Bad Girls Good Women (62 page)

Her appetite lasted for almost the whole of the time Lily was away.

Then she woke up one morning and after they had made love she discovered that she couldn’t think of anything to say to the blond boy in bed beside her. She hadn’t cared to talk before, but this morning she wanted to share confidences, and lovers’ laughter. The blank-faced boy confronted her instead.

‘Wasn’t it any good?’ he asked her.

‘Oh yes, it was fine,’ Julia lied. She got rid of him as soon as she could.

You’re still dependent
, she told herself.
A mass of men, that’s no different from one, is it?

She went to Soho, to a shop displaying surgical corsets and bottles of patent medicine with faded labels in its dusty window. A sign in the corner of the window announced
Marital Aids
. The irony of that didn’t seem particularly amusing. She bought a vibrator and used it, grimly conjuring up faceless fantasies. The charge running through her rapidly lost its electricity, then disappeared altogether.

‘Come with me to rehearsal tomorrow,’ Mattie said.

‘They won’t want spectators hanging round at rehearsal, will they?’

‘This is different,’ Mattie told her.

She had finished work on
Girl at the Window
. It had been a relief to kiss goodbye to her own vapid role, even more of a relief not to have to simulate passion for Tony Drake every day. Mattie had been out of work for weeks afterwards. Deliberately, she had turned down the parts her agent had tried to persuade her to audition for. There had been a supporting role in a silly West End musical, only being staged as a vehicle for a much older, bigger star, and the chance of playing a student nurse in
Emergency Ward Ten
.

‘Bread and butter,’ Francis Willoughby’s successor had murmured, shaking his head. ‘You can’t afford to turn down bread and butter.’

‘I’d rather have gin and éclairs,’ Mattie had told him.

She had stayed at home in Bloomsbury, reading magazines and watching her new television, and going out to eat in her favourite cafés at erratic hours. As an economy measure, because she was out of work, she drank Spanish burgundy instead of gin or whisky. The wine made her sleepy, and she often woke up stiff in her armchair with the blue eye in the centre of the television screen staring balefully at her.

Then, without any warning or preliminaries, a woman rang her up.

‘Mattie Banner?’

‘Speaking.’

‘My name is Chris Fredericks, of the Women’s Stage Group. We’ve seen your work. Are you interested in coming to read for us? It’s a new play, by a new woman playwright. It’s an all-female production.’ Her low, slightly hoarse voice was attractive.

Mattie thought for a moment. She had never heard of the Women’s Stage Group. She looked across the room and saw the pile of magazines on top of the television set, and three empty bottles of wine beside it.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think I would be interested.’

Chris Fredericks gave her an address, a place that sounded like a warehouse, south of the river, a date and a time. Then she rang off.

Mattie raised her eyebrows in mock-surprise. ‘I’m supposed to be the famous actress,’ she told the dead line. ‘What happened to
please, please come and read for us
?’

She found herself looking forward to the reading more keenly than its relative importance might have warranted.

When the day came she found her way to the address in Lambeth. It was, as she had imagined, a warehouse. After hammering at the big metal doors and shouting for several minutes without making herself heard, Mattie was beginning to assume that she had come on the wrong day. Then she heard a rattle on the other side of the doors and one of them slid open to leave a narrow slit. A head popped out of it. It was a girl’s, with a bush of curly dark hair.

‘Oh, hi,’ the girl said, smiling at her. ‘Sorry. We were talking. Didn’t hear you. Come on in.’

Mattie followed her. They passed through the shadowy warehouse space, which as far as she could see was still filled with bits of machinery, and through a door in a partition at the far end. The partition closed off a small high room, furnished with a table and a few packing cases. There was a layer of dust over everything, including a kettle on a tray. Coffee mugs, play-scripts, a relatively undusty bottle of milk and an open packet of chocolate digestive biscuits were scattered over the table. There were perhaps a dozen women perched on the packing cases, all talking. Two or three of them glanced up at Mattie and grinned, one of them stood up and held out her hand. She had a young face, but her black hair was thickly streaked with grey. She was wearing jeans and a man’s shirt.

‘You must be Mattie Banner. I’m Chris Fredericks.’

Mattie was used to recognition and acknowledgement, in professional encounters at least, just as she was used to the studio car and driver. But the members of the Women’s Stage Group hadn’t offered her any acknowledgement beyond ordinary, casual friendliness. Mattie dismissed the twinge of pride and decided that she liked them for it. She shook Chris Fredericks’s hand warmly.

‘We’re a women’s group, as I told you. We’re also a democratic group. All decisions, artistic or administrative, are taken collectively. I have been nominated director because only one person can make a telephone call, for instance. But I have no more authority within the group than anyone else.’ Chris pushed a copy of the script across the table to Mattie. ‘Here you are.
Everywoman’s Odyssey
. Shall we start reading? Is everyone ready?’

Mattie interrupted. ‘Two questions before we start. Why have you invited me?’

‘Alison read an interview with you. You said in it that you think women are more interesting than men. Also, having you in the cast will make sure that we get proper attention.’

It was the oddest read-through that Mattie had ever attended.

There was no directorial suggestion or control. As a result everyone chipped in with what they felt and how they thought a line should be spoken. If there was a serious disagreement it was put to a vote. It took five and a half hours to complete a read-through of the piece.

Mattie thought the play was pungent and funny, in parts. She also thought it was too long and much too wordy, and she said so. By linking a series of short scenes from myth and history, it aimed to illustrate the difference between men and women.

At last, at long last, they came to the final line.

There was a small silence while the words echoed in the dusty space.

Then, ‘What do you think?’ The question was timid. It took Mattie a moment to realise that after all the democracy, they were asking for her opinion.

‘I think it needs a lot of work. It’s rough, and it needs to be sharpened. Democratically, of course.’

There was another small silence.

‘So? Are you in?’

‘Yes, I’m in,’ Mattie said.

They stood up, and crowded round to shake her hand.

‘Welcome to the Group,’ Chris Fredericks said. ‘What d’you think? Shall we all go to the pub to celebrate?’

In the pub they spread around two tables and talked and joked and wisecracked. In the centre of the big, easy group of women Mattie felt warm and invulnerable. Looking beyond Jocelyn and Chris, at the couples sitting at other tables, at the knots of men lounging at the bar, Mattie experienced a new sensation. It was the feeling of being on the inside, looking out.

On the day before Alexander brought a taller, rosier Lily back to Gordon Mansions, a young man with a big suitcase walked into George Tressider’s shop. He had a lively face, long hair and a denim jacket over a stripy T-shirt. He was so much not a Tressider-looking customer that Julia frowned discouragingly. But he stood squarely in front of her desk and announced, ‘I’ve got a new product here. I want an exclusive outlet to sell it through.’

‘You’re in the right place, if it’s exclusivity you want.’ He was gleaming with enthusiasm, and it was infectious. ‘You’d better let me see this wonderful product.’

Out of the suitcase, with a flourish like a magician’s, he produced fold upon fold of bright pink plastic. While Julia stared he attached a foot pump to a nozzle, and began to inflate the plastic. In front of her eyes, the shapeless plastic took on a shape. It grew, and became an armchair, with arms and a back and even a neat plastic antimacassar.

Julia applauded, and sat down on it. It was squeaky, but perfectly comfortable.

‘Blow-up furniture,’ he said. ‘It’s cheap, and it’s fun.’

‘Do you know, I think you’re right. It is fun.’

It was as bright as a child’s balloon, and as rude as a raspberry blown in the faces of all the serious gilt and old oak and mahogany pieces that lined the walls of George Tressider’s shop.

The door to the inner sanctum opened and George himself came out. His gaze flicked over the salesman and his T-shirt, the suitcase and the shiny pink chair underneath Julia.

‘Look, George,’ she exclaimed, too enthusiastically. ‘Blow-up furniture.’

Silently, George surveyed the two of them.

‘What do you think of it?’ the blow-up man asked.

‘I think it’s the tackiest thing I’ve ever seen,’ George answered. He walked past them, past the glowering gilt and mahogany, and out into the street, as though out in the King’s Road he could breathe in air that was at least uncontaminated by pink inflatable armchairs.

Inside the shop, Julia and the salesman looked ruefully at each other, and then they started to laugh.

‘Well, it was a bit of a long shot,’ Julia snorted, ‘coming in here with it.’

‘I thought you were supposed to be decorators to the new rich. Pop stars and photographers and hairdressers. I read about you in
Queen
.’

‘That’s Felix,’ Julia said. She held out her hand and the salesman shook it. ‘I’m Julia Smith.’

‘Thomas Tree. Do you really like the armchair?’

‘Yes, I do.’ Julia didn’t stop to think. ‘If you can produce them, I’ll find a sales outlet for you.’

And that, although she didn’t recognise it, was the start of her brainwave.

It was also the tiny, chance-sown seed from which Garlic & Sapphires grew.

Eighteen

It started in a small way. Through her contacts, Julia found one or two retail outlets that were willing to take a chance with Thomas Tree’s blow-up chairs. Thomas was surprised, although Julia insisted she wasn’t in the least surprised herself, when the first few samples sold at once. The shops clamoured for more, and Thomas went back to his workshop to produce them.

‘Quickly,’ Julia ordered him. ‘It’s no use turning up with them in six months’ time when everyone’s forgotten.’ She looked speculatively at Thomas and at the patches on the knees of his jeans. ‘Do you mind me telling you what to do? There’s no reason why you should take any notice, of course.’

‘I’m grateful,’ Thomas said. ‘Looks like we make quite a good team.’

‘Have you got the money for materials?’

‘I’ll find it.’

Julia had none to offer him. At his insistence, she had taken a tiny commission on the sales. The shops had sold the chairs at a huge mark-up; she knew that Thomas must have made hardly anything out of them.

He came back three weeks later with three dozen chairs in pink, green, orange and scarlet. The colours glowed when he unpacked them in Julia’s living room and Lily bounced gleefully on the orange chair that he blew up for her. Thomas had big dark rings under his eyes, and he looked even thinner than he had done when he first turned up in George’s shop.

‘I’ve been working all hours. It’s gluing the seams that’s the problem,ʼ he said. ‘The cutting, all the rest, that’s easy. But heat-sealing the seams by hand takes for ever. I need machinery if I’m going to produce in quantities.’

‘See how these sell first,’ Julia advised.

‘And I’ve got this,’ Thomas announced. From the big suitcase he produced a multi-coloured coil of plastic. Attached to the foot pump, it blossomed into a nine-foot plastic palm tree, complete with coconuts and a parrot. Lily’s face turned into three ‘O’s of astonishment. ‘Only a prototype,’ he said proudly. ‘But with half a dozen of these you could transform your front room into a desert island.’

Julia stared at it, for one second feeling like George Tressider as she imagined a roomful of waving plastic fronds. Then she started laughing again. ‘Why not? Have you got any more ideas?’

‘Hundreds. Just no money to put them into practice.’

‘Sell these chairs, then raise a bank loan. I’ll see if I can persuade Felix to guarantee it.’

‘I hope it’ll be worth while for both of you,’ Thomas said.

Julia went out with him to the foot of the basement stairs. ‘I’ll try to get you a better deal from the retailers,’ she promised. ‘But you mustn’t pay me any more commission. The chairs sell themselves.’

Thomas held out his hand, and after a moment she shook it. She noticed that he was looking at her, and that the look was admiring. She stepped backwards, away from it, with the memory of her month of freedom still sharp.

‘Bye,’ Thomas said. ‘I’ll be back soon.’

The chairs sold. Julia made the retailers pay more for them than for the first batch, and passed the difference straight to Thomas Tree. That made the final price higher, but they still sold almost as soon as they reached the shops.

There’s a market
, Julia thought. The hairs prickled down the nape of her neck as she contemplated the potential size of it, and the corresponding size of her idea. The young people who swarmed down the King’s Road every Saturday had money to spend. Julia reckoned if they had so much to spend on their clothes, they might spare some for their rooms. If, that is, they were offered merchandise that was cheap, fun, and new. It was the newness that was the most important.

Through that spring and summer, she looked carefully for goods that fulfilled her criteria as brilliantly as Thomas’s did. And as soon as she began to look, she saw possibilities everywhere. In Peter Jones, she almost fell over a range of self-assembly tables and tub chairs. They were shoved away behind the garden furniture, and the cardboard was too thin and the colours were nasty, but the idea was good. A design magazine that she picked up from Felix’s desk featured a space-age chair, the square white plastic shape upholstered in scarlet vinyl, and Julia thought,
That’s it, too. Only it costs too much. Could it be done more cheaply?
In a lighting shop she saw Japanese paper lanterns to use as lampshades, big white globes that gave a soft, simple light. On a handicraft stall at a market she saw hand-coloured candles in the shape of apples and ice-creams and Coca-Cola bottles, and at the same market a month later she met a girl selling lurid satin cushions in the shape of lips and ears and fists.