Starlight

by Anne Douglas

  ‘No. I’m hoping he needn’t know. I mean, if you break it off with this lawyer fellow.’

  ‘I won’t be doing that.’

  ‘You’re going to keep on seeing him? Marguerite, you can’t. Ben has his suspicions. He told me you seemed different towards him.’

  ‘Did he?’ Marguerite smoothed her hair and put on her cap. ‘Always the bright one, Ben. Looks like I’d better tell him what’s happening.’

  ‘What is happening?’ Jess cried desperately. ‘Marguerite, what are you going to do?’

  Already at the door, her sister looked back.

  ‘Jess, I’m going to ask Ben for a divorce. It’s the honest thing to do, eh? Oh, don’t look like that! It’s no’ the end of the world. I’m sure he’s just as sick of me as I’m sick of him. We were just honeymoon people, really – never meant to be lifetime partners.’

  As soon as she heard the door click on Marguerite, Jess bounded out of her chair and ran after her.

  ‘Marguerite, wait!’

  ‘Oh, what now, Jess?’

  ‘I was just wondering – when are you going to tell Ben, then?’

  ‘Oh, heavens, I don’t know. Sometime soon. I want to get things settled.’

  ‘And what about Ma?’

  For the first time, Marguerite seemed flustered, her lip trembling, her colour rising.

  ‘I’ll tell her – when the time’s right, I suppose.’

  ‘She’s going to be upset.’

  ‘Yes, but what can I do? It’s my life.’

  ‘Folk in her day stayed married, that’s the thing.’

  ‘And were miserable. Things are different now.’

  ‘Still difficult, getting a divorce. And expensive.’

  Marguerite, recovering her poise, smiled a little.

  ‘I’ll have expert help. Guy’s father specializes in divorce.’

  ‘Best of luck, then,’ Jess said curtly. ‘Let me know how things go.’

  ‘You wouldn’t come with me, would you? When I tell Ma?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t. This is something you want, Marguerite, you can tell her yourself.’

  Back in her office, Jess sat down at her desk, but she couldn’t stop thinking of Ben and wondering how he would face Marguerite’s news. He would be devastated, she was sure, for it clearly wasn’t true that he was as tired of Marguerite as she was tired of him. He still loved her, as had been proved by the way he’d talked of his worries about her. If only Jess hadn’t reassured him!

  ‘You think I’m worrying about nothing?’ he’d asked, and she’d been quick to tell him it was only a post-war problem that many people were facing. What a mistake! But, to be fair, how could she have told him anything else, when she hadn’t then seen Marguerite with the other man? She’d thought Ben and her sister were still lovebirds, just going through a bad patch. Like her and Rusty.

  No, not like her and Rusty. For them, the golden days were over, their happiness having melted away, killed, perhaps, by the stress of war. Or maybe would have died anyway. Now, they were facing life alone, for even if they hadn’t so far parted, Jess never felt these days that she and Rusty were together. Only Marguerite had the promise of a new love and a new life. At what cost, though? At what cost?

  Another tap sounded on her door. Marguerite returned?

  But it was only Edie, come to collect the letters for typing.

  ‘Oh, Edie, I’m sorry, I haven’t finished them! Just give me a few minutes and I’ll bring ’em through.’

  ‘You OK, Jess?’ Edie asked kindly.

  ‘Bit of a headache, that’s all.’

  ‘Want an aspirin?’

  ‘No – it’s going off, thanks.’

  ‘I’ll bring you another cup of tea.’

  ‘That’d be grand.’

  And as Edie departed, Jess put on her professional hat and got down to the letters she should have finished some time before. Personal life, she thought, that’s out. I’m supposed to be at work. But as she later sipped the tea Edie brought her, Ben’s sombre gaze still filled her mind and would not fade.

  Fifty-Five

  Two days passed, during which Jess waited with heavy heart for the inevitable, while Marguerite kept out of her way and Sally’s large blue sympathetic eyes kept meeting hers, expressing her wonder at what was going on.

  So far, Jess had not told anyone of Marguerite’s plans, not even Rusty, though she might have told him if he’d ever come home at a reasonable time when they could have discussed it together. As it was, he only came in to go to bed, where he fell instantly asleep, while Jess lay awake, her thoughts churning, until she had to get up to make tea and sit in the kitchen, wishing she was one who could smoke a cigarette to calm her nerves.

  Sometimes she asked herself why she should be so very concerned for Ben. Was it that she was afraid to think of him a free man? Unattached? No, no, she just didn’t want him to be hurt, that was all. But underneath her disclaimers, she knew there was that knowledge that he would no longer be her sister’s husband. And though that should make no difference, she knew that it might, and shied away from thinking about it.

  On the evening of the third day, when Jess had still heard nothing from Ben or her sister, she was astonished to find her mother on her doorstep when she arrived home from work.

  ‘Ma, what are you doing here?’ she asked, fumbling with her key, but one look at Addie’s reddened eyelids had already told her all she needed to know.

  ‘Ah, don’t tell me you don’t know!’ Addie cried, sweeping into the house. ‘Oh, Jess!’

  For some moments, they clung together, until Addie pulled herself away to sit in a chair with a handkerchief pressed to her eyes.

  ‘Oh, to think of it, Jess. A divorce in our family and our lovely girl to be the one to want it! I tell you, when she met me out of work this afternoon, I couldn’t take in what she was telling me. I couldn’t believe it. Marguerite, splitting up with Ben? It just wasn’t possible.’

  ‘I know, I know, Ma.’ Jess had put on the kettle and was setting out cups and saucers. ‘I felt the same, when she told me, but there it is – it’s what she’s going to do.’

  ‘I always wanted her to make a good marriage, you know, because she’s no’ like you, Jess – you’d get on anyway, but she’d need a good provider. And she was that attractive, I thought she might meet somebody with family money. A professional man, maybe, who’d give her what she should have.’

  ‘Well, she didn’t do too badly with Ben,’ Jess remarked. ‘He’s got a settled job and they’ve a nice house. They’re luckier than a lot of folk, I’d say.’

  ‘Aye, but he was never right for her, Jess! He was never what she was looking for.’

  ‘And what you were looking for, from the sound of it.’

  ‘Never mind me, then.’ Addie rattled her teacup. ‘Are you no’ going to make that tea?’

  ‘Ready now.’ Jess filled her cup. ‘There, that’ll make you feel better.’

  ‘No, it won’t.’ Addie drank it, anyway. ‘It’ll take more than a cup of tea to cheer me up, eh? When I know my girl’s going to take herself through the divorce courts.’

  ‘You did say Ben was never right for her.’

  ‘So, she made a mistake. But if you take marriage vows, Jess, you keep ’em. Chopping and changing – where would it end?’

  Jess studied her mother for a moment or two.

  ‘Ironic, though, that the fellow she’s met is just what you’d have wanted for her in the first place. A professional man. Family money in the background. A good provider. Shouldn’t mind too much, Ma, if Marguerite gets it right second time?’

  Addie’s fine blue eyes rested on Jess’s face with such unexpected shrewdness, Jess leaped to her feet.

  ‘Don’t look like that, Ma. There’ll be no second chances for me!’

  ‘There’s your doorbell,’ Addie said calmly. ‘Better see who it is.’

  It was Ben.

  He was wearing his long black winter overcoat, with a cap
over his hair and a scarf muffling his features, but it was still painfully obvious that Marguerite had spoken to him. Everything about him spelled shock and dismay, from his drooped shoulders, to his gloved hands stretched out towards Jess, as though pleading for help.

  ‘Jess, may I come in?’ he whispered.

  ‘Oh, Ben!’

  Drawing him into the house, she unwound his scarf and gazed sorrowfully into his face.

  ‘My mother’s here, Ben, but she’ll be going soon.’

  ‘So, Marguerite’s told her too?’ He gave a desolate smile. ‘And we both had to come here to see you?’

  ‘Jess, is it Rusty?’ Addie asked, coming into the hallway, but stopping short at the sight of Ben. ‘Oh, it’s you, Ben.’ Her voice wavered. ‘How are you, then?’

  ‘All right, thanks, Ma.’

  All right? They stared at him, then Addie began the complicated task of dressing for the outside weather, pulling on rubber galoshes over her shoes, buttoning up her coat, tying on a headscarf.

  ‘I’m away, Jess,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I’ll be in touch. Better give this laddie a drink, eh?’

  ‘I have no drink in the house, Ma. He’s welcome to a cup of tea or coffee.’

  ‘I don’t want any tea, or coffee!’ Ben cried. ‘Oh, God, I don’t want anything!’

  But as Jess opened the door for her mother, he put his hand on Addie’s arm.

  ‘Shall I walk you to the tram? The pavements are treacherous out there.’

  ‘Och, no, but it’s good of you to offer, Ben.’ Addie took a sniff of the ice-cold air. ‘Maybe too cold for more snow tonight. Don’t worry about me – I’ve been walking on ice like this since before you two were born.’

  For a moment, she looked at Ben, then pressed his hand, and throwing her scarf more firmly round her neck and pulling down her hat, set off for her tram.

  Fifty-Six

  ‘Think she’ll be all right?’ Ben asked, as Jess showed him into the kitchen where a one-bar electric fire was burning, for how much longer she didn’t know. She was still waiting for cuts.

  ‘Oh, yes. Ma’s good on her legs, always has been. You don’t mind the kitchen, Ben? There’s no coal for the fire next door.’

  ‘Don’t mind the kitchen?’ He threw his overcoat over a chair. ‘Jess, what’s there for me to mind, now that Marguerite’s going to leave me?’

  ‘I feel so bad, Ben. I feel terrible. Because you asked me about her and I said everything was all right, but it wasn’t. I didn’t know, though, what was happening.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘Who did? She kept the secret very well.’

  ‘When did she tell you?’

  ‘Today. At twelve thirty precisely. I was getting ready for the matinee when she came into the box, said she wanted to talk to me. I’d seen her at breakfast, of course, when she’d never said a word.’

  ‘She told you at work?’ Jess cried. ‘Why? Why at work?’

  ‘I suppose she reasoned that I’d behave better if I thought there were people around. Not so likely to throw a fit and chew the carpet. Isn’t that what they said Hitler did, when upset?’

  ‘I can’t believe it, Ben. To tell you at work . . . Why, that must have been awful! To be told something like that, to be so shocked, and have to keep on . . .’

  ‘I didn’t keep on,’ he said quietly, studying his cigarette. ‘As I was on my way to work, I’d seen Rusty going into the Lion in Princes Street. As soon as Marguerite had gone, I ran out and brought him in, told him he’d have to do all the performances for me today.’

  ‘And he’d been drinking?’

  ‘No, it was OK, he’d just got there, said he was fine about standing in, hoped I’d feel better soon.’

  ‘But why didn’t you come to me, Ben?’

  ‘I couldn’t go to you. Not then. All I wanted was to get out of the box and walk, and that’s what I did. God knows where I went. All round the West End. Into the Haymarket, I think, then back into town and down into Inverleith Park. Saw folk skating on the pond. Saw a chap fall down. Hurt his arm. Probably had to go to casualty.’

  They were silent for a while, until Ben put out his cigarette and raised his eyes to Jess.

  ‘Did you see this fellow Marguerite’s found?’ he asked roughly. ‘This Squadron Leader?’

  ‘I saw him on the station platform in Glasgow.’

  ‘Didn’t tell me.’

  ‘How could I, Ben? How could I?’

  He shrugged. ‘What’s he like then?’

  ‘Has handlebar moustaches.’

  ‘Ha! Perfect caricature, eh? Of an RAF officer.’

  ‘You were an officer, Ben.’

  ‘I wasn’t a Squadron Leader. I didn’t have a father with a law practice to give me a job. I didn’t have the sort of money he’s got.’

  ‘You think Marguerite’s only interested in money?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘She did say . . . she did tell me you two had drifted apart. Didn’t you say you hadn’t been getting on?’

  ‘So, next thing, we’re looking at divorce?’

  Jess shook her head hopelessly. ‘I don’t know what to say, Ben. I’m still not believing it’s happening.’

  ‘How do you think I feel?’ he asked, lowering his voice. ‘I’m reeling.’

  Suddenly, he stretched out his hand and took Jess’s.

  ‘But not for long, Jess. Oh, no, not for long.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, I’m going to get over this and quickly, too. If Marguerite can play this game, so can I. She doesn’t want me, I don’t want her. It’s as simple as that.’

  Oh, if only it were, Jess thought, as he put on his outdoor clothes and, like Addie, took a look at the outside weather.

  ‘Not too bad. No snow. I’ll get home, then, Jess.’ He paused. ‘No need to worry about meeting Marguerite, that’s one good thing.’

  ‘Why, where will she be?’

  ‘She’s moved herself to your mother’s. Didn’t Addie say?’

  ‘I’m sure she doesn’t know!’

  ‘Nice surprise for her, then, when she gets home.’

  His eyes on Jess softened.

  ‘Thanks for listening,’ he said hesitantly. ‘Never thought, did I, when I offered you my shoulder once that I’d be using yours?’ He kissed her cheek. ‘Go in, Jess. It may not be snowing, but it’s arctic out here.’

  ‘Take care!’ she cried, and waited till he was swallowed up in the darkness.

  For once, Rusty came home directly he’d left the cinema, disturbing Jess’s endless roundabout of thoughts as she went over and over her talk with Ben. It had meant something, that he’d come to her in the end. Come to her for solace, as the only person, perhaps, that he could allow to see into his heart. How much did it all mean? No one could answer that.

  ‘Did you find out what was wrong with Ben?’ she asked, as Rusty sat down to a bowl of soup.

  ‘Seemed under the weather.’

  ‘Marguerite is going to leave him.’

  Rusty’s spoon halted in mid-air. ‘She’s what?’

  ‘She’s met someone else. Told Ben today, just before the matinee.’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’

  ‘It’s true. She used to know this man in the war, when she was in the WAAFs. Then they met again.’

  ‘And he’s got more to offer than Ben?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Lucky guess.’

  Jess turned her head, unwilling in spite of it all to hear her sister criticized.

  ‘Come on,’ Rusty murmured. ‘You know what she’s like.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Fair enough. I’m for my bed, anyway.’

  Same old story, Jess thought, even though Rusty’s eyes were not so glazed as usual. He’d be out like a light, she’d be lying awake, riding her roundabout again, eventually getting up and sitting in the kitchen.

  ‘Might as well get rea
dy, then,’ she told Rusty. ‘I’ll heat the hot water bottle before I do anything else.’

  ‘Very cold tonight,’ he agreed, and they went to bed. Saved more talking, thought Jess.

  Fifty-Seven

  The long hard winter finally gave way to spring and then to summer, and if the rationing was no easier, at least the weather was better. Everyone, including the staff at the Princes, felt more cheerful, with even Ben seeming to cast aside the air of darkness that had held him after his wife’s departure, and to be more willing to smile.

  All sympathy, of course, had gone to him, rather than Marguerite, whose behaviour most of her colleagues found quite shocking. To leave a good husband like Ben for a great soft fellow like Guy Powrie! Why, it was obvious she’d done it for his money and position, and the fact that she was going to have to wait years for a divorce made it all the more scandalous.

  Not that Marguerite was around to know what people thought of her, for almost as soon as she left Ben, she left the cinema cafe, too.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she told Addie and Jess, ‘Guy doesn’t want me to work as a waitress any more, so I’ve handed in my notice. He’s going to find me a little job in his office, he says.’

  ‘Office work for you, Marguerite?’ Addie cried. ‘Why, you were never one for paperwork!’

  ‘I’ll be more of a receptionist, Ma. Guy thinks I’ll be quite good at that.’

  ‘And how long are you planning to stay with me, then? I don’t think it’s right, Marguerite, I don’t, and that’s the truth. You’re a married woman, you should be with Ben, until things can be made legal.’

  Marguerite hesitated, glancing quickly at her mother, and then at Jess, before lowering her eyes.

  ‘Thing is, Ma, I’ve taken this little flat. They’re hard to get, but Guy found it for me. I’m moving in next week.’

  ‘A flat?’ Addie cried. ‘And you never said? What on earth would you want your own flat for, at this stage?’

  ‘Well, I know you don’t want me at home again, so I needed a place to stay until we can get on with the divorce, don’t I?’

  ‘Which is going to take years,’ Jess put in. ‘I told you it wasn’t easy getting a divorce.’

  ‘And in the meantime, Guy Powrie comes calling when you’re on your own in this flat?’ Addie cried. ‘Marguerite, that’ll be worse than you living here. I’m no’ having it, I tell you, I’m no’ having you moving into a flat paid for by him and expecting us to believe that there’s no hanky-panky going on, as though we were all born yesterday!’