The First Time I Saw Your Face

by Hazel Osmond

  ‘We’re looking to see what costumes we can recycle,’ Lydia said, holding up a dark-blue doublet. ‘Got that cast list?’

  Wendy was examining a red velvet skirt and flexing the waistband. ‘This is going to be too tight for most of the women. Although maybe Jocelyn …’ She peered at Jennifer’s list and made a mocking noise. ‘Size twelve? She’s never size twelve.’

  ‘Might be,’ Lydia said, ‘it’s a long time since you were a size twelve, Wendy.’

  ‘That doublet,’ Jennifer asked, quickly taking it from Lydia’s hands, ‘would it do for Lisa?’

  Wendy looked at it. ‘Maybe, but we’d need some heavy-duty strapping to keep those breasts of hers under control.’

  ‘Shame you can’t strap up her nether regions too,’ Lydia snapped, and both Jennifer and Wendy decided almost in unison, to bend down and take a much closer look at the clothes. Club gossip suggested that Lisa had once been discovered snogging Lydia’s husband in the costume loft at an after-play party.

  Jennifer started matching clothes to actors, conscious of the chatter and laughter coming from the hall and then listening out for individual voices as the cast started to read through the play. She could not discern a trace of West Country burr in the one she was really listening out for.

  When the cast started to appear in dribs and drabs, they were either handed costumes and sent to try them on, or stood looking uncomfortable while Jennifer measured them. Out came the old, slightly nervous jokes about warming the end of the tape measure when getting anywhere near an inside leg.

  Pamela the leech, being laced into a bodice, was flapping her hands around and complaining that it was too tight and she couldn’t breathe properly, something Jennifer thought might be a blessing.

  Which was when Matt Harper walked in.

  ‘So, jumper off, I guess,’ he said, putting his glasses on the table.

  Jennifer watched him pull it off over his head and the tape measure became like a piece of unmanageable rope in her hand.

  Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

  Underneath the jumper he had on a thick black T-shirt which made his eyes and hair look even darker.

  ‘Thermal,’ he said, with a rueful grin, pushing his hair out of his eyes. ‘So what do you want first?’

  What did she want first, or last or ever? What was she doing standing here with this tape measure in her hand? If she reached up and pushed that stray bit of hair out of his eyes would he mind?

  ‘Chest,’ she said and he raised his arms obediently. He was like a little boy – in which case she was having completely inappropriate thoughts about a minor. She took a step nearer and leant in towards him and tried to keep her head down and put her arms around him to position the tape measure without her breasts actually coming into contact with his chest. She could feel the heat coming off him, a slight tang of something citrusy and she wondered what his chest looked like under that T-shirt. There was certainly no flab. She straightened up and read the measurement.

  ‘Puny?’ he asked, laughing, and she kept her eyes on the tape and wrote down 97 cm next to his name on her notepad.

  ‘And now?’ he said, raising his eyebrows.

  ‘Shoulder to wrist.’

  She placed the tape on his shoulder and ran her fingers down it to keep it taut, ending up at his wrist. Every inch of the journey down his skin stirred up something in her she didn’t want stirred up.

  Go away and leave me alone.

  She bent over the notepad again.

  ‘Waist,’ she said when she came back, thinking of something else, of the river at home and of the warmth of the kitchen, something baking in the oven. She kept her head down as she put her arms around him again and passed the end of the tape measure from one hand to the other and then pulled it tight. That figure got written down, and as she wrote, the spectre of the next set of measurements she would need hung over her.

  He was looking embarrassed, as if his mind had also galloped ahead.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘bit … um … all this, isn’t it? Do you want me to do the um … inside leg … thing.’

  Is it worse to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’?

  ‘Hip measurements too,’ Lydia shouted across and Jennifer decided now was the perfect time to do some acting.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said lightly, ‘it will take no more than a minute.’ She bent and fed the tape around his hips, concentrating on a patch of his T-shirt just above the buckle on his belt. Quite a nice belt really, compared with the jeans. Kind of punky.

  Do not look at his groin.

  ‘OK,’ she said before whisking the tape measure away from his hips and getting down on her knees.

  ‘If you could just open … I mean, stand with your legs wider apart?’ She remembered other times and other men, kneeling like this. Of bedroom carpet under her knees.

  ‘Of course, of course,’ he said and moved his feet apart and she delicately, delicately, as if his whole groin area was radioactive, measured from the centre seam in his jeans to a point just level with his knee.

  She was pretty pleased with how well that had gone until she stood up and splashed back into those brown eyes. He was looking down at her intently and she could not understand what his expression meant. It was there for an instant and then gone.

  Lassoing him with the tape measure, pulling him towards me and kissing him would be too forward, would it?

  ‘All finished?’ He stepped backwards.

  She managed to write down 84 cm for his inside leg measurement and then couldn’t remember the figure she’d had in her head for his hips.

  After he’d told her his shoe size, making some joke about really needing bigger ones for all his walking, he said thank you, picked up his jumper and left. Wendy had to run after him to give him back his glasses.

  ‘Now Jen,’ Lisa said, coming into the room next, ‘is there any way, even though I’ve got to wear bloke’s stuff, that you could make it, like, a bit sexier? Maybe show off my arse?’

  ‘No,’ Lydia said sharply.

  ‘Jen?’ Lisa’s tone was plaintive.

  ‘We’ll see,’ Jennifer mouthed at her, happy to lose herself in thinking about Lisa’s body rather than the one she had just had under her hands.

  In the pub afterwards, she sat at the large, round table listening to the excited chatter about who had messed up the reading and who had not, and wondered if anyone would be interested in how she’d threaded a needle, pinned a pattern. There was no adrenalin rushing round her body after managing to stitch a seam.

  She came back into the conversation as Gerry was bemoaning how badly he’d read his part of Andrew Aguecheek. Steve, who was playing Sir Toby Belch, seemed engrossed in checking his ponytail for split ends, but did break off to say, ‘Oh come off it, Gerry, you were great. Particularly the way you read out the stage directions as well.’

  Jennifer had always enjoyed this gentle bitchery in the pub, the mix of whispered, almost camp asides and full-on ribbing. No harm was meant, none taken. But you had to be careful with Jocelyn and Neale. One could tear your ego to shreds with a barbed, throwaway verdict, and the other was not above having a hissy fit and stalking off.

  Right now though, Neale looked as if he was putting aside his earlier disappointment at not getting the part he wanted. ‘I think I can make something of this Malvolio chap,’ he confided in Jennifer, and she had the waspish thought that Shakespeare had already made something of it – all Neale had to do was not unmake it.

  Laughter rippled round the group as Angus, already on his third pint, his neck and cheeks flushed, pronounced that he felt the Duke and he were very much alike because both of them were ‘in love with love’. When Steve flicked his ponytail and said dryly, ‘in love with sex, you mean’, Angus looked delighted.

  Jennifer glanced across at Matt Harper talking by the bar, looking relaxed and slightly dishevelled, and felt the desire to go over to him and stand just close enough to be able to see the extraordinary brownness of his eyes.
Instead she watched Lisa make an attempt to corner him before Doug appeared to block her.

  Lisa retreated to a seat near Jennifer. ‘He’s nice, that Matt guy, isn’t he? Bit dorky, but I’d still give him one.’

  Lisa’s conquest of men was such a force of nature, like a wave curling to shore or a squall of wind, that Jennifer was always amused when people judged her. It seemed a pointless waste of time. Lisa’s heart was in the right place, however far other bits of her body might roam. Jennifer remembered her coming to visit after the accident, picking her way over the farmyard in her high-heeled shoes and just as expertly navigating a route through Jennifer’s misery. There was no patronising; no avoidance. ‘That scar’s minging, Jen,’ she had said, before hugging her and adding, ‘but not half as minging as thinking of you being dead.’ Other times she had just popped in to sit and witter on about work and who she’d been knocking around with: all the gossip and small talk that represented some much-needed normality when everyone else seemed too afraid of saying the wrong thing.

  Jennifer saw Jocelyn circling and agreed with Lisa that, ‘Yes, Matt Harper did seem nice.’

  Jocelyn pulled up a stool. ‘Heard you kicked Alex into touch. Not lining Matt up as a replacement, are you?’

  Jennifer heard the message under the words: that such an idea was laughable and felt the usual jumble of embarrassment, shame and anxiety. This trip to the pub was shaping up to be as bad as the last one.

  ‘Bugger off, Jocelyn,’ Lisa said, eloquently.

  After she’d gone, Lisa said she’d really like to ram Jocelyn’s broomstick up her backside, and Jennifer put her hand on her arm and said, ‘Jocelyn lashes out at all of us, it’s just my turn. Don’t get yourself worked up, Lisa, I’m really not upset.’

  There it was again: the need to make everyone feel better but herself. Why couldn’t she lose her temper, fight back?

  Lisa was looking over in Matt Harper’s direction again. ‘I’d be doing everyone a favour ripping his clothes off, wouldn’t I? They’re minging. If only Doug would get out of the way. Oh, hang on.’ Her mobile was ringing and she went out into the porch to answer it. When she came back she grabbed her jacket off the back of the chair.

  ‘Change of plan,’ she said with a grin. ‘I’m off. Stewie’s just finished his shift. Know what they say, “bird in the hand” and all that. Mind you I always think “two in the bush” sounds more fun.’

  Jennifer was trying to work out which of Lisa’s boyfriends Stewie was when Doug plopped himself down on Lisa’s vacated stool. Matt Harper came and stood behind him, looking self-conscious, and Jennifer was torn between wanting to run and wanting to stand up so she could get nearer to him. She fought the urge to lower her chin, even though she felt exposed to those brown eyes.

  ‘Couldn’t help me out, could you, Jen?’ Doug said. ‘I offered Matt a lift back home, but then remembered I’m meant to be nipping and seeing a bloke about a sundial I’m designing for him. Any chance you could give Matt a lift instead?’

  Being alone in a car with Matt suddenly seemed frightening, but then she saw him shift his weight and wince as if his foot was still hurting him.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘I have to go right past your door.’

  Mack could tell that Jennifer was tense and wondered if she was always on edge. Or maybe it was a hangover from the measuring session – she’d certainly been uncomfortable when she’d had to measure his inside leg and it had made him uncomfortable too; made it hard to keep up that irritating brand of Matt Harper cheeriness. The way that she had run her fingers down his arm had particularly unsettled him – not because he found it pleasant, but that he hadn’t found it as unpleasant as he had expected. Unlike when she put her face too close to his; then he’d found it really hard not to flinch.

  He supposed if he was honest, which was rich coming from him, the thing that had spooked him the most had been the urge to raise her gently back to her feet when she had been on her knees. He had no idea what expression had been in his eyes when she’d got back up.

  No point in beating himself up about it; he might be a deceiving git right at this moment, but the impulse to save someone from the discomfort of a hard floor was a natural one.

  He let her settle into the drive and as she did, it occurred to him that from this side you could see nothing of her scarring so that the picture he was getting was a kind of ‘Before’ version. It was a version that would have attracted his attention, no doubt about that. In fact, he’d have probably thought she was out of his league. Those cheekbones really did give her a Scandinavian-princess look.

  He stopped staring at her and looked back out of the windscreen at the white lines picked out in the headlights. Stretching his leg, he winced, to play up his ankle injury. He had three miles and that stupid extra bit to break the ice and work her round gently to at least mentioning Cressida. That was as far as he’d push it tonight.

  ‘They’re a lovely bunch, aren’t they?’ he started. ‘I really enjoyed myself tonight.’

  Apart from during that stupid warm-up when I had to pretend I was moving a pip around in my mouth and letting it slowly grow into a gobstopper and then back to a pip before I spat it out and generally wanted to die of friggin’ embarrassment.

  ‘And Finlay’s a real character, so inspirational. He’s a teacher, isn’t he?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Did he ever teach you?’

  ‘Yes, and he works his magic on everyone. We had hard nuts in my class who wouldn’t even pick up a script because they thought it was “gay”. By the time he’d finished with them they were in the end-of-year play with everyone else; captain of the rugby team playing a love scene in a dress, the lot.’

  OK, so we’re getting somewhere now.

  ‘Doug’s great too, isn’t he? Can’t wait to see one of his sculptures.’

  A little nod and a smile.

  He persevered, talking about a walk along the Tyne Valley he had planned for later in the week; telling her how he had lost one of his notebooks. He only got the odd nod back. What had happened to that lovely smile she’d given him after his audition?

  One thing left to try. Perhaps she was just sick of all this tiptoeing round her and people assuming it was her intelligence that was broken and not her face.

  ‘Sorry you got landed with taking me home,’ he said, ‘you probably wanted a bit of time on your own. It must be hard watching the rest of us rehearsing when you’re not acting any more.’

  He wasn’t sure if he imagined the intake of breath, but he did not imagine the way the car weaved before she corrected it.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied after a silence which was so long he had started to wonder if he had completely stuffed it up, ‘it’s difficult.’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying that, it’s just I heard you did a drama course and couldn’t finish it.’

  She turned her head in his direction and then looked back at the road. ‘It’s all right, you can say the words “had an accident”.’

  ‘Of course, of course. Had an accident.’

  She didn’t speak again for the rest of the journey, but this time he felt the silence between them was not the chilly barrier it had been earlier, and that possibly she was thinking back through his words and judging him favourably.

  When they pulled up outside Brindley Villas he wondered if he should say anything else other than ‘Thank you for the lift,’ but he never even got those words out because when he looked up from undoing his seat belt it was right into those blue eyes of hers, the perfect one and the one that was clipped by the scar. There was a look of such sadness in them that it stopped him shrugging off the belt and getting out of the car.

  Was there nothing anyone could do, about that scarring? Nothing to make it less noticeable? He supposed it would fade in time, perhaps it already had. It was never going to be invisible, though: it had permanently changed the contours of her face, as if plates had shifted under the ground.

  He knew th
at her smile, when it came, was a supreme piece of acting. ‘Enjoy your walking and … thanks for being understanding about me, well, not being very talkative tonight,’ she said.

  He went straight into the cottage without watching her drive away, heading for the remains of a bottle of Merlot in the kitchen. All his years with Phyllida had taught him that drink wasn’t the answer, but he needed something to take the edge off that last scene in the car. A little bit of anaesthetic to stop him thinking that if he’d have been a different kind of man, he would have tried to comfort her in some way.

  CHAPTER 15

  Jennifer manoeuvred the lamb between her Wellingtons to hold it steady, tipped back its head a little and put the teat of the bottle to its mouth. Immediately it tossed its head, knocking the teat away and so Jennifer gently held its mouth, aimed the bottle again, and this time with a bit of holding and wiggling on her part the lamb got its mouth properly on the teat and started to draw down on the milk. Now it had the idea, it was taking a good feed, and Jennifer knew if she looked behind her she would see its tail wagging wildly.

  She yawned. It had been a long night, lying there thinking about Matt Harper, and she had a headache that wasn’t helped by the constant high bleating of the sheep. How noisy they were contrasted sharply with her recollection of how quiet she’d been in the car; almost struck dumb by the reality of being alone with Matt Harper and his brown hair and his brown eyes and all those lovely measurements. And he’d tried so hard to talk to her. She could tell he was confused by her frostiness. Why wouldn’t he be? He thought he was just having a lift home with Jennifer; a nice lift and a nice chat. He’d have been rocked back on his heels to hear her thoughts: Stop talking, Matt, let me just enjoy sitting here in the dark with you.

  ‘I’m going to have to tube-feed that black one on the end,’ her dad suddenly said from two pens away. ‘He’s not getting the hang of the bottle at all.’