by Laura Wilson
Oh, to hell with it. ‘Let’s go in,’ he said. ‘No sense in both of us freezing.’
‘Mrs Garland’ll be here in a minute,’ said Monica, as she bent down to bolt the back door behind them. To stop me running away, Stratton thought, with an inward shudder. Mrs Garland was the latest in the line of war widows who were very much, according to his sisters-in-law, for the likes of him, and was obviously about to be paraded before him as a potential wife. Unnervingly small, with kittenish blue eyes, her main tactic was, he remembered, to get him to talk about his work and pretend to be fascinated while he did so. It was a sort of game, he supposed, but not one that he felt like playing, especially with Doris and Lilian monitoring every word. He had hoped – obviously foolishly – that on Christmas Day he’d be safe from that sort of thing.
Monica straightened up. ‘Auntie Doris invited her for tea. Don’t look like that, Dad. She’s quite nice, really.’
‘I’m sure she’s delightful,’ said Stratton, who wasn’t sure of any such thing. ‘It’s the reason your aunt invited her that I’m not so keen on.’ Talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous, he thought.
‘You should look on the bright side, Dad.’ Monica giggled. ‘It could be Miss Trew.’
‘Oh, very funny.’ Miss Trew was a tough old bird with iron hair and a kippered face who’d been in charge of the local Girl Guides for as long as anyone could remember. ‘Come on then, let’s get it over with …’
Chapter Twenty-Six
Monica rubbed her hands vigorously, trying to dry them on the thin towel that hung on the back of the scullery door. The fabric had barely any nap left to absorb moisture. All the towels in the house were like that. Unlike hard things, she didn’t categorise them as good or bad, friendly or unfriendly – they were simply worn out. The previous week, she’d gone into the dressing room of a visiting American star, who must have brought her own towels because they were thicker and fleecier than any she’d ever seen. She’d been sent in there to fetch something, but she’d lingered, touching them and marvelling at how luxurious they were – much more so than the ones they used in Make-up, which were scarcely better than the ones at home.
She stepped back quickly as the door was shoved open. Dad had gone straight up to bed when they’d returned from Auntie Doris’s, and she’d thought Pete had done the same – or hoped he had. It was late – almost eleven – but she wasn’t tired enough to go to bed. She just wanted to be by herself for a while. She certainly didn’t want to talk to Pete, after he’d embarrassed her this afternoon, talking about boyfriends in front of everyone, but here he was, lounging in the doorway. ‘Got a cig, Monica? I’ve run out.’
‘In my bag. Wait a minute.’
Pete followed her into the kitchen. ‘Fancy making us a cup of tea?’ he asked, when he’d lit up.
‘At this hour?’ said Monica, even though she’d been thinking about making some tea for herself.
‘Why not?’ Pete plonked himself down at the kitchen table. ‘I’m not ready for bed yet.’
‘Oh, all right.’
‘What about that Mrs Garland?’ said Pete, when she came back from filling the kettle. ‘Ooh, Mr Stratton …’ He launched into a cruel but accurate impersonation. ‘Your work must be so interesting … Do tell me all about it. Honestly, I’m surprised she didn’t jump into his lap.’
‘Oh, stop it.’ Monica lit the gas. It had been an uncomfortable evening, with Mrs Garland being embarrassingly skittish and Dad, who’d obviously hated every minute of it, almost painfully polite.
‘Mind you,’ said Pete, ‘he could do a lot worse. She’s not a bad-looking woman … for her age, I mean.’
‘He’s not interested,’ said Monica. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, he still misses Mum.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Pete, narrowing his eyes. ‘Mum. Now there’s a subject …’
Knowing what was coming – the few conversations she and Pete had had about their mother since her death had ended in rows – and determined not to be goaded, Monica said, ‘Not now, Pete. I know what you think, but you’re wrong. It wasn’t Dad’s fault.’
‘Of course not,’ said Pete, sarcastically. ‘She was murdered by a lunatic with him standing two feet away, but let’s not blame him.’
‘I’m not going to argue about it.’ Monica turned her back on him and began taking the tea things out of the cupboard.
Pete blew smoke at her. ‘You’re a real daddy’s girl, aren’t you? You think the sun shines out of him.’
‘Pete, I’m not—’
‘That why you don’t have a boyfriend, is it? Can’t find anyone as good as your precious Daddy?’
‘Stop it!’ Close to tears, and furious not only with him, but with herself for letting him upset her, Monica dumped two cups on the table. ‘Why do you always have to be so horrible? You can’t even start a conversation without turning it into a fight or insinuating something – like you did this afternoon.’
‘This afternoon?’ Pete asked, pretending innocence. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You know damn well what I’m talking about.’
Pete shook his head. ‘You’re imagining things. Or,’ he regarded her shrewdly, head on one side, ‘you’ve got a guilty conscience.’
‘Oh, rubbish!’ Monica whirled round and threw the saucers down on the table so that they spun and clattered.
‘Steady the buffs.’ Pete put a hand out to still the wobbling china. ‘Well, it must be one or the other,’ he added, ‘because as I said, I’ve got absolutely no idea what you mean.’
‘You know exactly what I mean – that stuff about boyfriends.’ The moment the words were out of her mouth, Monica knew she shouldn’t have said it. Pete was nodding, a smug expression on his face, as if she’d blurted out something incriminatingly significant.
‘What did you think I was insinuating?’ he asked, folding his arms. ‘Because that was the word you used.’
‘Nothing! Stop it!’ she raged at him, furious at having fallen into his trap. ‘Just … stop bullying me!’
‘You’d better stop shouting or you’ll wake Dad,’ said Pete, in tones of exaggerated reasonableness. ‘And I wasn’t bullying, I was asking a question, so …?’
‘I don’t want to discuss it,’ said Monica. ‘You were being horrible this afternoon and you’re doing the same thing now.’
‘Oh, come on, Monica,’ said Pete, in a wheedling tone. ‘It was a joke. I wasn’t suggesting anything.’
‘Weren’t you? It certainly sounded like it.’
‘What could I have been suggesting?’ The tone of mock innocence was back again.
‘I told you, I don’t want to discuss it.’ The kettle was boiling. Monica grabbed the cloth and went over to the stove to take it off the gas. At the same moment, Pete stood up and then, just as she’d begun to lift the kettle, took hold of her arm so that she jerked and a few drops of hot water splashed on her hand.
‘Ouch!’ She let go of the kettle and shook her sore fingers. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
‘Trying to make you answer the question. Be fair, Monica. You can’t keep telling me that I’ve insinuated things and suggested things and then not say what they are.’
Monica suddenly felt as if she couldn’t breathe. ‘But you know bloody well what they are!’ she burst out. ‘You were suggesting I wasn’t normal and you said it right in front of everybody and—’
‘They wouldn’t have understood,’ said Pete, dismissively. ‘And anyway,’ he said, ‘it was a joke. I wasn’t really suggesting that you were … you know … one of them. Here, give me that,’ he took the cloth from her, ‘and I’ll make the tea. You sit down.’
Monica sat down. Watching Pete as he made the tea, she wondered if he had meant it as a joke. If it really was a joke, then why had he just done all that business pretending he didn’t understand what she was talking about? She knew why he was making the tea – because he knew he’d gone too far and upset her
and he was trying to make up for it. Or perhaps he was doing it because he’d got what he wanted – even though she hadn’t actually admitted anything … or not in so many words, anyway. With a sinking heart, she thought, he’s being nice now, but he’ll never leave the subject alone – sly digs, little comments that couldn’t be understood by anyone else … She should never have said anything. Of course, he might have carried on doing it anyway, but now that he knew she knew what he was getting at, he’d be impossible.
She’d only found out what ‘one of them’ meant a couple of weeks ago, when Anne, her best friend in the Make-up Department, had referred to a woman who worked in the Ashwood administration block in that way. Monica knew the woman in question, though not her name; she stood out because she was mannish, with cropped hair and a deep, fruity voice, and stomped about in severely tailored suits and brogues. When she’d asked Anne what it meant, Anne had giggled and said, ‘You know, one of Nature’s mistakes. A woman who wants to be a man.’ When Monica asked, ‘How do you mean?’ Anne said that she was more attracted to other women than she was to men. She’d heard people laughing about the woman behind her back, or speaking about her in pitying tones or worse, contempt.
Monica had been thinking about the woman on and off ever since. I’m not like her, she kept telling herself. I’m not like her because I don’t want to be a man. In fact, she couldn’t think of anything she wanted less. Men did get more opportunities to do things, but if she’d been a boy she’d have had to do National Service, and she didn’t fancy that at all. Imagine having to spend all your time with a lot of blokes like Pete! It wasn’t that she disliked men – after all, Dad was a man, and she loved him, and so was Uncle Donald, and he was lovely, and …
She didn’t want to end up like the woman at work, with everyone laughing behind her back. But they would if she carried on making a fool of herself as she had with Mrs Calthrop. Since that awful afternoon when she’d blurted out all of that stuff about Dad and being worried about him and Mum dying, Monica had avoided her. It was impossible not to think about her, though: she was so unbelievably beautiful, just like the women in the magazines. Being anywhere near her made Monica feel breathless. When she was actually with her, she felt that she couldn’t even have told anyone her name, let alone anything else, and then she’d suddenly found herself jabbering about her family. She glanced at Pete, who was taking his time stirring the pot, and realised how odd it was that, despite the embarrassment and the rest of it, it was far easier to talk about Mum to Mrs Calthrop, a virtual stranger, than it was to talk to her own brother. She wished she didn’t blush so easily, though – that was a dead give-away.
Taking her tea upstairs – she’d had more than enough of Pete for one day – she decided, as she very often did nowadays, that it would be all right to think about Mrs Calthrop for, say, five minutes before she went to sleep. She’d fallen into the habit of asking herself permission to do this, which she usually granted, but only for short periods – and only thinking, nothing more – as otherwise it was almost impossible to wrench her mind onto a different subject. She felt an agonising sense of guilt about doing it at home, because Dad was clearly keen on Mrs Calthrop himself, and the thought of him somehow picking up on her imaginings was horrifying. And with Pete here as well, it felt even less safe than usual, but tonight, she felt, she deserved it. In any case, Monica reasoned, Dad was bound to be asleep by now, and Pete would soon follow, so it would be – sort of – like being alone in the house.
Even if she did, by and large, manage to avoid Mrs Calthrop at the studio in the sense of staying out of her way, it had become impossible in the last week to avoid the subject of her. Speculation about her and Mr Carleton was rife, and there was a different rumour every day – almost as many as the rumours about how Mr Carleton had fallen off the waggon. It was a shame, Monica thought, because everyone said he was the best director working at Ashwood. She supposed Mrs Calthrop must be aware of it. If Mr Carleton was in love with her, Monica thought, and she with him, that would be enough to make anyone stop drinking, wouldn’t it? Not that other people in the studio thought so. There’s so much, she thought as she cleaned her teeth, that I don’t understand.
In spite of her anxiety about seeing Mrs Calthrop, she was half-hoping she’d be working on Mr Carleton’s next picture. This was partly because it would be fun and partly – well, mainly – because Mrs Calthrop would be on the set.
Monica took off her clothes, put on her nightdress, and got into bed. Closing her eyes, she indulged – for twelve minutes, rather than the allotted five – in a fantasy of telling Mrs Calthrop about Mr Carleton’s drinking, and Mrs Calthrop thanking her and looking into her eyes and pressing her hand in gratitude … And then, feeling – temporarily at least – a great deal happier, she fell asleep.
1951
Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘You’re going to marry me, darling,’ said James Carleton. ‘The moment you’re free.’
Diana laughed. ‘Are you sure you haven’t had too much champagne?’ It was the beginning of February, and they were walking through the Green Park mist after celebrating her imminent move into her own, albeit rented, flat by lunching at the Ritz so lavishly (‘Always be extravagant when you’re in funds, darling – you never know when the chance’ll come again’) that it was almost possible to believe that rationing had ceased to exist.
‘There’s no such thing as too much champagne,’ said James solemnly. ‘Left hand, please. And close your eyes.’ Still thinking that he was joking, Diana did so and, presenting her hand, felt something being slid onto her third finger. ‘You can look now.’
Whatever she’d expected, it certainly wasn’t a ring with diamonds and sapphires twinkling in an art-deco setting. It was old-fashioned, but so lovely that it almost took her breath away. In the two months since their first dinner together, they’d seen a great deal of each other – most evenings as well as every day at the studio – and James, as Diana had admitted to a sceptical Lally, had swept her off her feet. She’d never met a man who knew so much: films, the theatre, classical music, poetry, philosophy, mathematics, jazz … His knowledge and zest for life made her giddy. He’d opened new worlds to her – things she’d never thought about or barely knew existed – and she listened, rapt, to his explanations, devoured the books he recommended and listened to the records, bombarding him with questions afterwards. ‘I’m not intelligent enough for you,’ she’d told him, and he’d replied, ‘Yes you are, you just don’t know it yet.’ And it was true that she’d felt her senses heightened, not only by falling in love, but by all this new information, as if she could suddenly see and hear things that weren’t apparent to other people. Lally, despite her initial caution, had taken to him immediately when they’d met at Christmas, and so, Diana thought, had Jock, although he hadn’t said as much. But then, as Lally’d pointed out, you could hardly expect him to gush, and the nature of his work did tend to make you suspicious about people, even when there was no need to be.
Unlike Claude Ventriss, James was devoid of cynicism, and, also unlike Claude, he hadn’t yet attempted to get her into bed. Part of Diana was glad about this, but another part was rather offended. Remembering Guy’s hands-off behaviour during their courtship, she worried that it might not bode well for the future. ‘Are you serious about this?’ she asked.
‘Don’t you like the ring?’ James’s tone had an uncertainty she’d never heard before. ‘It belonged to my mother but we can get it reset, if you don’t like—’
‘It’s not the ring, darling. That’s perfect – beautiful … It’s …’ Diana looked down at her hand and then back at James. ‘It’s just that you … you … Oh, I’m being stupid again.’
‘Of course I’m serious, Diana. I love you. Don’t you love me?’
‘Yes …’
‘Then say it.’ James made his hands into a loudspeaker and said, ‘Cue lights … Turn over … and … Action!’
Squaring her shoulders, Diana looked
him straight in the eye and said, ‘I love you, James Carleton.’
‘Very good. Almost believable, in fact.’
Confused, Diana said, ‘But I do—’
Laying a finger on her lips, James said, ‘That was a joke, darling. People make them from time to time. I believe you.’
‘Oh.’ Diana took a step back, not quite sure whether she wanted to laugh or cry.
‘Then why didn’t you think …’ James stopped and regarded her, head on one side. ‘Ah ha! You’re worried because I haven’t pounced on you. That’s it, isn’t it?’
‘No!’ It came out too shrill, too vehement. ‘That wasn’t what I—’
‘Oh yes, it was.’ James’s hand closed around her wrist, and she was aware of the pressure of his thumb against her racing pulse. ‘VSITPQ as the debs used to say. You remember … Yes, you do, you’re blushing. “Very safe in taxis, probably queer”,’ he declared in the clipped tones of Noel Coward. ‘Well, I’m not.’ His hand moved up her arm, pushing back the sleeves of her fur coat and dress so that his thumb was now massaging the soft flesh of her inner arm, hard enough to hurt. Diana stood and let him do it. There was nothing particularly intimate about an arm, and James’s face wore a casual expression, as if completely unaffected by what he was doing. How can he be? she thought. It was one of the most sexual things she had ever experienced, and the sensation was so intense that she was aware of nothing else but a fierce erotic warmth that seemed to overtake her entire body.
It stopped abruptly when he removed his hand in a single movement so sudden that he almost tore the material of her dress, then grabbed her round the waist and pulled her towards him, whispering, ‘I’ll take you behind that tree and ravish you right now if you want me to prove it.’
Diana gasped, and, flustered, tried to right herself, pushing him away. ‘That won’t be necessary,’ she said, primly. ‘My mother always told me that once the season’s over, ravishing should take place indoors or not at all.’
