by Kate Eberlen
‘So, you should know my name’s not Elle,’ she said.
‘Just as well you told me before I booked the plane.’
‘And I’ll buy my own ticket,’ she said, realizing that she had just agreed to go with him.
April was three months away, she thought on the Northern Line on the way home. She could always change her mind. He hadn’t suggested meeting up in the meantime. She’d almost felt as if she was being dismissed when he’d looked at his watch, as if he had somewhere else to go on to.
Perhaps there was a whole string of other women who accepted his generosity?
‘Did you enjoy your date?’ Marina asked the following day.
She was sitting up in bed in her silk dressing gown, the four prints on the wall behind her. It was the same beautiful dark-haired Roman lady in each picture. When she was little Letty had thought it was Marina herself, but now she realized the slightly schmaltzy Pre-Raphaelite style was too old for that to be true. In each of the paintings the lady was wearing the same long dress, gathered at the waist, probably reimagined from the wall paintings of Pompeii, but the dress was a different colour. Tranquillity lolled in pink on a stone bench with a pink oleander beside her; Idleness was in yellow, twitching a long peacock feather for a ginger kitten to play with; Lesbia, Catullus’s famous mistress, wore orange and held her pet sparrow aloft; and Violets, Sweet Violets, was in pale mauve, staring at a little posy of dark purple violets.
‘It was interesting,’ Letty replied, wandering over to the French doors that led out to wrought-iron steps down to the garden. It was raining. She stared at the globules of water running down the window, fascinated by how they stopped and started, ran into each other and made bigger drops, almost as if they were alive.
What would her grandmother make of Spencer? Letty half wished that she could bring him home for inspection.
‘Would it be wrong . . .’ She turned back to the bed. ‘Would it be wrong to allow a man you hardly knew to take you to the opera?’
‘You’re asking whether he would expect payment of some kind?’
At ninety years old, Marina had pinpointed exactly what she was asking, but Letty hadn’t expected quite such a direct response.
‘I suppose so.’
‘He will like being seen with you. That’s all the payment he will expect, I think.’
‘It’s La Traviata!’ she confided, expecting Marina to share her excitement, but her grandmother’s expression did not change.
‘What’s that one about?’ she asked.
‘La Traviata,’ Letty said louder. ‘Verdi! We saw it together last spring!’
‘Of course we did!’ Marina said.
But Letty could tell that it was an artificial smile, and a shiver ran through her body.
23
February
ALF
The pizza restaurant where Alf worked had a Valentine’s Day promotion lasting the whole month. Two heart-shaped pizzas for ten pounds. What they didn’t tell you was that that was for the basic marinara. If you wanted additional toppings you had to pay extra. The chef wasn’t happy. He prided himself on doing that thing of spinning the dough in the air. If you then tried to shape it, it came out looking more like a kidney than a heart.
It didn’t really matter; walk-in business was slow. The rain had been sheeting down for weeks. The kids who delivered on mopeds were busier – nobody wanted to venture out. They sometimes got tips because people didn’t generally open the pizza box until after they’d gone. Alf was the only one serving in the restaurant on weekday evenings, which meant a lot of listening to complaints and no tips at all when customers discovered the truth about the toppings.
Alf kept one pair of trousers and one black shirt just for work and he washed them every night when he got home, but he couldn’t get rid of the smell of burnt cheese. His only perk above minimum wage was a free meal each evening, but he felt like he inhaled enough pizza to never want to eat it again.
There were two good things about working every night, though. One: you earned money. Two: you couldn’t go out with your mates, so you never spent any of it. Which was just as well, because leaving home was going to cost a lot more than he’d estimated.
Alf had won a place at the dance school he wanted to go to, the only one where part of the degree course involved touring a show that the students created and performed. When he’d gone down for the audition, he’d been certain that London was where he wanted to be. Even in winter, the capital was buzzing. Walking down Shaftesbury Avenue on the evening he arrived, Alf couldn’t believe how many theatres there were on just one street, and how many Chinese restaurants on the street parallel to it, and how many patisseries on the parallel street to the north side – one selling eclairs and nothing else, all decorated in pretty colours, more like a display of jewellery than cakes.
There was a drawback. London was unbelievably expensive. Being accepted onto the course – providing he passed at least two A levels – meant he could apply for student finance for the fees and also a maintenance loan, but he didn’t like the idea of getting into a lot of debt and nor did his family. They couldn’t see how you’d ever make enough as a dancer to have a hope of paying the money back. He didn’t even tell them about rental prices in London. Alf knew that he was going to have to save to go there and get a part-time job while he was a student. He had decided to ditch his plans to travel with Cal, and Cal was getting in so deep with Kelly he didn’t seem too bothered. The idea of lying on some paradise island in Thailand, or spending Christmas on the beach in Australia, no longer had the same pull. You didn’t have to go that far to change your life, Alf thought. London was where he wanted to be.
It was the last Friday of the pizza promotion when Mr Noakes came into the restaurant with Miss Jones. Alf thought they were probably more embarrassed than he was, but by the time they’d spotted him they had already started taking off their coats.
‘We can’t go on meeting like this,’ Miss Jones joked to Alf, as he pulled out a chair for her.
He hung back from the table while they were considering their order.
‘Seems like a bargain,’ said Mr Noakes.
‘Not if you want extra toppings,’ Miss Jones said, reading the small print.
‘And I thought you taught English, not Maths!’
Alf cringed at the music teacher’s attempt at flirtation.
‘What are you having?’ Miss Jones asked him.
‘I think I’ll have the spicy meat feast.’
‘Oh, OK. I’ll have the Four Seasons then.’
‘Bit of everything,’ said Mr Noakes.
Mr Noakes beckoned Alf over.
‘A meat feast and a Four Seasons, please.’
‘Wait a minute, what’s the calzone like?’ Miss Jones asked Alf.
‘I think you’d do better with the Four Seasons.’
‘OK then.’
‘Thin base or Chicago style?’
‘Oh, thin, I think,’ said Mr Noakes.
‘Good choice, sir. Plain crust or stuffed?’
The music teacher looked at him as if he was taking the piss.
‘That’s the final question, sir,’ he said.
‘Well, thank God for that. It’s like being in a comedy sketch,’ Mr Noakes said.
‘Without the laughs,’ Alf added.
Miss Jones giggled.
‘Plain,’ he said.
‘And to drink?’
‘How do you feel about a glass of vino?’ Mr Noakes asked Miss Jones.
‘Can’t really, as I’m driving. You go ahead.’
‘I might have a glass of your finest house red!’ Mr Noakes told Alf.
Mr Noakes was clearly keener than Miss Jones was. It made sense because Miss Jones was in a different league. Attractive, good body, well able to look after herself. She’d been sent to cover Alf’s English class for a lesson in the first week of January, and she’d surprised them all by striding into the class and announcing, ‘I haven’t taught you be
fore, so there’s three things you need to know. First up, I’m blonde but I’m not dumb. Second, I’m small, but anyone who messes with me goes straight to the Head. No three strikes and you’re out with me, no yellow cards, no warnings. Three, and boys, this is for you’ – she sniffed the air – ‘these girls are all far too nice to tell you, but those adverts on television are lying. No woman ever fancied a guy because he wears Lynx.’
The girls had loved her after that and none of the lads had given her any trouble either, although Alf thought quite a few had gone down to Boots the following weekend to get themselves a different brand of body spray.
‘Noakesy and Bridget?’ said Cal, when Alf reported the sighting the following Monday.
‘She’s probably lonely,’ Alf guessed. ‘She came to my mum’s classes at the beginning of the year.’
‘Jesus, Alf!’
‘What?’
‘Not just the hottest girls but the hottest teacher too!’
‘It wasn’t like that . . .’
‘You would, though?’
‘I didn’t even dance with her,’ Alf said, wishing he hadn’t mentioned it now.
‘You would, though?’ Cal repeated. He wasn’t talking about dancing with her.
‘Would you?’ Alf asked.
‘Are you kidding me? You know what they say about women in their prime? She’s in her prime, mate, and you’re in yours. It’s eighteen for men. You might as well enjoy it, mate. It’s all downhill from here.’
Donna always told her Ballroom Beginners, ‘If you can walk, you can dance!’
It got them feeling confident at the start. Alf loved the way his mum was always so positive in her classes. He wished she could be more like that in the rest of her life. Donna was always careful with people’s feelings, realizing how exposed they felt. It was the reason Donna was a better teacher for beginners than Cheryl. Most of them were varying degrees of hopeless, but they did improve if they kept coming. Miss Jones, not so much.
For a teacher, Miss Jones wasn’t great at listening to instructions. The first time she’d appeared, at the beginning of January, Alf had deliberately not danced with her, thinking she’d be as embarrassed as he was. The following week, his mum asked him after class why he was avoiding the little blonde one.
‘She’s a teacher at my school,’ Alf explained.
‘Well, she’s paying the same as everyone else. I need to share you around equally.’
There were always more women than men, so a lot of the lesson was spent with the women’s arms stretched out in front pretending to be in hold. Alf would try to get around to everyone for at least a few bars of music, so they got an idea of what it felt like to dance with a partner.
Most of the younger women who’d seen Strictly and imagined the ballroom dancing world was full of fit guys dropped out pretty quickly. Alf assumed that Miss Jones was one of the Lonely Hearts, as his mum called them, because she hadn’t appeared since the third week of term. Now, the week after he’d seen her in the restaurant, she was back.
Alf was collecting the five-pound fees on the door.
‘I’ve had a lot of preparation,’ said Miss Jones, as if she needed to excuse her absence.
‘Have you got a letter from your mum?’ Alf asked.
She laughed.
‘Take a step forward with your left foot, no, other left foot . . .’ Donna started the class.
It was generally the women who had difficulty telling the difference between their left and right.
Alf thought it was probably worse for Miss Jones, with him standing there watching. He decided to get his obligation over and done with.
He guessed she wasn’t used to struggling with things; she kept apologizing to him for getting it wrong as he walked her through the basic steps several times without music.
Donna went over to the sound deck. As soon as he heard the intro, Alf grinned.
‘You should be fine with this one,’ he said.
The track was ‘Have You Met Miss Jones?’
It was that little bit of relaxation that seemed to untangle the knots she’d twisted herself into. For a few steps she managed to follow him, but it all went wrong as soon as he said, ‘Look up, don’t look at your feet!’
‘Think of it like a spelling test,’ he told her when the music stopped. ‘You don’t remember the words by staring at them – you remember them by not looking at them, don’t you?’
‘Thank you, teacher,’ she said with a smile.
‘OK,’ Donna said. ‘You all did well with that, so we’ll have a go at the lock step. Alfie, can I have you back?’
He wished his mum wouldn’t call him Alfie. Or that she’d at least save it for when they were in a family setting. It was his given name, but he’d always hated it, thinking it was more like the name you’d give a dog. When he was growing up, Cheryl’s Westies were Albie and Bertie. At the age of five, he decided to insist on plain Alf because he thought it sounded more like a man’s name. It was just before he went to primary school and, luckily, just before dancing competitively for the first time, otherwise he’d never have been free of it.
When he glanced inadvertently at Miss Jones, she gave him a conspiratorial wink, as if she’d noticed his discomfort and wasn’t going to start calling him Alfie at school.
At the end of class, as he was helping everyone with their coats, she said, as if to emphasize their unspoken agreement, ‘Thanks, Alf. I enjoyed this evening.’
‘Glad to hear it, Miss Jones.’
‘It’s Gina,’ she said. ‘Outside school, obviously.’
24
March
LETTY
Spencer was standing at the check-in desk, just as they had arranged by text. He took Letty’s ticket and upgraded it to business class.
‘How did your exams go?’ he asked, as they waited in the queue for security.
‘Bit of an ordeal,’ Letty said.
‘But you survived!’ Spencer said.
The subject was clearly over. It was refreshing to be with someone who had no idea about iambic pentameter or Homeric epithets and wouldn’t have even understood what the examiners were asking, let alone how to answer.
‘How’s Gran?’ Spencer asked.
‘She’s not too good at the moment.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘She’s old,’ Letty said. Literally old now, she thought.
Marina had become an increasingly difficult and impatient old lady, with whom it was no longer a pleasant experience to spend an afternoon. The doctors were now describing her illness as vascular dementia, where a series of tiny strokes, or infarcts, knocked out bits of memory. Was it possible, Letty sometimes wondered, that there was an area in her brain labelled ‘Love for Violetta’, like a file in an old-fashioned cabinet, that would one day be randomly obliterated?
Part of Letty wanted to spend as much time with Marina as possible, knowing that their time was running out, but another side wanted to remember Marina as she had been.
As the plane took off, and there was no longer any chance of turning back, Letty felt a burst of relief. If her grandmother were in her right mind, she would approve, she told herself – hoping that was the truth, and not just a comforting platitude.
‘Champagne?’ asked Spencer.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon, but she was on a plane between two time zones with a man she hardly knew, on their way to a city she’d never visited, to see an opera she loved – so the normal rules, whatever they were, didn’t apply.
‘Let me pay for it?’ she said.
She wanted to pay her share as much as possible. Upgrading to business class was totally beyond her means, so she’d let that go, but a glass of champagne was something she could afford and buying it would demonstrate a kind of symmetry, if not balance, in the situation.
Spencer laughed. ‘It’s free in business.’
At the luxury hotel there were, as agreed, two separate rooms, and they were the kind that had two doub
le beds in each.
Letty had expected to feel tired from jet lag, but instead she was buzzing to get out and experience the city. She brushed her teeth and splashed cold water on her champagne-pink face before knocking on Spencer’s door. Eventually he appeared in a towelling robe, his hair wet from showering, and when he saw that she was still wearing her leather jacket and jeans, a look crossed his face that made her feel as if she wasn’t treating his generosity with quite the respect it demanded.
‘Should I change?’ she heard herself asking.
‘People tend to dress up a bit more for dinner here,’ he said.
‘Of course,’ she said, slightly flustered.
Letty had brought just the single carry-on bag allowed in economy. The silk blouse she’d borrowed from Frances to wear to the opera the following evening was the only item that would be acceptable for dinner, and he was hardly going to approve if she wore it twice.
Was there even a dress code at the Met? At the Royal Opera House in London, you could sit in the stalls in full evening dress or you could rock up in frayed jeans and a T-shirt and nobody would bat an eyelid, but maybe not here. Definitely not, as far as Spencer was concerned.
She remembered that he’d looked askance at her small suitcase at Heathrow.
‘Is that it?’ he’d asked. ‘You’re a lady who travels light!’
She’d thought his astonishment indicated approval, but perhaps she had got that wrong. Perhaps his suit bag contained a dinner jacket and formal black trousers with shiny black stripes down the side?
Now she was going to have to buy something the following day, which meant a further expense that she hadn’t budgeted for. This evening, the blouse would have to do.