The Blue Note

by Charlotte Bingham

  Bobbie’s face had become scarlet with embarrassment, not for herself, but for Miranda. How could she sound so sort of careless about love, of all things, as if the act of love meant nothing? Love was for ever. There was no so long as you don’t – you know – become pregnant about it.

  That was not how she and Julian had been. They had been twin souls, seeing everything the same way.

  ‘Oh, I know.’ Miranda shrugged her shoulders, reading Bobbie’s reaction at once. ‘You think I am one of those girls who have had it, and I expect you’re right. Not many men want to marry damaged goods even nowadays, do they?’

  Bobbie sighed. ‘Oh, come on, Miranda, don’t let’s talk like this. We’re at the fair, we’re here to have fun. Let’s do just that. Besides, the way you talk – it’s so grown up, and who wants to be that? At least not tonight. As a matter of fact I never want to become a grown-up.’ That was something else that she and Julian had promised each other – never to be imprisoned by hideous maturity, never to stop finding life amazing and ridiculous, never to become solemn and incurious, their minds solidified by attitudes arrived at by someone else.

  Of a sudden Bobbie threw off her hat and the wind caught it and tossed it about for a bit before landing it back at Teddy’s feet.

  ‘Bobbie’s dotty.’ Teddy laughed and picking up the hat he carefully, with great finesse, placed it back upon Bobbie’s thick, brown shining hair, and as he did so he looked down into her large eyes, and Miranda’s heart seemed to stop for those few seconds.

  It was true. Teddy was in love with Bobbie for ever and ever, probably.

  Now she too started to run, away from Bobbie and away from Dick, too, towards the merry-go-round that was about to crank slowly into life, away from all the realities. Bobbie was right. Everything else besides tonight, love, everything – it was too grown up.

  After that it was as if they had all taken a vow, to be in love with whoever they wished, but no-one to tell anyone. They must have all known anyway that it was just as well, at that moment in their lives, to set love aside, for Miranda was too busy setting up her café with Dick, and Bobbie was too busy ‘being famous’ as Teddy liked to call it.

  She had now been made even more comfortable in a suite of rooms in the Saxbys’ house in Ebury Street. Her present money-earning status meant that she could afford to rent three rooms and a bathroom from the Major and Mrs S, three rooms which she and Teddy immediately set about decorating, in between visiting Miranda and Dick at the studio in Aubrey Close. Teddy, having found that he could not make enough money from photography alone, had started to design clothes privately for various top fashion models who were more than happy to wear them, but he was having no luck with any of them. They seemed to look brilliant on the girls he designed them for, but they did not translate, so that if Bobbie or Miranda tried them on for him they looked strangely dated.

  ‘Maybe it’s because you’re not being inspired by your own ideas. Maybe it’s because they’re asking you to design things for them, rather than for you, as it were, and maybe, once you’ve had them made up for them, they just lose their impact.’

  Teddy was lying full length on the floor of Aubrey Close, and Miranda, Bobbie and Dick were carefully walking around him as he groaned out loud at his lack of success as a designer, his failure to make any impression even on his friends.

  ‘And maybe you’re right,’ he shouted from the floor, ‘but how else do you design clothes, except by making them up and fitting them?’

  Miranda paused on her way back to her kitchen to experiment with a new recipe for chicken liver pâté with herbs and cream.

  ‘There was a designer I knew in Paris, in the bad old days of my bad old past. Unfortunately he killed himself over a girl, but before he did, well, he used to––’

  ‘Silly fellow!’ Teddy moaned from the floor, interrupting as usual. ‘Kill yourself for any reason but that. Not for a girl.’

  Miranda stared down at him for a second before continuing. ‘Yes, well, he did. But I did actually know him for a few weeks before that, and he used to design straight onto my body.’

  There was a long, long silence, during which Teddy sat up, brushed back his long, bright blond hair from his eyes and stared ahead of him, a blank look in his eyes.

  ‘He designed straight onto your body?’

  ‘Yes. I’d have nothing on except – you know – my thinnest underwear, and he would mould the material onto my body. He was getting some terrific effects when, um, he took this overdose. Not because of me, poor ducky, because of a beautiful married woman known only as La Contessa. But, you know, he was that sort. Very inspired, and at the same time hysterical. There was nothing to be done. But I have one of his designs, somewhere, up there in one of the trunks. He himself thought it was a terrible flop, but you can see it, if you like.’

  There was another long silence as Teddy, his eyes narrowed, started to walk about the great studio room in which they now all lived almost full time at weekends, sparing only enough time to earn their living, or, in Bobbie’s case, to return to Ebury Street for what she called ‘a spot of sleep’, which meant that she could rest and think without Teddy coming over all enthusiastic, or Miranda insisting on her trying a dish, leaving Dick to play some jazz piano which never shut any of them up.

  ‘Get the dress,’ Teddy commanded. ‘At once.’

  ‘Not until I’ve whipped these precious eggs, Ted. Stay awhile while I am cruel to these eggs.’

  ‘No, no, no, big Sis, you go and get that dress pronto, and leave the eggs the way their mother laid them for a little minute. This is my living we’re talking about. I can’t just photograph dresses, I have to make ’em, too. I am going to be the first to make the cross-over between photography and high fashion, and the effects will be spellbinding. You will see.’

  Miranda did as she was bid, almost as a matter of course, because somehow, when Teddy wanted something, she always found that she sprang to attention.

  Bobbie leaned towards the piano, which Dick was playing with wonderful lightness of touch, and murmured above the sound of his playing, ‘Teddy commands and big Sis runs. It’s not good for him, really it isn’t. Miranda must stop kowtowing to him, before he starts crowning himself the King of Aubrey Close.’

  Dick looked up, briefly raising his eyebrows to the ceiling, but he never stopped playing for a second. ‘You noticed, Bobbie dear,’ was all he said, and his playing at once took on a melancholy sound, as if from that moment a little of the joy had gone from the day.

  Of course, when Miranda reappeared in the dress, it turned out to be nothing short of stunning, and for one moment, as she stood at the top of the studio stairs and raised her long arms above her head, not only did Dick stare up adoringly at her, they all did, even Teddy.

  The dress was an inspired spiral of material that looked as if it had been literally moulded to her body, as indeed it had been, and now that she was out of her navy blue clothes Miranda’s body could be seen to be well worth moulding silk to, or anything else, for that matter. The space between the bottom of her bust and the top of her waist was longer than on most ordinary people, and as well as being slender to the point of looking as if it might snap, the waist itself too seemed longer than normal, so that her long slender hips did not look exaggerated, but merely extended the same long slender line. In other words, she was all woman, nothing of the boy about her, and quite perfect in outline.

  The cloth that the designer had used was a new mix, something that Teddy had not come across before, some new kind of thinner and more pliant silk, and the colours were shot together, apple green with a mauve mixed into it somehow. It positively glowed under the lights of the studio, and when she turned at the bottom of the stairs to reveal a vast bow knotted across her hips at the back they all found themselves applauding spontaneously.

  ‘Why was Miranda not a success as a model,’ Bobbie demanded when Teddy called round the next day to help her with yet more wallpapering. ‘She should be far
more famous than all of us. She should be on every billboard and magazine cover. She is stunning.’

  Teddy shrugged his shoulders. ‘Because she allowed herself to be picked up by this nutter called Mac something. I mean typical Miranda. And don’t tell her I told you, but she was a disaster because she actually fell in love with him. That was her mistake. If she had just modelled and made a success of it, and come home, that would have been that. But she wanted him to love her too, and you know that kind of man – they’re usually half sadist and half businessman.’

  ‘No, I don’t actually.’

  ‘And you’ve got to remember, too, they despise women for having ambitions about anything, either themselves or anything else, really. They only really worship their mothers – women who will take care of them and their needs – and just want to make money from the rest, the beautiful young girls they meet. Just money, money, money, that is all that kind of relationship is about. And of course as soon as Miranda realized this, being Miranda, she started down the rocky road.’ Here Teddy mimed knocking back a drink. ‘Anise, I think she said was her Parisian tipple. But really, what does it matter? By the time we stumbled across her in the Blue Note she was just one great horrible mess. She’s all right now, but – oh God. I mean we all love Miranda, but that night, I thought I would be sick when I saw her.’

  ‘Poor soul.’

  ‘Poor soul? It was her own fault. She should have had more horse sense. Falling in with a man like that.’

  Bobbie put down her wallpapering brush, and frowned across at Teddy. ‘Just you be careful, Teddy Mowbray. One day you will fall in love with the wrong person, and you will then see how chaotic love is, how terrible, how you suffer for it. Believe me, you do. You suffer as much as the damned are meant to suffer, perhaps more.’

  Teddy stared at her from the top of the ladder where he was perched, suddenly realizing that Bobbie of all people, Bobbie whom he now thought of as the most beautiful creature in the universe, was speaking from experience.

  ‘You have been in love.’

  Bobbie frowned, and quickly turned away. ‘No, of course not. But, you know, I do believe in what the Easterns call “karma” or something like that. That everything you do wrong, or that you despise in someone else, will turn back on you. For instance, if you are so busy making fun of poor Miranda for that beastly love affair in Paris that went so wrong, the same thing will happen to you. You will fall in love with someone who will hurt you. It will happen, Teddy, really it will.’

  Teddy laughed. ‘I am not the type to fall in love, Bobbie. You know me. Carefree Ted. Ambitious Ted. I do not fall in love. Women to me are there merely to be used. Like the dreaded Macaskie – that was his name – I will use women for my own purposes. Mould materials onto their divine bodies and sell them all, dresses and bodies and all, to the highest bidder. That is what I shall do,’ he finished gaily.

  So Bobbie said ‘Humph’ and went off to make them both some much-needed coffee, but first she made a speech to Teddy, wagging her finger up at where he still sat at the top of his ladder.

  ‘The trouble with you, Teddy Mowbray, is that your head is too big. You will fall in love when you least expect it, you’ll see. You will fall in love with a girl who won’t care a silly little damn for you, and you will suffer tortures, you’ll soon see. Just you wait.’

  Teddy turned back to the wall and leaned his head against it and shut his eyes. He did not have to wait. He already had fallen in love with a girl who did not care a silly little damn for him, and she was making coffee and humming ‘Music while you work, Hitler is a jerk’, and she had a small yellow handkerchief tied round her rich brown, shining dark hair, and a pair of Capri trousers that ended halfway down her legs displaying slender ankles. Frankly, he thought miserably, if he did not love her so much he would hate her for never, ever noticing what was there in his eyes every time he looked at her.

  ‘There.’ She put down the coffee tray, and stared up at him, ‘Quaker Girl makes perfect coffee for old bighead.’

  She smiled up at him, and Teddy felt like pulling her up his ladder and kissing her until she fainted, but it was just not him to do such a thing. No, he knew his place in life, and that was to go on being Teddy Mowbray, the old carefree bighead.

  ‘Now, Bobbie,’ he said, and he looked at her reproachfully, ‘how can you call the man who has made you famous “old bighead”?’

  ‘Because,’ Bobbie said, biting into a biscuit and for no reason at all waving it about, ‘I am cruel, Teddy Mowbray, don’t you remember that? When we were at Mellaston, it was always Miranda who was kind, and I was always cruel.’

  ‘That is not true, you were both darlings and you know it. Tell you what, let’s go down to the old place, to the old rectory, at the end of next week? As a matter of fact, we could shoot that gumdrop advertisement there, couldn’t we? An old rectory, a clergyman, and you, the Quaker Girl, in something perfectly outrageous chewing a gumdrop. Oh, God.’ He leaned back against one newly papered wall and, determined to go on over-acting to make Bobbie laugh, he shut his eyes again and groaned. ‘Oh, God, why am I such a genius? That is so beautifully brilliant. Oh, but guess who will take all the credit for it? North and Ryland. As soon as they see the pictures they will preen themselves in front of their clients, and the ad will take off and you and I will be paid in buttons, as always. Buttonholers is all we are, just like the buttonholers in the sweat shops at the back of the garment industry. We do all the work, and they get paid for it.’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘Yes but what, Roberta Murray?’

  ‘Yes but …’ Bobbie waved another biscuit above her head, this time as if it was a fan and she was doing a fan dance. ‘But we, don’t forget, are having all the fun, and fun is better than money any day. I know. I have seen rich people, and I will tell you something – they never smile. And shall I tell you why they never smile? Because they are rich. No, we are having all the fun, and we must not spoil it by becoming rich too. Money ruins everything. I know. I have seen the unsmiling rich, always suspicious and worried that someone might sit down next to them who is not rich, who is only going to be interested in their money, who-whoo!’

  Bobbie ended by making an owl sound through her closed hands, after which she climbed up her own ladder again and they continued wallpapering to the sound of the new wireless programme being listened to, rather too loudly, by the second Mrs Saxby, and Boy the pug, of course.

  But Teddy, being Teddy, could not understand what Bobbie meant.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dick was allowed to come with them for the duration of the shooting of the gumdrop advertisement, and of course Miranda had to come, and once Teddy had decided that Miranda could come it occurred to him that she might as well be in the advertisement too.

  ‘It’s not as if the two of you are in any way alike. Besides, it might be good to put Bobbie in the middle and then have you somewhere in the background. I’ll work out the story behind it. Anyway, it means that we all get our expenses paid, and that is good.’

  Miranda did not really want to leave London at that moment, but the temptation to return to the old rectory, and to Mellaston, was too much. Besides, if they brought Dick along with them it would, she imagined, prevent their all becoming too sentimental. That is what she hoped, anyway. After all, Dick and she were now partners, and that was something really.

  She looked at him, driving them all along in his brand new Morris Oxford to their first stop, for dinner. They would stay the night, and complete the journey to Mellaston the next day. Compared to Teddy – who was seated beside him, his feet up on the dashboard, his hat pulled down over his eyes, a cigarette in one hand, its smoke drifting out of the window – it had to be said that Dick, despite being a painter, was the acme of reliability. Not only was he never late or boastful, but unlike Teddy he was completely and utterly content. He was not like herself and Teddy and Bobbie; he had none of their restlessness, none of their huge ups, or fearful downs. B
ut then again, despite his painterly background, Dick was unlike all of them in another way. Dick was a touch patrician. And not just because he had the good luck to have private money, and the talent to pursue what he loved to do; he was always at pains not to show his feelings, in case they affected someone else, which, Miranda realized suddenly, considering how they all were, was probably just as well, really.

  However, patrician or not, Dick was not averse to making a speech once they arrived outside the Dog and Pheasant.

  ‘England has the greatest tradition of coaching inns in the world. When they became popular in the eighteenth century they became the envy of Europe, did you know that? Great welcoming log fires, beef roasting on a spit, smiling ostlers rushing out to welcome you – it was one of the greatest boons of being an Englishman, travelling around this exquisite island of ours, to arrive, cold, tired, and travel-stained, at one of our coaching inns.’

  It transpired that the Dog and Pheasant was in just such a tradition. A real English inn of a pub with a vast log fire burning in the hall, and that slight smell of wood ash mixed with lavender furniture polish and pot pourri which is so comfortingly English. There were fires in all the rooms, although it was still only early autumn, and the logs in the grates hissed and spat, and sometimes seemed to be declining to leap into life in a Christmassy fashion, but that did not matter. There was a spark and a flame here and there, and above all, through all the rooms, the delightful smell of wood smoke, an aroma which turns an arrival from the dullest journey into an event of warmth and delight.

  Upstairs the rooms were small, the floors uneven, and the flowered curtains already drawn against the darkness outside. Bobbie and Miranda shared a double room, as did Dick and Teddy, with a bathroom somewhere down the corridors, which had to be scurried to, back and forth.

  Every now and then, of course, because he simply could not bear to think that they were not talking or thinking about him all the time, Teddy knocked on the door and shouted some inanity into the girls’ room, at which Bobbie and Miranda would groan and call, ‘Go-away-Teddy! At-least-until-dinner-time,’ which to their great surprise he eventually did.