by Rosie Thomas
‘Why are you so brown?’ she asked him.
‘I’m a traveller. I work where I can, flying, and if it’s in the sun, so much the better. Then, when I’ve put enough money together, I ski until it runs out.’
Julia thought of languorous silver beaches, and then snow under a brittle blue sky. A long way from the attic flat, and from the rows of desks in the accounts office. Her freedom seemed suddenly tame. Josh’s glittering energy fired her own, making it blaze up inside her. It was impossible to sit still any longer.
The singer finished his spot.
‘I want to dance. Can we?’ she asked Josh.
He smiled at her. ‘Sure we can.’
On the little dance floor he held out his arms to her. She stepped forward, a small, deliberate step. His hand on her waist felt light and warm.
Dancing at the Rocket was nothing like this. Usually Julia knew what tune the band was playing, what the other girls were wearing, who was dancing nearby and what steps they were doing.
Tonight she didn’t notice anything, except Josh. She forgot how to dance, and learned all over again through Josh. She felt lighter than she had ever done, part of the music itself.
From across the room Mattie saw them smiling at each other, hypnotised. She was dancing with Harry, whose still, English bearing was such a contrast to Josh’s. Harry danced like a poker. Harry Gilbert wouldn’t look at her like Josh was looking at Julia. She was glad of that, because she knew what the look meant. But she was touched by a tiny, unfamiliar shiver of jealousy. Mattie wanted to be overtaken too.
Julia and Josh danced for a long time. They hardly spoke but they were still listening to each other, to the sound of one another’s breathing, the unspoken words.
At last, reluctantly, Harry let his arm fall from around Mattie’s waist. He was still standing close enough to see down her blouse, into the blue shadow between the creamy, gold-freckled breasts. But Harry had to work the next day. There was an old Lancaster, converted for freight-carrying, waiting to be flown. Not like Josh Flood, who seemed to have the knack of working only when he felt like it. Harry touched Mattie’s cheek, pushing back the blonde waves. The pair of them were not much more than children anyway, he thought. It was tempting, but impossible.
‘I must get to bed,’ he told her sadly.
‘And me too.’ Mattie’s eyes held his. ‘My own bed.’
She had been perfectly honest with him. And Harry was always dogged by his own gentlemanly code. ‘Of course,’ he murmured.
Julia and Josh followed them. They held themselves apart by a little, artificial space. Outside in the cool darkness Josh turned suddenly.
‘It’s too early to go home. Do you want to go home?’ he asked Julia.
Slowly, she shook her head.
‘Josh never sleeps,’ Harry said. He flung out his arm to a passing taxi. ‘I’ll see Mattie home.’
He held open the door for her. Mattie’s knuckles brushed against Julia’s, hidden in the folds of their full skirts. She took her hand quickly, and squeezed it. Julia watched her friend subside into the taxi with Harry beside her, but she didn’t look round. The cab chugged away into the night.
I love you, Mattie, she thought.
‘Julia Smith,’ Josh said softly. ‘What shall we do now?’
Julia looked up. They sky was powdered with faint stars. ‘Let’s walk a little way.’
He took her hand, drawing it close against him. They began to walk, not noticing which way, perfectly in step.
‘I’ve talked all night about aircraft and ski-slopes,’ Josh complained. ‘I’m surprised you’re not asleep. I don’t know anything about you, except how pretty you are.’
Julia laughed. There was nothing to tell Josh, she thought. She was a blank canvas, like one of Felix’s, waiting. The idea was intoxicating. She felt electrically alive, charged with an astonishing happiness. It made her want to take hold of everything, that lamp-post and these shop windows and the newspapers crumpled in the gutter and hold them, here and now, because they were part of Josh and part of tonight. Nothing could go wrong tonight. Nothing could touch her now.
‘I can’t fly. I can’t ski.’ She heard herself laughing.
Josh lifted her hand and kissed the knuckles, where they had brushed against Mattie’s. ‘I’ll teach you.’
So much to learn.
‘There’s one thing,’ Julia said softly. She would tell Josh, of course. ‘It’s why this evening happened, in a way. My mother told me today that I’m adopted.’ She lifted her chin, looking at him. ‘I didn’t know. I’m on my own, now.’ It was easy to say that, because she knew that she wasn’t.
Josh stopped and put his hands on her shoulders. He looked into her upturned face for a minute, a long time. Julia felt his concern like the sun, warming her.
‘That’s tough,’ he said at last. He didn’t try anything else and she loved him for that, for not flooding her with words.
Josh was watching her, under the light of the street lamp. The attempted sophistication of Leoni’s and the nightclub had dropped away from her. She wasn’t just another girl now. She was this girl, looking back at him with wide eyes that reflected the light. He cupped her face in his hands. Her neck and throat were fragile, and her skin was luminous. He kissed her, twisting her round against him, tasting the sweetness of her mouth and tongue. She held on to him, answering him, but Josh lifted his head again.
‘How old are you?’ he asked harshly.
‘Seventeen,’ Julia said, and then she whispered, ‘Almost.’ That was the truth. She wouldn’t lie to Josh.
‘Jesus.’ He turned her face again, so that he could see her more clearly. ‘That’s jail-bait.’
‘Josh. I’m older than you think.’
He remembered her in the restaurant. She had laid her claim on him then, as coolly as a woman twice her age. And she had danced with him, keeping nothing back. They had been making love, upright and fully clothed. Children didn’t dance like that. And he couldn’t relinquish her now. It was already too late.
‘Are you?’ he demanded roughly. ‘Are you?’
Julia only smiled. When he kissed her again he could feel the outline of her body under her thin clothes. She had long legs and narrow hips, and small, hard breasts. She felt hot, and her head tilted back under the weight of his.
‘Come on,’ Josh said. ‘Julia Smith, this is a public street.’ He was grinning but he wasn’t quite in control of himself, and he didn’t want Julia to see that. ‘Let’s walk on a way, or there’ll be real trouble.’
They went on under the street lights, walking very slowly, their hands still touching. Telling Josh about her mother had breached a dam inside Julia. The words poured out of her now, and she told him about home, and the High Street, and Blick Road, and about Mattie and the Embankment and ending up with Jessie and Felix in the square. They sounded such small doings compared with Josh’s but Julia didn’t care about that. It was important that he should know everything, that was all.
He listened gravely, nodding his blond head.
‘Now you know,’ she said at last.
‘Now I know.’
He was touched by her offering it all to him. It was very different, this walk in the deserted streets, from the conventional overture to the evening. Nor was this girl anything like one of the pair of pretty, giggling women he had ordered pink champagne for. Josh sighed. He touched Julia’s face with the tips of his fingers before he kissed her again.
‘It’s very late,’ he said.
‘I know.’ Time didn’t mean anything to Julia then.
Josh had been thinking. He had been staying with a girl, an ex-girlfriend, but even so he didn’t think that Carol would be happy to see him at three in the morning with Julia in tow. He knew that Julia shared a room with Mattie, back in their friend’s apartment. And it was far too late for a hotel, without any luggage.
‘I’d better take you home,’ he said gently.
Her hand tightened on his, but
she only said, ‘It isn’t very far from here. I know the way.’ Julia smiled at him, and he saw the happiness in her face. ‘Tonight has been the most perfect evening I’ve ever had,’ she said simply.
Josh wanted to pick her up and hold her, and he knew that he was crazy, and that there was nothing to be done because it had happened now.
‘I kind of enjoyed it too,’ he said.
Outside the black-painted door in the square he held her again. Julia let her head fall against his shoulder, thinking, I don’t care what happens.
‘Can I see you again?’ Josh asked, and as soon as he had said it she knew how much she did care.
‘Oh, yes. Yes, please.’
Joshua couldn’t help smiling. ‘Give me your phone number then.’
‘There isn’t a telephone here.’
He looked up at the numerals on the shabby black door. ‘Okay. I know where you are.’ His hand touched her shoulder, lightly, like a friend’s. ‘So, I’ll be back.’
He walked away quickly, his hair a spot of brightness under the dark trees.
Julia let herself in and climbed the stairs. She couldn’t feel their dusty solidity under her feet. She was light, as if she could float, and the tight feeling inside her was all gone. It was a stream now, washing freely. She wanted to lie down in the warmth of it, with Josh, and let the current pour over them. Was that what love was? Julia was laughing. She could see Josh’s face so clearly. Your aviator, Mattie had said. The word was as beautiful as Josh himself. Julia tried the words aloud.
‘I love you,’ she said. ‘God help me, I love you.’
Five
Julia waited for a week. Every evening she ran through the home-going crowds and into the square, certain that Josh would be there. But every evening at the top of the stairs there was only Jessie in her chair.
‘I know he’ll come,’ Julia said, with the light still in her face.
Jessie scowled. ‘What do you mean, you know? The only thing to know about men is that you can’t trust them. You listen to me.’
‘Josh is different,’ Julia said simply. It was unthinkable that he might not come. Another week went by.
Julia stopped talking about her aviator, but Mattie could see from the way that she sat with her head cocked that she was listening to the street noises below their window, willing the buzz of the doorbell to cut through their aimless conversation. Julia wouldn’t go out any more, however hard Mattie tried to persuade her. She sat on her bed, apparently absorbed in a book, but the pages either flicked over too quickly or else they didn’t turn at all.
‘Do you think he’ll come?’ Mattie whispered to Felix one night, but Felix only shrugged and turned away.
Mattie had her own preoccupations. After the party she had dialled the number on the card that Francis Willoughby had given her. She had imagined that such an important man would be shielded by secretaries, and she was faintly surprised when he answered the telephone himself.
‘Come and see me in my office,’ Mr Willoughby said.
‘Shaftesbury Avenue, of course. Address on the card I gave you. Top floor. Tuesday at three sharp.’
On the Tuesday afternoon Mattie told her shoe shop mangeress that she had a headache and would have to go home.
‘You can’t do that,’ the woman said. ‘What if we all went home on the slightest excuse?’ Mattie made her face sag, and swallowed very hard. ‘I feel sick. I might be sick near a customer. Or on some stock.’
‘Oh, go on then,’ the manageress said hastily.
Mattie caught a bus to Piccadilly Circus and began the walk up the enchanted curve of Shaftesbury Avenue. She didn’t see the dusty shop windows, or the advertisement hoardings, or the city-sharpened faces of the ordinary people passing her. She only saw the majestic fronts of the theatres and the names up in lights. She dawdled for a moment, staring greedily at the production stills in their glass cases. She had seen two or three of the plays, perched up in the cheapest seats, but with the talisman of Mr Willoughby’s card in her hand, Headline Repertory Companies, she felt closer to the stage than she had ever done in any audience.
It was further than she thought. She found the Victorian redbrick block housing the Headline company at the northernmost end of the avenue, set amongst a cluster of tiny shops and Italian cafés. She took the ancient lift to the top floor, panting from having run the last hundred yards. Mr Willoughby was sitting alone behind the glass-panelled door of his office. The door announced his name, and the name of his company in full, in not quite evenly painted white letters. Mattie saw at a glance that the office was a green-painted cell, furnished with two deal desks and a pair of battered metal filing cabinets, a telephone and an electric kettle, and a dog-eared copy of Spotlight. It smelt of linoleum and cigarette smoke and, rather strongly, of Mr Willoughby himself.
‘Come in, dear, come in,’ he said. ‘Make yourself comfortable.’
He was looking at Mattie’s flushed cheeks and the corkscrews of blonde hair sticking to her forehead. Then his glance travelled downwards. Mattie was wearing a new circle-stitched bra and her jumper fitted tightly. She stumbled to the empty desk and perched on a typist’s chair with a broken back.
‘What I need, dear,’ Francis Willoughby announced with a show of briskness, ‘is a really efficient girl to help me with all aspects of this business.’ He waved his hand around the office. ‘Bookings, Contracts. Auditions. I’m a very busy man.’ He glanced at the telephone, but it remained silent. ‘There’s answering that thing for me. Are you used to the telephone?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Mattie assured him.
‘Typing, of course …’
‘I’m afraid I can’t type.’ I can’t pretend about that, Mattie thought desperately. Mr Willoughby glanced at her jumper again and ran his thumb to and fro over his thin moustache.
‘Well. Perhaps you could pick it up as you go along?’
‘I’m sure I could.’
‘The job pays six pounds ten a week.’
Less than at the shoe shop. Mattie looked over Mr Willoughby’s shoulder and through the sweaty green walls. Beyond them was the stage.
‘Could you make it seven pounds?’
Mr Willoughby’s smile showed his teeth, too white and even to be real.
‘Lots of girls want to do theatre management, dear. It’s not like ordinary office work, is it?’
‘All right,’ Mattie said quickly. ‘Six pounds ten.’
She started work with Headline Repertory Companies the following Monday, leaving the shoe shop without a backward glance.
While Julia listened to the clamour inside herself and waited, trying to contain it, Mattie went out to explore the limits of her new job. It seemed to consist mostly of explaining to angry-sounding voices on the telephone that Mr Willoughby was auditioning and couldn’t speak to anyone now.
Mattie quickly understood that most of the anger related to the non-appearance of money. Francis would look up from his desk, squinting against the smoke from his cigarette, and hiss, ‘Cheque’s in the post, tell ’em.’
Mattie knew that there was nothing of the kind in the post, because she did Francis’s few letters too, but she made a convincing job of lying for him, and he grinned approvingly at her.
One caller was particularly insistent. His voice was deep and resonant, the perfect actor’s voice as far as Mattie was concerned. His name was John Douglas, he told her, and he was the manager of Francis’s number one company, currently on tour in the north of England.
‘Tell fucking Francis,’ the rich voice issued from the telephone mouthpiece, ‘that unless I get fucking paid in full and unless I get cash in hand to pay the fucking company every Friday night as well, I don’t take them or sodding Saint Joan to fucking Gateshead next week. Got that?’
‘I think so,’ Mattie murmured.
Wincing as if it hurt him, Francis at last unlocked the big company cheque-book from the safe.
‘It’s all cash-flow, dear,’ he told her as he wrote a cheque
. ‘If you don’t get the takings during the week, it isn’t there to pay the actors at the end of the week, is it?’
When she bent down to find the company’s current address in the filing cabinet, Francis put his hand up her skirt. His fingers squeezed her thigh and then slid up over her stocking top. Mattie jerked away from him.
‘Six pounds ten a week doesn’t cover that, Francis,’ she told him wearily, and he chuckled. A large proportion of Mattie’s time was spent dodging his hands, but the more brusquely she shook him off the more Francis seemed to enjoy it. Sometimes, especially after one of his lengthy lunches, the atmosphere in the little office was so highly charged with his erotic tension that Mattie was half-afraid the spurt of flame from his cigarette lighter would set fire to it. But most of the time she felt sorry for Francis and his beleaguered existence. Were all men pathetic, she wondered, under the armour plate of their aggression?
Mattie sighed and directed her attention back to whatever non-task Francis had set her between fumbles and phone calls. This was the theatre, that was the thing to remember. However marginally, she was involved in the magic world at last.
At the end of the third week, Josh came. Mattie opened the door to him, and Felix saw Julia’s face when she heard his voice. It was as though a soft light had been turned on under the skin of her face. It shone out of her eyes and glowed through her bones. The blurring of familiarity lifted for an instant, and Felix saw her as if she was a stranger again. She’s beautiful, he thought.
He went on calmly slicing the aubergines he had been preparing for their meal. Their rich colour made the backs of his hands look ashy by contrast.
‘You see?’ Julia whispered, to nobody. ‘I knew he would come.’ A moment later Josh stood in the kitchen doorway with his arm round Julia’s shoulder. He seemed to fill the space with his height and the breadth of his shoulders, although in reality he was no taller than Felix. Julia was laughing at something he had said to her in the hallway, gasping a little, as if she was short of breath.