Before I Met You

by Lisa Jewell

  ‘How was it?’ He leaned down to take the baby from her and the smell of tobacco on his breath reminded her that she had not had a cigarette in over eight hours and hadn’t even noticed.

  ‘Fine,’ she said, through another yawn. ‘Good. Well, once I’d worked out how to put that double buggy up.’ She gestured towards the hallway. ‘That took nearly an hour.’

  ‘You took the kids out?’ He looked surprised.

  ‘God, yes,’ she said, stretching out her arms. ‘Would have gone crazy stuck in here all day. We walked down to St James’s Park. Fed ducks. Went on swings. That kind of thing.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Dom, looking pleasantly surprised. ‘Cool.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘it was fun. We had fun.’

  He looked at her in awe. ‘Well,’ he said after a moment, ‘you’re either lying, or you are, genuinely, Mary Poppins. Either way is fine with me. As long as you promise you’ll come back.’

  He smiled at her. His eyes creased at the corners and he looked tired and sad.

  ‘Of course I will,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘When do you need me?’

  ‘They’re with Amy tomorrow, but she’s dropping them back early evening. Could you do a late one? Possibly, like, early hours?’

  She would have to phone in sick again, break Rodrigo’s little heart, but it was worth it. Dom was paying her more than three times her Wendy’s hourly rate. ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘yes. What time?’

  ‘Come at five,’ he said, ‘if that’s OK?’

  He saw her to the door, the baby sleeping across his shoulder, and as she left he said; ‘Oh, wait, hang on,’ and pulled a roll of notes from his back pocket. ‘For you,’ he said, ‘and well worth every penny. Will you be all right walking home?’

  ‘Er, yes,’ she said, rolling her eyes. She tucked the roll of notes into her shoulder bag without looking at them. It felt strangely unseemly to accept such a large sum of money from someone for a day’s work. But then she thought of supermodels and decided that it was fine. And supermodels did not, after all, have to clean anyone’s bum.

  ‘Thank you, Betty,’ Dom said. ‘I’m glad we met. I feel good about this. I really do.’

  He closed the door quietly behind her, and she headed back towards Berwick Street.

  It had not been an easy day. The logistics of getting three small, uncooperative people from place to place had been challenging and exhausting, and there had been a moment after the tenth time she’d come back into Astrid’s room to attempt to settle her, when she’d had to keep herself from crying with frustration. But really, she’d enjoyed it. They were nice children. And it was all worth it to see Dom’s face soften with gratitude, to hear him say he appreciated her. Because Betty liked being appreciated and she missed looking after someone.

  She rolled a cigarette as she walked, quickly and clumsily, and was about to head straight up to the fire escape and smoke it when she noticed a card in the wire basket beneath the letterbox in the front door with her name scrawled on it. She picked it out and stared at it for a second. It was a flyer for a club night in Windmill Street. The club was called the Matrix and the night was called Lovecats. With DJ J.B. on the decks.

  J.B.

  John Brightly.

  She turned the flyer over and read: ‘I’m here 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. Come and sit with me if you’re not too whacked, John.’

  Betty looked up at her window. She looked down at her clothes. Her summer dress, creased and vaguely stained after her day with Dom’s children, battered Converse, pale legs. She imagined her face: make-up long crumbled away, mascara long picked off. She thought of her breath, stale from the hour’s sleep she’d had on Dom’s sofa, her hair unbrushed and flat at the back.

  And then she thought of John Brightly, alone at his decks, his strong toned arms gleaming under the disco lights. DJJ.B. It was nearly one o’clock. She was just in time. She lit the cigarette and smoked it urgently as she turned back to the front door, opened it and headed back out into the night, towards Windmill Street.

  The Matrix was in a basement, the only outward signifier of its existence being a piece of paper taped to the wall imploring patrons to respect the residents of the area by leaving the building quietly, and a dusty blue light above the door with the letter M painted on it in black.

  Beyond the grubby entrance, however, the Matrix was a gloomily glamorous place clad with tatty red velvet, scuffed gilt and chandeliers. She followed the sound of 10,000 Maniacs into a small room at the back, where around fifty people danced beneath a disco ball and another thirty or so stood around the edges drinking beer from bottles, smoking and looking quite serious. She saw John at the back, squashed into a small corner behind his decks, pulling a vinyl album from its sleeve and examining the surface of it under the dull lights.

  She queued for a minute at the bar and bought two beers, which she carried over to the DJ booth.

  ‘Hi!’ she said, holding a bottle aloft.

  John looked up at her and she saw his face turn from steely concentration to something suggestive of pleasure. ‘You came,’ he said, pulling his headphones from his ears and accepting the beer. He looked at his watch. ‘You just finished work?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Wow, that was a long day.’

  ‘Babies, not burgers. Dom Jones gave me two hundred quid for it.’

  John’s eyebrows jumped towards his hairline. ‘Seriously?’

  She pulled the roll of notes from her shoulder bag and showed them to him.

  ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘you should be careful with that.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, putting them back in her bag and holding it close to her stomach, ‘I’m being very careful. And straight to the bank first thing. But in the meantime,’ she smiled, ‘beers are on me.’ She knocked the bottle against his and he held open the door of his booth so that she could squeeze in next to him.

  ‘Bit of a squash,’ he said, offering her his stool.

  ‘No problem,’ she said, feeling the heat radiating from his body. ‘It’s cosy.’

  He smiled at her and said, ‘Stick with me. I won’t be able to chat much, but I’ll be off in a minute and then we can find a quiet corner. Unless, of course, you want to dance?’

  She looked at him in horror. ‘No!’ she said. ‘No thank you.’

  He smiled down at her as if to say, ‘Good,’ and then he put his headphones back on and lifted the needle from Tom Tom Club, while on the other turntable the needle came down on the opening bar of ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Pigbag’ and every thirtysomething ligger at the back of the club let go of the wall and headed for the dancefloor, eyes shining with nostalgia.

  Betty glanced up at John, watching him work. She saw sweaty clubbers walk across to the booth to shout in John’s ear, asking for requests. She saw a pretty girl in a négligée and thick black eyeliner pass him a beer with a smile. She saw him examine each disc of vinyl as if it were a rare diamond, searching it for flaws, before placing it gentle as a baby onto the felt-covered turntable. She felt his body move in time to the music, smelled his sweat, damp and musky, through his thin T-shirt, watched his strong brow furrow with concentration every time he faded one song into another. She noticed that he never smiled, not at the pretty girls, not at the euphoric, sweat-drenched dancers. Every few minutes he would lean down and shout something in her ear. She only heard half of what he said, but she noticed that every time he looked at her, he allowed himself a half-formed smile.

  At one fifteen John finished his set with ‘Born Slippy’ and took her to a small bar two doors down. He came back from the bar with two pints of lager and two whisky chasers, which he placed on the table in front of them alongside his packet of Lambert and Butler and Betty’s tobacco pouch. Betty had watched him at the bar. The barmaid knew him, had smiled warmly and flirtatiously as she’d served him. He’d nodded and winked at people sitting at a couple of tables on his way back and she’d heard someone call out, ‘All right, J.B.?’

  ‘
This is your local, then?’ she enquired.

  ‘Yeah. Kind of. It’s my club.’

  ‘Your club?’

  ‘Yeah. My club. Mostly market people. Some sex workers. Dom Jones’s got the Groucho. I’ve got the Windmill. Cheers.’

  She raised her pint glass towards his and appraised him under the slightly liverish lights. She barely knew the man, yet he was growing layers day by day. A man of twenty-seven, brought up by an antiques dealer, obsessive about music, obsessive about vinyl, a smoker, a drinker, a man who liked hats. He was fit and he was a night owl. He worked fourteen-hour days, did not blanch in the face of a bucket-load of someone else’s vomit, but did not smile at pretty girls in négligées who gave him beer to drink.

  ‘Where do you live?’ she opened, wanting to flesh out the picture with yet more layers.

  ‘Paddington,’ he said. ‘Harrow Road.’

  She nodded. It meant nothing to her. ‘Is it nice?’

  He laughed and shook his head. ‘I live in a shit hole,’ he said. ‘Rising damp. Subsidence. Dry rot. Water comes down the wall when it’s raining. The place should be condemned. If I had the time I’d find somewhere decent to live. But I haven’t got the time, so I’m stuck there.’ He flexed his knuckles on the table top, and winced. ‘It’s affecting my joints, you know, the damp. That’s why I have to go so easy with the vinyl when I’m DJing, have to really move slowly otherwise I’d drop stuff or miss the beat. And then of course I spend all day outside, which doesn’t help ...’

  ‘What about your sister?’

  ‘What about my sister?’

  ‘Couldn’t you live with her?’

  He looked at her aghast. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Eighteen years living with her was plenty long enough, thank you all the same. I’d rather put up with the dry rot.’

  Betty nodded, as if she knew what he meant. But she had no idea. She was an only child. ‘And your mum and dad?’

  ‘Mum lives in Hastings. Dad lives in Bedford. It’s fine,’ he said. ‘I only sleep there. You know, most nights, when I’m DJing, I crash out like a light, one, two a.m., then I’m up and out again at five thirty.’ He shrugged.

  ‘Why don’t I ask Marni?’ Betty said, filled with horror at the thought of this fine man living in squalor, his strong hands growing weak with the damp. ‘You know, the girl who found my place for me. I bet she’s got loads of places round Paddington. Loads of places you could see.’

  He smiled and nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘you’re right. Maybe I should. It’s just like a vicious cycle. I don’t want to go home so I make sure I’m busy and then I’m too busy to find somewhere decent to live.’ He sketched a circle on the tabletop with a square fingertip, before drawing his hand back into a fist.

  ‘I’ll call her,’ said Betty, ‘tomorrow. If you want.’

  John looked down at her. His dark eyes crinkled at the corners. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘That’s really kind of you.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ she said. And she patted the hard ridges of his knuckles, fondly.

  He looked at her in surprise and Betty put her hand back in her lap.

  ‘You know,’ he said, after a short pause, ‘when I first saw you ...’

  ‘You thought I was a stupid bint,’ she finished for him.

  He laughed gently. ‘Well, no, not quite. I just thought, I don’t know, you seemed like one of those Trustafarian types, playing at being grown up, Mummy and Daddy paying for you to live life on the edge, that kind of thing. And then I’ve watched you these last few weeks and I can see how wrong I was. You’re the real deal, you know. A real, proper person.’

  Betty gulped. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Thank you. And since we’re being honest, when I first met you I thought you were a total wanker.’

  John threw her a look of injured surprise, and then he laughed. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘most people think that when they first meet me. It’s why I haven’t made any new friends since I was eight years old. So,’ he turned to face her, ‘have I done anything to disavow you of your first impressions?’

  She gave him a stern smile. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You have.’

  ‘So you don’t think I’m a wanker any more?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I think you’re ...’ she paused. She had no idea what she thought he was. ‘I haven’t made my mind up yet,’ she finished.

  He laughed. ‘Fair enough. I can’t say I’ve really made my mind up about myself yet, so no reason why you should have.’

  Betty turned down John’s offer of a cigarette and made herself a roll-up. For a moment they sat in silence. But it wasn’t an awkward silence, it was more a moment of reflection between two people who’d had a long, hard day, sitting late at night in a scruffy members’ bar in Soho.

  ‘So,’ said John, inhaling on his cigarette and resting it in a glass ashtray, ‘tell me about Dom Jones. What’s the deal there?’

  Betty shrugged. ‘Well, Amy Metz has sacked the nanny and keeps leaving the kids with him at short notice. So I’m saving his bacon, basically.’

  ‘And what’s it like,’ he continued, ‘you know, behind the doors?’

  Betty threw him a patronising smile and said, ‘Oh, come on now, John, surely you don’t have the slightest interest in the domestic minutiae of some boring megastar pop singer. Surely you’re far too cool to give a shit.’

  John smirked. ‘Yeah, well,’ he said, ‘I’m not really interested, just, you know, making conversation. Taking a polite interest in your job.’

  Betty laughed. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Sure. But unfortunately I am not at liberty to divulge any personal details about Dom Jones’s private or domestic life.’

  ‘What, he’s made you sign something, has he?’

  ‘No! Right now we’re just working on a gentleman’s agreement. He trusts me. And I don’t want to abuse that trust.’ She pursed her lips piously and lit her roll-up.

  John nodded at her approvingly and said, ‘Good on you. I respect that. But seriously, what’s he like? Is he a total nob?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘he’s a bit vague, a bit scatty. But from what little I’ve seen of him, I think he’s quite decent. Loves his kids. Keeps a nice house. Eats well ...’

  ‘A lot of cheese, yeah?’

  ‘A lot of cheese,’ she laughed. ‘Tons of fruit. No crisps. And believe me, I looked for crisps.’ She stopped and put her finger to her lips. ‘But that,’ she said, ‘is more than enough. No more Dom talk. Let’s talk about you.’

  ‘Oh God, no way. Number one: I hate talking about myself, mainly because, number two: there is nothing to say. And anyway, what I really dragged you out tonight for was to find out the long story. The night of the party. Why you disappeared, left me sitting on a fire escape for half an hour with ten Polish language students.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘yes. Of course. Candy Lee.’

  ‘Candy Lee?’

  ‘Mad Chinese lesbian. From the flat downstairs. Cornered me in the bathroom. Tried to seduce me. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.’

  ‘Oh my God, she didn’t assault you, did she?’

  Betty laughed. ‘Er, no, not quite. But she made it quite clear she would like to. With her studded tongue.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Well, I said thank you but no thank you, and then she left. With an open offer to visit her downstairs if I ever change my mind.’

  John looked at her mock-seriously. ‘Do you think you will?’

  ‘Well, you know ...’ She winked and laughed and smoked her roll-up.

  ‘That wasn’t a long story.’

  ‘No. You’re right.’ She exhaled. ‘It was pretty short, really. Felt like for ever at the time, mind you. Maybe I just pretended it was going to be a long story to subliminally persuade you to invite me out for a drink.’ She stopped and flushed red. John raised an eyebrow at her sardonically. She had not meant to say that. ‘I mean, not because I wanted to, to ... you know, like a date or anything. Just because you’re down there and I’m up there and we
keep passing, and it was time, you know, time to get to know each other.’

  ‘I agree,’ he said, and he raised his whisky shot to hers. ‘Cheers. And while I reserve the right not to tell you anything about myself, I do still insist, if we are getting to know each other, that you tell me everything about yourself. All of it. Starting with the crumbling mansion. If you don’t mind.’ He flashed her a cheeky smile, one of his rare ‘full’ smiles, one that involved both his eyes and his lips. She flushed again. His face in repose was calm and slightly forbidding – not a mask as such, but certainly a net curtain. When he smiled like that it was like pulling open the net curtains and discovering that it was the first day of summer. It made her glad that he didn’t smile very much, otherwise she might get used to it and stop seeing it as the beautiful thing it was.

  She drew in her breath. There were feelings stirring within her, feelings she was not ready to acknowledge. She made her face look wry and cool and said, ‘The crumbling mansion on a cliff-top, you mean?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he smiled again, ‘yes. On a cliff-top. Windswept, I hope?’

  ‘Very windswept, battered daily by the elements.’

  ‘And please, please tell me it was haunted?’

  ‘No, not haunted. But a very, very old lady lived there. A very old lady with red satin shoes.’

  ‘Red satin shoes?’ said John, rubbing his hands together. ‘I’m hooked. Tell me everything. The whole story of you.’

  Betty smiled. ‘It’s quite boring.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ said John. ‘It’s about you. And you’re not boring.’

  ‘Aren’t I?’

  ‘No,’ said John. ‘You’re not.’

  Betty smiled again, and told him everything.

  29

  1920

  ‘GOOD MORNING, MA’AM. My name is Mr Pickle and I am looking for Miss Arlette De La Mare. I wonder if you would be so good as to tell her that I am here? I thank you.’

  Mrs Stamper, the manager of the ladies’ apparel department, glanced up at Arlette’s gentleman visitor and her arched eyebrows shot towards her hairline. She put a hand to her chest and appraised the man in front of her from the tips of his shiny black shoes to the top of his expensive mohair bowler hat. She took in the coffee-and-cream-striped satin waistcoat, the gold fob watch hanging from a chain across his stomach, and the large bunch of white gladioli clutched inside his dark-skinned hands, and said, in a voice set midway between shock and delight, ‘I’m not entirely sure. Let me just check for you.’