After the Last Dance

by Sarra Manning

  When the bar started filling up with people younger and hipper and with better hair than them, Scoffer invited Leo back to his studio, which took up the top floor of an old printing works off Shoreditch High Street. Even though it was past eight, there were still a clutch of assistants rushing about like they’d been cast as very busy people in a play. Scoffer told a pretty girl with ridiculously long legs to bring them some beers and they sat in his office, the city lit up and spread out before them and Leo reeled off all the tales he’d reeled off many times before. About going on stage in Tokyo and the Hollywood actress who’d given him a blow job, oh, and the time he spent a night in jail in Mexico, which he really wouldn’t recommend and yeah, sure, let’s do a couple of lines.

  They were both full of bluster and bravado, but the proof of Scoffer’s success was as tangible as the bitter taste in the back of Leo’s throat as he snorted then swallowed. The envy, the disappointment, must have shown on his face because Scoffer placed a meaty hand on Leo’s knee. ‘Look, mate, if it helps, if you need a job…’

  ‘Oh no,’ He could hardly get the words out. ‘I’m lining up some big commissions. You know what it’s like. Don’t want to jinx anything.’

  ‘Course you don’t. But I always need someone to think of ideas that I can work up. I wouldn’t rip you off, boy. Pay you a decent day rate.’

  Leo looked around the carefully curated space. At the stupid neon signs that said THE FUTURE IS TOMORROW , and NOTHING IS INFINITE , ONLY DEATH . The controversial Mexican Day of the Dead masks decorated with real human skin and teeth. The portraits of families living on council estates, their plasma TVs and pit-bulls rendered as lovingly as Gainsborough painted ships and horses.

  It wasn’t art. It was commerce. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.

  But Scoffer’s bullshit paid for another couple of lines of coke and when they stumbled out onto the street and Leo fell to his knees on the rain-soaked pavement, Scoffer gave a cabbie fifty quid to take him home.

  It was just like the old days. He threw up in the gutter, then staggered down the mews to bang on the door of Frank and Lydia’s little cottage. They weren’t very happy to see him, although it wasn’t that late. Still the right side of midnight, so Leo didn’t think there was any reason for Lydia to look like she’d spent all evening sucking on acid drops.

  Frank turned off the alarm so Leo could get inside the house. He took the whisky decanter off the sideboard in the drawing room and all but crawled up the stairs.

  Then he remembered Rose got angry when he came home like this. She wasn’t well. Needed her sleep. He tried to tiptoe down the corridor but settled for walking quietly. It wasn’t until he opened the door of his room, shut it behind him with exaggerated care then flung himself on the bed that Leo remembered he had a wife, who woke up with a muffled scream.

  Jane lashed out and caught the side of Leo’s face with her nails but he was already rolling off her. ‘Sorry! Sorry! I forgot I had a little wifey warming my bed.’

  His words slurred and ran together. Leo winced as Jane turned on the lamp. Hoped she’d think that it was the light that made his pupils so dilated. As it was, he knew his face was dusted with beads of sweat and as he stared at her blearily, he could feel his jaw working.

  She sat up, folded her arms and stared at him. Even wearing his old, faded Motörhead T-shirt with rumpled hair and absolutely no make-up, she was still too good for him. ‘Aren’t you tired of this, darling?’ she asked him and in that moment, as he sprawled half on and half off the bed, another old T-shirt stretched tight over his belly, he hated Jane for her pity.

  ‘Of what?’ Leo touched a hand to his lips. He couldn’t quite believe that he was still able to make sounds come out of his mouth. ‘Tired of what?’

  ‘The party’s over,’ Jane said. ‘About time you realised that everyone else has gone home.’

  She’d obviously been taking lessons from Rose in how to make Leo feel so small that if it weren’t for the slightly repulsed look on her face, which had circumvented the fillers and the Botox, he’d swear he was invisible to the naked eye.

  ‘Yeah, well… I’m going through stuff. Forgive me if maybe I wanted to get a little lost.’

  ‘A little lost?’ She echoed incredulously. ‘Oh, so you needed some time off for good behaviour? What good behaviour?’ She pointed a rigid, j’accuse finger at Leo. ‘You scuttled off and left me to deal with your poor mother. That was a real touch of class.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about my mother.’ Leo tried to sit up but only succeeded in sliding further off the bed. ‘Let’s not argue. I thought we were friends,’ he added plaintively.

  Jane rolled her eyes. The more he got to know her, the less sweet she became. It was simply sugar-coating.

  ‘Lydia asked you to come back because she expected that in the ten years since you were carted off to rehab , thanks for filling me in on that little detail by the way, you would have grown up, but she was wrong. God, was she wrong!’

  ‘You didn’t have to come to London with me. You only came because it suited you.’ Leo wasn’t a mean drunk. He was a charming, witty, life-of-the-party, king-of-spontaneity kind of drunk, but not tonight apparently. ‘Don’t forget that I saw you in action on the night we met. What is this, really? Some kind of scam?’

  Leo didn’t know if the mottled rash that broke out on her upper chest exposed by the gaping T-shirt was guilt or anger.

  ‘Don’t judge me by your own standards, darling.’

  It was Leo’s turn to flush and he had the coke sweats now, so he didn’t say anything but tried to stand up while Jane simply sat there and kept staring at him like he was lower down on the food chain than pond scum.

  ‘Stop looking at me like that,’ Leo muttered. He finally managed to stand up and stagger to the bathroom where he splashed cold water on his face, which did nothing to clear his mind or make him feel better. He only felt worse, especially when he looked up to see that Jane had followed him and sat down on a stool in front of the vanity unit.

  ‘I’m sorry for being shrewish, darling. It’s so silly the two of us arguing like this,’ she said with a placating smile. ‘We’ve been thrown together by circumstance. Who knows for how long? And it would be so much better if we didn’t spend the time fighting.’

  Leo turned round a little too quickly and swayed against the sudden nauseating rush of blood to his head. ‘So you’re staying?’ There was no reason for her to stay with him. Not for his charm and good looks, certainly not for his money – unless this had become about Rose’s money, in which case Jane was going to be bitterly disappointed. There was another thing niggling at him too. ‘You’re not pining for Mr Ex? Not even a little bit?’

  ‘That’s not really any of your business, darling.’

  ‘You must still love him, though? You don’t just suddenly stop loving someone. Love doesn’t have an off-button.’

  ‘Whether I love him or not is neither here nor there. Anyway, darling, we’re getting off-message. We had a deal. I’ve met your great-aunt, I talked you up, tried to smooth things over as much as I could with your mother, but I really didn’t appreciate you running off like that.’

  She looked calm as she sat there, but her hands were clasped tightly together and she kept flexing her pink polished toes, which was very distracting when Leo had so much to process. He even opened his mouth and wondered what Jane would think of him if he confessed to the reason why he’d been banished, kicked out of the kingdom. Then he shut his mouth. He didn’t need to explain anything to Jane. Anyway, she was hardly perfect herself.

  ‘I bet you’d be pining for him if all those billions of dollars from Google or whoever had landed in his bank account,’ Leo drawled. ‘Yeah, you said that he was the one who jilted you, but I can’t believe that if you’d really loved him you’d have let him go without a fight. So maybe it was you who did the jilting, because you didn’t fancy slumming it.’

  ‘I married you, didn’t I?’ She shook her head a
nd made a shooing motion with one hand as if she were brushing away Leo’s words. ‘And don’t be so naïve. There isn’t a woman alive who actually wants to marry a poor man.’

  ‘That’s what you tell yourself to make you feel better, is it?’ Leo snorted. ‘No wonder you were in such a hurry to get married before your looks started to go.’ He was determined to get a rise out of her – maybe as payback for judging him, for being so superior and aloof, or because it took his mind off needing another drink. Somehow his slurred words had hit a nerve because Jane gave a little start, an ungainly jerk, as if he’d managed to drunkenly stumble upon the fears that even she couldn’t gloss over, that were there every time she looking in the mirror.

  ‘Careful, darling,’ she said tightly. ‘People who live in glass houses and all that.’

  It was a warning to back the hell off, but, as usual, he ignored it. ‘The funny thing about being a trophy wife, darling , is that it looks a hell of a lot like being a hooker.’

  ‘Says the man who couldn’t get back to London quick enough once he discovered his rich great-aunt was dying,’ Jane snapped. ‘What a pity she hasn’t rolled out the welcome mat.’

  Leo braced himself against the basin. He fancied that he could crush the porcelain with his bare hands. ‘That’s not why I came back!’ He said it, snarled it really, with enough force that Jane jumped again. ‘You don’t know anything about it.’

  She stood up, put her hands on her hips. ‘I know plenty. Honestly, how stupid do you think I am? You weren’t just drunk in Vegas; you’d done some coke too, hadn’t you? You even took some before we got on the plane and it’s what you’re on now. It’s why your pupils are bigger than dinner plates and you’ve turned into a belligerent prick.’ She nodded, as if it was all falling into place, like a deck of cards being shuffled by a maestro. ‘I also know that you were going to take the money we won. You’d gone into my bag, taken it out and you didn’t even…’

  ‘Not all of it…’ Leo protested and there was nothing like a fight to bring cold sobriety crashing down on his head, but it was too late now.

  He could feel her anger as though it were the third person in the room, crouching there at her feet, ready to pounce on Leo. ‘You think I’m desperate? Well, at least I’m not some drug-addled, geriatric Peter Pan figure who can’t function on any real level.’ Jane’s beautifully modulated voice was steadily getting louder and sharper. ‘I bet you spent most of your time in LA hanging out in coffee shops and hideous bars like that one in Vegas trying to score pot off college kids and asking them if they knew where the cool parties were happening.’

  ‘Shut up.’ It was an agonised whisper. ‘Rose will hear you.’

  ‘That’s got you worried, hasn’t it? That your precious Rose will find out that you’re even more of a fuck-up than she ever suspected.’

  He’d asked for this. Wanted to know what really lay beneath Jane’s sweetness and light and now he knew: it was something dark and scabrous.

  ‘Stop it,’ he said urgently. ‘We both need to calm the fuck down.’

  ‘I am bloody calm!’

  Leo launched himself away from the basin, started walking towards Jane. His own anger dissipated further with each step that he took. His come-down was fast approaching and already he was sick and ashamed of what he’d said to her. The truth always hurt worse than anything else.

  ‘This is stupid,’ he said and he was close enough to take hold of Jane’s arm, connect with her, bring her back down to earth, but he didn’t. Never touch an angry woman; it was like baiting a bear, but he forced himself to stand in front of her, just on the edge of her personal space in the hope that Jane would look at him, really look at him, and see that he was sorry. That he could be better than this. ‘Come on, you were right. We shouldn’t be fighting.’

  ‘This… this is never going to work,’ she muttered, so quietly that Leo had to lean in even closer to hear her. ‘What a mess.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be a mess,’ he said softly.

  ‘Bit late for that,’ she hissed, and tossed her head back. ‘God, will you stop crowding me?’

  ‘Please, Jane.’ There had to be a way to get through to her. If Jane gave up on him, then Rose would too. He could just imagine her reaction to the news that he’d managed to alienate his wife of less than three days after pledging to love and protect her. ‘Let me make it up to you.’

  ‘How the hell do you think you’re going to do that?’ She flared her nostrils and tossed her head back again like she was challenging him to give it a go.

  Well, it couldn’t hurt.

  Leo had some vague idea that he might kiss her – she’d liked it when he’d kissed her in Vegas – but his fingertips had barely brushed against her when Jane wrenched herself free from his clumsy overture.

  ‘Don’t fucking touch me!’ She snatched up the art deco brass figurine sitting on the vanity unit that Leo used to hide his stash in, and threw it. It glanced across the side of his head, making Leo rear back and give a surprised grunt of pain as the statuette fell to the floor with a dull but deafening clunk.

  Jane stood there panting, palms flat against the wall, eyes wild, mouth open. Leo took his hand away from his throbbing head, his fingers wet with blood. He was ready to bellow, rage welling up in him all over again but then he saw Jane. Really saw her. Bed-sheet-white face, chest rising and falling in time with her ragged breaths, hands knotted and knuckled.

  He’d never seen anyone quite so terrified before and he’d never felt so sober in all his life.

  ‘What the hell just happened?’ he asked her. ‘What did I do? I was going to —’

  ‘You don’t ever fucking touch me, do you hear me?’ she shouted in a voice that was nothing, not a thing, like her voice. ‘You don’t fucking put your hands on me unless I give you permission. And don’t even fucking think that you’re sleeping anywhere near me tonight.’

  16

  March 1944

  March came in like the proverbial lion but by the end of the month, crocuses and pansies were colonising every idle patch of grass. On Rose’s Thursday afternoon off, the weather was positively balmy and she set out to walk to Bayswater as Sylvia had it on good authority that a greengrocer had had a delivery of bananas.

  Then she planned to visit Whiteleys, because Pippa, one of the girls at Rainbow Corner, was adamant that the haberdashery department had some cheap remnants left over from last summer. Maybe a cheery lawn cotton or poplin and Maggie had said she’d help Rose sew a dress as Rose’s skills tended towards mending rather than making.

  Shirley had written that very morning to gleefully inform Rose that she’d requisitioned two of Rose’s summer frocks and turned them into overalls for the baby because even you agreed that they were far too short for you and wearing thin under the arms. Fair’s fair when you ran off with my black crêpe de Chine and lovely blue taffeta . Rose was quite tempted to parcel up Shirley’s blue taffeta and send it back to Durham, but then Shirley would be angry all over again when she saw the lipstick stain on the bodice that even scrubbing with carbolic soap hadn’t shifted. Indeed, it had only made it worse.

  Rose walked the back roads that ran parallel to Oxford Street to avoid the crowds, mentally sketching a perfectly lovely crisp white dress with shiny red buttons on the yoke and the cuffs, so it took a while to notice that a man had fallen into step beside her.

  For one glorious second, Rose thought it might be Danny. But Danny had written to her two weeks before. Scribbled four lines on a postcard. Princess, hope to have 48-hour pass mid-April. Let’s go away. Somewhere romantic. Just the two of us. D

  Anyway, mid-April was a fortnight away so the man shortening his long strides to her slower pace couldn’t be Danny.

  ‘Hello,’ said Edward. ‘Just the girl I was thinking about.’

  ‘You were?’ Rose asked doubtfully, because when she wasn’t thinking that every dark-haired American serviceman might be Danny, she was still crippled with shame when she thought ab
out that night at the Criterion and its bilious aftermath. Sylvia was forbidden to mention it under pain of death.

  Now Edward was suddenly at her side. Despite the mild weather, he was wearing a dark grey wool overcoat and grey hat as if he could merge into the shadows at any moment. As if he wasn’t just a spymaster but a spy himself. ‘You might be just the person who could help me with a little project I’m working on,’ he said. ‘Except you seem to be going somewhere with a very determined look on your face.’

  ‘Bayswater.’ Rose resolved to be sparing with her words like Maggie, who had an air of mystery and sophistication. Besides, she didn’t want to encourage Edward in any way. ‘I heard a rumour about a delivery of bananas, then I want to get some fabric for a summer frock.’

  Alas, Rose had no mystery. She even told Edward about Shirley’s letter and how she’d finished it with a smug, Typical of you to be so contrary, Rosie, and hit your growth spurt after clothes rationing was introduced .