Before I Met You

43


1995




THERE WAS A note in the mail catcher on the back of Betty’s door when she got home that night. It was in John’s handwriting and for a split second Betty felt her heart race with anticipation. And then she remembered that last night she had had sex with Dom Jones and that this morning John Brightly had seen her coming home with her knickers in her handbag. She sighed and picked the note out.

‘Betty,’ it said, ‘Alex wants you to call her. She’s got news. J.’

She felt a curious wave of disappointment engulf her. Five days ago she and John had been bonding over pints in his scruffy members’ club. Two days ago he had put his hand to her cheek and told her she was capable of anything. She’d been slowly pulling apart the bars he surrounded himself with and had been about to find a way in. But now he was pulling the bars closed again. Now he was leaving dry, impersonal notes in her mail catcher. And she had no one to blame but herself. She crunched the note into a ball and threw it angrily across the hallway.

On the fire escape she pressed in Alexandra’s number and listened to an answerphone message. She almost hung up, but then she heard Alexandra say, ‘and if that’s you, Betty, meet me Friday night at Jimmy’s, Frith Street. I’ll be there from eight. So much to tell you.’

Betty looked at the time on the display of her mobile phone. It was seven thirty. Then she looked across the courtyard towards the back of Dom’s house. It lay in darkness. She sighed and brought her knees up to her chest. Dom had sent her a text message earlier. It had said: ‘I’m off to a secret location with the band. Back on Friday. Take care. D x.’

She hadn’t known quite how to take this. She was pleased, in a way, that he’d thought to let her in on his plans. But crushed that he hadn’t alluded in any way to what had happened the previous night. But still, she thought, they both knew what had happened last night. What had happened last night had been good. But he was a rock star and she was his nanny, and really, whatever happened next was moot.





44


1920




‘ARLETTE!’ LETICIA SKIPPED across the drawing room, a tumbler clutched in her hand, and drew Arlette towards her in a quinine-scented embrace. ‘Happy birthday, darling girl. And you must be Gideon.’ She drew Gideon down from his lofty height to embrace him too. ‘Joyful to meet you.’

She was dressed from head to toe in white lace, with a white lace headband, and strings of sparkling diamonds around her neck.

‘Here, champagne,’ she pulled a passing waitress towards her gently by the elbow and plucked flutes off her tray for them.

‘Thank you, Mrs Miller,’ said Arlette, taking the glass, ‘and thank you so much for throwing me this wonderful party. It really is so generous of you.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Leticia, still smiling up at Gideon with a kind of girlish wonder. ‘The least I can do for Dolly’s girl. How she must be missing you. And besides, Lilian insisted on sharing her party with you. She adores you, you know. You’re the big sister she never had.’

Arlette smiled and said, ‘Well, it is mutual. I always dreamed of my mother giving me a baby sister. And I love Lilian as my own.’

Leticia beamed and turned to greet another arriving guest.

The house had been decorated to look like a Japanese garden. The tables were dressed with branches of cherry blossom, lanterns hung from the ceilings and the waitresses were wearing kimonos and Geisha make-up. The dress code was White and Yellow. Most people had played it safe and dressed in white, but some guests had chosen the more challenging option and come dressed as various slightly grotesque characters from The Mikado. Arlette herself was dressed in a white satin bias-cut dress with a knife-pleat skirt that fell to her ankles, and silver sandals. Her hair had been set into waves in the salon at Liberty, using hot irons turned the wrong way round, and she looked, according to Gideon, ‘like a creature from the silver screen’.

‘Arlette!’ screeched Lilian, from the other side of the room. ‘You look spectacular!’

Lilian was dressed as Pierrette, and looked adorable in big-eyed clown make-up and a billowing white romper suit.

‘Happy birthday, little one.’ Arlette kissed her on her cheek, which smelled of greasepaint and rouge.

‘And to you. I can hardly believe that it was a year ago that we first met. Do you remember? Mother had made you one of her terrible drinks and you were almost cross-eyed with it. And you were wearing some awful green suit, I recall,’ she laughed.

‘It does feel like an awfully long time ago,’ said Arlette. ‘And it was an awful suit.’

They both laughed and Lilian stood on her pointed toes to reach up to kiss Gideon. He held her fingertips inside his hands, looked down at her fondly and said, ‘Lilian. You look a picture.’

‘A picture of what, exactly?’ she asked accusingly.

‘Of fresh-faced innocence and beauty,’ he replied.

Lilian smiled.

‘And tell me,’ he continued, ‘are you expecting a visit from Pierrot this evening?’

She smiled again and laughed. ‘That is entirely possible, Gideon,’ she replied. ‘And if you do happen to stumble upon one, please send him my way. Oh, in fact, never mind, here he is!’ Her face bloomed open into a smile and she put an arm out towards a beautiful boy with sandy curls and a matching clown suit. ‘This is Philip. Philip, this is Arlette and Gideon.’

Philip looked unbearably young, a million miles away from the characters Lilian had been socialising with in recent months in the jazz clubs and piano bars in Soho.

‘Well, well, well,’ said Arlette, appraising the young man in slight wonder, ‘wherever did Lilian find you?’

The boy smiled and said, ‘I live next door.’

Arlette smiled. ‘So not too far from home, then?’ Lilian and Philip looked at them and smiled, and then their hands found each other’s and knitted together.

Arlette felt her stomach lurch slightly at the sight of them, almost identical with their blond curls and baby faces, perfect twins in their matching outfits. And their lives, of course, simply, elegantly entwined by neighbourly proximity. The absolute opposite of her own romantic pairing: black and white, British and West Indian, London and Manchester. She wondered who she might have found herself holding hands with if she’d never left Guernsey. In Guernsey there had been no ‘next door’, just a cluster of stone cottages in the dip below the house, peopled with elderly, leathery-skinned couples and distracted young families. No golden-haired boys to pair up with in perfect homogeny. No Pierrot to her Pierrette. Had she stayed on Guernsey, she pondered, she would probably have found herself irresistibly drawn to someone who would whisk her on the first boat away from the island, someone with an accent and a tan, someone utterly foreign in every way.

‘Mother is delighted,’ said Lilian, breathlessly. ‘Philip’s father is the richest man in the universe and Philip is an only child.’ She laughed and Philip joined her.

‘Second richest man in the universe,’ he corrected.

‘Oh, yes, sorry. But still, he needs to sell only one more motorcar and maybe he’ll be the richest.’

They both laughed uproariously at their little joke, and Arlette pulled Gideon away by the hand.

‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s see who else is about.’

The party was spread across two rooms and out onto the wrought-iron veranda that led from the back sitting room. The air was scented with the tang of old bonfires and a warm wine toddy being ladled from a large vat by a girl in a green kimono. They mingled for an hour or so, taking every glass of champagne that was offered to them, until they were both quite merry. And then they came upon the two elder of Lilian’s brothers sitting side by side on either arm of an armchair, one with his feet on the seat, the other with his legs crossed widely and somewhat obscenely, staring around the party and whispering the occasional sneering comment in the other’s ear. The older one looked up when he saw Arlette heading in his direction and his eyes widened.

‘Oh. It’s you,’ he said, ‘whatshername.’

Gideon squeezed Arlette’s elbow reassuringly.

‘Arlette,’ she said.

The boy clicked his fingers and said, ‘Yes, that’s right. Arlette.’

‘Hello, Henry,’ she opened pleasantly, no longer even a tad nervous in his presence. ‘It is Henry, isn’t it?’

He nodded.

‘This is Gideon,’ she said, ‘my very good friend. I don’t believe you’ve met.’

Henry shook his head and shrugged disinterestedly.

‘Gideon, this is Henry, Lilian’s little brother.’ She emphasised the ‘little’ with a slight smile.

‘Jolly nice to meet you,’ said Gideon.

Henry put out a sulky hand and offered Gideon a limp handshake. ‘The pleasure’s all mine,’ he replied sarcastically. On the other arm of the chair, they heard Arthur, the younger brother, let out a small snort of laughter.

Arlette and Gideon looked at each other and a mischievous spark flew between them.

‘So, Henry,’ Arlette began, ‘I hear you have finished with school. I would imagine you must be about to head off to university somewhere?’ She stifled a smile, well aware that Henry had failed all his examinations and was in fact due to start an unpaid apprenticeship at his father’s firm, which would mainly involve sorting out the post in the mailroom.

Henry bridled and said, ‘No. I decided against that. I’m to work with my father. His firm is looking for young blood.’

Arlette raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, how marvellous. So you’ll be bringing some money into the house? I’m sure your mother must be thrilled.’

He shuffled a little in his seat and shrugged. ‘And you, Arlette, I hear you have been promoted to head of all the little shop-girls?’

‘I am the department manager, yes,’ she smiled graciously, ‘the youngest in the store’s history.’

He wriggled slightly again and said nothing.

‘And of course, as manager I am on a fairly decent wage, enough to pay for a lovely room in Bloomsbury and all the trappings of a modern girl about town. You must be looking forward to having your own money to spend?’

He glowered at her and ground his heel into the fabric of the armchair. ‘I do not need any money, Arlette. As you can see ...’ He waved his arms around the room proprietorially.

She smiled sweetly. ‘Ah, well, Henry, so long as living off your father’s hard-earned money is enough for you ... But personally, I believe an individual should forge their own path in life. Wouldn’t you agree, Gideon?’

Gideon nodded effusively. ‘Oh, absolutely yes, Arlette. Because, as you know, my parents own half of Oxfordshire.’

Arlette pinioned Henry with a smile and nodded her agreement.

‘If I’d wanted, I could have spent my entire life sitting at my mother’s table waiting for handouts. But where is the manliness in that? All those men and boys, younger than me, gave up their lives, died in conditions of putrid torment, lost their legs, their arms, not, I believe, so that Gideon Worsley could sit and count his father’s beans. No, no, no.’ He shook his head slowly and sadly.

Henry glared at him and a silence landed upon the four of them like a collapsed ceiling.

‘Anyway,’ trilled Arlette, ‘it has been lovely talking to you boys. Enjoy the party!’

‘Yes,’ said Gideon, stifling laughter, ‘have a super, super night.’

And then he grabbed Arlette’s hand and they moved briskly through the party crowds towards the open veranda doors, stopping briefly to accept mugs of mulled wine and then stumbling down the garden steps and out across the lawn where they let loose helpless peals of laughter that carried them into near madness.

‘What ghastly, frightful children!’ Gideon exclaimed, laid out on the grass on his back.

Arlette lay down next to him and laughed again. ‘I know!’ she said. ‘If they were mine I would put them in the workhouse.’

Gideon laughed out loud again at that. ‘If they were mine I would tie them down to railway tracks and let the next train deal with them.’

This struck Arlette as a little harsh and she let her laughter recede to a sigh.

A balmy breeze blew across them then, rustling the dead leaves scattered upon the lawn, making them rattle. The moon was out of sight, tucked behind the high trees at the bottom of the garden, and the sounds of the party inside billowed out across the garden in ethereal, indistinct bursts.

Gideon turned his head towards Arlette and smiled. Then he picked up her hand and held it in his, bringing it up to his mouth and kissing her knuckles gently.

Arlette smiled back and squeezed Gideon’s hand. She was about to open her mouth and say something, something nice about how much she had enjoyed Gideon’s company these past couple of weeks, how the period of Godfrey’s absence was, as Gideon had promised, passing by in a whirl. She was going to thank him for taking her to salons, to soirées, to parties and to clubs, where she had met poets and writers and artists and actors, and for the fact that she had failed entirely to write her mother a letter longer than three or four lines.

Her heart was filled with warmth and affection for her friend, and so, when he brought himself up on one elbow and appraised her intently for a second before then bringing his mouth down upon hers and kissing her, quite hard, upon the lips, she did at first acquiesce, because it did, for a moment, feel the right thing to be doing, a mere heartbeat away from the hand-holding intimacy they’d been enjoying since they’d first met, not such a big leap and not so shocking. But when the kiss continued beyond the firm avuncular thing she’d been permitting and it became apparent that he was trying to part her lips with his she put a hand to his chest and pushed him back.

‘Gideon,’ she said, ‘what on earth ...?’

He looked at her quite strangely and said, ‘Oh, now, come on, Arlette. It’s not as though you’ve never been kissed.’

‘Well, yes, but –’

‘Well, but nothing,’ he said, before bringing his mouth down firmly again against hers.

Again she pushed him back. She looked at him sternly and said, ‘It is far from nothing, Gideon. I am spoken for. I can’t –’

‘Oh, Arlette, spoken for? Really? Do you really believe that? Do you really think your dear Godfrey is not, as we lie here, doing something rather similar?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ She blinked at him.

‘Well, Arlette, my dear lovely girl, Godfrey is a West Indian. For goodness’ sake, do you know nothing about the world? When it comes to affairs of the heart, they are not to be trusted.’

Arlette attempted to push Gideon away from her entirely, but the force of her indignation was not enough to do so. ‘Rubbish, Gideon,’ she said, trying to get to her feet. ‘Utter, utter rubbish. Godfrey is not a West Indian. Godfrey is a gentleman. Now, if you’ll excuse me ...’

She managed to scramble to her feet, and was about to storm back into the party when suddenly, and dreadfully, she found herself being dragged backwards, away from the house, down the lawn and towards the small wooded area at the end. She struggled against Gideon’s pull, but it was impossible. ‘Gideon!’ she cried out. ‘Will you let go of me!’

‘No, Arlette, I will not let go of you.’ He turned her to face him, her wrists still held tightly inside his hands. ‘I will not let go of you, you silly woman, because I have been in love with you since the very first time I set eyes on you and I have had enough.’ His eyes flashed angrily and Arlette felt something twist and spoil inside her gut.

‘Enough of all this nonsense. Enough of you treating me like a fool. I want you ...’ He stared at her desperately and her wrists started to sting inside his rough grip. ‘I need you to understand me. I need us to reach an understanding.’ He tugged her backwards with every word, dragging her silver heels through the soil, her wrists feeling that they might come apart in his hands.

‘Get off me, Gideon,’ she hissed.

‘No,’ he hissed back. ‘No! Absolutely not.’

They were in the wooded area now and Gideon was holding Arlette up against the trunk of a tree. He appraised her darkly for a moment and then he smiled, and for a moment Arlette thought he might be about to laugh and make the whole thing a joke, that she might walk away from here with everything the way it should be. But he did not laugh. Instead he brought his face down against hers once again, over-hard, roughly, forcing his tongue into her mouth. Arlette thought to struggle, but she was pinned almost entirely beneath the weight of his body. She could feel knuckles and nodules of bark pressing into her flesh; she could feel his leg forcing its way between her thighs, bruisingly. His lips passed from her mouth to her neck until she began to shout out, whereupon he forced his mouth once more over hers to stifle her and then, hard and awkward, he dragged down his trousers, pulled up the pure white pleats of her dress and forced aside her underwear. Arlette screamed noiselessly into the hot, hard cave of his mouth. She clenched her eyes closed and concentrated on a point five minutes from now when this would be over, when she could go inside, wash, sit, cry, go home.

As he climaxed his body softened against hers and he brought them both down into the bed of dry leaves. Arlette sat with her back still against the tree, Gideon’s head buried first in her shoulder and then in her lap. He breathed heavily, in and out, and Arlette stared deep and dark into the sky, feeling the awful hot wetness inside her. It had all taken about thirty seconds.

After a moment, Gideon lifted his head from her lap and smiled at her, an incongruous look of childish wonder. ‘Oh, my darling,’ he said, cupping her cheek with his hand. ‘My precious darling. Thank you.’

Arlette blinked at him and said, ‘What?’

‘Thank you. Thank you for letting me show you how I really feel.’

Arlette could think of no words. Instead she nodded, just once.

‘A momentous day!’ Gideon cried out, suddenly getting to his feet. ‘A marvellous day!’

She watched mutely as he pulled up his trousers, put away his damp penis, buttoned up his fly, brushed away crumbs of autumn leaf from his clothing. ‘Here,’ he held his hand down to her and she took it. He pulled her up to standing and watched her tenderly as she pulled down her skirt, brushed away more crumbs of autumn leaves.

‘Oh, here,’ he said, ‘you have some dirt ... let me ...’

She stood numbly as he carefully brushed some clods of dry earth from the back of her dress. ‘Such a beautiful dress,’ he muttered sweetly. ‘We mustn’t let it be spoiled. There.’ He smiled at her triumphantly. ‘You look perfect. No one would ever know.’

She nodded again, feeling the rancid trickle of warm liquid in the gap between her underwear and her stocking tops. ‘I need to clean myself,’ she said.

‘Of course. Yes. Of course. But first, I feel I absolutely have to mark this occasion somehow.’ He pulled apart his jacket and took something from his inside pocket, something small and metal that gleamed dully in the darkness. Arlette caught her breath, fearing that the ordeal may not yet be over.

‘Here,’ he said, pulling open the penknife. He started to gouge out lumps of the tree behind them. ‘Here, a lasting memorial. Our little secret.’ Arlette stood in abject silence as Gideon chiselled away at the wood and then he brought out a box of matches and lit one up. ‘See,’ he said, putting one hand gently on to her bare shoulder.

Arlette peered at the tree.




She shuddered and turned away.

‘Don’t you like it?’

She said, ‘I’m going inside now, Gideon, to clean myself. And after that I shall be going home.’

‘But, Arlette,’ he said pleadingly, ‘the party. What about the party?’

‘I don’t care about the party.’

‘But – what shall I tell Leticia? What shall I tell Lilian? All your friends?’

‘I have no idea, Gideon.’

She picked up the hem of her beautiful white dress and she walked back across the lawn, her legs trembling, her hands shaking, and she headed through the servants’ entrance in the basement, to the nearest bathroom where she scrubbed herself raw.


Dear Mother,

I am so sorry not to have written you a decent letter for such a long time. I cannot tell you how busy my life is here in London. I work so hard and play so hard and on the rare nights I’m at home with nothing to do, before I’ve even picked up a pen, I’m already halfway to sleep. I hope you are well. It’s been a glorious summer. Did you spend much time on the beach? I did think of you, often, and those long days we used to spend together. It all feels like such a long time ago now ...

Well, my news, such as it is: I have spent this summer conducting a remarkable love affair. With a musician. I can’t tell you much more about him, other than that he is a gentleman, and that I love him very much. He is away at the moment, performing in the North with his orchestra, but next Monday he will be returning and I cannot breathe with the anticipation of seeing him again. The period of his absence has almost reduced me to madness. For the past week I have not left my room apart from to go to work; I am truly a recluse. And this week, more than any other since I left you on the quayside just over a year ago, I have missed you more than words can say. I have lain in bed at night and dreamed of you, wanting to lie in your arms and have you stroke my hair, like you used to do when I was small. Because, Mother, the most awful thing happened to me last week. I am not sure I can put it into words without feeling the pain of it all over again, maybe I can tell you, maybe I can’t, but a man, a man I loved platonically and with deepest affection, a man I considered to be the best of all possible people and a true, genuine friend, violated my trust, violated my body, in the most heartless and animal of ways. I cannot think too hard and too long upon the details of this incident, and I am sure you would not wish to hear of them. I have told no one, not even my closest friends, because I am scared of how they might react. But I feel constantly now on the verge of hysteria. I feel dirty, I feel like all my joy in life, my trust in humanity, my hope for the future has been snatched from my hands and torn to shreds.

Oh, Mother, I am desperate, I am destroyed. Every time I close my eyes I feel his mouth on mine, I smell the scent of his skin, I panic, my heart races, as if I am locked in a box, as if I have been buried alive. The air turns to dust in my mouth, I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I am destroyed, Mother, I am destroyed ...


Arlette breathed in deeply, caught a sob at the back of her throat, ripped the pages from the notepad, screwed them into a small tight ball and hurled them at the wall. Then she began afresh.


Dear Mother,

Yet again the social and professional whirl of my life prevents me from writing to you properly. Yet again I must just dash you off a few paltry and insufficient lines to tell you that I am very happy, very well and missing you very much. The summer has been marvellous, and now autumn is upon us and I have been in London for more than a year. Where did the time go to? Well, Mother, I must dash, I am expected at a party and my friends are calling for me. I will write again next week.

All my fondest love,

Arlette.


She pulled the sheet carefully from the notepad, folded it very precisely, and slid it into a lavender-scented envelope, which she addressed to her mother. Then she walked slowly across the room and collected the discarded ball of paper, pushing it deep and dark into the bottom of her wastepaper basket. A moment later she retrieved it from the wastepaper basket, and laid it in the wash basin, where she set it alight with a match and watched it burn itself away to a small pile of blackened ephemera.