by Rosie Thomas
Josh took her hand, guiding it.
‘You could take off my clothes, too.’
Julia drew back a little, and undid the buttons of his plaid shirt.
She saw the curling blond hair on his chest, the sun-reddened hollow at the base of his throat, and then the developed muscles of his shoulders and arms.
‘Go on,’ Josh ordered her.
She undid the buckle of his belt.
When Josh was naked too he laid her against the sofa cushions, very carefully, as if she was precious. Over his shoulder, through half-closed eyes, Julia watched the fire’s glow. The silky feel of bare flesh against her own was surprising, exciting. She had though that when the moment came she might be afraid. She wasn’t afraid, at all. She felt hot and clear-headed at the same time, and there was a pleasurable painful knot inside her.
‘Julia,’ Josh said.
On the table beside the door, the telephone began to ring.
Under his breath Josh swore, very comprehensively.
He wrapped his shirt around himself and went to answer it. At the other end a girl said, Josh? It’s Stella.’
‘Uh, hello. Hi there.’
He glanced round. Julia was lying where he had left her, hidden from him now by the sofa back.
‘Josh, I’ve got something to tell you. You won’t like it much. I’m pregnant.’
He stared down at the angular black lines of the receiver, blinking, trying to take the words in. ‘You what?
‘I’m pregnant. I’ve been to the doctor. It’s all quite certain. I’m sorry, Josh.’
Josh was usually very careful. His boyhood hero, Bim Hassell the sawmill manager’s son, had told him always to carry rubbers in his wallet. That was long before Josh had needed anything of the kind, but Bim’s muttered warnings had sunk in. Josh had developed his own code in the years since then. He wasn’t faithful, or reliable, but he wasn’t callous either. And yet, in the bed upstairs with Stella’s legs round his waist, he had let her whisper, ‘Don’t use that thing. I want to feel you inside me. It’ll be all right. It’s my safe time.’
Josh remembered. He had come like a dive from thirty thousand feet.
He rubbed his hand over his face. ‘Oh, Jesus. I’m sorry. Look, don’t worry. We can fix things up. It happens you know.’
‘You don’t understand, do you? You don’t know what it’s like.’ She was almost screaming now. ‘Ring me, Josh. Ring with a doctor’s name.’
Stella hung up.
Joshua put the receiver back in its cradle. He unwrapped his shirt and put it on properly, buttoning the cuffs. He was thinking about a baby. Not a baby yet. A mysterious sliver of life, like a tadpole, inside Stella. He had put it there, on an evening like this.
He saw that Julia was sitting up, her arms folded on the back of the sofa and her chin resting on them. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing. Some bad news.’ It wasn’t nothing. Only nothing to do with this Julia. He walked round the end of the sofa and stood looking down at her. Her arms and legs suddenly seemed childlike and her face had lost its dreamy, feminine mystery. She was hardly more than a baby herself.
What had he been doing?
Josh bent down and picked up the tidy pile of her clothes. He held them out to her. ‘Here you are,’ he said gently. ‘Put them on.’
Julia was bewildered. Surely a telephone call couldn’t change everything so disastrously?
‘What’s wrong? What have I done?’
You asshole, Josh repeated to himself. You stupid jerk.
‘You haven’t done anything.’ He stooped down so that their faces were level. ‘Listen. You’re a virgin, aren’t you?’
She nodded, biting her lip. ‘Does it matter?’
‘It matters. Don’t give yourself to me. Stay the way you are for a bit longer, okay?’
‘I want you. Josh, I …’ She held her hand out to him. He took it, and replaced it in the shadowed fold of her lap.
‘Do what I say.’
There was a note in his voice that stopped her even trying to argue. Julia stood up with her cheeks burning. She turned away from him and dressed herself, her fingers stiffly fumbling with the buttons that Josh had undone so deftly.
When they were both ready he said lightly, ‘Good girl. Now I’ll take you out and buy you some dinner. You must be hungry after losing your breakfast on the airfield.’
Julia fought back her humiliation. Obediently, she followed him out to dinner.
They went to a pub, with oak settles and beams and another log fire in the welcoming dining room, but the spontaneous happiness of their day together was gone. Julia talked as brightly as she could but she felt awkward and miserable, afraid that she had disappointed him in some way that she didn’t understand.
And Josh was preoccupied with thoughts that didn’t concern her.
At the end of the evening Josh took her back to the cottage at the end of the track. Courteously he showed her the bathroom, and the bedroom opposite his at the top of the stairs. There was a single bed in it that looked as if it had never been slept in.
He kissed her goodnight, as if he was her uncle.
‘Josh, please …’
‘Don’t.’ He was warning her off again. ‘I was a jerk to bring you here. It’s not your fault, it’s all mine. You’re so nice, Julia. Don’t get things all wrong, like I do.’
He turned abruptly and went into his own room, closing the door on her.
Julia lay down on her bed. She was crying, hot tears of hurt, and frustration, and love.
But she did know that she wanted Josh Flood, her aviator, more than she had ever wanted anything and more than she could imagine ever wanting anything else in the world. She promised herself that she would get him, somehow.
Six
John Douglas was on the telephone again.
Mattie listened to his wonderful voice. She was doodling on her notepad with her free hand, a proscenium arch and curtains, a single spot shining on the empty boards …
‘Tell him what I said, won’t you?’ John Douglas finished.
‘As soon as he comes in,’ Mattie promised.
‘Good girl. Be seeing you.’
If only, Mattie thought wistfully. Did he look like he sounded? She went back to her one-fingered typing, frowning at the keyboard in search of elusive characters.
Francis appeared a few minutes later. He looked cheerful, and he was smoking a cigar so big that it threatened to overbalance him.
‘It’s a cruel world, my love,’ he told her. ‘A big cruel world, and you have to go with it or go under.’
Mattie deduced that he had satisfactorily done somebody down. His instincts were predatory and self-seeking, but Mattie didn’t condemn him for that. She was beginning to like Francis, and through him to see a picture of the theatre that wasn’t all glitter. She was glad of it.
She ripped a completed letter to a theatre manager in Durham out of her machine and pushed it across for Francis’s signature. ‘What have you done? Stabbed your grandmother in an alley for two per cent of the takings?’ She had discovered that Francis loved to be teased about his ruthlessness.
‘That’s enough cheek from you. Look at your bloody spelling. Is this supposed to be “commencing”? Any phone messages?’
‘My spelling’s as good as yours. Just different.’ They smiled appreciatively at each other. ‘Just one message. From John Douglas. He says that Jennifer Edge has left the company. He also said, as far as I can remember, that she’s gone off with the fucking Italian chef from some poncy caff, and you’d better send him up someone else who isn’t going to fall on her back every time some fucking dago unbuttons his equipment and waves it at her. And you’d better do it right off, or he’s wrapping the whole fucking show and sod ’em. And sod you.’
Francis sat down behind his desk and rubbed his hand over his face. ‘Language, language.’
‘I quote,’ Mattie said crisply, and rolled a fresh sheet of paper into her typewriter.
‘That fat bitch,’ Francis sighed. ‘I should have known better than to send Douglas off with a middle-aged nympho for a stage manager. Once she’d had him and everything else in the company in trousers, she’d be bound to be looking elsewhere. Gone off, you said.’
‘Gone off, left the company. Took the half a week’s wages owing to her out of the night’s takings and went without a forwarding address. That’s loosely what Mr Douglas said, if you prefer it that way.’
‘Oh, Christ,’ sighed Francis. He took his cigar out of his mouth and stared gloomily at the shiny, wet end of it. ‘Let’s think. No use hoping that they could do without anyone. The company’s stripped to the bone as it is, and Douglas wouldn’t stand for it. Who can I send up there halfway through a tour?’
Mattie knew. She saw her chance, shining at her like a beacon through the banks of cigar smoke. ‘I’ll go.’
Francis snorted. ‘You? What do you know about stage management? Edge knew what she was doing, if she could get herself off the horizontal for long enough. We’ll have to advertise.’
Mattie jumped up and went round to his chair. She perched on his desk, gripping the splintered wood with her fingers to contain her eagerness. ‘I can do it. I’ve got experience. It’s only amateur, but I know what to do. Let me, Francis.’
He was silent for a second, and her heart jumped in her chest. She pressed on recklessly. ‘I could go straight away. Tomorrow, if you like. You won’t get anyone else that quickly.’ When he still said nothing she begged him. ‘Please, Francis. Send me.’
Francis looked down at her knees. They were smooth and nylon shiny. He put his hand over one of them and squeezed it. For once Mattie didn’t pull away. He was remembering the first time he saw her, singing with old Jessie. She can’t sing, he had thought, but she’s got plenty of other talents.
A rare generous impulse took hold of Francis. He liked her, and she deserved her chance. She was also the worst typist he had ever known. ‘You can go as a fill-in. Just until I find a proper replacement.’
Mattie put her arms around him and kissed the top of his head. Francis leaned back, resting against her breasts, glowing with the pleasure of being rewarded, for once, for having done the right thing. ‘You’re not going for good,’ he reminded her hastily. ‘Just for half a six-month tour. I need you here.’
‘Not for good, of course,’ Mattie agreed. Just for as long as it takes.
Three days later, Julia and Felix were seeing her off from Euston Station. There had been a surprise addition to the send-off party – at the last minute Josh had turned up too.
Mattie leaned out of the carriage window. Sprouts of wet, stale steam separated her from Julia and Felix, and now that the time had come she didn’t want to leave them. In the last weeks in the square they had become a family. But Felix had heaved her one suitcase into the rack over her seat, and her single ticket was stowed in her purse.
‘Goodbye,’ she called. ‘I’ll write, lots and lots.’ As if she was going to Australia. It felt like it, suddenly. She wanted to whisper to Julia, ‘Be as happy with him as you like. Just don’t make him be your happiness.’ There was no chance of saying anything of the kind now, even if she could have found words precise enough to express her uneasiness. Julia was smiling, waving, with Josh’s arm round her shoulder.
Mattie wanted to whisper to Felix, too, but she had even less idea of what she might have said. There was just something in his face, behind his smile. Perhaps bewilderment. Josh’s other arm rested on Felix’s shoulder, drawing the three of them together, into a little circle of light. Josh’s vitality and charm had that effect, Mattie thought.
They might have been a picture, the three of them on the platform. Called something like Au Revoir, or We’ll Meet Again. That was another effect of Josh’s. He didn’t seem to belong, quite, to reality.
The guard’s whistle blew. Steam was thickened with smoke, and the train jolted forwards. She was going, anyway. She would miss them, but she wouldn’t miss her chance.
‘Goodbye! Good luck!’
‘Be a good girl, Mattie!’
She leaned out as far as she could, and blew kisses. ‘Not if I can help it!’ Julia and Felix stood waving, linked by Josh, until the guard’s van of Mattie’s train swayed out of sight.
‘I wish she hadn’t gone,’ Julia said, but she could only make herself aware of Josh. When he was with her everything else faded into insignificance, even the bleakness that she suffered when he wasn’t.
Since the flying weekend he had come to see her two or three times, appearing as if he had just thought of the idea five minutes earlier. His seeming casualness hurt Julia, but she accepted it because there was nothing else she could do.
Josh fitted well into the family in the square. Jessie always had time for good-looking young men, and although Mattie was wary of him for Julia’s sake, her touchiness disappeared when he brought a pile of American records in their paper sleeves and lay on the floor beside her to play them. One of the records was by Bill Haley, and that was the first that Mattie and Julia heard of rock and roll. From that time on, the sound of it belonged to their bedroom over the square, and to Josh.
Julia watched him with admiration, and pride, and such unmistakable love that made Jessie sigh for her. Only Felix held himself apart. He almost never looked straight at Josh. Whenever he was there, Felix was busy in the kitchen or in his own room. If Jessie insisted that he join them, he spread his work out on the table so that he could keep his head bent over that. He did one drawing, of Julia and Josh and Mattie listening to ‘Rock Around the Clock’, and he kept it pinned to the wall in his room.
Felix walked all the way from Euston to the block of flats in Ladbroke Grove. He walked quickly, with his head bent, and the rhythm helped to drum some of the impatience out of him. He didn’t enjoy being with Julia and Josh, but when he was apart from them he found himself thinking about them.
Felix shrugged so angrily that two girls who were passing giggled and stared. He didn’t suppose that Julia and Josh thought about him. He didn’t have any reason to suppose that Joshua Flood thought about anything at all except his various appetites. So why did he occupy Felix’s own consciousness like a splinter under a ball of flesh?
Deliberately, with an effort of will, Felix turned the thought away. He was going to work, and he would concentrate on that.
Felix had given up the pretence of studying art on a formal basis. The building work on the flats belonging to Mr Mogridge’s friend was almost complete, and there were six empty shells waiting to be fitted. Felix discovered that he was expected to be designer and decorator, and he was enjoying the challenge. On a tiny budget, and with his employer’s instructions to make the flats look ‘classy, you know the kind of thing, but not overpowering’, he was struggling to turn his ideas into cupboards and curtains.
Felix hated almost everything to do with modern design. He disliked splashy prints in harsh colours, and spindle-legged furniture, and synthetic materials. Felix dreamed of country houses and acres of brocade, Aubusson carpets and crystal chandeliers and the faded splendours of inherited treasures. It was hard to know how to translate that yearning into the reality of six spectacular conversions in Ladbroke Grove, or even how to recreate the particular atmosphere of the flat above the square, but Felix was going to do his best. By the time he reached the site he had almost forgotten Julia and Josh. On a Saturday afternoon the flats would be empty of builders and their sneering foreman, and he could walk around and think in peace.
So long as he was working, he could keep the darker anxieties at bay.
It was dark, with the sudden depressing weight of a northern November, when Mattie reached Leeds. She stood beside the ticket barrier with her suitcase, peering around her. Even under the station lights, fog thickened the air, and her breath hung in a cloud in front of her.
There was no one to meet her.
Mattie squared her shoulders and went out to the taxi rank beyond the station. S
he gave the taxi-driver the address of the theatre and they started off into the murk. The driver called something to her over his shoulder, in an accent so impenetrable that Mattie could hardly understand him. She felt as if she was in a foreign land.
But the theatre, when they reached it, reassured her a little. It was a huge grey edifice, seemingly big enough to seat a thousand playgoers. Lights streamed out and the taxi slid forward into the yellow glow. Mattie paid off the driver and went up the semicircle of shallow steps into the foyer. It was hung with playbills from past shows, and with grainy photographs of the two Headline productions.
It was completely deserted, except for a bored girl staring vacantly out of a glass-fronted booth. Mattie strode up to her.
‘I’m here to see Mr Douglas. I’m the new stage manager for Headline.’ It was the proudest sentence that Mattie had ever uttered, but the girl’s face didn’t even flicker.
‘They’re halfway through t’second act. You want stage door. Or mebbe e’ll be oopstairs. You can tek that door.’
She nodded across the expanse of darned carpet to a door marked Staff.
‘Can I leave my things here?’
‘Suits yersen.’
Behind the door was a narrow staircase of bare boards. It was almost pitch dark. Mattie groped her way upwards, with no idea where she was heading.
Then she heard the voice. It was unmistakably John Douglas, and he was shouting. While Mattie hesitated a woman’s voice screamed back. She couldn’t make out the words, but it was clearly a full-blown row. Making her way towards the noise Mattie came to a dingy corridor lit by a bare bulb, and a door marked Office. The door banged open and a woman stumbled out. Her greying hair was falling out of a bun and she was crying.
‘You’re a monster,’ she sobbed. ‘No less than a monster. Not a human being at all.’ Then she pushed past Mattie without glancing at her and ran down the stairs.