Before I Met You

40


1920




AS THE COMPANION of Godfrey Pickle, Arlette finally shed the last few layers of her former self and embraced the world in which she’d unwittingly found herself. It was as though she’d been reborn that first night in Godfrey’s arms, or more, as if she’d been born for the first time, as if previously she had been nothing more than a wooden doll, waiting for the magician’s gift of life. Now when she walked into a club, she would carry herself like an Egyptian goddess, tall and regal, although she was neither. She plundered the rails at work, no longer looking for an outfit that would mark her out as an upstanding and stylish citizen, but rather one that would elicit overblown compliments from her friends in the club, costumes instead of clothes. She formed herself an image, distinctive and her own.

Lilian called it ‘The Arlette Look’, and attempted to emulate it, but it never looked quite the same on her rounder, fuller frame, with her pale colouring and babyish face.

‘I look like a child who’s plundered the dressing-up box,’ she sighed dramatically, ripping an ornate headdress from the top of her head and flouncing backwards into Arlette’s settee.

‘Oh, darling girl,’ said Minu, ‘you are a child who has plundered the dressing-up box. And you should be glad about that.’

‘Well, I’m not,’ she replied sulkily. ‘I shall be nineteen years old next week. And I’m more or less running my mother’s home single-handedly. I feel like I’m at least thirty, yet every time I look in the mirror, a child looks back at me. It’s all very tedious ...’

‘I can absolutely promise you, one day you will dream about that child in the mirror and wish for her back.’

Lilian glared at Minu, looking as if she were about to say something, but she failed to find the words and fell back again into the settee.

‘Did you see,’ said Minu, ‘in the Illustrated London News last night, another mention for Arlette in Badger’s column?’

‘No!’ said Lilian. ‘I did not. Did you keep a copy?’

Arlette passed her the paper from her dressing table and Lilian read it out loud, her voice tinged with pride and awe.


‘And I arrive shortly after midnight at the Cygnet; my companion for the night, the Duchess, has mysteriously disappeared, leaving me high, dry and not a little damp after a sudden downpour on the northern stretches of Piccadilly. And so I attach myself, leech-like, to the side of the exquisite Lady Cleopatra, resplendent and somewhat tickly in an ostrich-feather crown. Lady Cleopatra tells me that her beau, the equally exquisite ebony-skinned brass-blower who I shall call, simply, the Man from the Pitons, is not joining her tonight, for he is playing his clarinet in Brighton, and who can blame the girl for not wanting to join him on the windy south coast when she could be snug and cosy sitting with the Badger in sparkling W1?’


‘Was he awfully smelly?’ said Lilian, lifting her eyes from the paper.

‘He smells like an old horse in high summer,’ Arlette replied, and all three of them burst into laughter. ‘And he was so drunk,’ she continued, ‘that I am surprised he remembers a thing about it.’

‘Why does he call you Lady Cleopatra?’ asked Lilian.

‘I have no idea,’ replied Arlette.

‘It’s the eyes,’ said Minu. ‘You have Egyptian eyes.’

‘I absolutely do not have Egyptian eyes,’ Arlette retorted. ‘I have Guernsey eyes.’

‘Whatever they may be,’ Minu rolled her eyes.

‘Guernsey eyes are the eyes of my mother and my grandmother. Neither of whom has ever been to Egypt.’

‘Well, either way, Lady Cleopatra is a fine pseudonym,’ said Minu. ‘I should be more than happy with it.’

Lilian lay fully stretched out along the settee, rubbing her stomach in circular movements. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I may have to go home and take to my bed. I’m having an awful time with my monthly visitor.’

‘I’ll fill you a water bottle,’ said Arlette. ‘You can’t possibly stay home tonight. It’s Godfrey’s last night at the Kingsway. The party will be absolutely the bee’s knees.’

‘I know,’ Lilian grimaced. ‘But I feel utterly awful. And look at my skin. I am literally covered in spots. I can’t.’

‘You can,’ insisted Minu, ‘and you will. This might be the last chance we get to see the orchestra in London. Put on some panstick.’ She passed her a tube. ‘And let your hair fall down. No one will notice.’

Arlette turned back to the mirror and finished off her make-up. She could barely believe that this was the last night of the London run. For ten weeks she had spent nearly all her free time with Godfrey. She would meet him most nights after his show and go for drinks and dancing, sometimes with his friends from the orchestra, sometimes just the two of them. Most nights, at around 1 a.m., they would go their separate ways, but on Fridays and Saturdays she would smuggle Godfrey up the stairs of her Bloomsbury lodgings, past her landlady’s rooms, and Minu would stay out late, and they would spend the night making love and talking. The only night she didn’t see Godfrey was on Sundays, when he and the orchestra would fill the gap in their schedules with extra shows in Brighton and Eastbourne. They had made themselves a routine and now that routine was coming to an end. The orchestra had a string of shows booked in Manchester and would not be back in London until 14 October. She would not see him for a month. He would miss her birthday. It was too painful to contemplate.

In some ways it would be a relief. She was growing tired of the late nights and the early starts. To go to her bed at a reasonable hour would be something of a treat. To find the time to sit and write to her mother would be wonderful. She had not written her mother more than a few lines since early July. To mend some clothes and write in her diary, to pull herself out of the whirl, just for a few weeks. But she would miss her Godfrey more than she could say.


The show was spectacular. In spite of two shows a day and regular trips to the coast, in spite of a schedule that had taken these musicians around the four corners of Great Britain not once but twice in the space of only a year, in spite of the late night parties and the sleepless nights in crowded lodging rooms in noisy corners of south London, and in spite of coming here fresh from the tribulations of a terrible world war, still the men sparkled and glowed on stage, still their music made it impossible not to move in rhythm and smile from start to finish.

Arlette swallowed away a lump in the back of her throat as the show came to an end and the audience got to its feet, and cheered and hollered and stamped and clapped.

‘Darling,’ she said, throwing herself into Godfrey’s embrace as he walked towards her after the show, ‘you were absolutely wonderful. Really, the best show yet.’

He held her close to his body and rested his face against her hair. He held her closer and tighter than he usually would, because he too knew that this time tomorrow he would be settling into a damp room in a small house under a railway bridge in the outskirts of Manchester, that this time tomorrow there would be no glitzy, gilded club waiting to welcome him into its womb-like interior, no beautiful, fine-boned woman sitting by his side, no smiles from strangers and fawning attention from puffed-up journalists and double-barrelled socialites. Tomorrow he would be a jobbing musician again, a mere brass-blower, and all of this would feel like a dream.

‘Come on, my sweet Arlette,’ he whispered into her ear, ‘let’s join the party later. First I want to walk for a while, through the city, just you and I.’

Arlette looked up at him and nodded. ‘That would be wonderful,’ she said.

They made their excuses and then headed out into the mild dark night. Summer still clung to the edges of the air, and Arlette tucked her arm through the crook of Godfrey’s.

‘To the river?’ he suggested.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘why not?’

They headed in a straight line south, down towards the Aldwych. Arlette’s feathered headdress shivered in the mild breeze and the heels of her shoes clipped the pavement like tiny hoofs. At the river they sat together on a stone bench. Godfrey brought an arm around Arlette’s shoulders, ignoring the curious gaze of a passing couple.

‘This has been the most remarkable ten weeks of my life, Arlette,’ he said.

She looked up at him and smiled. ‘I would have to echo that sentiment, Godfrey.’

‘I would never have thought it possible that I could have been taken so deeply into the heart of a foreign city, that I would fall in love with a beautiful English girl, that I would have seen the things and been to the places and felt the things that I have felt. Whatever happens in my life, this will always be for me the best of all possible worlds.’ He smiled and kissed her on the lips.

‘And I too,’ she concurred. ‘I never thought that I could live a life like this, to be accepted and loved, to be at the very heart of things, to be with a man like you, a musical genius, a man with such a soul.’

Then she smiled too and kissed him on the lips.

‘You know,’ he said, after a moment, ‘I would like to settle here.’

She looked at him with surprise. Godfrey had never before spoken about the future, only ever about the next show, the next city.

‘I would,’ he continued. ‘I always knew I would not go home, but I never knew where I might be instead of home. And now I think I know. Here. London.’ He opened his arms out towards the river, to the belching chimneys and the muted gaslight on the opposite side of the river, and then behind him to the sweeping stucco curve of Aldwych, the theatres and the hotels and the fine ladies passing by in horse-drawn carriages. ‘Such a vibrant place. So accepting and open. And, of course, it is the place where you are, Arlette.’

‘So, when ...’ she paused, not wanting to push too hard on the subject of future plans, but needing something to hold on to, however small, ‘... when do you think you might stop touring? When do you think you might settle?’

Godfrey laughed. ‘That is the greatest mystery of all, my sweetheart. As long as we are in demand then we will keep on. There is too much money being made. When the people stop coming to see us then we will all have to choose new paths.’

‘But, Godfrey, you are such a fine musician, possibly the greatest clarinettist in the world. Do you need to keep travelling with the orchestra? Could you not, possibly, give them your notice, take a position at the clubs in London, maybe with the Love Brothers?’

Godfrey smiled wryly and brought Arlette closer to him. ‘After Manchester,’ he said, ‘we will be back in London, possibly for a long time. Certainly for some weeks. I have promised Mr Cook another year. After that, well, yes, a London spot with the Love Brothers, a little house ...’

Arlette’s heart jumped.

‘A little wife ...’

Arlette turned then and stared at him sternly, for this was no matter for humour.

‘A little family. A little dog.’

‘Godfrey!’ she chided. ‘That is not remotely funny.’

‘And neither was it intended to be, Arlette.’

She paused and stared first at him, then out towards the river and then again back at him. ‘Mr Pickle,’ she said, ‘what on earth ...?’

‘Miss De La Mare,’ he smiled affectionately, ‘I am not in a position to make you a formal proposal of marriage, but you are the only woman I have ever met who I would want to be in a little house with, do you see? Other women make me want to get on boats and run away. You, you make me want to stay somewhere, so that I can see your face every day. So that I can hold you every day and watch you grow and change and get older. You make me want to be an adult man. You make me want to settle down.’

Arlette wrinkled her nose and said, ‘Oh, my beautiful Godfrey. How simply frightful.’

He glanced at her with surprise.

‘A girl like me does not want to make a man think about small houses and settling down. I want to make a man think about big houses. And big adventures. All the things we can do together.’

He widened his eyes and then he laughed. ‘Oh, yes,’ he agreed with a smile. ‘A big house. Of course. And a big dog. And a big family. Can you imagine our babies, Arlette De La Mare? Can you see them?’

She smiled and nodded, for she had already passed many a quiet moment imagining the children that she and Godfrey could make together.

‘I suppose what I am trying, very badly, to say is that I want you, Arlette. I want you for a long time. I want you to be mine and for me to be yours. In a little house. In a big house. On a ship running away together. Whatever it may be. Can you see that, Arlette? Can you feel it?’

Arlette closed her eyes, let the warm September breeze pass over her and through her, let the moment open up and swallow her, and she did feel it. She felt it in every nerve, every bone in her body.

‘I am yours, Godfrey,’ she said. ‘For ever.’

He brought her close to his body and held her there. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then let for ever begin tonight.’