by Kate Eberlen
Letty hung it up, still in its plastic film from the dry cleaner’s, feeling guilty for telling her mother that it was an American friend from her Greek sculpture course who had invited her to New York for the weekend, knowing exactly what Frances would say if Letty told her the truth.
Spencer had booked Robert, a restaurant at the top of the Museum of Arts and Design on Columbus Circle.
‘You said you liked art,’ he said.
Letty was touched at the care he had taken to try to please her. Was this what happened when you were with an older man? With Josh, the closest they had got to eating in the sky was candyfloss at the top of a fairground Ferris wheel, although at the time she had thought it the most romantic date in the world.
Glancing at the prices on the menu, Letty chose the least expensive item: a farmer’s salad of fresh vegetables.
Spencer was good at making the kind of small talk she found almost impossible to initiate. Everything he said about New York seemed to relate to movie locations he assumed she would be familiar with. They should go to Little Italy, he said – did she remember that scene in The Godfather: Part II, because it hadn’t changed a lot. Or Wall Street – didn’t she agree that Leonardo DiCaprio had been robbed of the Oscar for The Wolf? Perhaps she was more interested in the romcoms? They could go for a walk in Central Park, like in When Harry Met Sally, or even have breakfast in that diner . . .
‘Actually, I’m going to need to go shopping,’ Letty told him.
‘What a surprise!’ he said.
What did it matter what he thought she was like, she asked herself, downing cold white wine like water to try to quell the strange buzz of bad and good nerves at the situation she found herself in? What was she like anyway? Sitting on the top of a glass tower in New York with a man she had met on a train, who had invited her to the opera, was like being in a high-concept romcom of her own. Why not be a different kind of person for a weekend?
Letty woke up fully clothed with a hangover. When she went to the bathroom and saw herself in the mirror, there was a discoloured patch on Frances’s shirt just below the collar, where the shiny silk had gone matt with dark edges. She must have dribbled as she slept.
Bits and pieces of the night before flashed across her mind.
She thought she’d managed to bring it back whenever the conversation started feeling like flirting, but now she wasn’t sure. She thought she remembered leaning across the table to taste a spoonful of his dessert, and the waiter arriving with another spoon for her.
She thought she remembered looking at his reflection in the mirrored lift back up to their floor, and him going to kiss her goodnight, and the kiss intended for her cheek landing half on her mouth.
Usually, Letty bought her clothes from Primark or H&M. Occasionally, Frances would buy her a designer coat, or shoes from Russell & Bromley, which made the cheaper clothes look more stylish. If they shopped in Selfridges together, it was always for Frances, and Letty never looked at the price labels, so she had no idea whether Saks Fifth Avenue was expensive in comparison; she only knew that it was totally beyond her reach.
When she asked one of the more approachable shop assistants if she knew of somewhere more affordable, the woman said she could try Century 21, but it was way downtown in the WTC district.
‘Why don’t I see you back at the hotel in a couple of hours?’ Letty asked Spencer, forced to admit, when he asked what the problem was, that there was absolutely no way she could buy a dress here.
‘But are there things you like?’ he asked.
‘I couldn’t let you pay,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘Because I couldn’t pay you back.’
‘How’s a dress different from an opera ticket?’
She was grateful he didn’t add ‘or a separate hotel room’, ‘or an upgrade to business’, ‘or dinner last night’, but somehow all of those things were there in his question.
‘It just is,’ she said firmly.
‘You know, you’d enjoy it far more if you just relaxed,’ he said.
There was a slight edge in his voice now that made her suspect he was running out of patience with her random ethical qualms.
‘Doesn’t matter to me if you choose the lobster over the salad,’ he told her, showing that he had observed her calculations the previous evening. ‘What does matter is that you enjoy yourself. And I enjoy myself,’ he added.
Was there an infinitesimal note of threat? Or was he saying that it would give him pleasure to buy her something, and who was she to deny him that? And then the decision was taken from her, as Spencer beckoned the shop assistant who was hovering, pretending not to listen.
‘Could you help my friend find something suitable for the opera tonight?’
It was only when the lights went down and the orchestra started playing that Letty realized that there were, in fact, specific resonances with the romcom Pretty Woman.
Didn’t Richard Gere take Julia Roberts to the opera in a long red dress that he’d bought her? Wasn’t that opera in fact La Traviata?
Of course it was.
La Traviata, the story of a rich man who falls in love with a courtesan – or, in Pretty Woman, a street prostitute. In La Traviata, when love finally triumphs, it is too late because she is dying. Letty assumed that Pretty Woman had a happier ending, but she wasn’t sure because it was always on telly so late she fell asleep halfway through, waking up with the jaunty music over the credits.
Spencer, she thought, with his extensive movie vocabulary, would be sure to recognize the theme. Perhaps he had devised this weekend as an homage? Perhaps he even assumed that she was consciously going along with it? He had preferred the red dress that the shop assistant suggested, although he had allowed Letty to opt for the black one.
Letty spent the first act of the opera arguing with herself. This situation was completely different because this rich man was not introducing the woman to high art. It was the other way round. More importantly, they had made no deal for her time. However, accompanying a man to the Met, wearing a thousand-dollar dress, felt far more compromising than any theoretical case she could argue.
The production had a stark modern set and made the chorus into a comic commentary on the central love story, rather like a Greek tragedy. Letty was slightly disappointed on Spencer’s behalf that, for his first opera, he didn’t get to see a more conventional staging.
At the interval, however, he was enthusiastic for exactly the opposite reason.
‘I expected fat ladies screeching in flouncy dresses,’ he said.
‘Are you enjoying it?’
‘It’s something else,’ he said.
It was strange, Letty thought, how she could spend an hour twisting herself in knots, only for them to unravel in a second. Spencer was not some scheming sophisticate but a straightforward guy who hadn’t had the benefit of a middle-class North London upbringing.
Why did she always make things more complicated than they needed to be? Spencer wasn’t the sort of person she was used to socializing with, but he was fun, and maybe that’s what she needed in her life.
Afterwards, he let her buy them both hot chocolate in a cafe overlooking the park, and their goodnight kiss was perfectly sober and chaste.
Lying in a deep bath, Letty ran through the events of the day. They got on surprisingly well together, she thought, when she wasn’t being neurotic. He was good at chatting about the things that were important to him, like watches. He appeared to own a fairly extensive collection, and stopped to look at the watch counter in each department store they had visited. He talked about them in the way that she might talk about art, knowing the makers, the designs and the prices. Even though she hadn’t previously been the slightest bit interested, she’d found herself looking at men’s wrists during the interval at the Met, trying to recognize a Rolex or a Patek Philippe. The eventual acquisition of a particular watch was for Spencer what getting a First would be to her. Not just a reward for hard work, but a f
undamental indicator of status that he would have earned and that couldn’t be taken away.
The sky was blue as they checked out of the hotel. They took the subway downtown – a dark, grimy, subterranean world just feet away from the glittering glamour of the city above. She was glad that he’d suggested the Staten Island Ferry as the final thing they should do, because it was so cheap that she could pay for it, and it was as unforgettable an experience to see Manhattan sparkling in the sunshine as it was to go to the Met.
In the car on the way to the airport, Letty craned her neck to see the iconic skyline fading into the distance, feeling almost tearful at leaving.
‘Thank you so much,’ she said to Spencer. ‘I have had the best time.’
‘Want to do it again?’ he asked. ‘I mean another city?’
Given what she’d just said, she could hardly say no, and yet she felt somehow that he was pressing home an advantage. Could she spend another weekend with him? When she thought about the shopping and the opera, she thought not; but when she thought about the Staten Island Ferry, how he’d stood behind her on the deck and taken a selfie of them both laughing with the wind blowing their hair back like in Titanic, she thought why on earth not?
25
April
ALF
The A level English syllabus was entitled ‘Love Through the Ages’. Alf thought they’d probably chosen the theme because most of the students who did English were female. In their year, he was the only male candidate. In all the texts they were studying, the male characters were flawed bastards. Didn’t matter whether it was a man or a woman who’d written it. Othello and Iago: both raving idiots; Heathcliff: a killer and a maniac. In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Alec was a rapist and Angel Clare was a wuss. As far as Alf could see, Jay Gatsby was virtually a stalker.
The female characters weren’t like that, though. Cathy in Wuthering Heights and Daisy Buchanan were both a bit high maintenance, but Desdemona was a loyal, understanding kind of woman and Tess was naive and innocent. The girls in the A level group could relate to the female characters, but he didn’t recognize the male ones. True, most of the guys he knew didn’t think in the complex way that girls did about relationships, so maybe you could say they were thoughtless, or even stupid, but not evil.
Alf had preferred the AS year, when they’d studied poetry. He had never been a fast reader, so it was fewer words to deal with, and poetry was written about aspects of love that both sexes could relate to, like desire, longing, regret. They’d had some good discussions in the Lower Sixth. In Year 13, he felt like he was constantly under attack.
It was even worse when Miss Jones covered for the week Mr Marriot was at a conference.
Miss Jones wasn’t used to teaching the A level syllabus, and she got flappy whenever anyone asked her questions. That made her vulnerable because the Pink Ladies could smell weakness a mile off.
‘Got a question for you, Miss.’
‘Go ahead, Sadie.’
‘Are you dancing with Alf again tonight?’
It was a disadvantage for a teacher to be blonde, Alf thought, because pale complexions coloured and blue eyes were less opaque than brown.
Miss Jones was panicking.
‘Yes, I’m going to my dance class,’ she finally said. ‘I’m not very good, but you get better if you work at things. That’s a lesson you’d do well to learn, Sadie.’
Nice recovery, thought Alf. He’d come to quite admire the way she’d persevered with the dance classes. And it was true: she was getting better. A little bit better.
‘Do you like being in Alf’s arms, Miss?’ Sadie asked.
Fortunately, the bell rang.
In the corridor, Alf caught Sadie up.
‘Give it a rest,’ he said.
‘Oooh, sticking up for her now. Must be serious.’
‘You’re out of order.’
‘I’m not the one who likes the teacher.’
‘I don’t like her, not like that!’
‘What’s that thing Shakespeare said about protesting too much?’
In the common room, Cal said, ‘Just ignore it, mate. You’ll never win with Sadie.’
‘Yeah, and how did she find out about the dancing?’ Alf was furious with him.
‘I told Kelly not to tell.’
‘Full marks, mate!’ Alf walked off.
Miss Jones did not turn up at dance class that evening and, for the rest of the week, Alf skipped English, not wanting to embarrass her. When Mr Marriot returned, he gave him a ticking off. He understood that long bouts of concentrated reading weren’t really Alf’s thing, and even wondered if Alf had ever been tested for dyslexia, because he seemed to struggle more than he’d expect for someone of his intelligence. Alf told him that one of his primary school teachers had said the same thing, but he was always fairly near the top of the class, so his mum didn’t think there was anything wrong with him.
He left Mr Marriot’s office promising he’d make up the work, but feeling deflated. Was dyslexia just a way of saying he was thick? Mr Marriot was the teacher who’d always supported him. Was it unrealistic to think he was going to pass his English A level? And what would happen then? The dance school required him to pass both his A levels, Drama and English.
There was a cold wind blowing off the sea, and the air was heavy and wet, as if it was full of drizzle and salt spray but couldn’t be bothered to rain properly. As he walked along the promenade, the rhythm of his footsteps helped to unravel tangled thoughts and work out what was important and what was not. He needed to spend more time studying. There was no point in earning the money for London if he failed to get there. He would cut down his nights at the pizzeria, and ask his mum if she could do without his help for the next couple of months.
When it finally started to rain, it was torrential and he had to make a run for it, with his backpack over his head.
The pink Cinquecento was parked about fifty yards down the street from the dance hall. Miss Jones was sitting in the driver’s seat. She wound down the window and said, ‘Can I have a word, Alf?’
She pointed to the passenger seat, leaned across and opened the door for him.
Inside the clean, dry interior of the small car, he felt very big and very wet.
‘Alf, I’m sorry if I’ve caused you any embarrassment by coming to dance classes,’ Miss Jones began.
The rain was coming down so fast now, it felt like being in a tiny glass room inside a waterfall.
‘I’m the one who’s sorry for telling Cal,’ Alf said. ‘I honestly wouldn’t have done, but I thought you’d left.’
‘I’ve decided not to come any more,’ she said, staring through the windscreen.
‘That’s a shame,’ he said automatically. And a bit of a relief.
‘It’s just, well, I’ve bought a flat on the other side of town, and it’s keeping me busy.’
‘People come and go all the time,’ Alf assured her.
There was a long moment of silence. He looked across at her. She seemed vulnerable and a bit lost somehow.
‘You don’t want to take any notice of the bullies,’ he found himself saying.
‘Aren’t I supposed to be the teacher here?’ she said, sniffing.
He smiled at her, his fingers hovering above the door handle, wishing he knew what to say to finish up and get out.
‘So, where’s this flat you’ve bought?’ he asked, trying to lighten up the mood.
‘It’s one of those new-builds on the South Promenade,’ she said.
‘Cool!’
‘Want to see it?’ She looked at him.
He wasn’t sure how to say no without hurting her feelings.
‘I’m working tonight,’ he said.
‘I didn’t mean now!’ She laughed, as if he was suggesting something improper. ‘How about tomorrow? I could use someone tall to help me put up shelves and things.’
She was lonely and he’d made it impossible for her to come to dance classes. Wasn’t it the least
he could do?
‘OK then,’ Alf said.
He put the address into his phone and they arranged a time.
‘See you at eleven, then,’ he agreed, finally able to open the car door.
‘Coffee,’ she said. ‘I may even be able to stretch to cake.’
It wasn’t one of his mum’s good days. The most promising Little Star had just announced she was quitting in favour of gymnastics.
‘Dyslexia?’ she said, when Alf told her what Mr Marriot had said. ‘That’s just a fancy word for laziness, isn’t it? You’ve always been a hard worker. I don’t know what’s happened to you recently, Alfie.’
‘Well, I’m spending a lot of time working at the restaurant, and helping out here . . .’ he said.
‘So it’s my fault now, is it?’
‘I’m not saying that.’
Sometimes he felt like he’d spent his life treading on eggshells round her, but when it came to giving him support, she wasn’t there.
‘What are you saying then?’
‘Forget it,’ he said.
‘I don’t need attitude from you, Alf, after the day I’ve had.’
‘Yeah, well it’s not been great for me either,’ he said, unable to stop himself adding, ‘Not that you’d care, because you never think about anyone else!’
His mum stared at him, then sank down onto a chair and started crying.
‘I’m going to be late for work,’ Alf said, and marched out.
It was the first time her tears hadn’t worked on him, but he spent the evening feeling sore inside. By the time he returned home all the lights in the house were switched off, even the one over the front door you needed to see your key into the lock. Donna and Gary had gone to bed. Cheryl always said you shouldn’t let the sun go down on a row.
When he got up, his mum had already left for the private classes she took on Saturday mornings.
Gary was in the kitchen, hunched over his cornflakes.
‘I didn’t mean to upset her.’ Alf was the first to speak.
‘It’s been a tough few days,’ Gary said. ‘She lost another pregnancy.’
How was he supposed to know if nobody told him? Alf felt terrible for what he’d said.