counter. Her own customers were waiting and Carla, likely as not, would scoop up the tip. You couldn’t argue with a pregnant woman, Maddy reminded herself.

  ‘Here.’ To her surprise, half an hour later Carla stuck a ten-dollar bill into Maddy’s apron pocket. ‘From Table 12,’ she called out over her shoulder as she rushed back to the kitchen. ‘The English guy.’ Maddy looked at it, rather bemused. It was an exceedingly large tip. Especially since his breakfast had hardly come to much more. She looked over the heads of customers clustered around the bar, but he was no longer there. She shrugged. Shame. She’d have liked to have thanked him. Oh well. She picked up her coffee jug and wound her way across the floor. She hadn’t exactly lied to him; she was waiting for her agent to call. Virginia was just about the only person left on the planet who thought that Maddy might one day find fame and fortune as an actress, not a waitress. It had been nearly two long, tough years since her final-year performance at Tisch. Her mother had come to New York and sat in the audience, entranced as her only daughter transported her and a couple of hundred other people somewhere else entirely. The hardest thing of all, Maddy often thought to herself, was that she’d actually been good. She’d lost count of the number of auditions she’d gone to, the number of casting calls, the promises to call her back, the days and evenings sitting waiting by the phone … In two years she’d had one commercial and a pilot for a sitcom that had eventually been cancelled. She’d done the community and neighbourhood theatre workshops, she’d put her picture on eve
ry board that she thought might help … nothing. Nothing ever came of anything. Virginia, touchingly, refused to give up, but there were days when even she tapped her pen against her teeth and proclaimed it a mystery. It was partly the fiery red hair, she mused, and what she called Maddy’s ‘unique’ looks … quite what she meant by that was anyone’s guess, least of all Maddy’s, but the bottom line was that the work simply wasn’t there for a redhead with the kind of porcelain skin and hazel-green eyes – set fractionally too far apart – that looked a little strange with dyed brown hair. She just wasn’t ‘marketable’ enough. End of story. Except it wasn’t, of course. Like Virginia, although for different reasons, perhaps, Maddy stubbornly refused to give up. She couldn’t. New York was her life now. She’d found herself a tiny studio apartment on the wrong side of Fort Green in Brooklyn; there was barely enough room for a sofa-bed and a desk, but it was hers. After a year of living in crowded apartments with half a dozen other aspiring actors, actresses and models of every description, she’d finally managed to save enough to plonk down three months’ advance rent. Sandy, who was the only person she’d kept in touch with since graduating from Tisch, had fared no better. Too Jewish-looking; too ‘ethnic’, which pretty much meant the same thing, Sandy said bitterly; ‘a touch too much character in your face, honey’ was how casting agents usually put it. Only unlike Maddy, Sandy wasn’t poor, and she lived in a large apartment in the East Village that her father had bought for her whilst he waited for her to come to her senses and get married.

  ‘Fat chance,’ Sandy scoffed over a bottle of wine. ‘And certainly not to any of those nice Jewish boys my mother keeps inviting over.’ Maddy and Sandy still met every other week, usually at Sandy’s apartment, where they both drank far too much and wound up in tears, over the dismal state of either their love lives, or their careers, or both. This hiatus was interrupted every once in a while by an overexcited phone call from Virginia. There’d be a flurry of readings and preparation, followed by a period of fasting and then bingeing and making herself sick … and then Maddy would go off for the audition and sit by the phone until the rejections finally arrived and then the whole cycle would repeat itself. If it hadn’t been for the atmosphere at the restaurant, Sunshine’s, which she genuinely enjoyed, and the thrill of living in New York, Maddy wasn’t quite sure what she would have done. Going back to Iowa was out of the question. But there was still a chance, she reminded herself firmly. She’d been to two auditions for the same role only the week before. The girl they’d originally picked had had to cancel. It was all a bit last minute, but ‘if everything goes well, honey,’ Virginia growled down the phone, ‘you could be onstage on Saturday night. You’ll be playing opposite Bette Midler.’ Maddy had had to sit down to stop herself from falling over. Bette Midler?

  She refilled coffee mugs that afternoon with an automatic, vacant smile, her mind and stomach churning over together in unison. God, let me get this part, she whispered to herself as she pulled her pad from her apron and a pencil from behind her ear and prepared to take yet another order. Let me get the part. Please God, please, please, please. Despite her resolve, she was beginning to wonder if she’d ever do more than write out a meal order and balance a tray on her head. This was what she’d slogged her guts out for four long years for?

  29

  The Englishman was there the following morning when Maddy began her shift. This time he was seated at the bar. A dark blue suit and a shirt unbuttoned at the collar; well-polished shoes and a newspaper. He lowered the paper as she passed and their eyes met. They smiled tentatively at one another. He looked slightly the worse for wear. There was a faint shadow of a beard beneath his skin and his eyes were heavy with sleep.

  ‘Heavy night, huh?’ she asked as she poured him a cup of coffee and flipped open her order pad.

  He looked at her and grinned sheepishly. She caught her breath and had to look away. ‘’Fraid so,’ he said, in a voice still tinged with sleep.

  ‘I … I guess it’ll just be coffee, then?’ she stammered. His charm was unsettling; she wasn’t used to it. New Yorkers were many things, but usually not charming.

  He studied the menu, then shook his head. ‘Veisalgia,’ he said firmly. ‘Remedied by foods rich in cysteine.’ He smiled at her.

  Maddy stared at him. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Veisalgia. It’s the medical term for a hangover. Cysteine is what the liver uses to break down alcohol, and eggs are rich in it. That’s why you often crave an omelette after a heavy night.’ He laughed suddenly, showing a row of perfect white teeth. ‘Now I’m showing off.’

  ‘You’re a doctor?’ she asked, smiling.

  ‘Guilty as charged. I’m here for a conference, actually. Hence the long night. My paper’s not until this afternoon, so I nipped out to get breakfast.’ He looked at her. His eyes were the colour of cornflowers or the sky on a warm summer’s day. ‘Did she ring, by the way?’

  ‘Who?’ Maddy was confused.

  ‘Your agent.’

  ‘Oh, she’ll ring me soon, I guess,’ Maddy shrugged, trying not to sound despondent.

  ‘Well, I’ll cross my fingers for you. What’s your name? Just so I can say I knew you back when.’

  ‘Maddy. Maddy Stiller.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Maddy Stiller,’ he said, gravely formal. He held out a hand. ‘I’m Rafe. Rafe Keeler.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Dr Keeler.’ His hand was warm and firm. From the corner of her eye she could see Carla frowning at her. ‘Well, I’ll … I’ll just get your eggs, then,’ she said hurriedly. ‘How d’you like them?’

  His eyes came to rest on her own. There was a moment of frank appreciation so swift she thought she’d imagined it. ‘Whatever you suggest.’

  She could feel her cheeks tingling. ‘I … I’ll be right back,’ she stammered and fled. His charm unnerved her. She rushed into the comparative safety of the kitchen.

  ‘He’s cute,’ Carla stated baldly, coming in behind her.

  ‘Who?’ Maddy kept her voice as neutral as possible.

  ‘Oh, chica. Don’t gimme that. You know who.’

  ‘You think so?’ Maddy kept her voice as neutral as possible.

  ‘Doesn’t matter what I think, honey, you think so. Hey!’ she yelled suddenly, pointing to the plate the short-order cook had left on the counter. ‘Didn’t you hear me say ‘‘scrambled?’’ Do these look scrambled to you?’

  Maddy grinned. Carla’s reputation in the kitchen was fierce. Deservedly so. She slid her own ticket quietly under the flap and hurried out. Being on the sharp end of Carla’s tongue or under the microscopic gaze of her brown eyes weren’t places she particularly wanted to be, certainly not today. For reasons she couldn’t quite fathom, Rafe Keeler had unnerved her. She grabbed her own order of scrambled eggs and walked quickly back to his table.

  He glanced up at her from his newspaper as she placed it carefully in front of him. ‘Thanks. This should do the trick.’

  ‘Let me know if you need anything else.’

  ‘I will.’ He folded away his newspaper and began to eat.

  Twenty minutes later he signalled for the bill. She hurried over, slid the tab across the bar and was just about to turn away when he spoke. ‘Um, look … I know this might seem rather sudden, but I was just wondering … I’m here in New York for a couple of days and I don’t really know anyone other than my colleagues and I’m sort of fed up hanging out with them. The conference is over this afternoon … would you like to have a drink with me afterwards? Tonight?’

  ‘A drink?’ Maddy was so surprised she nearly dropped her tray. ‘With you?’

  ‘Er, not quite the reaction I was looking for,’ he deadpanned, lifting his eyebrows. ‘Is it too awful a suggestion to contemplate?’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean it like that … I just … you took me by surprise, that’s all.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Sure … er, why not?’ The words were out before she could stop them.

  ‘You will?’ Now
it was his turn to sound surprised.

  There was something warm and open about him. It wasn’t the sort of thing she normally did. Four years in New York was a long time and she’d kissed more than her fair share of frogs. Sometimes more than kissed, she thought to herself with a sudden pang. But he seemed different. And it wasn’t just his accent. ‘Why not?’ she said again, trying to sound more offhand than she felt. ‘There’s a little bar just around the corner on Canal Street. Joey’s. You can’t miss it. About halfway down the street.’

  ‘Great. What time d’you finish?’

  ‘Around seven.’

  ‘Seven thirty, then? Unless you need to go home first … ?’

  ‘No … seven thirty’s fine. I … I’ll see you then.’ She flashed him a quick smile and hurried back to the kitchen. Her mind was already racing ahead. She had a grey flannel sweatshirt in her bag and a pair of jeans – hardly appropriate attire for a date. A date! How long had it been since she’d been on a date? She didn’t want to think.

  By 7.25 p.m. she was ready. She checked her reflection in the tiny washroom mirror one last time. She brushed her hair and carefully applied a dab of lip gloss. She’d borrowed a white shirt from Carla that was several sizes too large but it looked marginally more date-like than a faded college sweatshirt. She fluffed her hair out, blotted her lips and picked up her bag. It was cold outside, but the bar was only a couple of steps away. She checked her watch – 7.29. A few minutes late. A girl’s always gotta be a few minutes late. Another unfathomable New York rule. The blue neon sign gazed steadily at her from above the entrance. She hurried up the steps, and pushed open the door into a blaze of music and voices. He was already sitting by the bar, his body half-turned towards the door. She made her way towards him, conscious of his eyes on her as she approached. His smile was one of cautious relief.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, sliding off the stool as she came up to him. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d actually show up.’ He pulled out the bar stool next to him. ‘What can I get you?’