by Rosie Thomas
‘That’s better,’ Jimmy said. He put the smouldering butt out in a tin ashtray and pulled Mattie over to lie on top of him.
‘Go on,’ he murmured. ‘It’s not going to bite you, is it?’
After a while, quite a long while, through the usual stabbing and bumping, Mattie began to feel a different sensation. Jimmy had twisted her over on to her back, and her knees were drawn up on either side of his narrow hips. He moved in and out of her with long, slow, rhythmical thrusts. Mattie realised that she was lifting her own hips to meet his. The odd sensation, still dim and unlocalised, was a throb of pleasure. It had nothing to do with what Ted had once done. It belonged to here and now, and Mattie twisted her head on the pillow, trying to reach inside herself for it. It escaped her, tantalisingly, like a point of warmth blown to and fro in a windy space. But it was there, somewhere. It was even intensifying. Mattie was half afraid to focus on it, in case it vanished.
Jimmy plunged on. His eyes were screwed shut and his face was red. His mouth opened suddenly, a dark, wet square, and he shouted something over her head. Mattie watched him, gripped by an instant of acute anger that the peak of pleasure should be his, and not hers. And then, a moment later, when he flopped down beside her, anger dissolved into tenderness. She was incredulously happy, too. This time she hadn’t longed for it to end. This time she had begun, a little, to understand what it was all about.
The knot that had tied itself inside her began unsatisfactorily to unravel and the small, local, ordinary sensations of hands and feet, arms and legs, came back to her. It was Jimmy who had shown her the difference. Gratitude washed over her. She leaned over him and brushed the hair back from his forehead. He was panting and he opened his eyes and looked at her, full in the face. He didn’t often do that, she realised now. His eyes were an unusual greeny-yellow colour.
‘Okay,’ he murmured, and Mattie didn’t know whether he meant her or himself.
They lay with their arms around each other for a little while longer. Mattie would have liked a cigarette or perhaps some more grass, but Jimmy jerked himself upright and then swung out of bed, out of her reach. He pulled a shirt over his shoulders and began buttoning it.
‘Time to get moving,’ he said briefly.
‘Where …’
‘People to see. Duties of celebrity to discharge.’ He grinned at her, ‘You should have, too.’
‘Yes, of course.’ She couldn’t think of anything she had to do but be at the theatre by 6 p.m., but she slid out of bed too, keeping the shelter of the covers around her for as long as possible. Jimmy was already dressed. He went into the kitchen alcove and she heard him splashing water and whistling. Mattie looked out of the window into the street. There was a sandwich bar opposite, with office workers taking early lunches already filing into it. She felt supremely privileged. She had no office to go to. She had a part, a wonderful part, and a packed theatre. She wanted to put her arms around Jimmy and thank him, but when he came back he was shaved and combed, and he was already shrugging himself into his jacket.
‘D’you mind if I push off?’
‘No. No, of course not.’
‘Just pull the door shut. It’ll lock itself. See you tonight.’
‘Yes. Jimmy, thank you …’ But he was already gone. Mattie stood in the middle of the room, thinking about the way his narrow eyes lifted, the way he had said I’ll take care of you, the other things he had done. His crumpled jeans were still lying on the floor where he had left them last night, and she picked them up and smoothed them neatly on a chair. Then she made the bed and picked up their breakfast mugs and carried them through into the kitchenette. As she did the washing-up she was thinking, is this what it’s like? Is this what Julia felt, about her aviator? She wondered if her own face glowed in the same way, as if it was illuminated from deep inside. She even tried the words out on her tongue, I love you, Jimmy, and didn’t stop to laugh at herself.
When the room was restored to its original neatness she dressed herself and pulled the door shut behind her, listening for the click of the lock. Then she walked down to Oxford Street, to catch a bus home. She felt different, walking through the crowds, but she didn’t know if it was because of her success or because of falling in love.
Julia had been in to work, but George had sent her out to pick up some urgently needed wallpaper samples from the manufacturers’ offices in the West End, and she had decided that she would reward herself for the boring chore with a quiet lunch at home in the square. She didn’t quite admit to herself that she was worried because Mattie hadn’t come home all night, and no one had answered the telephone in the flat this morning. Perhaps she would be in by now, Julia thought, as she tramped up the stairs.
The flat was empty when she let herself in, but by the time she had made herself a sandwich in the kitchen Mattie had arrived. Julia glanced quickly at her. She was relieved to see that Mattie looked cheerful, only tired, with dark patches under her eyes.
‘And where’s the star been, all night?’ she asked lightly. ‘Have you seen the papers? George is so impressed, I must be worth at least another thirty bob a week to him just for knowing you.’
‘Yes, amazing, the reviews …’
Mattie looked so uncertain that Julia went and put her arms around her. She had been feeling an uncomfortable sensation that wasn’t jealousy, of course it wasn’t possible to be jealous of Mattie’s success, but still an awkward irritableness every time she thought of the papers, and the three times that the telephone had rung just while she was making her sandwich, each time someone Julia didn’t know, urgently wanting to speak to Mattie. She hugged her tightly now.
‘Where have you been, Mat? Are you all right?’
‘I went home with Jimmy Proffitt.’
Julia was startled. ‘With him?’ She hadn’t much liked the brief glimpse she had caught of the playwright. ‘And what was that like?’
‘It was nice,’ Mattie said. ‘He’s really nice. I think. As well as brilliant, of course,’ she added loyally. ‘In fact, this could well be It.’
‘Oh, Mattie.’
They looked at each other and then they laughed, rubbing their cheeks together. She was still Mattie, after all, Julia thought with relief. Why ever should she have thought otherwise, just because of a few lines in the newspapers? Abruptly, ashamed of her earlier feelings, she said, ‘I didn’t get a chance to tell you properly last night. I was so proud of you, up there. You were better than I’d ever imagined you were going to be. Shows how much I know.’
‘Thanks,’ Mattie said, her face glowing.
‘C’mon. Have my sandwich. I’ll make another. There’s coffee in the pot.’
‘I’d rather have a gin.’
Sitting in front of the gas fire in Jessie’s room, it was like ordinary life again. Plain and reassuring. Mattie was eager to reconfirm it, convincing herself that the play and the reviews were just delicious icing on top of the solidly familiar cake, and it wouldn’t matter if there wasn’t to be a second helping of icing.
‘Tell me some news of real life. What have you been doing?’
‘Since yesterday afternoon? Not much. Being intimidated by Bliss’s mother, mostly. Lucky I’m not a hopeful daughter-in-law, isn’t it? Oh yes, one thing. George says he wants Felix to go in and see him. He thinks he just may have an opening.’
‘No prizes for guessing which one,’ Mattie said coarsely.
It was so much one of the old jokes that they fell against each other, hooting with laughter. Julia gasped, ‘Mattie, darling Mattie. You won’t get any different, will you, just because you’re famous?’
‘Nothing’s going to get any different,’ Mattie said firmly. ‘Just better, that’s all.’
The telephone began to ring again. Julia sighed.
‘Go on, you’d better answer it. It’s sure to be for you.’
Mattie stood up, brushing the sandwich crumbs from her mouth as if the caller could see her. She crossed the room to the telephone, in the corner
where Jessie’s bed had once been, and picked up the receiver.
‘Come on, darling. This way. Keeping in step with the poodle, please.’
It was the beginning of March, and the few gleams of thin sunshine filtering through the clouds failed to melt the air at all. Julia shivered, stared hard at the rash of yellow crocuses poking out of the grass, and tried to convince herself that she was both warm and perfectly relaxed.
‘Ve—ery haughty. Good. Nice. This way, love, can’t you?’ She was walking her adorable giant poodle beside the Serpentine in Hyde Park. It was a lovely warm day. She looked marvellous in her new outfit, designed by Yves St Laurent for the august house of Dior. She loved the suit in raspberry and black checked tweed, cinched in at the waist with a four-inch-wide patent-leather belt, ballooning out into a skirt that was then pulled into a tight band ending two inches above her knees.
There was a matching tweed hat, divinely shaped like a lampshade. The photographer hopping in front of her was no more important than a fly or a gnat.
If only any of it was true, Julia thought miserably. She thought the clothes made her look grotesque, and the huge earrings they had put on her pinched her earlobes. Her feet were frozen and the big dog, hideously clipped into balls of black fluff, pulled viciously on its jewelled lead. The photographer was a greyhaired exquisite whose impatience was beginning to wear through his charm, and his assistant and the fashion editor from the magazine looked despairing. Julia had so much make-up on that she didn’t know how much of her expression showed through it, but however she looked it clearly wasn’t haughty enough. Not nearly as haughty as the dog.
‘Good, keep going, and again, so grand,’ trilled the photographer.
It was Julia’s second week as a professional model, and her third assignment. Her photographer friend, surprisingly true to his promise, had shot a portfolio of pictures and they had taken them to a model agency. To Julia’s amazement, the agency had agreed to take her on to their books.
‘You’re a great-looking girl, with a thoroughbred face. You’ve got the height, and you’re slim enough,’ they had told her. ‘You’re very raw, of course, but time will solve that. Do you want to give it a try?’
It was February, a particularly cold and wet one. Mattie was absorbed in One More Day, and any free time she had was devoted to Jimmy Proffitt. Suddenly, overnight, they were the golden couple. Every magazine that didn’t have Jimmy’s face on the cover seemed to have Mattie’s.
Felix had joined George Tressider Designs. George had taken him straight behind the door into the design offices, and Julia was left outside in her old place.
‘Oh, yes,’ she told the model agency. ‘Of course I do.’
She handed her notice in to George and waited for her own success to overtake her. It had only taken ten days, ten days divided between sitting in the flat and wishing the agency would ring her and actual assignments where she spent every second wishing she was back in the flat again, for her to realise that success was elusive.
She had been fine in front of the first photographer. He was a friend, and it was all only a joke. She had strutted and posed with real enjoyment, thinking, As soon as I’ve done this he’ll stop pestering me. But once it became real work, Julia felt quite different. She was awkward with critical faces peering at her, however much she told herself that she didn’t care, and the camera lens seemed to freeze her with its cold fish-eye.
‘Good face,’ she heard one of the photographers murmur, ‘but she’s as stiff as a board.’
Julia seesawed between needing to laugh and wanting to cry. These clothes made her laugh, with their high-flown haute couture absurdity. She supposed that she was lucky even to be allowed to touch them, but the sort of clothes that Julia wanted to wear came from a new little shop called Bazaar in the King’s Road. Sadly, Bazaar didn’t employ models, nor did its dresses get featured in the glossy magazines. It was failing that made Julia want to cry. She had always hated failure, and she knew that it was facing her now.
‘Where are you going?’ the photographer shouted in exasperation.
Julia wasn’t going anywhere, it was the dog. It had glimpsed an Irish setter in the distance and it shot forward, yanking Julia behind it. And then it stopped dead, unable to contain its malice any longer, with its knotty legs spread wide and its pompom tail quivering. Julia crashed into it, swayed, and lost her footing. She fell heavily, slithered down the wet concrete incline on her bottom, and ended up with her legs in the Serpentine. The dog barked joyously and bounded away, the glittering lead snaking behind it. Murky, freezing wavelets lapped around Julia’s calves and soaked the hemline of the hobble skirt. She could imagine the faces behind her, but she sat where she was because she couldn’t make herself turn round and see them in reality.
It seemed a very long time before an arm seized her on either side and hoisted her upright. Her sheer nylons were torn to shreds and water ran out of her patent shoes. ‘Oh, dear,’ the magazine girl murmured. ‘Have you got anything there?’ she asked her photographer.
‘Might have. Just one or two,’ was the gloomy response. ‘We’ll have to manage somehow with what we’ve got. That’ll be all for today, Julia.’
They were all dabbing tenderly at the suit as if it was far more important than she was. Of course, it is more important, Julia thought furiously.
When her feet were dry and back in her own shoes the photographer said, ‘All over now. Cheer up, dear.’
‘I’m quite cheerful,’ Julia responded, with dignity. ‘I just hate dogs.’
He pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows, reminding her infuriatingly of George.
There was no one at home, of course, when she reached the square. Mattie had already left for the theatre, and Felix was absent increasingly often, nowadays, about his own mysterious business. Julia made herself a hot drink and sat down beside the fire, snuffling a little and reflecting that no one would care if she caught pneumonia.
When the telephone rang, she almost didn’t answer it because she was so sure it would be for Mattie. But she was wrong. It was Bliss, ‘Would you like to have dinner with me?’
Julia beamed. ‘Bliss, wonderful Bliss. I’d like to have dinner with you more than anything else in the world.’
‘Good God. I was going to suggest a spaghetti, but I’d better revise my intentions after a response like that.’
Julia smiled. She could just see his ironic expression. Bliss was exactly what she needed after a day like today. And the empty flat had begun to feel almost creepily silent.
‘I’ll pick you up at eight o’clock.’
Julia took extra care in getting herself ready. She soaked in a long, hot bath with plenty of L’Air du Temps bath essence. Miraculously, her snuffles dried up. She had recently had her hair cut into a neat, dark cap and she brushed it into gleaming feathers around her face. Finally, she put on her new Bazaar outfit, a short grey flannel tunic with a mustard polo-necked jumper and matching tights.
When Alexander came in he looked at her for an extra moment. ‘You look lovely,’ he said, and kissed her lightly on the cheek.
He took her to a place she particularly liked, in Kensington. It was small, noisy and fashionable, full of people who paraded between the tables and stopped to exchange fulsome greetings with one another. Julia knew that it was far from being Bliss’s favourite, and she was touched that he had chosen it for her. In return, she tried extra hard to be lively and to make him laugh. He watched her face through the candlelight, seeing the darkness in her eyes. He put his hand over hers and the fingers laced in his, almost greedily.
But they did laugh a good deal over their meal, and later they saw some friends of Sophia’s and joined their table for coffee and brandy. Julia thought it had been an excellent evening, and that she had been faultlessly happy and carefree.
But when they were back in the little cocoon of Alexander’s red Mini, heading home towards the square, he asked her, ‘What’s the matter, Julia?’
&n
bsp; They had stopped at some traffic lights and he put out his hand to turn her face to his. There was no question of resisting him. She tried hard to find something light to say, but Bliss’s stare was too direct.
‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ Julia whispered.
‘Work?’
‘Yes, but not just that. I don’t have any bearings. Not like Mattie. Or Felix, or you. Everything seems like an empty sea.’ He was looking at her so closely that she blinked, and bent her head to escape him.
The lights changed and Bliss turned his head too. The car slid forward again.
‘Shall I tell you what happened to me today?’ she asked.
He nodded gravely. ‘Yes, please.’
She told him the story about the dog, and the Dior suit, and the Serpentine. She made it as amusing as she could, exaggerating the details a little. But at the end he didn’t laugh. ‘Not all that funny,’ he commented.
Julia was touched. He had seen through her flippant story and understood her humiliation, even though she had imagined it was well hidden. That was perceptive of him, and the power of his perception seemed suddenly at odds with his vagueness. She looked at him, her eyes wide open, wondering if she had looked before without ever really seeing. ‘No, I suppose not,’ she agreed. ‘Messing things up isn’t ever funny, is it?’
Alexander reached out and took her hand again. His felt very large and firm. ‘I was wondering,’ he said casually, ‘if you’d like to come with me to Ladyhill for the weekend. There won’t be anyone there. I’d like to show it to you.’
‘To Ladyhill? All right,’ Julia said. And then, thinking how lukewarm that sounded, she added hastily, ‘I’d love to see it, of course. I’ll look forward to it.’