by Liz Byrski
‘Just one,’ I say. ‘Just one, my first love. He was a German who played ‘Wooden Heart’ to me on the piano.’
And when they see I can say no more the question moves along to the next woman’s story. For even now I see your eyes gazing into mine as you played. I see you pause after the last chord and then rise from the piano stool and take me in your arms.
***
‘Let me marry him now,’ I begged my parents.
‘Let me go with him.’
‘You’re very young Bill,’ my father said, using the nickname that he had created for me and he alone used. ‘There’s plenty of time. All we’re asking is that you wait a year, give yourself a bit of time. Give Karl time to get a job, get established. A year’s not all that long, you’re only just eighteen.’
‘Can’t you talk to Dad,’ I pleaded with my mother. ‘You like him, you know you do.’
‘Of course I like him, so does your father. It’s just that you’re so young and he’s so much older and—well, all the other things. But if he loves you he’ll wait. You know it makes sense.’
But I didn’t know. To me it was madness and I felt it as a physical pain that woke me at night and haunted my days.
‘You could just run away with him,’ said Jackie. ‘You could elope to Gretna Green, that would be really romantic. He could get a ladder and put it under your window and you could drive away to Scotland in the middle of the night.’
‘Your parents are only doing it for your own good dear,’ said Mrs Maxwell. They really do know what’s best. You’ll find the time will fly by. You won’t even notice it.’
‘Well, well Miss Beard,’ said Dr Murray. ‘And how is our young Aryan friend?’
‘He’s leaving soon,’ I said. ‘Dr Murray if I was your daughter would you let me go with him?’
He patted his pockets looking for his pipe and finding it finally on his desk began to fill it from the ancient leather pouch. ‘If you were my daughter I would probably be incapable of denying you anything you wanted,’ he said slowly. ‘But that of course would not necessarily be the best thing for you, and that it is why it’s a very good thing that I never became a parent.’
‘But it’s so unfair,’ I persisted.
‘Let me tell you something,’ he said, pausing to light the pipe and draw on it to get it going. ‘When I met my wife she was eighteen just like you, and I was thirty-five, even older than your young man. I thought Ellen was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen and I was determined to marry her. It was the thirties and in those days long engagements were the thing but it was two years before we could get engaged and her father made us wait another three years after that. I was forty when I married her and she was just twenty-three, and now I’m sixty-eight and I still think she is the most wonderful and beautiful woman in the world. She was worth waiting for, as you are my dear. Life is long, you have many years ahead. Your young man will wait for you, he’ll come back and marry you and you will wonder why it all seemed so hard.’
‘It’s only right,’ said Mrs Wilmot, pursing her lips as she prepared to take the signature book filled with letters into the managing director’s office. ‘You can’t be gadding off to America when you’ve only just got to know him. Heaven knows what might happen.’
‘A year’s not long really,’ said Sally Palmer. ‘Just think what you were doing this time last year.’
‘It’s too long ago to remember,’ I muttered.
‘Oh go on with you! The time’ll be gone before you know it and we’ll all be getting ready for the wedding.’
‘It’s an eternity,’ said Jackie. ‘If I were you I’d kill myself. That’d make them think. Then they’d really wish they’d let you go with him. But, of course, you’d go to hell because suicide is a mortal sin. You know I heard that people make suicide pacts and kill themselves together if they can’t bear to be apart, sort of like Romeo and Juliet I think. That would be more romantic than eloping.’
‘America,’ said my mother, ‘Is such a long way away and if anything happened—’
‘Like what?’
‘Well, if things went wrong between you, you’d be all on your own, thousands of miles from home, from us.’
‘But it won’t go wrong. We’re in love, Karl will look after me. He said so, you know he will.’ But she turned away to fold the linen and I ran upstairs to weep alone on my bed.
***
On a rainy Saturday afternoon we sat facing each other in a teashop near Victoria Station and I had my first taste of waffles with maple syrup. In San Francisco, you said, you would warm the waffles in our own kitchen and pour on the syrup and the cream for me and we would sit together and watch the day dawn over the bay. We would eat real American hamburgers in a diner with red leather seats and a counter gleaming with chrome and drink sodas from the soda fountain. We would snuggle together in your car at the drive-in, sharing a bag of popcorn, and at night lie in each other’s arms and know that every night was ours. Inside the warm cafe the windows were clouded with condensation, and steam rose from the damp coats of the customers who ducked inside to escape the rain. But as the unmistakable first notes of ‘It’s Now or Never’ floated from the jukebox your face changed. There was a sudden darkness in your eyes that looked like desperation. Your fork clattered onto the edge of your plate and it seemed like minutes before you could speak.
‘I suddenly had this terrible feeling that I won’t ever see you again,’ you said. It was a feeling so intense that it knocked the breath from your body and set your hands shaking.
‘Of course we’ll see each other,’ I said. For, despite my misery at the prospect of parting, I was confident of the ultimate reunion. ‘I’m coming to America, we’re going to be married.’ And I reached across the table and took your hand and you gripped mine so hard that the ring on my finger bit into me, and for an instant I felt the depths of your panic.
And the days grew longer and the sky lightened. You took my photograph in the garden, and early on a bright Sunday morning you called to me from under my bedroom window and as I opened it and looked down you snapped me standing there. On the beach at Brighton on a chilly day when a raw wind blew off the sea filling the air with salt spray, you walked away from me down the slope of stones towards the water’s edge. I called your name and as you turned, your hands in your pockets, the collar of your jacket turned up against the cold, I took your photograph capturing your laughing eyes, your broad smile.
‘Come with me, Sweetheart,’ you called against the wind and I ran down the beach and took your hand and we ran together under the pier. Breathless I leaned against a stanchion green with seaweed and encrusted with barnacles, and with one hand resting on the stanchion behind me you bent to kiss me. With your face warm against mine you promised we would always be together.
The day before you left we walked through grass soaked by recent rain, under a sky that promised another downpour, and brushed past bushes and brambles that drenched our sleeves and chilled our limbs. Beside the great lake where the water tumbled white and foaming over the rocks, we clung to each other with promises of love and letters, with assurances of always and forever, until we were drained of words. Words that were carried away on the wind. We stood in silent desperation until the dusk drove us home, back across the fields and closer to parting.
I wept through the night, waking to the chill dawn of the day I dreaded. We sat together in the car as if cast in stone. Your face was a mask, your body rigid; I caught a sob on your breath and your lips trembled as you kissed me and I clung to you.
‘Don’t get out of the car,’ you told me as you opened the door and grabbed your bag. ‘Please stay in the car.’ Your eyes were black with pain, your face was terrible as you closed the door and turned to walk into the station. I was suffocating, drowning, dying. As you reached the top of the station yard you turned before the steps to the platform, you looked back once and then you were gone.
3
‘Another letter?’ said M
rs Wilmot as I put my bag and the airmail envelope down on my desk. ‘He seems to write to you a lot. I hope you don’t intend to spend too much time reading it in the office.’
Of course I intended just that. Dr Murray was away and I was planning to head straight for his empty office on the pretext of filing, and there read your letter in the peace and privacy of the executive floor. I hung my coat on the hook and slipped the envelope into my skirt pocket.
‘What are you wearing for the dinner dance Liz?’ Sally asked as I made the pretence of sorting correspondence on my desk.
‘I’m not going,’ I said.
‘But you have to go,’ said Sylvia looking up from her typewriter in horror. It was early in the morning and the other two secretaries hadn’t yet arrived. ‘It’s the one event of the year for the firm. Everyone goes, it’s expected; you must come and bring a partner.’
‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘My partner would be Karl and he’s in California. I can’t go without him, I don’t want to.’
‘Of course you do dear, don’t be so silly,’ said Mrs Wilmot with an air of irritation. ‘You must know another young man you can bring.’
‘I suppose you could come on your own,’ Sally ventured. ‘There will be other people on their own, you could sit with one of those nice boys from the lab. There’ll be plenty of people for you to dance with.’
I started to feel uncomfortable. ‘I’m not going,’ I repeated. ‘Karl wouldn’t like it and anyway I don’t want to go without him, I don’t want to dance with anyone else.’
‘Wouldn’t like it indeed!’ sniffed Mrs Wilmot, rising from her desk and drawing herself to her full, impressive height. ‘And who does he think he is, telling you what to do when he’s not even here? The dinner dance is given to the staff by the firm and you should be grateful that you have such a good employer.’ And she took her bag and headed for the ladies room.
I flushed as I started to open Dr Murray’s mail.
‘You don’t have to tell him,’ Sally said, seeing my distress. ‘After all he’d never know.’
‘That’s right,’ said Sylvia. ‘Just don’t tell him. He doesn’t need to know everything and it won’t hurt you to mix with a few nice boys your own age.’
‘Men don’t need to know everything we do,’ said Sally in a whisper, as though a crowd of eavesdropping men might overhear. ‘You’re only going dancing, there’s no harm in that.’
Mrs Maxwell was in the duplicating room watching as a new junior typist attempted to conquer the eccentricities of the Gestetner machine.
‘I don’t have to go do I?’ I asked her.
‘Of course you do dear, it’ll be lovely. You’ve got a nice dress haven’t you? You’ll have a wonderful time, lovely food and lots of dancing. That young Michael Westbury—you know, the lab assistant, he’s really got an eye for you. It’s a lovely occasion, everybody’s going.’
‘Dr Murray’s not going,’ I said. ‘He told me he’s not. He hates dinner dances and so does Mrs Murray.’
Mrs Maxwell paused to show the junior how to remove the stencil from the machine and then gestured to her to take the duplicated copies back to the typing pool. She closed the door behind the girl and turned back to me.
‘Dr Murray is an elderly gentleman and a director dear, he can do as he likes. You are just a secretary, and despite your rapid promotion you’re still very young. Having a job like this means that you have certain responsibilities that go with it. Coming along to the dinner dance and being a part of the firm’s social life is one of them. Now what is all this nonsense about?’
‘I don’t want to go,’ I said as, despite my efforts to control it, the first tear slid down my cheek. ‘I don’t want to go without Karl, and anyway he’d be really upset. It can’t hurt anybody if I don’t go, probably nobody will even notice.’
‘Of course they’ll notice and they’ll remember,’ said Mrs Maxwell obviously exasperated. ‘Now don’t be such a silly girl. Go along and see Jacqueline and have a chat to her, she’s looking forward to it.’
I wandered up the stairs to the first floor where Jackie, who had recently been promoted to secretary to the accounts manager, now occupied an office with two other girls.
‘I’ve got this amazing red dress,’ she said. ‘It’s strapless and it fits really tight. Derek from Sales is just going to die when he sees me in it. Michael Westbury’s going to ask you to go with him, I know he is because he told Pauline Watkins and she told me. He thinks you’re the best looking girl in the whole place. He told Pauline he thinks you’re even prettier than Debbie Reynolds.’
‘I’m not going,’ I said.
Jackie dropped the ledger book and the other two girls froze, their hands poised above the keys of two identical Imperial 66 typewriters.
‘I don’t want to go without Karl and he wouldn’t like it.’
‘Oh don’t be so soppy,’ said Jackie, bending down to retrieve the ledger. ‘You’ll have a fantastic time. Wear that black dress you told me about, the one you got in Bond Street. Don’t tell him, he’ll never know. After all he’s not here, what do you think he’s up to in San Francisco? You don’t think he stays in every night thinking of you do you?’
‘That’s right,’ said one of the others. ‘He’s quite old isn’t he? He probably goes to clubs and stuff like that all the time. You know what it’s like in America.’
‘After all,’ said the other, ‘if he really loved you he wouldn’t have left would he—he’d still be here.’
Now I couldn’t stop the tears and I turned away and walked quickly out of the office and up the stairs to the sanctuary of the director’s floor.
While you were still in England there had been a feverish interest in our romance, endless questions, advice about clothes and how to behave in order to keep you and make you keener. The decision to wait a year and your departure had been approved as sensible mature behaviour, but now, since you had actually left, you were discounted and disapproved of. I was alone with my love and my loneliness. I was to be matched up with a boy from the laboratory so that I wouldn’t be a messy and inconvenient wallflower. It seemed that none of them understood about love, only about the external appearances. I felt frighteningly alone and I was angry and hurt; I was more determined than ever that I would not go to the dance.
Dr Murray’s office was cool and silent. It was the last room at the end of a long passage on the third floor. Oak and ash trees, bordering a small copse, brushed their branches on the windows, their leaves a filter to the sunlight. The beige carpet and the polished mahogany desk were dappled with the green light. I organised a pile of papers, stacking them up to look as though I was working through a pile of filing. Then I sank down into the big green leather revolving chair, took the ivory paper knife from its stand and slit open your envelope.
The airmail pages were covered in your strong sloping handwriting, the strange elongated letter V scattered like tiny blue snakes, the long open lower loops always finding a clear space to fall.
I held the letter to my face trying to feel the hands that had written and folded the pages. I read it several times. You were saving money fast, at this rate you would easily be able to satisfy my father’s demands. You missed me desperately you said, but knowing you were working for our future kept you going and you longed for the day when we would be together. I was your whole life, all you had ever dreamed of and you felt your gypsy days were over, the wandering was at an end and you were ready to settle down.
Your loving words soothed me and calmed my anxiety. Your letter made me feel strong, I would simply refuse point blank to go to the dance, I was able to withstand whatever was said to me, whatever might happen. I read it several times and then sat gazing at the trees, dreaming of our life together, of the day I would go with you to California. I could see our neat pretty house with its wide front lawns that swept down to the tree-lined sidewalk. I pictured myself—a Doris Day look-a-like, with a tiny waist, wearing a chequered apron over a full skirt and a
trim blouse with puffed sleeves and a Peter Pan collar. In a spotless pastel and chrome kitchen I would bake pies for you. Each evening the tantalising smell of home cooking would greet you as you opened the door. You’d call out ‘Sweetheart, I’m home!’ and I would run to greet you. We’d drive an apple green Chevrolet, or a desert rose Buick with big chrome fins, and on the record player Tony Bennett would sing about our city.
As I got up to start on the filing I hit my shin on the open lower drawer of Dr Murray’s desk and as I bent to close it I spotted a stack of colour photographs, the top one of a woman in bed. Dropping back into the chair I reached down and without even pausing to consider what I was doing I took the photographs from the drawer.
She was a plain woman, quite overweight with greying blonde hair and heavy features. She was sitting propped up in bed, the pillows resting against a carved mahogany bedhead.
The frilly straps of a pale blue nightdress looked strangely unsuitable and the sheer fabric did nothing to hide her breasts. She was looking straight into the camera lens and the fingers of one hand rested on the full lower lip of her slightly open mouth. I began to look through the photographs knowing I was doing wrong but unable to stop. Now the nightdress was gone and she was holding her heavy breasts in her hands, the dark nipples thrusting towards the camera. I gasped in shock and kept on looking. The pictures were like a series of frames that, if run fast through a projector, would have made her appear to be slowly revealing herself to the photographer. Each one showed a little more of the fleshy body as the sheet was pushed down to reveal the first trace of pubic hair, and the tops of her thighs.
Even alone in the room I flushed with embarrassment and my body flooded with heat. I was young, my limbs were slim and smooth and I remembered the night that I stood in front of the mirror and studied my own pleasingly taut and curvaceous body. A part of me was repelled by the folds, the mounds, the depressions of this older woman’s flesh, and the skin that lacked the glow of youth. But another part was seduced by the shocking intimacy of the pictures.