Before I Met You

53


1921




Dear Lilian,

Well, to say that I miss you all would be a statement of extraordinary inadequacy. I miss all of you, every moment of every day (except, perhaps, your younger brothers!). I miss London, I miss the buses and the motorcars, the noise and the smell. I miss parties with Minu, and the music. I really do miss the music. How are you all? How are the building works going? I suppose it will be a long time before the house is ready for you all to move back in. But then, an apartment in Hyde Park is likely a fine compensation for you all in the meantime.

I am sorry that I left so suddenly and without proper farewells. And now that I am away from everything, I feel I can share with you the exact reasons for my disappearance. I overheard Godfrey having a conversation with a young girl about their unborn baby. She gave him back a sum of money that he had given her to deal with the situation and told him that she ‘couldn’t do it’. Now I, more than most, can understand that, as you know. It is no one’s fault. I left Godfrey without explanation, he owed me nothing. And this poor girl is just doing what she feels is right. There is no one to blame, no one to be angry with, but Godfrey has to be free to do the right thing with regard to this girl and he won’t be able to do that easily with me in the picture.

So, here I am, back where I started. My mother is so happy to have me back. Already my time in London feels like a dream. Travel really is just a momentary pause in the ongoing rhythm of real life. Nothing changes. Not really. But, Lilian, I need you to do something for me. Please would you stay in touch with Godfrey? I want to know that he is well and happy, that his baby comes without any drama, that he finds a way through this. Please? As far as I know he will be in London for the whole of the summer. I still love him so very much, and I know I always will.

Love and best wishes to you all,

Your friend,

Arlette.


Dearest Arlette,

How shocking! Your dilemma is clear and I hate to say it but I think you have done the right thing. Poor Godfrey. Poor you. Poor little baby. It should all have been so very different, I feel.

I did see Godfrey last week. Minu and I went to a Love Brothers show at the Blue Butterfly. He looked very sad, his eyes like the eyes of an orphaned Spaniel. I can’t tell you.

Anyway, I did talk to him after the show. I told him that you’d written, that you were well. He did not mention a baby, but I did see a young girl sitting in the wings, knitting something in white wool. I took her to be the young lady in question. But I was not introduced. The whole affair seems very much steeped in sadness and consolation.

We are all well. The house is very far from being repaired. I cannot bear to look at it when I return on occasion to visit Philip.

Fondest love to you, my friend,

Lilian


Dearest Lilian,

Thank you so much for your report and I’m sorry I have not written for so long. Mother was taken ill, a bout of terrible bronchitis, and I have spent these last weeks going back and forth to the sanatorium. Thank goodness I was here. I feel more than ever I made the right decision. Although, if I can share with you a terrible truth, every time I think of Godfrey I feel so angry at the world, at my mother, at the unfairness of everything.

Please send more news, of you, the family, and of course Godfrey, whenever you get a minute.

Yours,

Arlette


Dearest Arlette,

Well, I start with joyful news. Philip has asked me to marry him and I have accepted! I will become Mrs Philip Love. Is that not the most charming name, worth marrying for that alone! I will be having a joint twentieth birthday party and engagement party in September. If your mother is feeling better and you can face the journey back to London, it would be so super if you were to be there. It will be a really happy, splendid night. One I feel we could all do with after the many sadnesses of the last year.

As for Godfrey, I have not seen him, but I hear he is off on tour again. And Minu saw him a couple of weeks ago and apparently he mentioned that he has a new girl and a baby on the way. He said it is due in November. But more than that, Minu did not ask and I do not know. He asked after you. She said he still has the sad eyes. And that his music is more piquant than ever.

Sweet dreams, my lovely friend, and best wishes to your dear mother from my dear mother,

Lilian


Dearest Lilian,

Oh, my dear friend! I have been dancing with joy at your news! Philip seems such a good man and you will be the loveliest, sweetest little wife. You already have so much practice in running a home. Where will you live? Oh, I’m sure it will be somewhere utterly divine. You two lucky people, I could not be happier. Whether or not I will be able to make it across for your engagement party remains to be seen. I will most definitely do everything I can, be assured of that much.

I wish that I could write and say that my heart is healing, that I am missing Godfrey less, but that would not be true. My mother and her family are forever introducing me to nice chaps, really, perfectly nice chaps. But I see them, and their bland faces and their small lives – some have never left the island, you know – and I cannot bear for that to be the end of it. There has to be more, don’t you think? Well, for me at least. And as long as I shall live, I will always know, deep in my heart, that the best has passed me by, in a terrible chaos of tragedy and bad luck. Nothing will ever compare, I shall live out my life in a state of pitiful resignation.

Best regards, my dear girl,

Arlette





54


1995




‘ARE YOU DECENT?’

Betty stood outside the front door of her flat and waited for a response.

‘I am fully clothed,’ John shouted out.

She turned her key in the lock and walked in. John was on the sofa in a white polo shirt and jeans, his hair freshly washed and messed up, his feet bare, watching a TV presenter, who’d been at Amy’s party the night before, lasciviously interviewing Louise Wener from Sleeper on the television.

Betty laughed. ‘Met him last night,’ she said drily.

John raised a minutely interested eyebrow at her. He pointed at Louise Wener. ‘Did you meet her?’

Betty shook her head and John sighed dramatically. ‘Shame.’

Betty smiled again and headed for the kettle. ‘Tea?’

‘Let me,’ said John, leaping to his feet.

‘No,’ said Betty. ‘You sit. You’re ill.’

‘I am not ill,’ he said. ‘I am recovering.’

‘Well, all the more reason to take it easy,’ she said, filling the kettle with water.

John sighed and sat down again. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I was thinking. It’s a beautiful day. And I’m so grateful to you for everything you’ve done. I’d really like to repay you. I’d really like to take you out to lunch. In fact ...’ he blushed slightly, ‘I’ve taken the liberty of packing a picnic.’ He stood up and opened the fridge. ‘I got sushi, do you like sushi?’

She shrugged and said, ‘I’ve never tried it.’

‘Oh, well, I also got some champagne.’

‘But you can’t drink.’

He grimaced. ‘Champagne,’ he said, ‘is not drink. Well, not where I come from, anyway. So, smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels, and look ...’ he pulled out a tiny glass jar, ‘some caviar.’

Betty blinked. ‘Wow,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ he said, scratching his chin, ‘I know. I went a bit OTT, but you know, I never get a day off. This is my first free Sunday in over a year, so I just thought ... well ...’ He closed the fridge door and looked slightly embarrassed.

‘Thank you,’ said Betty. ‘Seriously. That is amazing.’ She was about to say, ‘No one has ever bought champagne for me before,’ but stopped herself as she remembered that someone had. Dom had. At the Groucho. That awful night when he’d cried those big crocodile tears, squeezed her bum and called her ‘the nanny’. She shook the memory from her thoughts and said, ‘Where are you taking me?’

‘Green Park?’

‘Lovely,’ she said, ‘I’ll have a shower and put on a nice dress.’

‘And listen,’ John called out to her retreating back, ‘I want you to know, I’ve already lined up some places to view tomorrow. I won’t be hanging around. OK? In case you were worried?’

Betty turned and smiled at him. ‘I wasn’t worried,’ she said.

*

If there had ever been a more beautiful Sunday afternoon in the entire history of Sunday afternoons, Betty would have been very surprised indeed.

The sky was an electric blue and scattered with puffy clouds that passed across the sun at convenient intervals as though it was their job to stop sunbathers from overheating. After they’d eaten their picnic on a bath towel and drunk champagne from mugs, Betty and John rented deck chairs, which they turned at angles to face the sun.

‘Now, this is the life,’ said John, stretching out his legs and smiling into the sun.

‘Not secretly wishing you were at a record fair, then?’

‘Oh, well, yeah. Obviously I’d rather be in a big dusty hall in the suburbs with a load of lonely guys in stale T-shirts ...’

‘... buying Ultravox picture discs ...’

‘Buying Ultravox picture discs. But this will do. This will very much do.’

He pulled a Discman from his jacket pocket and plugged in some headphones. ‘Wanna share?’ he said, offering her an earpiece.

‘Depends what you’re listening to,’ she said.

‘Ultravox, of course.’

She raised an eyebrow at him and he smiled.

He returned her smile. ‘What do you want to listen to?’

He passed her a small leather case full of CDs out of their boxes and she looked at him curiously. ‘You thought of everything,’ she said.

‘I certainly did,’ he said, watching her leaf through the pages of discs.

‘Here,’ she said, ‘let’s listen to this one.’

It was an album by the Chemical Brothers. She chose it because she liked the title, Exit Planet Dust.

‘Good choice,’ he said, looking at her with respect. ‘Their first album. Only just came out yesterday.’

Betty nodded seriously, as if of course she knew that, as if she was a big fat muso, just like him.

He put the disc in the player and passed her an earpiece, then he turned up the volume and for the next hour they sat just like that, side by side, their arms hanging at their sides, the sun playing on their skin, the breathtaking, mind-blowing sound of Chemical Brothers, whoever the hell they were, taking them both to another place entirely.

As the album came to a close, Betty opened her eyes and saw John smiling at her.

‘Why are you smiling at me?’ she teased. ‘You’re freaking me out. I can see your teeth and everything.’

John pulled his lips down over his teeth. ‘I’ll never do it again,’ he promised.

‘Good,’ said Betty, folding her arms across her chest.

‘So, what did you think?’

‘Amazing,’ she said. ‘Totally.’

‘Good,’ he said, with some kind of unspoken satisfaction. ‘That’s good. What sort of music do you normally listen to? I have to confess, I’ve had a look around your place, not a scrap of vinyl or a CD to be found.’

She shrugged. ‘I left it all at home,’ she said. ‘Didn’t think I’d need it.’

‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘different strokes. The first thing I’d pack if I was leaving home would be my music. It would be my “what would you rescue first in a fire” thing. What would yours be?’

She paused and considered the question. ‘Right now,’ she said, ‘it would be Arlette’s stuff. Her photos. The book. The flyers. Apart from that, nothing really. It’s all just stuff, isn’t it? None of it really means anything.’

He nodded. And then he smiled and said, ‘One more treat.’ He leaned down and pulled a small paper box from the picnic bag. It was tied up with pale blue ribbon and had the words ‘Patisserie Valerie’ printed on it. He opened the lid and offered it to Betty. The box was filled with pastries, some topped with strawberries, others oozing whipped cream and confectioners’ custard.

‘Good God,’ she said, her mouth hanging ajar. ‘Those look amazing. But I mustn’t.’

He looked at her blankly. ‘What?’

‘Oh God, I just can’t. I put on so much weight when I was at Wendy’s, and now I’m constantly eating with the children and look ...’ She grabbed her spare tyre and showed it to him.

He laughed. ‘You weirdo,’ he said.

‘I am not a weirdo.’

‘You are, Betty Dean. I mean, look at you. Just look at you. How can you even begin to think you’re overweight? If anything ...’ he stopped.

‘What?’

‘If anything you were too thin, when I first saw you, in that stupid coat. Like a little shrimp, all bug-eyed and skinny. Now you’re ...’

‘What?’ she said again, narrowing her eyes.

‘Well, you’re just about perfect.’

She stared at him.

‘Just about, I said, just about. Don’t go getting any ideas about yourself.’

‘Oh, it’s too late for that, John Brightly, way too late for that.’

He smiled at her and waved the box under her nose again. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘you know you want one.’

‘No,’ she laughed, pushing the box away, ‘I don’t!’

‘Go on, get stuck in.’ As he said it, she saw a little flash of unadulterated mischief pass across his face. Before she could lever herself from her deck chair he’d picked a cream puff from the box and pushed it into her face.

She looked at him in stunned silence, unsure whether she was amused or deeply offended. She decided she was both, and after wiping most of a cream bun from her face with her fingers and then licking it off, she smiled at John sweetly, lifted another cake out of the box and rubbed it into his cheeks.

‘Oh, right. Oh, right!’ he said, rubbing his hands together, his eyes shining with delight, before picking out another bun and chasing Betty around a tree with it. He caught her after a moment and held onto her breathlessly, the bun in one hand, her shoulder in the other. She caught her breath and stared at him, imploringly. He stared back at her, triumphantly. And then he lowered the bun and his look turned to something else, something she could not quite interpret.

She wiped some cream from his face and he caught her hand in mid-air. ‘Betty ...’ he began.

‘What?’ she said.

He stared at her, slightly helplessly.

Betty caught her breath.

Then he dropped her hand and lowered his gaze and said, ‘Nothing. Just ... you’ve got cream in your ear.’ He pointed at her right ear and she put a finger in it and wiggled it around.

‘Has it gone?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said, with a strange sadness. ‘It’s gone.’

She looked at him tenderly. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, naughty John gone from sight, laconic John back in his place. ‘I’m fine. Here.’ He offered her the bun. ‘Eat this. For me.’

Betty took the bun from his outstretched hand. She smiled at him. ‘Thank you, John,’ she said. ‘Thank you for the picnic. Thank you for the champagne. And thank you for the music ...’

‘The songs I’m singing.’

‘Thanks for all the joy they’re bringing.’

‘Who could live without it?’

‘I ask, in all honesty.’

‘What would life be?’

‘Without a song, or a dance, what are we?’

John smiled. ‘Indeed.’

The moment drew away from them. And then it passed. Something had nearly happened here today, in the park, with John Brightly. Something that Betty wasn’t quite ready for. And neither, she suspected, was John.

‘Come on,’ said Betty, ‘let’s go home.’


There was a note in the mail catcher when they got back to Berwick Street half an hour later: ‘Betty, come over. I’m in till six.’

Betty glanced at her watch. It was just past five. She saw John looking at her. She had no idea what to say. ‘Erm ...’

He read the note and shrugged. ‘See you later,’ he said coldly.

‘It’s –’

‘Don’t worry about it. He’s your boss. Off you run.’

‘Yes, but ...’

John forced a small smile. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll see you later.’

Betty sighed. This was not what she wanted. But she’d promised Dom she’d hear what he had to say. And it was only for an hour.

‘I’ll be back at six,’ she said. ‘Will you be in?’

He shrugged. ‘Not sure.’

‘Right. OK. Well, I might see you later.’

‘Yeah.’ He shrugged again. ‘You might.’

‘Thank you again, John,’ she said. ‘It’s been a perfect day.’

‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘A perfect day. I’m glad I spent it with you.’

She stood on the pavement outside her flat for a moment after John went inside. Then she breathed in deeply, smoothed her hair and turned the corner into Peter Street.


Dom was wearing a football strip when he answered the door to her a minute later.

His face lit up when he saw her and he said, ‘Thank God, I thought I was going to miss you.’

She eyed the football strip. ‘What the f*ck are you wearing?’

Dom glanced down at himself and said, ‘Charity five-a-side thing.’

‘Who won?’

‘My team, of course. Thrashed them. Where’ve you been? Amy said you left hers at twelve thirty.’ The question was slightly accusatory in tone.

‘I’ve been to the park,’ she said.

He nodded, appraising her gently through his velvety lashes.

‘How was the party?’ he asked, leading her through to the kitchen.

‘It was all right,’ she said. ‘Not quite the sex-and-drugs-crazed wife-swapper I’d been led to expect.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s because Amy binned all our mates when I moved out and got a whole new set. Ones who like going to bed at ten o’clock. With a mug of green tea ...’

He opened the fridge and pulled out two cold beers. He offered one to Betty and then passed her a bottle opener.

‘So nothing to report then?’ he asked, pulling a chair out from under the kitchen table and sitting astride it, as though it were a motorbike.

‘No,’ she said, wondering why she was here when she could have been in her flat with John. ‘I went to bed at eleven o’clock. It all seemed very civilised.’

‘Good,’ he said, staring at the table top. ‘Good. Listen. Betty,’ he looked up at her, suddenly and dramatically, ‘I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to come straight out and say it. I’ve been thinking a lot about you lately. An awful lot. I think ...’

He paused and scratched at the label of his beer bottle. ‘I think you’re totally brilliant. Totally. I think you’re beautiful. And bright. And sexy, I mean, f*ck, you’re sexy.’

Betty picked at some dry skin on her fingernails and waited for it, the moment of truth, the moment he told her that he didn’t want to be her boyfriend. And she was ready for it. Because she didn’t want to be his girlfriend either. Too much baggage. Too much bullshit. And he looked silly in his football strip. What had happened here that night had been a one-off, just a moment of craziness. She was prepared to accept that and she was ready now for him to draw a line underneath it all.

‘And I’ve been thinking,’ he continued, ‘about what we were talking about here the other night. About other destinies. You know. About how maybe just because things seem like they have to be a certain way, it doesn’t mean that you can’t change it. If that’s what you want. And so when I was down in the country, with the band, I spent a couple of hours out with an estate agent. He showed me some f*cking amazing gaffs. I mean, places that made the house in Primrose Hill look like a shed, you know. And listen,’ he leaned towards her suddenly and covered her hand over with his. ‘I want to do it. You and me. A big house in the country. Pigs. Ducks. The kids to stay in the holidays. Farmhouse breakfast. The works.’

His hand gripped hers and his soft brown eyes bored into hers, and for a moment Betty was rendered completely speechless.

‘Remember I said I wished I’d met you first? Well, maybe I met you last. Do you see what I mean? I met you last.’

She nodded and tried to form a response.

‘And that’s the one, isn’t it?’ he continued. ‘The one you meet last.’

He was evangelised, energised.

‘Shit,’ said Betty, ‘I mean ... Seriously, I really do not know what to say. At all.’

Dom just smiled at her dreamily. ‘It could be so great,’ he said. ‘Just think about it.’

She stared at him mutely. ‘But what about me?’ she said. ‘What would I do?’

He looked at her strangely. ‘What do you mean, what would you do?’

‘All day? While you were on tour? When you were away recording?’

He smiled and rubbed his hand up and down her arm. ‘Well, that’s the beautiful thing, Betty. You could do whatever you wanted. Whatever you bloody well wanted. You could paint. You could write. You could come on tour with me. You could have a baby. You could do whatever the f*cking hell you f*cking well wanted to do!’ He beamed at her slightly maniacally.

She smiled and nodded. ‘And what about Amy?’

‘What about Amy?’

‘Well, she might be a bit ...’

He dismissed her half-formed concerns with a wave of his beer bottle. ‘Amy will be fine. At least she’ll know, when the kids come to stay, that they’ll be in good hands. At least she knows you, she trusts you.’

‘She offered me the job.’

‘What?’

‘Last night. Amy came into my room and told me I was amazing and offered me the job. I think she really likes me, Dom. I think she really needs me. I’m not sure I can just up and leave her.’

He laughed. ‘Oh, yeah, right. Amy always makes out that the nanny is like the centre of the universe. It’s her MO. Make them feel indispensable and then push them to their limits.’

‘I honestly don’t think it’s like that,’ Betty said. ‘Really.’

He laughed again and Betty grimaced. She thought about the flat round the corner, John Brightly on the sofa, then she thought about the country pile, the farmhouse kitchen, a room full of easels, a bank account she didn’t need to worry about and Dom Jones’s beautiful brown eyes staring at her passionately every morning when she woke up.

‘I know,’ said Dom, leaning away again, ‘I know this all seems like I’m rushing things. I’ve only known you a few weeks. But there’s something about you, Betty. I felt it the first time I saw you, in your Wendy’s uniform. Something pure. Something good. And I wish I had the time to wine you and dine you and really get to know you. But my life’s not like that, my life is, you know, crazy. All these years I’ve let that craziness rule everything, but now, with you, I feel like I’ve found the calm, gentle centre of everything. You are, like, my pacemaker ...’

‘Your pacemaker?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, staring at her deeply. ‘Tick, tick, tick. A metronome.’

A pacemaker? A metronome?

He gazed at her blindly for a moment before it hit him. ‘No!’ he said. ‘No. You’re more than that. Of course you are, Betty. Listen, Betty, the bottom line is: I’m crazy about you. OK?’

OK? Was he asking her or telling her?

She shrugged, feeling strangely unmoved by a megastar telling her that he was crazy about her. ‘Dom,’ she began, ‘I don’t know. It’s just ...’ she paused, ran her fingertip around the rim of her beer bottle, ‘... I’ve got so much going on here right now. I finally found my grandmother’s beneficiary. And Amy, she needs me. I can’t let her down.’

He leaned back towards her and grabbed her hands again. ‘I’m going to Berlin tonight,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back on Wednesday. Think about it, Betty. That’s all I ask of you. Please, just think about it.’ He picked up both her hands then, and kissed the hillocks of her knuckles. ‘Will you do that?’ he said, his brown eyes staring into hers pleadingly.

Betty felt her stomach swish and billow at the touch of his lips against her skin. She nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course I will.’

‘Honestly, Betty,’ he said, resting her hands back on the table. ‘I swear, this feels like the first grown-up thing I have ever done in my life. Ever.’

He smiled at her and let her go.

*

John didn’t ask where Betty had been or what she’d been doing when she came back to the flat just before six. He merely moved along the sofa and said, ‘True romance?’

‘Sorry?’ said Betty.

‘True Romance,’ he said again, waving a mug of half-drunk tea at the TV. ‘Have you seen it?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It never made it to the Mallard on Guernsey. I was gutted.’

She took the seat next to him and collapsed heavily into the cushions, her entire being reeling from the events of the last hour, desperately grateful to John for just sitting here being so perfectly normal.

‘Well, now’s your chance. I bought it yesterday, some Chinese guy selling stuff off the pavement.’

‘How far in are you?’

‘I’ll start it again.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Course I am.’ He stopped the film and pressed rewind. While they sat and watched the film replay itself backwards he turned to her and said, ‘I meant to ask you something?’

She looked at him questioningly.

‘What was the deal with Clara’s dad? I mean, we’ve found her now and clearly she was brought up by somebody else. What happened to her father? What happened to Godfrey Pickle?’

Betty smiled sadly. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘You didn’t.’

‘Your sister told me. It’s really sad.’

John paused the picture on the DVD player and turned to face her.

‘Go on,’ he said.

Betty took a deep breath.