Before I Met You (13 page)

Lilian was agog. ‘Well,’ she continued in her stage whisper, ‘it is entirely what one would imagine the home of a reckless artist to be, I suppose. And do you think he covered over the lady purposely, to spare our blushes?’ She nodded at the scantily clad statue and giggled. ‘As though we haven’t seen a naked woman before,’ she laughed breezily.

Arlette laughed breezily, too, although she had never in her life seen a naked woman. Not once. The only possible notion she had of how a woman appeared underneath her clothes was the one she saw reflected in her bedroom mirror. She assumed that she was not unique in her arrangement of dips and peaks. She
had
spent a week in hospital two years earlier when she’d been struck down with the Spanish ’flu, and had been examined in most every respect from ankle to neck, and no one had at any point ventured the suggestion that there was anything unconventional about her physiology. She wondered for a moment how Lilian, a girl of just eighteen, had had the opportunity to see a naked woman, but assumed it was just another example of the yawning gulf between their upbringings.

‘Here,’ said Gideon, returning with a paint-splattered wooden butler’s tray bearing a pot and three cups and a small jar of sugar cubes. ‘I’m afraid there was no milk. Or at least what milk there was seems to have given itself over to a terrible attack of the lumps. So I hope you will forgive me and drink it black?’

‘Oh, I prefer it black,’ Lilian offered overfervently. ‘Thank you.’ She took a cup from his outstretched hand and perched herself on the edge of an armchair.

‘So, you’re here to ensure that nothing unseemly happens to your friend, is that correct?’ he asked Lilian.

‘Yes, indeed.’ Lilian smiled and smoothed down the skirt of her dress. ‘She is three years older than me but has had a rather sheltered upbringing. On an island.’

‘Ssh,’ Gideon put his finger to his lips dramatically. ‘I have promised Miss De La Mare that I will be able to divine her provenance using instinct alone. So no clues, please,’ he smiled. His teeth were not good, not for a man of his standing, but this did not detract from his general air of raffish handsomeness, and, despite the near-squalor of his home, Arlette couldn’t help but notice how nice he smelled, of a scent, rather than of himself, of something to do with cloves and peppermint.

Lilian and Gideon chattered for a while, trying to find some common ground, and failing. The closest they got was a girl called Millie who’d possibly gone to the same school as his sister, but for only two terms. Arlette sipped her tea, clearly an expensive blend, served in cups that were also of a very good
quality
. She looked for clues as to the direction this experience might take.

‘Well,’ said Gideon, after a few more moments, placing his empty cup onto the brass-topped table, ‘I think, if it’s agreeable with you, Miss Miller, I would like to take Miss De La Mare up to my studio now.’

Arlette felt her stomach wobble. She wanted, she suddenly knew without a doubt, to do this alone, yet she could not judge the wisdom of this idea. She looked at Lilian for reassurance, trusting, for some reason, that this headstrong eighteen-year-old girl would know better than her whether this man with his half unbuttoned shirt had good intentions or bad.

‘Well,’ Arlette said, ‘shall I stay on, alone?’

‘Oh, yes!’ said Lilian, springing to her feet, ‘I absolutely don’t want to hang around here, disturbing your artistic juices, not to mention your attempts to work out where the mysterious Miss De La Mare might have sprung from. I will leave you both to your afternoon and, Arlette, I will see you at home. If you’re not back by six o’clock, I will send out a search party.’ She laughed and pulled on her coat. Gideon saw her to the door and then he reappeared, looking, now that Lilian was gone, suddenly threatening and rather obscene.

‘Come,’ he said, cupping his large hands together, ‘come up. Let’s get started.’

Arlette placed her cup carefully upon the table, smiled the best smile she could find, and followed this strange man up uncarpeted stairs towards who knew where.

17

1995

THE NEW DAWN
brought the dreadful realisation that Betty had slept through until 9.05 a.m. Her shift at Wendy’s was due to begin at 9.00 a.m. and, to save time, Betty jumped, unwashed, straight into her uniform, brushed her teeth perfunctorily, glanced in the mirror and wished she had washed her hair the previous night, thought about applying some make-up, looked at the time and decided against it, forced down a mouthful of dry cornflakes, leaped out of the front door onto the street and straight into the path of Dom Jones.

‘Whoa,’ he said, putting out his hands to protect himself from her.

Betty gazed at him in shock and awe. ‘Shit,’ she said, ‘sorry.’

He looked at her, half amused, half appalled, taking in the crumpled polo shirt and the nylon trousers and the baseball cap in her hand.

He said nothing for a moment, looked as though he were about to walk away. Then he looked back at her briefly. ‘You’re the girl,’ he said, in his pop star voice, ‘the one from over there.’ He pointed behind him. ‘On the fire escape.’

She nodded, not wanting to say anything, aware of cornflakes
between
her teeth and the fact that she had not brushed her teeth for long enough to take away the staleness of sleep.

He appraised her again. Even from here, at such close range, on this muted May morning, dressed down in a nondescript T-shirt, unshaven and puffy-eyed, it was clear that this man was a somebody.

Dom Jones nodded at her and then walked away, a slight smile playing around his lips.

Betty rocked back on to her heels, as though he had created a small hurricane in his wake. She gulped. And then she smiled.

Dom Jones.

He’d seen her.

He’d talked to her.

He’d recognised her.

She was on his radar.

And then, very suddenly, she stopped smiling.

She was wearing her Wendy’s uniform.

She thought of every single time she had stepped onto this street from her flat in nice clothes. She thought of the cool T-shirts and the denim minis, she thought of the days her hair had gleamed in the sunlight and smelled like dewdrops, the slicks of red lipstick and the flourishes of liquid liner that had rendered her hard to resist. She thought of every single time that Dom Jones could have bumped into her outside her flat and threw down curses upon the gods of chance and timing.

Not that she wanted Dom Jones to fancy her. Particularly. He was a cheating scumbag and far from being the best-looking member of Wall.

But still.

Dom Jones.

She shivered away the memory of their encounter and walked very, very quickly to work.

Betty saw John Brightly, as she turned the corner a couple of
days
later. He was leaning against the wall of her house, smoking a cigarette. She wanted to talk to him. But she had no idea whether or not the wall John Brightly built around himself could be dissembled at all by the use of charm and familiarity, or if she was in fact putting up an even bigger barrier every time she tried to engage with him.

‘How’s your sister?’ she asked, rather desperately.

He turned and grimaced at her. ‘No idea,’ he said.

She smiled tightly as another row of metaphorical bricks landed on the wall between them.

‘Seen anything of Dom Jones lately?’ she offered, as a last-ditch effort.

He shook his head. ‘Not really.’

Not really? Not really? What did ‘not really’ mean? He either had, or he hadn’t. She sighed, and was about to head back into the flat when he turned again and smiled and said, ‘He was asking after you.’

She spun round and stared at him. ‘What?’

‘Dom Jones. A couple of days back. He was at my stall, looking at my stuff. He said, “Who’s the blond in the Wendy’s uniform?”’

‘Oh my God! What did you say?’

‘Nothing much,’ he shrugged. ‘I said you’d just moved in. That you lived on the second floor.’ He shrugged again.

‘Oh my God! Did you tell him my name?’

He grimaced at her again. ‘Well, I’m not sure how I could have told him your name when I don’t know what it is myself.’

‘Betty!’ she almost shrieked. ‘My name is Betty.’

He nodded knowingly.

‘Oh God. What else did he say?’

‘Nothing much. Just that. Who’s the blond.’

Betty blinked and tried to stop a huge stupid smile take over her face. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe it!’

John Brightly looked at her then as though she had just plummeted to even lower depths of stupidity.

‘Did he buy anything?’ she asked.

‘What?’

‘From you? Did he buy anything?’

‘Nah. He was looking at a rare Dylan, but he didn’t buy it.’

She nodded encouragingly, paused for a moment wishing she could think of something salient to say on the subject of rare Dylans and then she went indoors.

Ten days into her career at Wendy’s Betty had already gained enough weight to subtly change the contours of her face: her cheekbones were less pronounced, her jaw less defined. The hours spent on her feet had done nothing to counterbalance the deleterious effects of two free Wendy’s meals a day, and she could feel the waistband of her size eight denim skirt beginning to dig into her flesh. Her complexion, too, was starting to suffer. It had lost its petal-like gloss and she even had a few spots here and there. And then, two nights ago, unable to justify a visit to the hairdresser’s on financial grounds, and with roots so grown out that they were now longer than the bleached bits of her hair, she had smeared a tube of something by Wella described as ‘Deep Caramel’ through her hair and turned herself inadvertently into a kind of low-rent, two-tone, washed-out brunette. She hadn’t realised it until that very moment, but the colour, really, virulently, did not suit her in the slightest. In an attempt to get rid of the colour she had now shampooed her hair five times. The only effect that this had had was to turn her hair a kind of mouldy shade of green.

She thought of ‘the blond’, the elfin, fresh-faced girl that Dom Jones had bumped into ten days ago outside the flat and wondered if he would even recognise her any more. She applied some eyeliner and some pinkish blusher from a tube. Then she scraped her cheap greeny-brown hair back into a stubby ponytail and sucked in her stomach.

She had invited Joe Joe back to her flat after work, after he’d
pleaded
with her to let him see it, and he was now standing at her kitchen window saying, ‘Wow, I can’t believe you live here. This is the best flat
ever
!’

‘I’m going outside for a smoke,’ she said, waving her roll-up at him.

‘Can I come, too?’

She shrugged. ‘Sure.’

‘Maybe I should start to smoke,’ he said a moment later, dangling his feet over the edge of the fire escape. ‘I always feel so left out when everyone else is smoking. All those little gangs, puffing away together, puff puff, chat chat.’

‘
Don’t
start smoking,’ said Betty. ‘That would be a really stupid thing to do at … how old are you?’

‘Twenty-four.’

She threw him a look of surprise.

‘You thought I was younger than this? Yes, I know. I look very young. Everyone always says this about me. I think it is my freckles. And my cheeky, cheeky smile.’ He demonstrated his cheeky, cheeky smile and she laughed.

‘So where does it come from, your colouring, your hair?’

‘Ha,’ he laughed. ‘I am like a stray dog, you know, with many, many genes. I have some Mexican, some Jamaican, some Argentinian, of course, and also, going back, like, a hundred years, so far back that no-one really knows, there was an Irishman. And his genes, they are like the genes of a
god
. Just in my generation, of thirty cousins, there are seven of us with this red hair and this white skin. Seven, in thirty. It is
amazing
.’

Betty stared at the wild amber afro and nodded her agreement.

‘What about you, what is on your genes?’

She smiled. ‘Nothing much,’ she replied. ‘Bit of English. Bit of Welsh. Some German.’

‘Ah, then you are purebred Aryan …’

They both turned then at the sound of a sash window being
raised
across the courtyard. Betty stiffened and grabbed Joe Joe’s arm. ‘It’s Dom Jones!’ she hissed.

‘Who?’

‘You know, Wall?’

‘What?’

‘Wall, the band. You know?’

He shuddered daintily. ‘I hate the Wall. I hate all that Britpop shit.’

The sash window came rattling up and there he was, pulling a cigarette out of a soft packet, clamping it between his lips, searching his jeans for his Zippo. He didn’t notice them at first, not until he’d finally located the lighter and taken his first drag. His eyes narrowed at them over his exhaled smoke.

Betty gasped. ‘See,’ she said to Joe Joe through clenched lips. ‘It’s really him.’

‘Urgh, he is disgusting.’

Betty glanced surreptitiously over her shoulder at the open window. Dom Jones sat perched on the windowledge, one skinny buttock overhanging, staring into the half-distance. He saw Betty looking at him and threw her a half-smile.

‘All right?’ he called out.

Betty blanched, every drop of blood in her body rushing violently to her head. ‘All right,’ she replied in her best approximation of a cool mockney hipster’s response. She turned away then, as nonchalantly as she could.

‘He is
so
ugly,’ said Joe Joe.

‘Ssh …!’

‘Why? Why ssh? He is ugly. I can’t say this?’ He put his hand against his heart and looked at her beseechingly.

‘Well, no, not that loud. And anyway, he’s not ugly, he’s …’ she threw another surreptitious glance in his direction and took in the mop of thick dark hair, heavily lashed eyes, petulant mouth, designer cashmere V-neck in baby blue, ‘… he’s cute.’

‘Yes,’ said Joe Joe disdainfully, ‘cute like a baby monkey.’ And
then
he started making baby monkey noises, very loud baby monkey noises. Betty hit him on his arm. ‘Stop it,’ she hissed, and Joe Joe laughed.

He stopped as the sound of ringing cut through the air. It was the distinctive tone of a mobile phone. Across the echoing courtyard they heard Dom Jones answering the call.