On the L train, while he was telling me about the magazine he owned and edited – a properly funny-sounding weekly called the Brooklyn Beaver – he’d caught me covertly sniffing my still-dirty hair. So when we’d got off at First Avenue he’d bought me a beanie from a little corner store. ‘To stop the hair-sniffing,’ he explained. I was touched and had put it on without hesitation, even though the All-Saints dress I had shoved on before we left was not its ideal partner.
Julian Bell was still laughing. ‘Sally Howlett, you look like a proper Alphabet City beat-poet grassroots-activist patchouli-loving student,’ he said. ‘And I like it.’
I had no idea what most of this meant but I embraced it. ‘Lead me to the creativity,’ I ordered.
The poets’ café was not so much a café but a proper little performance venue, with a stage, a large wooden floor and a balcony. A small bar ran along the wall from the entrance and – to my great surprise – the place was overflowing. Fiona, Raúl, Barry, Bea, Bea’s Brazilian masseur and a few other men I identified as Raúl and Julian’s friends were sitting halfway back, bottles of wine and beer already littering their table. Julian and I had obviously entered during some sort of hiatus but the crowd was already settling down for the next poet. Fiona looked flushed and excitable. ‘This is actually really good!’ she whispered. And then: ‘WHO THE HELL IS THAT?’
I shrugged, and chose not to explain that he was the widowed bloke who, in the last hour, I’d met, kissed and slightly fallen for. Even Fi, with her wild imagination, would have struggled with that.
Raúl and the other boys sniggered in Julian’s direction. ‘Fast work, bro,’ Raúl said, with an impressed nod.
I didn’t mind. I sat down, marvelling at how normal it felt to be at a poetry slam with a widowed journalist, a rock star and an assortment of other crazies. Although, I realized, scanning the venue, they actually weren’t crazies. They all looked quite normal. Even Bea didn’t look out of place, although in fairness she had declined to wear her customary spike heels.
The next poet took to the microphone.
He was a slight, nervous-looking man who called himself ‘Elf, from the Bronx’, and he was dwarfed by his oversized suit. I felt my skin crawl with vicarious embarrassment, knowing that a man so uncomfortable in his own skin was quite unlikely to have poetry inside him.
How wrong I was.
I’d never heard performance poetry before – I hadn’t wanted to – but I wanted that man to talk into the microphone all night. His poem was called ‘Double Life’ and it was all about the way he edited himself so that nobody could see who he really was. It was brutal and yet there was not so much as a whiff of self-pity. In fact, he was often so funny that Barry fell under the table laughing, although this was something Barry quite enjoyed doing.
When Elf finished I made myself hoarse cheering. He’d just told my story.
The night wore on and eventually ended, but Raúl was good friends with the owner of the café and got us locked in. I couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of Beatriz Maria Stefanini taking part in a lock-in after a poetry slam, but she was in her element.
I took a mental snapshot of the place, knowing that whatever happened next between me and Julian Bell – even if it was nothing – I wanted to remember tonight for ever.
Heavy drinking ensued. Julian was next to me all night and I stopped thinking he was great and started thinking he was stupendous. He was generous with drinks, warm towards me, kind to his friends and consistently amusing: he called Fiona a wazzock – which nobody else would have attempted – and he and Raúl had us all in stitches with their banter. And yet he said to me, as I came back from the bar with a round of drinks, ‘You crack me up, Sally Howlett. Why are you walking sideways to hide your bottom? It’s magnificent!’
I blushed and demurred. ‘You are extremely funny,’ he informed me. ‘Especially when you’re not trying to be.’
He was definitely laughing at me, but I was definitely laughing at him. His hair escaped the products he’d shoved on hurriedly before we’d left, and started to fluff as the night got later and the mood wilder. He caught me looking at it, howled loudly and stole my new beanie.
‘SO,’ Fiona broke in, ‘what do you think of our Sally? GORGEOUS, isn’t she?’ Fiona was very noisy tonight. And … weird. Something about her unsettled me. She spent quite a lot of time talking right in Raúl’s face, then Julian’s face, then my face, and kept starting pointless debates about things she lost interest in two seconds later. She was also, I noticed, with a twinge of fear, being difficult with Raúl. Clingy, then rude, then mad.
Julian began to compose a reply when Fiona interrupted, ‘Everyone loves Sally! Sally’s the real star at our work, not me. She’s like a sister to me, Julian, so if you mess with Sally, you mess with me –’
‘Oi,’ I cut in. ‘Shut it.’
Fiona was so surprised she did. ‘OK!’ she squeaked, bounding off to tell Barry the news that I’d just told her to shut it.
‘Is she normally like that?’ Julian asked, looking curiously across at her.
I was torn between maternal defensiveness and the strong urge I felt to tell him the truth about everything. ‘Yes and no,’ I said slowly. ‘She’s difficult. But there’s something particularly weird tonight …’
‘I think she’s high,’ Julian said.
I went pale. ‘No!’
He continued to watch her. ‘Does she have a problem?’
‘No! I mean … Well, I did catch her doing some coke in June, but she said she could take or leave it. She said she’d stopped.’
Julian nodded. ‘Hmm.’
‘I believe her, though. She stopped drinking too. She said she’d sorted herself out.’
‘They always say that.’
‘They?’
‘Drug users.’
My stomach knotted. ‘She’s not a cokehead. She told me she’d given up. Completely. And she stopped drinking too. And she’s been great! Much more reliable and … and she’s FINE!’
Julian slid a hand over mine. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. I could be wrong.’
I stared at him, clutches of panic in my abdomen. ‘Um, how come you know so much about drug users, Julian?’
He grinned. ‘Fancy a line?’
‘What?’
Then he laughed. ‘I’m JOKING!’
Seeing me waver, he squeezed my hand. ‘I was one hundred per cent joking,’ he said quietly. ‘I am not a cokehead. And I’m sure your cousin isn’t either. I don’t know what I’m on about.’
I nodded. ‘OK …’
‘I’m having a lovely night,’ he said simply. His eyes were so close to mine. ‘This is all pretty mad, isn’t it?’
Everything faded to quiet. Fiona, the fear, the constant worry. I took a deep breath. ‘Mad but good.’
Very briefly, before Raúl and the others had time to notice, Julian kissed me lightly on the lips. ‘I like you even more than I did when I said it earlier.’ He got up to go to the bar, the label of his still inside-out T-shirt flapping around under that mad hair.
Much later – by which time I had probably at least a couple of bottles of wine in me and was mumbling things like ‘I NEEDA GO HOME BUT I’M TOO DRUNKA MOOOOVE’ – someone started playing the piano. Bea, yes, that was who. Bea had a baby grand in her five-bedroom flat in Marylebone and knocking out Haydn sonatas was just another part of her repertoire.
‘I still don’t unnerstand why she works,’ I confided in Julian. ‘I mean, she’s, like, thaaaaaaat rich. She could buy Barack Obama’s house …’
Julian raised an eyebrow. ‘The White House? Wow.’
‘And DONALTRUM’S HOUSE! DONALTUMP’S HOUSE! I mean TRUMP’S HOUSE. No! I don’t mean TRUMP, I mean DONALD –’
‘Oh, my God, seriously, stop talking.’ Julian was wetting himself. ‘You told me you were a good drinker!’
‘I lied,’ I confirmed happily. ‘I’m terrible. TRUMP! TRUMPY DONALT —’
We were inte
rrupted. One of the other boys staying in Raúl’s flat – an artist the shape and size of a large tank – came over and pretty much picked Julian up. ‘Come and sing,’ he instructed.
‘Oh, dude, no …’ Julian protested. ‘I don’t want to, I’m talking to my fine lady here, she’s –’
‘Come and sing,’ the guy repeated. ‘Jorge asked for you. He’s been serving us beers way past his home time,’ he added. Jorge was the owner and apparently a friend of this group of bohemian nutters.
‘OK, OK! Let go of me, you douche.’ Julian went off to the piano.
Bea looked up from the keyboard and shrieked delightedly. ‘They tell me you are a great singer,’ she purred. ‘Come and sit next to Beatriz …’
As soon as he was gone, Fiona closed in on me. ‘What the fuck?’ she hissed. ‘Did you two have sex or something? You’re like electricity!’
I did a double-take. Sometime during the evening, Fiona had started drinking. I hadn’t noticed: perhaps because I was hammered, perhaps because I was so used to the sight of her with a smudged wine glass slopping around in her hand. But she was drunk. Her eyes were yellowy and unfocused and she was right up in my face. I could smell the booze on her breath. Maybe something else. Sharp, chemical.
Let it go, I told myself. I was drunk too. Bollocksed. Everyone was allowed a night off the wagon once in a while, weren’t they?
I tried to smile what I thought to be a secretive, enigmatic sort of smile, but it turned into a moronic leer. ‘Julian’s lovely,’ was all I could manage. ‘Luvverly.’
‘Well, one of us should be happy,’ Fiona replied. ‘I mean, I’m never going to be promoted at work and I’m getting all fat and I’ll probably fuck up with Raúl, but you might as well be happy. Go for it, I say.’
I sighed despairingly, and started to compose a reply, but Fiona giggled naughtily. ‘I’m joking!’ she said, punching my arm.
But then I stopped hearing her voice. Suddenly, the room was slowing down and there was a sound that filled me with the purest, not-drink-related joy. Bea was playing the duet in La Bohème where Rodolfo and Mimi first meet in his freezing garret in the Latin Quarter, where they fall in love on the spot. The tune poured into me and the hairs on the back of my neck, drunk and disorderly as they were, stood up. Oh, God, it broke my heart, this music. It killed me. It was beautiful.
Fiona had stopped talking to me and was staring dreamily at the piano. Someone had started singing Rodolfo’s part very well. Julian Bell, I realized, had started singing Rodolfo’s part. He clearly wasn’t a proper singer or anything, but he was singing it very nicely indeed. Softly, perfectly pitched, and with an impressive sensitivity for someone who had drunk a good few buckets of wine.
Bea threw in Mimi’s lines in her crow’s shriek, which made everyone laugh.
‘This is, like, a fraction of what he can do,’ the tank man told us proudly. I didn’t believe him, because if Julian could sing any better than that he’d have been a singer. But I felt myself taking in Tank Man’s infectious pride. You’re amazing, I thought dazedly, watching Julian sing. Really amazing. Briefly I remembered having thought only a few weeks ago that amazing men were way out of my league, never interested in someone like me.
‘This is your favourite, this duet, isn’t it?’ Fi whispered.
I nodded, and even though Bea was screeching horribly through Mimi’s part, I had tears in my eyes. I felt so happy, watching the brilliant man who kept kissing me, surrounded by people I loved, that to hear my most precious, favourite piece of music in candlelight was almost too much.
Fiona put an arm round my shoulders and kissed the side of my face. ‘I love you so much, Sal,’ she whispered, sweaty and close. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re my world.’
I allowed the tears – some happy, some despairing – to fall.
Julian and Bea carried on but as the higher, louder notes approached, Bea stopped playing. ‘I cannot do this!’ she shrieked. ‘Someone sing Mimi, please!’
And without hesitation, without thinking about it, I just got up, walked over to the piano where I stood in front of Julian, looked him in the eye and started singing.
After it was over I became aware of a lot of noise. It was Bea, shrieking again. She wasn’t singing this time, she was screaming at me. ‘You sing? You SING? DIO MIO, SALLY, MY DARLING, THAT WAS BEAUTIFUL!’ Fi was jumping all over me and all of the others were clapping and whistling. I looked around wild-eyed. I’d sung?
Finally, I looked at Julian, who was staring at me like I was on fire. He shook his head and whispered something. In spite of the racket I heard it clearly: ‘Shit. You were incredible. What was that about?’
And I knew I should care, that this was my cue to fade and disappear and die, that I should pretend it hadn’t happened and fudge over it as if it were some silly mistake, but I couldn’t and didn’t.
As if we were the only people in the room, Julian leaned over and took my hand. ‘Well, you certainly kept that one up your sleeve. You dark horse, Sally Howlett. Let’s go. I’m fed up of sharing you. Can I have you to myself now?’
Scene Eight
It is a fact universally acknowledged that no sane person can really fall in love in one night. At best, it is an obsession. A compelling feeling that this person, this one, out of all the millions of others, is the answer to all of your problems. At worst, it is misplaced horn.
I must just be in lust, I told myself drunkenly. Simple old lust. And loneliness.
Julian was saying goodbye to the owner, Jorge, at the door. Jorge had the air of a man who seriously worshipped Julian. As we wobbled off down the street, he called after us, ‘Take good care of my friend Jules! This guy saved my ass, not to mention this café!’
‘What did he mean?’ I asked.
Julian put the beanie back on my head, in case I got cold, and pinched my nose. ‘Ah, nothing. He just means I spend a lot of money in there. We go back a long way. Such a lovely, lovely man, Jorge.’
You’re a lovely, lovely man, I thought. A really lovely man. I’d been brought up in a house where kind words were seldom spoken about other people. Julian was different. He was generous.
‘Now,’ he said, refusing to move off, ‘tell me right now about that voice of yours.’ His eyes sparkled with curiosity and amusement. ‘You just sang the shit out of Mimi! I’m not sure I believe you’re just a wardrobe mistress.’
Panic slashed my insides briefly but I managed to pull myself together. ‘I am honestly a wardrobe mistress,’ I told him.
‘But you must have had singing lessons. Years of them. Wardrobe mistress or not …’
‘I’ve never had a singing lesson in my life,’ I said truthfully.
Julian folded his arms across his chest, smiling. ‘Why are you lying, Beanie Girl?’ he asked. ‘It’s not possible to sing like that without training.’
I folded my arms across my own chest. ‘And how do you know that? You weren’t so bad yourself.’
There was a minor face-off, which I ended by glancing upwards at his hair.
‘What?’ he said, hands flying to his head. ‘Is it fluffy again? ARGGH.’
I grinned. ‘No. And I’m not a singer. Not now, not ever.’
Julian watched me for a minute, then chuckled. ‘Ah, you make me laugh. You just make me laugh, a lot. Come on, mad little hamster.’
He walked me to Avenue B where he hailed us a cab. He looked like a scruffy film star and he held my hand as if it were the most natural thing in the world. It was ridiculous and completely normal all in one.
Neither of us said anything as we sped over Williamsburg Bridge. The previous inhabitants of the taxi had left the windows wide open and I let the air, now cool and fresh, fly through my still-dirty hair. As we hit Brooklyn and turned north, I looked sideways at Julian. His eyes were closed but I could tell he wasn’t asleep. He smiled. ‘Stop staring at my fluffy hair.’
‘I wasn’t!’
He just smiled sleepily and pinched m
y leg.
I looked out of my window at the still-busy streets. Williamsburg was alive and kicking. Trendies – hipsters, I had to start calling them – were standing smoking outside the Union Pool and two girls in vintage shoes were trying to navigate the flyover slip-roads with great bravery.
‘You sing like an angel,’ he said, after a pause. I could feel him looking at me. Most strangely, it didn’t feel threatening, the attention. He’d just complimented a part of me that nobody ever saw and I was fine with it.
‘You sang nicely yourself. How do you know the words to that duet?’ I asked idly. I was still turned away from him, watching the edges of Williamsburg flash past my window.
‘Oh, I learned it once. I liked it.’
‘It’s utterly, utterly beautiful, isn’t it?’ I said happily. I didn’t feel even the slightest bit twattish.
As we levelled 10th Street, Julian leaned forward and tapped on the cab driver’s window. ‘Can you make a left and leave us at 11th and Wythe?’ The man didn’t acknowledge him but duly turned left.
‘Where are we going?’
Julian ignored me; he just smiled.
‘Will there be toasted cheese sandwiches? I want a toasted cheese sandwich.’ I sounded comically drunk and resolved to keep my mouth shut.
But Julian roared with laughter. ‘I would love a cheese toastie,’ he said. ‘And a cup of proper English tea. I’ll see what I can do.’
A couple of minutes later we pulled up outside a brick building with huge red-lit letters, saying ‘Hotel’, up its side. I was puzzled but not particularly alarmed. Julian Bell didn’t seem to be the sort who’d just check us into a hotel for a night of hot love. I hoped not, anyway. This thing was far too magical to end up ruined by a fumbly-rump.
He tried to pay the driver but I insisted: he’d been buying me drinks all night and if my parents had taught me anything it was that I must not let anyone else spend too much money on me. (Why? I wondered momentarily. Am I not worth spending money on?)
A little fissure of sadness began to make its way through the fabric of tonight but I stopped it in its tracks. I wasn’t having it. Tonight had made me feel good about myself. My parents did not.
The Unfinished Symphony of You and Me Page 14
