by Rosie Thomas
Mattie half undressed herself and pulled the covers up over both of them. The weight of him in the bed beside her felt strange, but it comforted her. She fell asleep at once.
When she woke up again it was daylight. She frowned at the tall rectangle of light in front of her, and then it resolved itself into a window, with thin sunshine filtering through greyish net curtains. There were green velour curtains framing the net. She remembered, and turned under the bedcovers to look for him.
The bed was empty, although the pillows on the other side were dented and creased. He had been here, then.
Not a dream.
The room was empty too, for all the lowering, shiny furniture. Mattie drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She lay and listened to the sounds of doors opening and closing, distant hoovering, a car passing outside. She was thirsty and her head felt muzzy.
The door opened. John came in and closed it with a gentle click, before he looked and saw that she was awake. He stood at the side of the bed, peering down at her. Then he sat down heavily on his own side. He was wearing a startling, red paisley dressing gown.
‘I’m sorry,’ he offered at last. ‘That wasn’t a very attractive display, was it? I don’t often drink like that, although it may surprise you to hear it. Can’t afford it, for one thing. And when I did I used to be able to hold it. But I’m an old man now. Failing in every direction.’
Mattie broke into his monologue. ‘Fifty-four isn’t old. Not if you don’t let it be.’
She remembered how he had looked last night, in his underclothes. She felt pain for both of them, but John laughed. He was snorting a little, running his fingers through his hair so that it lay back flat, like a badger’s. He stood up again and walked restlessly around the room, then stopped at the window to stare through the mist of grey net towards the sea.
In a low voice he asked her, ‘Do you want to try again?’
Mattie tried to blot out the room and its depressing furnishings, and the dusty, heavy green folds of fabric shrouding them.
The room didn’t matter. They were here, that was all.
She was troubled more by the sense that nothing else mattered, either. Whether John Douglas made love to her against this shiny wooden headboard, or not. It wouldn’t make any difference. It wouldn’t be a cataclysmic moment, not like in the stories. Except that there had been that moment of tenderness last night. That stayed with her, like warmth and wetness still on her cheek.
Afterwards she had undressed him and he had been vulnerable.
In the restaurant’s sickly warmth, with the wine in her head, she had wanted to come here to his bedroom. This morning she only knew that she liked John Douglas, rumpled and hung-over in his cherry-coloured dressing gown. Liking unclouded by longing or lust.
Mattie thought fleetingly of Julia’s aviator. With his broad back and strong arms and blond head, his potency like a spell cast over Julia. Mattie’s mouth curved. She didn’t long for Josh Flood either.
What difference, then?
Without speaking she lifted her bare arm from the musty shelter of the blankets and held it out to him.
He came to her quickly, pulling at the paisley cloth. He was naked underneath it and Mattie saw white corded flesh and thickly matted grey hair. Then he was beside her, on top of her, his tongue in her hair and in her ears and in her mouth. He pulled at the layer of clothes she had slept in and she helped him where she could, wriggling awkwardly beneath him. He hoisted himself up so that he could see her.
‘Oh God, you’ve got a beautiful body.’
He seized her breasts, kneading and squeezing and bumping them, and then taking them in his mouth with the nipples between his teeth. Mattie lay perfectly still and let him do what he wanted to her. For a moment everything seemed simple. He just does it, she thought with relief. But it wasn’t enough.
‘Hold me,’ he ordered her. He fixed her fist over himself. She felt thin, shiny skin stretched perilously tight over hard flesh. Mattie moved her hand tentatively up and down, wanting to do it right for him. He hissed hotly in her ear, ‘Hold it tighter. And do it hard, like this.’ His hand pumped with hers, big, long strokes that he thrust into.
Is that right? she wanted to ask. Is that right?
His fingers tweaked at her, rubbing and probing. ‘You like, that don’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Her breath came in a suffocating gasp, and she felt him smile.
‘Good. Yes. There’s nothing bloody like it.’
Mattie felt nothing. She had never felt anything with the boys outside the dance halls, or in the back row of the cinema, either.
Suddenly John pulled the pillows down from behind their heads. He thrust them under Mattie’s hips, lifting her into the air. She felt stripped and exposed and tried to roll aside but he bent his head over her, probing with his tongue. Mattie tried to respond. She screwed her eyes up so tightly that stars exploded behind her eyelids. John leaned over the side of the bed and fumbled in his dressing gown pocket. He unrolled the rubber over himself and balanced over her on all fours.
You can do what you want, Mattie repeated childishly inside her starry head. I don’t mind. You can do what you want.
He pushed her legs so far apart that the tendons strained in her groin. Then he took hold of himself with his fist and guided it into her. He did it quite gently, but Mattie felt the resistance inside her, and the pressure of him jabbing in and down. There was a sharp tear and she yelled out, an aggrieved shout of pain.
John held himself still.
‘Jesus Christ. Is this your first time?’
She nodded blindly. ‘I’m sorry.’
He took her face in his hands and kissed it, rubbing her mouth with his lips.
‘You should have told me, you bloody silly girl. Oh, Mattie.’
His gentleness salved her a little, but he seemed to forget it quite quickly. He began to saw up and down inside her, all the way in and then almost out again. Mattie felt nothing. The soft, melting, warm-watery sensations that her father gave her when they were alone in the house together were all that Mattie knew. And she had buried those feelings so deeply and defensively that it would take more than John Douglas to disinter them.
It seemed to go on for a long time. The weight of him ground against her hip-bones, and her soft membranes felt bruised and assaulted. Mattie concentrated on his thick white shoulders sheeny with sweat, on the creases in his neck, and the tufts of grey hair that sprouted from his ears.
He began to move faster, his breath coming in hoarse gasps. He went rigid and shouted out, ‘Jesus,’ and then gave a long, wailing cry. Mattie was afraid for him, and then she realised that it was all over. She held his head between her hands, supporting him until he stopped thrashing over her.
Milky silence folded over the room and they lay limply in the knotted blankets.
There, Mattie thought. I was right it didn’t matter.
She thought that John had fallen asleep again, but he lifted his head to look at her. ‘I wish you’d told me that you were a virgin.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she whispered.
His face looked different, she noticed. Softer, perhaps.
‘You made me very happy, this morning, Mattie Banner,’ John said.
She smiled then, a quick flickering smile, but she felt warmer inside.
‘Good,’ Mattie said.
They lay comfortably together, listening to the world moving outside. It was nice, Mattie thought, to share a moment like this. Private, just to themselves. John reached for his cigarettes and lit one for each of them, fitting Mattie’s between her fingers for her. She inhaled deeply, knowingly. She felt wiser, almost happy.
‘John?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Mm?’
‘Did you go to bed with Jennifer Edge?’
A laugh rumbled in his chest, under her ear. ‘Yes. Everyone did, it was more or less obligatory. I’m not sure about Doris and Ada.’ Mattie laughed too, but the little glo
w of warmth faded. She could cope with his Burford wife. But Jennifer Edge, whom she had never seen and cared nothing about, she made a difference. She put Mattie herself into perspective. One in a line. It probably went with the job.
She tried to banter. ‘What? Lenny, too?’
‘Almost certainly.’
It was hard to laugh. Mattie saw the room again. Green and brown, hideous in the livid winter daylight. She butted out her cigarette in the tin ashtray beside the bed.
‘I should be at the theatre now.’
‘Come here for one more minute.’
He put his thick arms around and pulled her closer. The woolly hairs on his chest crinkled against her skin.
‘Jennifer’s nothing like you, you know. You’re a nice girl, Mattie.’ He kissed her thoroughly and when he let her go again Mattie said softly, ‘I used to be a nice girl.’
They both laughed, then. Mattie took the opportunity to slide out of bed. She put her crumpled clothes on and combed her hair in front of the greenish mirror.
‘I’ll see you later, my love, at the theatre,’ John said.
‘Of course.’
Mattie walked down through the Air-Wick-pungent hotel and out through the front door. Nobody shouted an accusation after her. The sea was puckered and steel-grey, but she didn’t stop to look at it. She turned into the town towards the theatre. Women with shopping bags passed her, and errand boys on bicycles.
They must all be able to see, Mattie thought. I know they can tell what I’ve been doing. She held her head up. It doesn’t matter. It’s happened, that’s all. She felt very lonely, and she longed to tell Julia. Not in a letter. Not after the weeks of silence that she had allowed to slip by.
She would have to wait until Christmas. Two weeks, until the company disbanded for the Christmas break.
Everyone in the company knew at once. Vera took her aside when she reached the theatre.
‘Where were you last night? I was so worried.’
‘Were you? I went out to dinner with John,’ Mattie said deliberately. ‘Someone else stood him up.’
Vera’s eyes and mouth made three amazed circles. She scuttled away as soon as she could to spread the news.
It turned out to be a short-lived sensation. Everyone was used to the permutations of company lovers, and when the brief flurry of interest died down Mattie discovered the effects were that the actors treated her more circumspectly and Sheila Firth adopted her as a kind of ally. Only Fergus and Alan didn’t share their jokes quite as generously, and Lenny didn’t expect her to be a friend now that she had John Douglas.
At the next Treasury call Vera handed her a separate envelope with her wages. It contained exactly seven guineas in notes and silver and Mattie was puzzled until she remembered that it was the price of a coat in the middle display window of the High Street department store. John Douglas must have seen it too. Mattie went to look at it again before the Saturday matinée. It was green tweed with big flaps and pockets and when she tried it on she looked like a farmer. She chose a black cloth coat instead. It had a big black fake-fur collar that framed her face, and a wide black patent belt. It was cheaper than the green tweed, and she spent the rest of the money on a pair of black suede gloves.
Mattie put on her new finery and went into the theatre office to see John. He frowned at her through the smoke of his cigarette and muttered, ‘You look like a bloody tart. But that’s your business, I suppose. Is it warm enough?’
‘It’s lovely and warm. Thank you.’
‘Vera’ll take ten bob a week out of your wages until it’s paid for.’
Mattie couldn’t help laughing.
The two weeks went by and there were carol singers outside the shops and strings of coloured light bulbs hung bravely from the street lights. Mattie had warned herself not to expect anything from John Douglas, but she was softened by his brusque affection. Sometimes he put his arm round her, almost abesent-mindedly, or touched her hair, as if he liked the feel of her for herself and not just for sex. He took her to bed in his salesman’s hotels too, of course, and she submitted to it because it mattered to him.
The best thing was the way that he talked to her, about books and opera as well as the theatre. Mattie listened thirstily.
The last week ended and she did the get-out with a mixture of relief and regret. The scenery and props were going into store until the tour started up again. There was an impromptu Christmas party for the whole company in the corner pub beyond the theatre. Mattie played darts and drank Guinness, and laughed at John’s stories which he performed for the benefit of everyone in the bar.
She felt that she had come a long way.
She had bought and wrapped a Christmas present for John. It was a book about opera, and she was hoping to impress him with her clever choice. But the afternoon ended, the company separated on a wave of boozy comradeship, and John drove her to the station in the Vanguard without producing a present for her. Mattie kept the book hidden.
He said goodbye absently. Mattie knew that he already belonged to Burford and not to her at all, and she accepted the knowledge uncomplainingly. John kissed her and opened the car door.
There was one thing, a kind of present.
‘When you get back,’ he said, ‘we’ll look at a bit part for you.’
The black car bucked away and Mattie went smiling to the London train.
Seven
Julia was waiting at Euston.
Before the train pulled in she stood in front of the bookstall staring at the models’ faces on the magazine covers. They were shined up for Christmas with glossy lipstick and bouffant hair, and as she looked at them and heard a Salvation Army band playing carols she felt that everyone was full of excitement and expectation, and that everything was in motion, except herself.
Josh had gone somewhere for Christmas, only promising ‘See you in the new year.’ Julia turned irritably away from the magazines and paced up and down the station concourse. Sometimes she thought she hated Josh, but even when she hated him she longed for him so intensely that her stomach writhed and she twisted her head to and fro to escape the pain of it.
Mattie’s train pulled in and she turned in relief to the barrier. The passengers poured out, their faces bobbing as they jostled towards the ticket collector. Julia didn’t recognise Mattie at first and then when she glanced back at her face, and it sharpened, coming into focus, she thought, Mattie’s changed too. She had been looking forward to her company almost desperately, and she felt an instant of resentful disappointment. Then the crowd surged forward and deposited Mattie in front of her. Mattie dropped her suitcase and flung her arms out, and then they were hugging each other, hopping and swaying and laughing. Mattie still smelt the same. Coty perfume and a faint whiff of cigarette smoke.
‘You look different,’ Julia accused, and Mattie grinned and fluffed up her fake-fur collar.
‘Must be the new coat. Do you like it?’
‘I don’t know.’ She grabbed her arm and pulled. ‘Come on, let’s get the bus. Then we can talk.’
They ran, and when they reached the bus they clambered up to the top deck. They squashed into the front seat and lit cigarettes, exactly as they had done hundreds of times on the way home from school. The familiarity of it, and the pleasure of seeing each other, dissolved Julia’s resentment and the new worldliness that Mattie was rather proud of. At once they were back on the old footing.
‘What has happened?’ Julia asked.
‘Guess.’ Mattie’s eyes were wickedly sparkling.
‘You …’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘Mattie.’ Julia’s head jerked round to see who was listening. She pressed even closer and then implored, ‘Tell me. Tell me what it was like.’
Mattie tilted her head against the black fur and pursed her lips, as if she was considering it. At last, judiciously, she said, ‘It was all right.’
Julia thought of Josh, and the cottage, and the brief, blurred glimpse she had been allowed
of something that was momentously strange, and different, and important. And then she exploded, ‘All right?’
Mattie was half laughing, but she was serious too. ‘Exactly. It wasn’t wonderful. But it wasn’t awful either.’
Julia took her hand in the black suede glove and held it tightly. ‘Tell me. Tell me about him, for a start.’
Mattie smiled. ‘He’s nothing like Josh,’ she began.
Then, while the bus jolted and swayed down Gower Street, Mattie told her. She described room thirteen and the tall brown furniture, and the smell of Air-Wick. She told Julia about the theatre office and Sheila Firth and the burgundy in the restaurant, and about John Douglas’s rubber-tipped stick and the moment of tenderness when he had licked the sea-salt off her face. She also described the warmth and comfort she had felt the next morning, afterwards, when they lay quietly together. She didn’t say anything about how she had felt when she had asked about Jennifer Edge.
Julia nodded at everything, but she was clearly still waiting. ‘But what did it feel like?’ she ventured, at last, when Mattie didn’t volunteer it.
Mattie tried for the words. She knew what Julia was expecting. Like fireworks going off. Like a waterfall. Waves breaking. Something like that. What she had really felt was so far from any of those things that she couldn’t even manage to make it up.
‘I told you,’ she said softly. ‘It was all right.’
They stared at each other for a minute, resignation confronting disbelief.
Julia whispered anxiously, ‘Is he … is he nice to you?’
Mattie held up the hem of her coat. ‘Sometimes. But do you know what? He’s going to give me a part. That’s what I really want …’
Julia snorted with laughter and put her arm round Mattie’s shoulder. Mattie laughed too.
‘Oh Mat, I’m so happy you’re home.’
‘I’m happy to be home.’
‘I thought you were different. But you aren’t.’
‘Do you know, on the first morning I thought it must be written on my face? I walked past everyone thinking, They all know. They can see.’