Betty scrambled to her feet and grabbed the receiver, her face still smarting sweetly from John’s touch. ‘Yes?’ she said, rather brusquely, which was not at all how she’d intended to begin the conversation.
‘Betty?’
‘Yes.’
‘Amy Metz.’
‘Hello,’ she said, bluntly. It appeared that John Brightly had stolen her vocabulary.
‘Listen. It was really good meeting you yesterday. And I’ve gotta say, you were by far the best of the bunch. By a mile. But still, I have these misgivings, you know? All these other girls have got qualifications and references jumping out of their asses. You, you’ve got nothing. Just a nice personality and a back story. So what I’m gonna do is this. A trial. Two weeks. If you like it and I like you, then after that we’ll talk about a more permanent thing. I’ll give you the going rate, six an hour, and we can discuss a salary if we get to that point. What do you think?’
Betty nodded. And then she found her voice and said, ‘Oh. Yes. That sounds great.’
‘Great! I’ll need you to come in today, sign some legal stuff, nothing fancy, just some basic privacy stuff. Pretty standard for this kind of thing. Then we’ll start you properly tomorrow at eight. Yeah?’
‘Er, yeah.’
‘Can you get here at five?’
‘Sure.’
‘Cool. I’ll see you then.’
Betty put the phone down and sank onto the bottom step. She breathed away a rising sense of panic and then she opened the front door and smiled at John Brightly.
‘I got the job,’ she said quietly, too scared to hear the words out loud.
He smiled at her. ‘Of course you did,’ he said.
She felt waves of pleasure ripple through her belly at his words.
‘Shit,’ she said, biting her lip and relighting her half-smoked roll-up.
‘It’s great,’ he said. ‘A real kick-start for your CV.’
‘You think?’
‘Yeah. Of course it is. Listen,’ he looked at his watch, ‘I haven’t had any lunch yet. If I can get someone to cover this for me,’ he indicated his record stall, ‘will you come and have a bite with me. By way of celebration, if you like?’
‘A celebratory sandwich, you mean?’
‘Yeah, and a lemonade, if you’re up for it.’
She looked at John Brightly, let the essence of him wash over her for a second; his everyman demeanour, the smooth tanned arms, the face that gave nothing away, the thick head of hair that she sometimes found herself dreaming about running her fingers through, the tattoo on his wrist, the almost militaristic style of dressing. And then she thought about the more vulnerable side of John Brightly; the half-arthritic fingers and creaking joints, the slight tang of damp about his aroma, the hats he wore, hats he must have tried on in mirrors, turning his head this way and that to check the angles, caring about his image, caring about whether or not they suited him. And then that moment just now, the softest part of himself he’d yet shown
her
: the warm palm against her face, the words of gentle encouragement.
She had two hours before she needed to set off for Primrose Hill. She wanted to pop into Wendy’s, tell Rodrigo that she wouldn’t be coming into work for a couple of weeks (she wouldn’t hand in her notice just yet, not until she’d been offered the job properly). And she’d wanted to spend some time in the library, researching jazz orchestras and Gideon Worsley, but as important as that was, she knew that it could wait. For now.
‘A lemonade sounds good,’ she said. ‘But make it a strong one.’
38
1920
‘ARLETTE!’ GIDEON LEAPED
up from his seat at the back of the Cygnet Club where he’d been talking to a man wearing a pink cravat. ‘I had no idea you were coming tonight. What a wonderful surprise!’
Arlette smiled at him, uncertainly. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘Gideon, I wasn’t expecting to see you here, either.’ She accepted a kiss on her cheek and saw Gideon’s face drop slightly at the sight of her entourage, coming in behind her.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Mr Pickle. I didn’t realise …’
‘We’ve been to see Godfrey playing with his orchestra. At the Kingsway Hall.’ She said this quickly, breathily, as though she were lying. ‘It was absolutely marvellous,’ she finished. She moved aside so that Minu and Lilian could be greeted by Gideon and then watched awkwardly as Godfrey and Horace moved in to say hello, to shake hands and exchange pleasantries.
Arlette felt her spirits deflate. Although she and Gideon were probably widely held to be courting, in reality they had gone no further in their private moments than to hold hands. Gideon had made it plain that he would like to kiss her on many occasions,
and
on every occasion Arlette had fondly told him that she did not think she wished to kiss anyone. She saw Gideon as a handsome older brother, someone whose company she enjoyed, someone she looked forward to seeing and someone she felt she could trust. But she did not feel sufficiently passionate towards him to want to kiss him on his lips. But she was also aware that in spending time alone with him, that in encouraging his friendship and allowing moments of hand-holding and gentle affection, she had unwittingly been pulling him along on a lead, like a small dog. It was perfectly reasonable of him to assume that theirs was a special friendship within which there should be no room for anyone else.
And now, here she was, torn between the man who kept her safe and the man who made her feel mad with wanting.
‘So,’ Gideon was saying, his voice slightly betraying his disappointment in finding himself forced to share Arlette’s attentions, ‘I hear the performance was incredible. I’m sorry I missed it.’
‘Ah, Gideon, I will send you some tickets tomorrow, don’t you worry.’
‘And all these lovely ladies,’ Gideon continued, sounding slightly melancholy, ‘coming to see you. You must feel so flattered.’
‘Oh, indeed I do,’ Godfrey smiled. ‘Indeed I do. And now, well, Mam’zelle Arlette has to rush home to get her beauty sleep and she promised me a dance before she has to turn into a pumpkin so, if you don’t mind, I will whisk her away.’ He smiled heartily at Gideon, and Gideon smiled bravely back at him.
‘Of course,’ he said magnanimously. ‘Of course.’ He threw Arlette a slightly injured smile and then brought Lilian, Minu and Horace onto his banquette and started loudly ordering drinks for everyone.
‘I think our friend Gideon is worried that I am trying to steal you away from him,’ said Godfrey, his hand gently pressed
against
the small of Arlette’s back as they made their way towards the dance floor.
‘Oh,’ said Arlette. ‘No. I’m sure he isn’t. Because I do not belong to him.’
Godfrey stopped and looked at her. His face was a picture of charmed delight. ‘Well, no,’ he said. ‘Of course you don’t. A fine woman like you belongs to nobody.’
‘Absolutely, Mr Pickle.’
‘Godfrey.’
‘Yes. Godfrey.’ And then she smiled a smile she’d never known she was capable of producing. It was both innocent and worldly-wise. The smile of a woman who had experienced little, but felt a lot.
‘I have much respect for your friend Gideon,’ he continued.
‘As do I.’
‘He is a good man, with a good soul. I would wish him nothing but the best of everything.’
‘Me too.’
‘And I must say that I thought, from our last meeting, that he had laid a claim to your heart.’
‘Not in that way, Godfrey.’
They turned to face each other on the dance floor. The band were playing a torch song. The light was faded red and marbled with cigarette smoke. Godfrey smiled at Arlette and said, ‘Shall we?’ He offered her a hand, which sent a jolt of electricity through her body when she touched it. The other hand he brought down upon her hip where it burned a hole through her flesh. On the stage a middle-aged woman in a tight velvet dress sang songs of loneliness and heartbreak. Arlette smiled at Godfrey and he smiled back at her. Then he brought his face down to hers and for one extraordinary moment Arlette thought he was going to kiss her, here, on the dancefloor, in front of her friends, in front of Gideon, and she held her breath and thought, yes, let it be, let it be now. But he didn’t kiss her. Instead he put
his
mouth to her ear and said, ‘I would like to take you home, Miss De La Mare.’
She did not speak. Instead she simply nodded her head, just once, and then quickly, before anyone could stop them, before, indeed, she could stop herself, she took Godfrey’s hand and led him through the club, past the enquiring gaze of Gideon and her friends, out onto the pavement and into a hackney carriage.
‘Bloomsbury, please,’ she instructed the driver, breathlessly. ‘And quickly.’
They removed their shoes at the bottom of the stairs of the Bloomsbury town house and ascended the stairs on tiptoes. They heard the murmur of Arlette’s landlady through the door of her upstairs sitting room and paused momentarily before continuing on towards the attic rooms.
Once inside her apartment, Arlette drew the bolt across the door and then stood, for just a moment, flushed with desire, her back against the door, her arms clasped behind her, her chest rising and falling, while Godfrey stood before her, a slight smile on his face.
‘You are so beautiful,’ he said, and then put a hand to her cheek. She fell against his hand, greedily, and brought it to her mouth where she kissed it and tasted it and knew without any doubt that tonight she would lose her virginity.
His hand moved from her face, down her neck and then stopped upon her breastbone. She grasped it and pulled it down, so that his hand cupped her entirely. They stared at each other and then all the things that Arlette had suspected but never known for sure made themselves plain to her. She felt his mouth against hers, soft and urgent, his hands on her, all over her, the smell of him in her nose, the smell of sandalwood and vanilla, the same scent that had faded to nothing on a square of muslin in her bed-stand drawer over the past ten weeks.
And then, as though possessed by a secondary soul, one that
had
resided within her for twenty-one years without her knowledge, she found herself removing Godfrey’s trousers, then allowing him to remove her own clothes and within a few small, almost unthinking movements, they were upon her bed and he was on top of her, looking into her eyes and saying; ‘Miss De La Mare, have you ever done this before?’
She shook her head.
He looked at her sweetly, pushed some hair from her face and said, ‘Then I shall be gentle.’
And it was all she could do not to say, ‘No! Don’t be gentle!’ But instead she smiled and brought his mouth back down upon hers and allowed him to take her away from her state of purity.
It took all of five minutes. But what came after took all night. For hours, until the sun shone through the small dormer windows, they talked and they held each other. Godfrey told Arlette about his family: his father, the chief of police, his mother, a former beauty queen, his house at the foot of the Pitons, his childhood spent practising music, studying, singing in the choir at his local church. He told her about his experiences of the war and his adventures travelling with the orchestra, the friends he’d made and lost, and his plans for the future.
At around two in the morning, Minu returned. ‘Arlette,’ they heard her whisper into the darkness, ‘are you here?’
Arlette and Godfrey giggled into each other’s necks and Godfrey called out, ‘Indeed she is, Miss McAteer.’
Minu made a strange noise and said, ‘Oh. Oh. Oh. I see. Well, good night then, Arlette, Godfrey. Sleep tight.’
‘Night-night, Minu,’ they replied in unison.
But they did not sleep. They talked more. Arlette told Godfrey about her own childhood, the windswept house on the top of a cliff, her stoic mother, the death of her father, her childhood spent staring out of windows and wondering what it would be like to be an adult. She told him about the Miller family, about poor Leticia and her teacups of gin, about the absent father and
the
naughty boys, and Lilian torn between wanting to grow her wings and needing to stay grounded for the sake of her little brother. And she told him about her job at Liberty, the eccentric ladies with their impossible requests, and the fact that she was the youngest department manager in the history of the store.
It was nearly the hour to get up for work by the time they finally fell asleep, and when Arlette opened her eyes and saw him there, long lashes resting against his high cheekbones, one long, sinewy arm draped across her stomach, her heart lurched and she instinctively brought her lips down against his forehead, and when he opened his eyes and smiled sleepily at her, then pulled her closer to him and nestled his head into the crook of her shoulder, Arlette thought again of that funny, serious girl, staring dreamily through the leaded windows of the house on the cliff, across the Channel, into a distance that held nothing but secrets and mysteries. She knew that that girl was gone, that she was now where she was meant to be, a modern woman, strong and certain, held safe in the embrace of a man called Godfrey Pickle.
39
1995
‘I’VE BEEN HANGING
out with your sister,’ said Betty, stirring sugar into a cappuccino and bringing it to her mouth with both hands.
John tore the top from a packet of sugar and looked at her quizzically. ‘She’s helping you out then?’ he asked. ‘With all this mysterious jazz stuff?’
‘Yeah. She’s been brilliant. She even took some time off work with me yesterday. We went to a gallery, had a picnic.’
‘This is my sister you’re talking about?’
Betty smiled. ‘Yes. I think you two should get together some time. I think you might actually like each other.’
John smiled sardonically. ‘And where have you got to, with your quest?’
She told him about the blue plaque and the engraved tree, the jazz orchestra and the painting of Arlette in the National Portrait Gallery.
John’s expression passed beyond his usual cut-off point of slight interest and towards wonder and surprise. ‘Wow,’ he said, when she’d finished. ‘I mean, wow, that’s extraordinary.’
‘I know,’ said Betty. ‘And now, well, I’ve got this job, I probably won’t have much free time to look into it. I mean, all
the
libraries, Somerset House, all only open during working hours.’