Before I Met You

42


1920




LIKE THE OTHER half of a Swiss weather clock couple, as Godfrey mounted a train headed for Manchester on a misty September morning and disappeared from Arlette’s life, so Gideon reappeared, new and shiny, full of charm and romantic intentions.

He was on the pavement, outside Liberty’s staff entrance on Tuesday evening, holding a bunch of roses the colour of flushed skin.

He removed his hat with his free hand when he saw her emerge, and smiled shyly.

‘Good afternoon, Arlette,’ he said, holding her hand in his and kissing the back of it with dry lips. ‘I feel I have barely seen you. You look utterly radiant.’

Arlette looked at him quizzically, because she knew that she looked anything but. ‘I have not slept in three nights, so doubt it very much. But thank you, anyhow. All compliments are welcome.’

He stared at her dreamily for a moment before gathering his senses and saying, ‘Oh, yes, flowers. For you.’

He handed them to her with a flourish and she smiled and said, ‘Thank you.’ She did not want to ask what the flowers were intended to suggest, because she did not wish to know the answer.

There was a moment of awkwardness then. It was incumbent upon Gideon, Arlette felt, to make his intentions clear, but he seemed reluctant to do so.

‘So,’ he said, eventually, ‘where are you headed to now?’

‘I’m going home, Gideon,’ she replied patiently.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes. Of course you are. Maybe I could walk you home?’

She smiled. ‘That would be very nice. Thank you.’

He looked at her then with a mixture of awe and joy. ‘Wonderful!’ he said. ‘Super.’

It was obvious to anyone with half a brain that Gideon was in love with Arlette. And Arlette had substantially more than half a brain. She had kept him at arm’s length these past few weeks, ever since the night at the Cygnet when she had first taken Godfrey back to her lodgings and into her bed. Thereafter she had no longer automatically taken the seat next to him in clubs and bars and had taken instead to waving at him politely across rooms.

‘Poor Gideon,’ Godfrey would say, with feeling, ‘I have never before seen a man look so lost. His heart has been pulverised.’

To avoid any further pulverisation of his vital organs, Arlette had severed all but the most basic ties with him, yet now she was allowing him to walk her home and accepting his gift of flowers. In answer to the unasked question ‘Why?’, she would have to reply that she had not a single clue. It was possible that she was lonely. It was also possible that she had missed him. After all, their friendship had been a close and intimate one, forged over hours spent in his studio alone together, his eyes engaged with every detail of her.

As they strode through the darkening streets of London that evening, the pavements glowing gold beneath their feet, funnels of crisp russet leaves twirling and dancing in their wake, she started remembering the way it had felt to have Gideon at her side, his height and his humour, his air of always being on the verge of doing something peculiar and wonderful. She remembered the first time she’d seen him, singing carols on Regent Street last Christmas, the wild look in his eye. He’d later told her it was absinthe. His one and only meeting with the green fairy. He’d been violently sick the next day and never touched the stuff again. But seeing him like that the first time had left him forever in Arlette’s imagination as someone flighty and strange, someone almost magical.

‘It has been a long time, hasn’t it?’ she said.

‘I wanted to see you before,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t like to intrude. You’ve seemed very much involved these past few weeks.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘I feel I have been on a different planet. A completely different world.’

He looked at her curiously. ‘Has it been a nice world?’ he enquired.

She looked at him then with shining eyes. ‘Oh, Gideon, it really has been the most unexpected and beautiful world. I ...’ She tried to say more but her words got caught up with her tears.

Gideon stopped and stood before her. They were outside the London Palladium on Argyll Street where a small queue was forming for a variety show. Arlette allowed Gideon to draw her head into his shoulder, not wanting strangers to witness her tears.

‘Oh, sweet Arlette,’ he soothed. ‘He has your heart. Doesn’t he?’

She nodded into the rough fabric of his overcoat.

He turned himself back towards the direction of their journey and kept her held close to him as he steered them east, towards Bloomsbury.

‘When does he return?’ he asked.

‘Four weeks.’

‘Oh, four weeks. That will speed by in a blur, my dear.’

She sniffed and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It absolutely won’t. I can assure you of that.’

‘Listen to me,’ he said, mock-sternly. ‘I am your friend and I will make sure that the next four weeks pass by in a blur. If you’ll allow me, Miss De La Mare, I will keep your mind occupied and your heart warm. If you’ll allow me I will do everything I possibly can to make sure there are no more tears.’

She smiled at him. ‘And how do you propose to do that, Gideon?’

‘Just say you’ll allow me.’ He squeezed her tight against him.

She considered the offer. She had intended to spend the next four weeks sobbing and fretting and becoming worryingly thin. She had intended to spend it sitting by the front door waiting for the postman to come. But now she had been offered an alternative, and she had to say she found it rather appealing.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I will allow you to attempt to distract me. But I reserve the right to be utterly miserable if I so desire.’

‘But of course,’ he smiled. ‘That is your prerogative.’

‘Good,’ she said.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘So, shall we begin?’

‘Now?’

‘Yes, why not?’

‘Well, I had intended to write some letters tonight.’

‘Letters to whom?’ he demanded, aghast.

‘My mother.’

He considered this for a moment with one fingertip against his bearded chin. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Well, it is for you to decide, but I intend to head from here to a poetry salon in Russell Square where they have promised home-made ginger snaps and fine sherry. And possibly an appearance from Mr Siegfried Sassoon.’

Arlette raised her eyebrows and Gideon cleared his throat and continued, ‘From there I am due to meet my eldest sister, Rebecca, for drinks at her apartment in Knightsbridge. She has just returned from a trip to Hollywood.’ He paused and let his words sink in. ‘Where she dined with Lionel Barrymore. Amongst others.’

Arlette’s breath caught. She thought of her mother, alone in the big house on the cliff, waiting for a letter of a decent size. And then she thought of herself again, as a girl, staring out to sea, wondering what might become of her. She had arrived, somehow, dead centre of another social tornado. She could not turn her back on it.

‘Fine,’ she said, ‘yes. I’ll come with you. But I shall need to be home before midnight.’

Gideon beamed at her. ‘Of course!’ he said. ‘Of course. I will guarantee it!’

‘Well, then, we must hurry,’ she said, taking his hand in hers, ‘I must change into new clothes and do something with these flowers.’

Gideon smiled widely and mischievously at her, and together they ran, breathlessly and exuberantly, hand-in-hand, through the streets of London towards her Bloomsbury apartment.

Arlette’s landlady popped her head out of her sitting-room when she heard them thundering up the stairs together a few minutes later. Miss Chettling was a single woman of around fifty with a cloud of white curls and a twinkle in her eye. She loved having the two young women in her attic, always keen to talk to them about their lives and their adventures, always admiring their clothes, their hairstyles, borrowing the latest style magazines from them and sighing with delight when she handed them back. She was also mainly deaf, which was most beneficial in regard to spiriting boyfriends in and out of their rooms at ungodly hours.

She smiled at Gideon and said, ‘Good evening, young man. Good evening, Miss De La Mare.’

‘Good evening, Miss Chettling. May I introduce my friend, Mr Gideon Worsley.’

‘A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr Horsley.’

Gideon tipped his hat and then removed it. ‘Likewise, Miss Chettling.’

‘I’ve heard you,’ she hissed conspiratorially at him, still smiling brightly.

‘I beg your pardon, Miss Chettling?’ Gideon smiled down at her questioningly.

‘Up and down the stairs. All times of the day and night. I hear you come and go. I know you think you’re being very quiet, but you’re not.’ She let out a small peel of laughter then and covered her mouth with her fingertips, girlishly.

Gideon smiled at her uncertainly.

Arlette cleared her throat. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we’d better be on our way. We’ve got dozens of parties to go to and we mustn’t be late.’

‘No!’ agreed Miss Chettling overbrightly. ‘No, you must not be late. Off you go.’ She patted Gideon’s arm and, using the low conspiratorial voice again she said, ‘I don’t mind, you know. They’re modern young women, you know. They pay their rent on time. I like my house to be busy.’

Gideon looked at her fondly and said, ‘Yes, indeed. Indeed, indeed.’ Arlette pulled him firmly by the arm, up towards her room. ‘Must go. Lovely to meet you,’ he called out to the landlady, before they both ran helter-skelter up the stairs, laughing so hard it hurt.

‘She thinks I’m Godfrey,’ Gideon said, once they were safely behind Arlette’s door.

‘It does appear that she does, yes.’

‘So, clearly, she has not been introduced to Godfrey?’

Arlette smiled wryly. ‘No, indeed not.’

‘Hmm,’ said Gideon, sinking into the settee.

Arlette looked at him crossly. ‘And what is that supposed to mean?’

‘What?’

‘“Hmm”? What do you mean by “hmm”?’

‘I mean nothing by “hmm” ...’ he countered.

‘Well, I think you’re lying. I think you do mean something by it.’

Gideon narrowed his eyes. ‘I find it strange,’ he started, carefully, ‘that Godfrey has been visiting you in your rooms for ten weeks and not encountered your charming landlady, yet I have met her on my first visit.’

Arlette bridled gently. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it has always been at a much later hour. I have not wished to disturb her.’

He looked at her sceptically.

‘Are you suggesting, Gideon, that I have not introduced my beau to my landlady because I am in some way ashamed of him?’

‘Absolutely not.’ He looked appalled at the suggestion. ‘No. No, no, no. I just merely wondered, I suppose, how it has been taken beyond the narrow confines of our perfect little world. Your ... affiliation with a gentleman of a different hue.’

Arlette drew her shoulders up and glared at him. ‘What nonsense,’ she cried. ‘Godfrey is not a gentleman of a different hue! Godfrey is a world-famous musician, the best clarinettist of his generation. He is educated and well read, he is far far cleverer than me.’

Gideon put up a conciliatory hand and smiled patiently. ‘Arlette,’ he said, firmly but gently, ‘you’re not listening to me. I would not refute a word of what you have just said. I am as awed and impressed by Mr Pickle as you, my dear lady. He is clearly an impeccable gentleman and a man of great depth and talent. I merely wonder ...’ He paused, looking for words that would not enrage Arlette any further. ‘Beyond this world,’ he waved his arms around the room, ‘beyond the liberal, colourful bubble in which we conduct our lives, how do you see a future with Godfrey? How would the rest of the world, the grey, the closed-minded, view your pairing? What, for example, would your mother think?’

Arlette felt a pain to her chest then, as though she had been slammed hard with the handle of a broom between her ribs. She put a hand to the spot and rubbed it absent-mindedly. ‘My mother is neither grey nor closed-minded,’ she murmured.

‘No, of course not. Of course not. And it was discourteous of me to suggest that she was.’

Arlette sat then, next to Gideon, feeling the wind had been taken out of her entirely. Her mother was not grey or closed-minded. This was true. But then her mother had seen nothing of the world beyond the shores of her small island. What would she think of Godfrey? And what would she think of their babies? She thought of the dusky, lurking sailors in the backstreets of St Peter Port as foreign and other-worldly, as if they had come down from the moon. And as different from Godfrey as it was possible for two people to be. And then she thought of the whispers and the stares in the perfumery at Liberty, one of the few times she and Godfrey had walked together in daylight hours. She thought of the woman with her mouth knitted together with disapproval and her vow to shop at Lilley and Skinner.

‘Gideon,’ she said after a moment, ‘I understand your concern. But love will be enough. Love will be enough.’

Gideon looked at her fondly, fraternally. ‘Yes,’ he said, squeezing her shoulder. ‘Yes, I’m sure it will.’