Armistice

by Nick Stafford

  “Gotta new friend?” asked the doorman of the two women.

  The women turned to look at Philomena. She had to say something or go back out, where the threatening man might lie in wait. She made her decision, and spoke in public as Felicity for the very first time:

  “No, I’m not with them.”

  “No?” said the man, and he cocked his head slightly, inviting her to explain herself.

  “I’m supposed to be meeting a friend,” she said, shocked at the sound of her own words, fully expecting any of the three to slap their thighs and hoot at her fake accent. But none of them did.

  “Where are you supposed to be meeting this friend, miss?”

  “Why, here,” she said, as Felicity.

  The doorman smiled. “Where is here, miss?”

  Of course she didn’t know, so she tried to flutter her eyelashes. And she mined that accent, mined that voice, that sounded at once lazy and authoritative, for all it was worth.

  “We’re supposed to be having some fun. He told me to come here.”

  “What’s his name, please miss?”

  Her mind raced. Before she could stop herself it was out of her mouth: “Daniel.”

  “Daniel, don’t know him, don’t know any Daniels here. But that might be only one of his names. And how are you known?” he asked, still friendly.

  She was losing her nerve. “I’ve made a mistake,” she said, turning to go.

  The pair of women were still watching.

  “Not necessarily, miss.”

  Philomena stopped.

  “You know what kind of place this is?” asked the man, raising an eyebrow slightly.

  “I think so.”

  The man shot a sideways look at the pair of women and they headed for the interior. When they were gone he peered out of the doorway left and right, before turning back to Philomena. “I’m not saying that you look like a matron, miss—the opposite, in fact, but you’re not working undercover for the police by any chance?”

  “The police? No.”

  “Are you working for anybody? A newspaper, for instance? A gossip writer?”

  “No. I’m not working for anyone,” she replied, absolutely truthfully.

  He cocked his head and pursed his lips. She shrugged and spread her hands, gestures she hoped would say “What else can I do?” and “Are you going to let me in?” and “I’m not really bothered whether you do or not.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “You are just here to have fun, I expect, so I’m going to let you in, and if you do have fun, that’s all to the good, and if others have fun because of you, likewise, and if Daniel turns up, you can have fun together.”

  If only he could turn up, she thought. “That’s very kind of you,” she said.

  “What’s your name?” asked the man.

  “Felicity.”

  “Let’s hope you live up to it,” said the man. “My name’s St. Peter; I definitely live up to mine. If anyone bothers you just let me know,” and he stepped aside, inviting her to enter wherever it was. A place of entertainment, which was something of a secret, where the clients used aliases and which didn’t want the police, the press, or the law to enter. If St. Peter was on the gates, what was the name of this place? Heaven?

  Philomena left her velvet coat at the cloakroom. She could hear what sounded like American jazz being played quietly upstairs. In a room on the first landing there was a trio of Negro men playing piano, double bass and a dreamy clarinet to an appreciative audience seated at tables scattered around the room. The musicians made her think of the Commonwealth soldiers and airmen who’d appeared in Manchester during the war, multiplying the black population. She scanned the audience for Anthony Dore, but he wasn’t there. She turned a circle, feeling a little obvious, and looked in through the open doors into the other two rooms off the landing. One room was a bar in which people sat on high stools at the thing itself, chattering away ten to the dozen, while the other had an empty dais and one or two denizens waiting for something to begin. He was not in either, master Dore, so she climbed the stairs to the next landing. On the way there was an alcove with a curtain partly concealing a sofa on which a man and a woman were locked in an embrace. Philomena had to study the man for a second in order to ascertain whether he was Anthony Dore, thinking that if it was him he was a quick worker—he’d only been in the place a few minutes. She was shocked to see that the woman had her hand busy inside the man’s trousers. Philomena wasn’t prudish by any means but she’d never seen that sort of thing in a public place before. Had had her hand inside Dan’s trousers numerous times, but as far as she knew they weren’t being watched at the time.

  As she moved on up to the landing proper she was getting a pretty good idea of what sort of girl Anthony Dore might expect to bump into here. Trying not to think too much about the notion of behaving in a deliberately alluring way with the man who may have murdered Dan, she came across more fellow patrons engaged in playful exchanges. They were being sexual, but it wasn’t dark. It was dark in that there was little illumination, but there was not a feeling of darkness. She was being scrutinized, of course. Frank attention. She told herself that if she didn’t look a man straight in the eye there was no good reason for him to approach her.

  Then she saw him. Anthony Dore was sitting in an easy chair, engaged in conversation with a waitress. Philomena paused for a few moments to give herself one last talking-to before she moved into his eye line and sat where he could see her. She let him have a very good look at Felicity. She crossed her legs one way, then the other. She presented her profile, one side then the other. She could feel him watching. She wished that she smoked cigarettes so she’d have had something to do with her telltale hands. She ordered them to be still, placing one on her thigh and the other on the arm of the chair. This felt too posed, so she played with a wisp of hair. The waitress delivered a drink to Dore then came to her.

  “What would you like?” she asked. She sounded European, like some of the refugees that had traveled on the trams. Almond eyes.

  Philomena had planned to ask for a lemonade but suddenly, very badly wanted something stronger. “A rum, please. With a dash of blackcurrant, and water.”

  The waitress nodded and moved away. As she passed near Dore, Philomena saw him beckon to her. She went to him, listened, bent her head and concentrated hard on what he was saying. It looked to be something complicated, in sections, that she had to repeat back to him, that she had to learn. She returned to Philomena, who sensed some impatience from her but there was no attitude in her voice when she recited: “That gentleman inquires whether you are alone and if so whether you want to be.”

  This was it. The opportunity. The thin end of it. Should she grasp it? Or could she say that she did want to be alone and walk right out of there? Part of her very much desired to do that. She could go back home and—what? Go back home and what? Feel terrible. Sew. Sew for the rest of her life knowing that she’d been told something, told by someone she tended to believe, and she’d done nothing about it. She could go back home and sew her own shroud and climb in and lie down and wait, for twenty years or thirty years or however long her natural span was destined to be.

  Or she could make some kind of reply to Dore’s overture. She realized that her hands were describing shapes so she clasped them together.

  “That gentleman,” she replied, as if it could have been any one of several.

  “That one,” confirmed the waitress.

  Philomena looked over to Anthony Dore and made eye contact for the first time bar the glimpse in the street and he smiled, then looked away. She was surprised. She’d expected him to be more assertive.

  “Do you know him?” she asked the waitress.

  “He is here last night, but that is my first night,” the waitress said, in her accented English.

  Philomena stole another look at Dore and felt a rush of apprehension.

  “If you ask me,” the waitress offered tentatively, “I think he is
probably all right, and from look of him he got money. And he’s young man and there aren’t many of those about. And he has no bits missing, that you can see.”

  Philomena looked at the waitress, wondering what event had led her to make that last observation; she had known a man who’d seemed complete whom she’d subsequently discovered was not?

  “I wouldn’t go so far to say suck it to see,” continued the waitress, “but you might do worse.”

  Philomena saw the twinkle in her eye. Accept the drink. Why else would a girl be in this place? Grasp the opportunity.

  “Tell him to come over.”

  There was a moment when the waitress and she held each other’s gaze. Underneath their smiles, shades of sadness.

  “I’ll keep an eye for you,” said the waitress. “To see how it is done.”

  Philomena watched her go to Anthony Dore and relay her answer. He looked as if he was trying not to smile too broadly. She tried to imagine him cowering under a table in a dugout as an enemy shell exploded and reminded herself to remember to speak in Felicity’s accent.

  So, there she was, on her own in a strange London club pretending to be someone called Felicity, wearing hired clothes, about to have a drink with the man who might have killed—who’d been accused of killing—her fiancé.

  Dore rose from his seat. He’d previously picked up a few women in this sort of place. Some were showgirls who were really prostitutes; some were prostitutes who said they were really actresses. All the ones he’d had sex with, bar one, had been prostitutes of one sort or another in that they’d afterward accepted gifts of money. Not streetwalkers, any of them, nor difficult to approach, but capable of declining. They had to be won.

  Whatever intimacies ensued were superficial in two respects. Firstly, no commitment was anticipated. Secondly, Anthony concealed nearly all of his true self from the women. From men, too. Had done for years. He’d laid down layer upon layer of protection—not regular and even like undisturbed sedimentary rock; twisted and turned in upon itself like upheaved igneous strata.

  Recently he hadn’t felt able to let his defenses naturally evolve. They’d needed an accelerant. Yes, to Major James he’d denied absolutely everything regarding his involvement in the death of Daniel Case, and been believed. But he felt that this had been achieved on a wing and a prayer, inspiration, in fact. To say that there had never been a card game had been an audacious stroke that had beaten the initial accusation. Now came the long haul. Fearing that one day he could be accused again of shooting Daniel Case, Anthony Dore had sought help. In order to learn how to rehearse his innocence, he was secretly visiting a psychiatrist. That is where he had been this teatime, engaged in lying on his couch and lying to him. His reason to be there, and continue to visit, he maintained, was that he irrationally feared other people would accuse him of some terrible action. What people, what action? probed the psychiatrist. No idea; someone as yet only shadowy, wielding lies about some heinous crime. The psychiatrist had inquired from whence this fear might stem and Anthony had again had no idea. The psychiatrist had nodded sagely and droned on about childhood this and repressed that and the “unconscious.” Sometimes Anthony listened, sometimes not. When in sessions it was his turn to speak he’d discovered how easy it was to paint himself as an innocent victim in his own history. He polished memories of himself until they reflected the story he felt most favorably revealed him. He presented evidence that showed he was a sensitive soul, too sensitive, perhaps.

  Anthony found solace in the fact that he had proved himself to be an accomplished dissembler because the psychiatrist—an expert, surely—had failed to see inside him to the truth.

  Walking over to this green-eyed girl tonight, he was reminded of another woman, the one who wasn’t a prostitute, who’d told him not long into their conversation that she wanted to stop talking because she had a thing about sex with strangers. After they had done it Anthony would have liked to see her again but she had argued that he couldn’t be a stranger the second time. He’d heard a foreign accent in her English, had a vision of her visiting every seedy nightclub in London, and perhaps Paris, and all the other capitals, having sex with strangers again and again, not for money. Could she have pursued her existence if the war hadn’t happened, if pre-war morality had continued? Or would she have been a maverick in any era? Was this emancipation? He had really very much wanted to see her again. Not as a commitment. She was unsuitable in every social respect. A secret mistress, perhaps. He had needs, of course he did, for companionship, and sex, and other cures for loneliness. So here he was, hopeful once more. He sat down opposite this one and said: “My name’s Anthony.”

  “I’m Felicity,” the girl said.

  “How do you do?” said Anthony.

  He tried to keep his face turned toward her. He smiled. She was very attractive, but he couldn’t quite read her: actress, prostitute, good-time girl, free spirit? Strong body. Arresting face. Sparkling eyes. Good luck to me, he thought.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Immediately Philomena feared that she was about to be found out—she didn’t even know the correct reply. She didn’t really know enough about how a woman like Felicity spoke or lived or ate when mixing privately. She had no proper idea about any of it. The girl playing the girl in the play had had lines to recite and weeks of rehearsal. Felicity could hardly say “What fun!” in response to everything Anthony said.

  “I’m okay,” she risked.

  “‘Okay.’ How American,” said Anthony.

  “Everybody’s saying it, aren’t they?”

  “Not everybody’s saying it, no,” said Anthony. “But there are lots of things that not everybody is saying.”

  What did she think about Anthony so far? He was almost handsome, and very posh, but there was something brittle underneath; he wasn’t quite balanced. What stopped him being handsome was that he wasn’t quite tall enough, nor broad enough, and his mouth wasn’t right—too wide, and his eyes were pinched in the corners. It wasn’t a list of calamities but, assembled in this one person, with what he gave off, it added up to a sense of not quite rightness.

  The waitress arrived with the drinks; Felicity’s rum and black and his Scotch. After she’d gone there was an awkward moment while Philomena and Anthony searched around for conversational re-openers.

  “It’s my first time here,” she offered, as Felicity.

  “What do you think of the place?” asked Anthony, sounding a little like he was claiming responsibility for it.

  “It seems okay,” agreed Philomena, and she summoned a smile to let Anthony know that she was teasing him in saying okay again so soon.

  “How did you hear about it?”

  “Oh. You know,” she said, buying time—wondering whether to make up a name of someone, immediately deciding not to because it could lead to a whole series of other questions. “Gossip.” To engage both hands, she rolled her glass between her palms.

  “They don’t make it easy to find, do they?” said Anthony.

  “Well you can’t be too careful, can you?” warned Philomena, taking a big sip of her drink, and thinking, this is “okay”; Felicity’s a tease. She’s enigmatic.

  “You can’t, can you?” said Anthony, widening his already wide mouth in a smile, and she got the feeling that he was trying to play but it wasn’t quite coming off.

  “Not everyone deserves to be admitted,” she said, artfully raising an eyebrow. “And St. Peter’s on the gate.” Immediately she kicked herself hard—she risked being found out because she didn’t know the name of the club they were in.

  “D’you think Peter is the doorman’s real name or one he’s adopted for The Gates of Heaven?” said Anthony Dore, pleased with his wit.

  The Gates of Heaven, thought Philomena, thank you. And her broad smile of relief was misinterpreted by Anthony as an invitation to move in.

  “What do you do?” asked Anthony. He’d leaned forward slightly, and he had a new expression on his face. He’d put a bit more
emphasis on the word “do” than was strictly necessary, trying too hard to be suggestive. Philomena imagined he wanted Felicity’s reply to be something along the lines of “anything you like.” He was looking at her hands for the first time as they encircled her glass. Ladies’ hands don’t have scrabby nails and rough pads to the fingers, evolved to resist the pricks of sewing needles and pins.

  “I’m an artist,” she blurted out—it sounded so to her -inventing Felicity’s occupation on the spot.

  “I bet you are,” said Anthony.

  She placed her glass on the table next to her, folded her hands in her lap, said: “I know, it’s ruined them,” before catching on that he was being lascivious. For a moment he looked perplexed.

  “A real artist?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Anthony was disappointed. He’d thought she was saying she was another sort of artist. In bed. He rallied, asked: “What sort of art?”

  What sort of art? He might be an expert. The rich all had the odd Old Master hanging on the wall, didn’t they?

  “I don’t categorize it, really.”

  “Modern stuff,” said Anthony.

  Philomena felt truly, deeply up to her neck in it. The door was to her left; she could make it in four swift strides.

  From somewhere she dredged: “Well, yes. I am making it now, so it is modern. What’s your line?”