Before I Met You

by Lisa Jewell

  Betty held her breath. There had long been a rumour in the tabloids that there was a Dom Jones love child somewhere in north London, a child only two weeks younger than Donny. But nothing had ever been proved. The mother, an emaciated sculptress called Tiffany, who’d also had a baby with another rock star, had never said anything to either fuel or kill off the rumours. But there was a suggestion here – the use of the plural ‘women’ – that maybe he was the child’s father. Betty looked into Dom’s eyes. They were bloodshot and slightly dazed. He’d clearly spent the whole day drinking to some extent or another. He was drunk and tired and vulnerable. She didn’t ask the question. Instead she smiled and said, ‘Yes, and very nice babies you make, too.’

  ‘Ah, yeah, my babies.’ His face softened. ‘My beautiful fucking babies. I miss them so much. So fucking much.’ And then he started to cry. He dug the heels of his hands into his eye sockets and sobbed. ‘I’ve fucked it all up, Betty,’ he sniffed. ‘Fucked the whole thing up. I wish I could be different. I wish I could be just like some normal guy, you know, off to work with my lunch in my bag, kiss the kids goodbye, home for bath-time, glass of wine, shag the wife. But you know, I never could have been that person. I’ve always had it in me, all this creativity, all this power, all these urges, these overwhelming urges. Even when I was at school. All I did was chase girls and make music and cause trouble. And now I’m like, thirty-two, you know, and maybe it’s too late for me to change. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is all there is for me. Just all this arsing about. And sometimes that’s enough, you know.’ He sniffed again and wiped his nose against the sleeve of his denim jacket. ‘And sometimes it just ain’t. I mean, tell me, honestly, Betty.’ He looked up at her through wet lashes. ‘What do you think of me, truthfully? I mean, the real me, the one you’ve got to know against the me you used to read about in the papers?’

  Betty took another sip of champagne, buying herself time to consider the question. ‘I don’t know,’ she said eventually. ‘I mean, obviously I read stuff about you, and obviously I had an opinion, but I don’t think those opinions really count for much ...’ She paused and saw that he was staring at her intensely, like his whole future depended on her opinion of him. She took a breath and continued, ‘And yeah, I suppose I thought you were a bit of a ...’

  His eyes widened, waiting for her pronouncement.

  ‘... a bit of a rabble-rouser,’ she finished diplomatically. ‘And, you know, I’m not really a Wall fan so I haven’t followed the stories religiously but I just saw you as being part of a select group of people all doing the same things, hanging out in the same places, drinking too much, sleeping around, putting two fingers up at everything, all being really, you know ... clever clever.’

  He winced at her words and then smiled encouragingly. ‘But what about now?’ he urged. ‘Now you’ve got to know me a bit. Has your opinion of me changed at all?’

  Betty looked at him again and felt a small surge of annoyance. He had moved beyond using her for therapy and was now using her for ego-maintenance. He didn’t really want to know what she thought, not really. He just wanted reassurance that he was fabulous. She sighed and said, ‘You know, when I see you with your kids I think you’re nothing like the guy in the papers. I saw you once, across the courtyard, just after you moved back in, and you were holding Astrid in your arms, comforting her, and that was the very first time I really thought anything about you at all, to be honest. And I thought, oh look, he’s a human being ...’

  His eyes widened and he nodded encouragingly.

  ‘But then, I see you like this,’ she said, ‘you know, necking champagne, making it all about you. And, I don’t know, it’s like going back to the beginning again.’

  His eyes narrowed and he looked at her questioningly. ‘What do you mean?’ he said in a slightly injured tone of voice.

  She paused while she tried to find a tactful way to express herself and then she looked at Dom, at his soulful puppy-dog eyes full of hurt and hope, and then she thought of the blurred photos of the girl giving him fellatio in a toilet cubicle and she thought, he is just a child, I shall spare him. So she shook her head and smiled and said, ‘Oh, nothing. Nothing. Just, you know, I suppose seeing you here, a bit the worse for wear, it fits with the media image. But really, I think, yes, you’re a good guy.’

  His face flooded with relief and he took her hand and squeezed it and said, ‘Thank you, Betty, thank you. That means a lot to me because, you know, you’re such a great girl, such a cool girl, and I really, really value your opinion.’ He smiled at her cheesily and looked like he was about to say something else, but instead he picked up his champagne glass, drained it, picked up the bottle to top them both up again, stared at it with surprise and disappointment when it yielded nothing more than one small drop and then called over a waiter.

  ‘Another one of these, please,’ he slurred.

  ‘No problem, Dom,’ said the waiter.

  ‘Actually,’ Betty interrupted, ‘you know, I really need to get back now. I’ve got to be up really early ...’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Dom pulled himself straight and ran his hands down his face. ‘Of course. You’re going to take care of my babies and so I will obviously not even attempt to persuade you to stay for another one. Even though I’d really like to.’ He turned back to the waiter and said, ‘Jack Daniel’s, please, a big one.’

  ‘Sure, Dom.’ The waiter smiled and took away the champagne bucket and their empty glasses.

  ‘I’ll see you out,’ Dom said, getting to his feet.

  ‘No need.’

  He considered this for a second and then he suddenly looked tired and wan, and as if simply getting up from the sofa would be a severe physical effort, and he said, ‘Are you sure?’

  Betty nodded. ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘You’ll be all right getting yourself home?’

  ‘I think I can probably manage the walk home,’ she smiled. ‘How about you? Will you be all right getting back?’

  He smiled. ‘Yeah. I’ll probably kip down here.’

  ‘What, here?’ She pointed at the sofa.

  ‘No. Upstairs. There’s rooms.’

  ‘Oh. I see. But your house is so close.’

  ‘Look at the state of me, Betty,’ he said, his hand against his chest. ‘There’s paps out there. I don’t wanna give them the wasted Dom Jones photo. And besides, they’ll give me breakfast here. Bacon and all.’ He smiled weakly and looked like he might be about to fall asleep.

  A man with a huge head of unruly curls that sat atop the body of a child approached Dom then and said, ‘All right, mate?’ Dom said, ‘Yeah, man, I’m great. Long time no see.’

  And the man with the mop top said, ‘Saw you last week, mate.’

  Dom said, ‘Yeah, yeah, course you did. I’m all over the place, mate. All over the place. Park yourself. Take a seat. I’m just saying goodbye to the nanny.’

  The mop top man looked up at Betty and squinted at her through his curls. ‘The nanny?’ he repeated as though there was something inherently sexual about the concept of a person paid to look after children. ‘Hello, nanny.’

  ‘Hi.’ Betty considered introducing herself by her given name, but decided she couldn’t be bothered. ‘And bye. I’ll see you soon, Dom,’ she said.

  He stood and hugged her around her neck, and he smelled of sour wine, departure lounges and too much time in the same clothes.

  ‘Next time,’ he whispered boozily into her ear, ‘we’ll do it properly. Yeah? Next time I’ll plan it, take you somewhere nice. Yeah?’ As he said this she felt his hand snake from her hip to her buttocks, and give them a gentle squeeze.

  She nodded, with confusion. He was drunk and had no idea what he was talking about, but it did sound to her that he was suggesting a date. She moved his hand from her buttocks and pulled herself away from his over-firm grasp, then smiled tightly. ‘Night-night, Dom. Take care.’ She turned to the mop top and said, ‘Look after him, will you?’

  Mop to
p simply smiled blankly and somewhat lasciviously.

  Betty turned and left, moving slowly this time, her arms swinging by her sides, her eyes making contact, drinking it all in: 1a.m. at the Groucho, the whole place imbued with a communal lack of focus, of hazy memories and forgotten conversations.

  She left calmly and happily, the nanny, sober and wide awake. She would go to bed and sleep for five hours and then she would wake up tomorrow in her own bed remembering every last detail. But she would not, she was sure, have even the first idea what to make of any of it.

  40

  1920

  AS THE COMPANION of Godfrey Pickle, Arlette finally shed the last few layers of her former self and embraced the world in which she’d unwittingly found herself. It was as though she’d been reborn that first night in Godfrey’s arms, or more, as if she’d been born for the first time, as if previously she had been nothing more than a wooden doll, waiting for the magician’s gift of life. Now when she walked into a club, she would carry herself like an Egyptian goddess, tall and regal, although she was neither. She plundered the rails at work, no longer looking for an outfit that would mark her out as an upstanding and stylish citizen, but rather one that would elicit overblown compliments from her friends in the club, costumes instead of clothes. She formed herself an image, distinctive and her own.

  Lilian called it ‘The Arlette Look’, and attempted to emulate it, but it never looked quite the same on her rounder, fuller frame, with her pale colouring and babyish face.

  ‘I look like a child who’s plundered the dressing-up box,’ she sighed dramatically, ripping an ornate headdress from the top of her head and flouncing backwards into Arlette’s settee.

  ‘Oh, darling girl,’ said Minu, ‘you are a child who has plundered the dressing-up box. And you should be glad about that.’

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ she replied sulkily. ‘I shall be nineteen years old next week. And I’m more or less running my mother’s home single-handedly. I feel like I’m at least thirty, yet every time I look in the mirror, a child looks back at me. It’s all very tedious ...’

  ‘I can absolutely promise you, one day you will dream about that child in the mirror and wish for her back.’

  Lilian glared at Minu, looking as if she were about to say something, but she failed to find the words and fell back again into the settee.

  ‘Did you see,’ said Minu, ‘in the Illustrated London News last night, another mention for Arlette in Badger’s column?’

  ‘No!’ said Lilian. ‘I did not. Did you keep a copy?’

  Arlette passed her the paper from her dressing table and Lilian read it out loud, her voice tinged with pride and awe.

  ‘And I arrive shortly after midnight at the Cygnet; my companion for the night, the Duchess, has mysteriously disappeared, leaving me high, dry and not a little damp after a sudden downpour on the northern stretches of Piccadilly. And so I attach myself, leech-like, to the side of the exquisite Lady Cleopatra, resplendent and somewhat tickly in an ostrich-feather crown. Lady Cleopatra tells me that her beau, the equally exquisite ebony-skinned brass-blower who I shall call, simply, the Man from the Pitons, is not joining her tonight, for he is playing his clarinet in Brighton, and who can blame the girl for not wanting to join him on the windy south coast when she could be snug and cosy sitting with the Badger in sparkling W1?’

  ‘Was he awfully smelly?’ said Lilian, lifting her eyes from the paper.

  ‘He smells like an old horse in high summer,’ Arlette replied, and all three of them burst into laughter. ‘And he was so drunk,’ she continued, ‘that I am surprised he remembers a thing about it.’

  ‘Why does he call you Lady Cleopatra?’ asked Lilian.

  ‘I have no idea,’ replied Arlette.

  ‘It’s the eyes,’ said Minu. ‘You have Egyptian eyes.’

  ‘I absolutely do not have Egyptian eyes,’ Arlette retorted. ‘I have Guernsey eyes.’

  ‘Whatever they may be,’ Minu rolled her eyes.

  ‘Guernsey eyes are the eyes of my mother and my grandmother. Neither of whom has ever been to Egypt.’

  ‘Well, either way, Lady Cleopatra is a fine pseudonym,’ said Minu. ‘I should be more than happy with it.’

  Lilian lay fully stretched out along the settee, rubbing her stomach in circular movements. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I may have to go home and take to my bed. I’m having an awful time with my monthly visitor.’

  ‘I’ll fill you a water bottle,’ said Arlette. ‘You can’t possibly stay home tonight. It’s Godfrey’s last night at the Kingsway. The party will be absolutely the bee’s knees.’

  ‘I know,’ Lilian grimaced. ‘But I feel utterly awful. And look at my skin. I am literally covered in spots. I can’t.’

  ‘You can,’ insisted Minu, ‘and you will. This might be the last chance we get to see the orchestra in London. Put on some panstick.’ She passed her a tube. ‘And let your hair fall down. No one will notice.’

  Arlette turned back to the mirror and finished off her make-up. She could barely believe that this was the last night of the London run. For ten weeks she had spent nearly all her free time with Godfrey. She would meet him most nights after his show and go for drinks and dancing, sometimes with his friends from the orchestra, sometimes just the two of them. Most nights, at around 1 a.m., they would go their separate ways, but on Fridays and Saturdays she would smuggle Godfrey up the stairs of her Bloomsbury lodgings, past her landlady’s rooms, and Minu would stay out late, and they would spend the night making love and talking. The only night she didn’t see Godfrey was on Sundays, when he and the orchestra would fill the gap in their schedules with extra shows in Brighton and Eastbourne. They had made themselves a routine and now that routine was coming to an end. The orchestra had a string of shows booked in Manchester and would not be back in London until 14 October. She would not see him for a month. He would miss her birthday. It was too painful to contemplate.

  In some ways it would be a relief. She was growing tired of the late nights and the early starts. To go to her bed at a reasonable hour would be something of a treat. To find the time to sit and write to her mother would be wonderful. She had not written her mother more than a few lines since early July. To mend some clothes and write in her diary, to pull herself out of the whirl, just for a few weeks. But she would miss her Godfrey more than she could say.

  The show was spectacular. In spite of two shows a day and regular trips to the coast, in spite of a schedule that had taken these musicians around the four corners of Great Britain not once but twice in the space of only a year, in spite of the late night parties and the sleepless nights in crowded lodging rooms in noisy corners of south London, and in spite of coming here fresh from the tribulations of a terrible world war, still the men sparkled and glowed on stage, still their music made it impossible not to move in rhythm and smile from start to finish.

  Arlette swallowed away a lump in the back of her throat as the show came to an end and the audience got to its feet, and cheered and hollered and stamped and clapped.

  ‘Darling,’ she said, throwing herself into Godfrey’s embrace as he walked towards her after the show, ‘you were absolutely wonderful. Really, the best show yet.’

  He held her close to his body and rested his face against her hair. He held her closer and tighter than he usually would, because he too knew that this time tomorrow he would be settling into a damp room in a small house under a railway bridge in the outskirts of Manchester, that this time tomorrow there would be no glitzy, gilded club waiting to welcome him into its womb-like interior, no beautiful, fine-boned woman sitting by his side, no smiles from strangers and fawning attention from puffed-up journalists and double-barrelled socialites. Tomorrow he would be a jobbing musician again, a mere brass-blower, and all of this would feel like a dream.

  ‘Come on, my sweet Arlette,’ he whispered into her ear, ‘let’s join the party later. First I want to walk for a while, through the city, just you and I.’


  Arlette looked up at him and nodded. ‘That would be wonderful,’ she said.

  They made their excuses and then headed out into the mild dark night. Summer still clung to the edges of the air, and Arlette tucked her arm through the crook of Godfrey’s.

  ‘To the river?’ he suggested.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘why not?’

  They headed in a straight line south, down towards the Aldwych. Arlette’s feathered headdress shivered in the mild breeze and the heels of her shoes clipped the pavement like tiny hoofs. At the river they sat together on a stone bench. Godfrey brought an arm around Arlette’s shoulders, ignoring the curious gaze of a passing couple.

  ‘This has been the most remarkable ten weeks of my life, Arlette,’ he said.

  She looked up at him and smiled. ‘I would have to echo that sentiment, Godfrey.’

  ‘I would never have thought it possible that I could have been taken so deeply into the heart of a foreign city, that I would fall in love with a beautiful English girl, that I would have seen the things and been to the places and felt the things that I have felt. Whatever happens in my life, this will always be for me the best of all possible worlds.’ He smiled and kissed her on the lips.

  ‘And I too,’ she concurred. ‘I never thought that I could live a life like this, to be accepted and loved, to be at the very heart of things, to be with a man like you, a musical genius, a man with such a soul.’

  Then she smiled too and kissed him on the lips.

  ‘You know,’ he said, after a moment, ‘I would like to settle here.’

  She looked at him with surprise. Godfrey had never before spoken about the future, only ever about the next show, the next city.

  ‘I would,’ he continued. ‘I always knew I would not go home, but I never knew where I might be instead of home. And now I think I know. Here. London.’ He opened his arms out towards the river, to the belching chimneys and the muted gaslight on the opposite side of the river, and then behind him to the sweeping stucco curve of Aldwych, the theatres and the hotels and the fine ladies passing by in horse-drawn carriages. ‘Such a vibrant place. So accepting and open. And, of course, it is the place where you are, Arlette.’