Before I Met You

55


1921




ARLETTE STEPPED FROM the carriage and looked up at the imposing apartment block. It stood ten storeys high, facing directly across Hyde Park. A smartly liveried porter helped her across the threshold with her bag and directed her to a lift to take her to the third floor.

It was blissful to be back in London. Blissful and also poignant. She would only be here for three nights: she had a job now on the island, at a dress shop in St Peter Port, and they couldn’t give her any more time than that. But three nights were better than no nights at all, and she was just happy she’d been able to come across for Lilian’s party.

Lilian greeted her at the door of the apartment and threw herself so hard into Arlette’s arms that she almost knocked her off her feet.

‘Darling, darling Arlette! Look at you! So beautiful. And wearing such a fine coat.’ She admired it at arm’s length. ‘It’s just yummy. Where did it come from?’

‘From the dress shop where I work.’

‘Ah, so style has finally reached the distant shores of Guernsey?’

‘With a little help from me, yes,’ Arlette laughed.

‘Oh, I’ve missed you so much. Come in. Come in. Come and see our beautiful apartment.’

Lilian showed Arlette the rooms, all high-ceilinged and bathed in the white-gold sunlight that streamed clear across the park and straight through the tall windows.

‘And you’re in here, with me,’ she said finally, showing Arlette into the last of the many bedrooms. ‘Because, I’m rather afraid, we have Henry at home now. And Arthur is back on exeat. But it will be cosy, and it will give us a chance to share all our secrets under cover of night!’

Arlette smiled tightly. She did not want to share secrets. She just wanted to celebrate Lilian’s happiness and then go home.

Lilian sat her down in the parlour and sent for tea and biscuits. ‘So,’ she began, ‘the schedule of events is this: on Sunday night we are having a family meal here, at the apartment. Tomorrow night, of course, is the party. So tonight, I thought we could go to a club, maybe. With Minu?’

Arlette glanced at Lilian nervously. ‘A club?’

‘Yes. If you like. I thought maybe the Blue Butterfly. But never fear. Godfrey is not in London. Right now he is in Scotland. With the orchestra.’

‘Oh,’ Arlette felt some kind of unspoken anxiety she had been carrying around inside herself since she’d first planned this trip to London ebb out of her at these words. Godfrey was in Scotland. She would not be seeing him. She felt both relieved and deflated. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s probably good.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Lilian, ‘it is.’

‘And what of the girl?’ she asked. ‘Any news of her?’

‘Yes,’ said Lilian conspiratorially. ‘Minu had a letter from Godfrey a few days ago; her parents have thrown her from their home.’

Arlette clasped a hand across her mouth. ‘Poor girl,’ she whispered.

‘Poor girl indeed.’

‘And where is she now?’

‘Godfrey told Minu that she is staying in Soho, while he is away, at a home for unwed mothers.’

‘Oh, how sad.’

‘Yes. But he’ll be returning in early November, in time for the birth. He said he will find them rooms, that he will marry her.’

Arlette felt an agonising stab of sorrow pierce her heart at these words. She’d known it would happen. It was why she’d left London. But to hear the words, to know as fact that someone else would be spending the rest of their life with the man she loved, that someone else would live in the small house with the friendly neighbours, would take the coffee-skinned toddlers back to St Lucia on a majestic cruise ship. She held back a guttural sob and forced a tiny smile. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘That’s good.’

A clattering emanated from the hallway and Leticia and the three boys hurtled into the room. All of them were ruddy-cheeked and smiling, even Leticia, who had more colour in her face than Arlette had ever seen her carrying before.

‘Glorious Arlette!’ cried Leticia at the sight of her. ‘What a splendid, splendid treat! Welcome! Boys,’ she called out behind her, ‘look who’s here. It’s Arlette!’

The three boys peered at Arlette disinterestedly, apart from Henry, who threw her a very strange look indeed and said, ‘Well, well, well, I thought we’d seen the last of you.’

‘Henry!’ Leticia chastised. ‘There’s no need for such rudeness. Really.’

Henry merely grimaced and disappeared.

‘Henry!’ called Leticia. ‘Come back here right now and apologise to our guest.’

‘Oh, really,’ said Arlette, ‘it’s fine.’

‘No,’ said Leticia, sternly, ‘it is not fine. Come back here right now,’ she called again, ‘or I will be talking to your father and your allowance will not be making an appearance in your bank account this month. Now, Henry!’

Arlette almost jumped at the authoritative tone of Leticia’s voice and she looked at Lilian in surprise and vague amusement.

Lilian smiled and whispered, ‘Such changes, Arlette. Such changes.’

Henry reappeared in the doorway and stared at Arlette sulkily. ‘I apologise for my comments, Miss De La Mare. Now, if you will excuse me, I have some tiresome domestic chores to attend to.’

He disappeared and Leticia smiled at Arlette. ‘Such terrible boys,’ she said. ‘I am taking them in hand. They will be the most charming boys in London by the next time you visit!’

‘I am sure they will,’ said Arlette. ‘And possibly they will also be uncles.’

Leticia put a hand to her heart and gasped. ‘And me then a grandmother! Well, well, well. What a silly thought. But also so terribly exciting. Now, I must leave you girls to catch up. I have some last-minute party arrangements to discuss. So lovely to have you back, Arlette. Such a treat.’

She left the room and Lilian looked at Arlette and shrugged. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘sometimes bad things do happen for a good reason.’


Arlette accompanied Leticia and Lilian into the West End the next morning, where Lilian was having the last fitting for her party dress and looking for new hairpins with which to ornament her hair. Arlette left them in the dress shop and took herself for a walk through streets that had once been her second home. It was another bright September day, golden and crisp, just like the day last year when she’d walked to the river with Godfrey, when he’d told her he wanted to be with her forever, just before he’d gone to Manchester and left her to her fate with Gideon Worsley.

She found herself wandering carelessly, but maybe somewhere deep down, purposefully, towards Soho. She’d asked Minu last night about the home for unwed mothers. St Anne’s Court, Minu had told her. Just opposite the new flats.

She didn’t have a plan, she just wanted to see. See what someone looked like with Godfrey’s baby growing inside them. She crossed over Soho Square, tatty and tawdry on this bright Saturday morning. Drunks and opium addicts stared at her horribly through glassy eyes and she averted her gaze, walking briskly and with purpose. St Anne’s Court was a short road, equally dirty and sordid, but there, as Minu had said, was the shiny new block of flats, built in the modern style, all gleaming granite and streaky marble.

Arlette stood before the building and looked at the house opposite. On the ground level was a tiny shop selling supplies for cripples and injured soldiers. Above were three floors, all grimy-windowed and unwelcoming. There was no signage to suggest what the building was used for, just the number 12 engraved into the mantel. She watched the building for a while, until, after a moment a young girl scuttled out, hiding her blooming stomach with a bag held across herself. She scuttled back again a moment later, holding a paper bag from a pharmacy to her chest, and Arlette crossed the street urgently towards her.

‘Hello,’ she said.

The girl looked at her in horror.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to alarm you. I’m just ...’ She stopped, suddenly aware of the stupidity of her actions. ‘It’s just,’ she continued, ‘there’s a girl staying here. She’s called Esther. I wondered ...’

‘Esther Jones or Esther Murray?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Arlette. ‘The one who’s engaged to a coloured man.’

‘Ah,’ said the girl, knowingly, ‘yes, Esther Jones. What about her?’

‘I’m a friend of her fiancé’s. I was just, he asked me to check up on her, while he’s away. To make sure she’s all right.’

‘Well, you’re not allowed in there,’ she said. ‘No one’s allowed in there. But I can tell her you were asking after her. If you like?’

Arlette stared at the grimy building and then back at the grimy girl. There was another world behind those walls, a world she could not come close to imagining.

She shook her head and said, ‘Thank you. But no. It’s fine. As long as she’s all right?’

‘Yes, she’s fine. Her and the baby. Fighting fit.’

‘Good,’ said Arlette, tears blurring her vision, ‘that’s good. Thank you for your time.’

And then she turned and headed back through the dirty streets of daytime Soho towards the glittering dress shop in gleaming, glorious Mayfair.





56


Telegram




Arlette STOP Call immediately STOP Hyd 2362 STOP I have news STOP Call as soon as you can STOP

Lilian


ARLETTE READ THE telegram, once, then twice. She felt no urgency. Just curiosity. ‘I have news.’ It could mean anything. She did not hurry to the exchange. She felt there was no need. Instead she folded the note, and tucked it into her purse, with a half-formed plan to visit the exchange on her way home from work, to where the telegram had been delivered.

But the telegram sat in her purse, calling to her, as the day passed. Why a telegram? she asked herself. If it was just family news, would not a letter have sufficed? Eventually, as the nagging feeling intensified, she asked her manager for an early break and she made her way through the bustling streets of St Peter Port to the main exchange.

The telephone was answered by the operator in Lilian’s apartment block. ‘Hyde Park Mansions, to whom would you like to be connected?’

Arlette asked for the Millers’ apartment and the telephone in their flat was answered by the maid: ‘Good afternoon, Millers’ residence, how may I help you?’

‘I would like to speak to Miss Lilian Miller.’

‘And who shall I say is calling?’

‘This is Miss De La Mare.’

‘Just one moment, Miss De La Mare.’

Eventually Lilian came on the line and Arlette felt herself tense up at the prospect of what she was about to hear.

‘Darling Arlette,’ said Lilian, her voice choked with tears.

‘What?’ snapped Arlette. ‘What is it?’

‘It has been on the news, but I thought it may not have got as far as the Channel Isles.’

‘What, Lilian, what?’

‘Oh, it is too, too sad. The most dreadful thing. The orchestra ...’

‘The orchestra?’

‘Yes, Arlette. The orchestra have drowned.’

Arlette paused, taking it in, trying to make sense of something that sounded, in Lilian’s mangled words, faintly comical. How could an orchestra drown?

‘The SS Rowan. It went down last night. Off the coast of Scotland. There was a collision with another ship. The orchestra were on board, Arlette, nearly all of them.’

Arlette blanched and sunk to her knees. The operator looked at her in alarm. ‘Comment va, Mademoiselle?’ she asked in patois.

‘Godfrey?’ Arlette said.

‘I have no idea; they have not yet released any names. But the whole ship went down, Arlette. The whole ship!’

Arlette breathed in and brought herself up to standing again. No, she thought, it simply could not be true. No, Godfrey would not have been on the ship. He would have been on his way back to London, to marry Esther Jones, to see his baby arrive in the world. He would not have been on the ship.

An image passed through her consciousness as she listened to Lilian sniffing and wailing in her Hyde Park apartment. It was an image of water, dark blue, dark as ink, and a man passing down through it, a smart suit floating from his body like the tendrils of sea anemone, his arms spread out, his eyes open, the eyes of Godfrey Pickle, dead, but smiling as he drifted downwards, smiling and at peace. And then like an afterthought, drifting down behind him, a golden clarinet, glinting and glittering in the water, following him down to his watery grave. And she knew then that he was dead. Felt it inside herself, sharp as a knife, yet soothing as a lullaby.

Of course, she thought, of course.

She smiled then, the saddest smile she’d ever smiled, and said to Lilian, ‘It’s all right, Lilian. It really is. It’s all right. We’ll wait for news. Just wait for news.’

But she already knew there was no good news. The love of her life was dead. And his baby would have no father.


When it was confirmed three days later that eight members of the orchestra had perished in the icy seas off the coast of Scotland, and that one of them had been ‘world-renowned clarinettist Godfrey Pickle, otherwise known as Sandy Beach’, Arlette sat in her room for a whole day and screamed until her throat was raw.