Under the Jeweled Sky (7 page)

Above them, the stars had disappeared, shrouded beyond the veil of smoke thrown out from the fireworks that cloaked and bittered the night air.

The tiny flat in Kendal Street held a permanent unpleasant stickiness in the air, both from the hand-laundered delicates that hung dripping from the line above the enamel tub in the bathroom and from the poorly ventilated kitchen, its bottom window painted shut. Sophie's latchkey clattered on to the table as she pulled off her coat and hung it up. A hearty aroma filled the flat, reminding her sharply of her emptiness, having eaten nothing since the tea and toast she had forced down in the station cafeteria that morning.

“Sophie? Is that you?”

She called hello and made her way down the narrow hallway to the kitchen, where steam ran freely down the sash window, fogging the grim view of the red-brick building not more than ten yards behind theirs.

“Where on earth have you been?” Margie dusted clouds of loose flour from her hands and pulled her apron over her head, throwing it aside, blind to the mess she had made as always. “Lucien turned up on the doorstep three hours ago and said you'd stood him up for lunch. He was mighty upset about it. Have you two had a tiff or something?”

“Hardly.” Sophie slid the silk scarf from her neck and sat at the table.

“What's the matter with you?” Margie rinsed her hands under the tap, tinny music escaping from the transistor radio perched precariously on the shallow ledge above the sink.

“Nothing.”

“Then why the long face?”

“Oh, I'm just feeling a little under the weather.” Sophie looked up and managed a smile, shaking off the awfulness of the day. “What are you making?”

“Meat and vegetable pie,” Margie said. “Got a bit of scrag end from the market. Mind you, there wasn't much left of it by the time I got all the gristle off. Want to give me a hand with the spuds?”

Sophie rolled up her sleeves. “Pass them over.”

Margie spread a sheet of newspaper on the table and tumbled a small pile of potatoes upon it before seating herself and setting into one sharply with a knife, watching closely as Sophie picked up a muddy clod and inspected it.

“All right,” Margie said, paring out a sprouting eye. “Let's have it. What's he gone and done this time?” Sophie didn't bother to look up.

“He's asked me to marry him.”

“What!” Margie sprang up from the table, hand snatching out to silence the radio, almost knocking it over. Sophie began to peel, her knife moving slowly, concentrating hard. If she got the peel off in one single unbroken coil, it would be a sign, she decided. An omen of some sort. Margie stared at her. “What did you say?”

“I told him I'd think about it.”

“Well, blow me down.” Margie shook her head incredulously. “That's a bit of a bolt from the blue, isn't it?”

“I'm as surprised as anyone.”

“When did he ask you?”

“Sunday.”

The peel dropped from the potato, the coil complete. Sophie picked up another and began again.

“
Sunday?
Why on earth didn't you say anything?”

“Like what?”

“Crikey, Sophie! I don't know!”

“I think it took four days to sink in.”

“I wish you'd told me.” Margie sat down, cheeks high with color. “I can't believe it. You've only known him since…” She thought for a while.

“Five months.”

“You're not…”

“No!” Sophie smiled. “Of course not.”

Margie sat back and exhaled, the two of them allowing their thoughts to percolate for a while. They had met a handful of years earlier when Sophie first arrived in London, sent off by her father, who had insisted she should strike out and see something of the world rather than fussing over him and hiding from life in an untidy house perched amid the Nilgiri Hills in India's far south. A blessed sanctuary it had been, for both of them, and she would have stayed quite happily. There was no lovelier place on earth. Sophie had turned twenty-four that year, just as the winter fogs were beginning to lift from the forest-bound peaks, and her father had become restless, closing himself off in his study where she could see him from the gardens, leaning back in the big leather chair behind his desk, hands poised against his chest, fingertips pressed together while he stared at the ceiling for hours. He had not discussed what was on his mind, but Sophie had sensed it from his manner, the way he seemed to be distancing himself from her. There had been no arguing with him, and part of her had known that the time had come for her to go. She had lived with him for five years, and now she had lived with Margie for four. It had not escaped Sophie's notice, this habit she made of clinging on, as though afraid to let go.

It had been such a wrench, her sense of loneliness at times so profound that there were days when it was almost too much to bear, rainy afternoons spent alone in the cinema, trying to appear easy in her own company. There was no lonelier place than a crowded city. You could die in your bed and no one would miss you. You might just as well be a ghost; but for your remains, there would be nothing to say that you had been here once, to live a life overlooked.

Sophie had taken a room at Mrs. Stanton's guest house off Queensway in Bayswater, a ladies-only establishment where the doors were locked tight shut at ten-thirty sharp and no male visitors were permitted one step further than the residents' sitting room, and even then only for the briefest of stops, usually to collect or deposit a guest, some of whom had been there for years. The rooms were clean and functional and the women pleasant enough, although the older ones tended to keep to themselves, sharing tales of having had their lives turned upside down by the war. After doing their bit for king and country, they had then been expected to give up their jobs and return to the kitchen the moment their menfolk came home. For some, it was too much to ask, that they should rinse away any notions of liberation and go back to the old ways. Marriages had disintegrated, swelling the numbers of women who now lived by their own fates, whether by choice or through widowhood.

It was at Mrs. Stanton's that Sophie met Margie Stock, a rosy-faced Yorkshire girl, some years younger than her, fresh out of secretarial school. Margie taught Sophie the basic rudiments of Pitman's shorthand and insisted that she really must take evening classes and obtain the required certificate, otherwise the best that she could hope for would be to end up in a windowless typing pool bashing away at a machine all day. It was a week before Sophie plucked up the courage to admit that that was exactly what she was doing. After a month or two, seeing as they got on so well, it was only natural that they should move on from Mrs. Stanton's together, pooling their meager resources and splitting the rent on a little place to share.

At weekends, Sophie and Margie would rummage around the bustling street market that sprung up on a Saturday, stallholders shouting
Rock-hard salad tomatoes!
, weighing goods in the flash of an eye, hurling brown paper bags, swung into knotted corners. Sophie liked to stroll through the market, wandering past the traders and sifting through displays of cheap homewares that would have been considered the very last word in sophistication in the country she had left behind. But the greengrocers' stalls seemed bland. She would buy fruit: bananas, apples, perhaps a few oranges. That was roughly the extent of the choice, and there were days when she longed for ripe mango or fresh papaya.

“I don't dislike Lucien at all,” Margie said. “But are you sure he's the right man for you? I mean, he's a bit…” She struggled to find a suitable adjective. “Stiff, I suppose. He always leaves me with the impression that what he says isn't necessarily what he's thinking. There's a part of me wants to say supercilious, but that's not what I mean really, although you have to admit he can be a little, well…” She lifted her head slightly and swept the underside of her nose with her finger. “Like that.”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

“Well, I suppose not, given his job.”

“Not everyone is as liberal as you.”

Margie pursed her lips briefly, inspecting the peeled potato in her hand before dropping it into the pan. “I'm assuming you've been to bed together.”

“Margie!”

“What?”

“That's none of your business, and even if it was, the answer would be no.”

“How Victorian,” Margie said. “I wouldn't dream of marrying a man without going to bed with him first, otherwise how could you know whether you're compatible? If you wait until after the wedding, you might find out that he's not up to it at all. Can you imagine how miserable that would be? All this nonsense about saving yourself. Didn't you read
Married
Love
when you were a girl?”

“No, I did not, thank you.”

“Now there's a woman who knows what she's talking about. Most men haven't the first clue about what they're doing, and the pity of it is that their women are none the wiser. Everybody should read that book, men and women alike, and we'd all get along a lot better.”

“
Must
you talk about sex all the time?” Sophie caught herself, feeling a small shudder run through her, as though her mother's voice had just spilled from her own lips. She had left her mark, the woman who had refused to acknowledge the facts of reproduction. When Sophie's periods first started, her mother had acted as though her daughter had committed some kind of mortal sin. She kept a note of Sophie's days, and every month, for that week, Sophie would be made to feel like a leper, her mother saying it was unclean, the whole house smelling of carbolic soap.

“I don't,” Margie said. “I'm merely pointing out the importance of the physical side of things, and if you're as innocent as you try to make out, which I don't believe for one minute, you might just be in for a very big disappointment.”

“I didn't say I was completely innocent,” Sophie said. “And I didn't say that I was going to accept him either.”

“Ah.” Margie checked over her potato. “Now we're getting to it.”

“My parents' marriage was a disaster. I've come this far on my own. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing to keep things that way.” Sophie's thoughts wandered to her mother's voice. “Marriage isn't for everyone, you know.”

“We're not talking about everyone. We're talking about you.”

“Well, why should I? I'm happy enough. I've learned to stand on my own two feet and I'm free to please myself.”

“Until you turn into a dried-up old prune like the ones in Mrs. Stanton's attic.”

“I'd rather that than end up like my parents.” Sophie's head dipped. She felt her cheeks flush.

“Hey.” Margie dropped her knife, reached over the peelings, and took Sophie's hand. “What's brought this on?”

“I don't know,” Sophie said. “I always wanted to marry, to have a family, but…” She squeezed Margie's hand, closing her eyes tightly for a second. “I went to see my mother today,” she said. “It was awful.” She paused, as though unable to believe it herself. “Ten years,” she said. “Ten years since we have seen or spoken to each other. I don't know what I expected to find.” She looked up into Margie's pale blue eyes. “I thought I could heal the rift, that she might even be pleased to see me. God knows, it's been long enough. I thought I would tell her about Lucien and his proposal, and that we would at last be able to put the past behind us and make a fresh start. I thought…” Sophie let out a terrible sigh. “Oh, I don't know what I thought. I should have left it all well alone.”

“How was she?” Margie asked softly.

“It was all a bit of a shock,” Sophie said. “I knew she would be older, of course, but I hadn't expected her to look quite so different. I hardly recognized her.”

“Did you talk?”

“That's the odd thing.” Sophie frowned to herself. “I don't really remember what we talked about. All I know is that the moment I arrived, I felt like I shouldn't be there, like I was picking at something that should be left alone. It was as though I was a child again, just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Standing there quaking in my boots. Isn't that ridiculous?”

“I'm so sorry,” Margie said. “That must have been tough on you.”

Sophie shook her head sharply in self-reproach. “I shouldn't have gone. It's no good getting all churned up over things that are in the past. Time to think about the future.”

“I should think so too.” Margie wiped her hands clean on the floury tea towel and delivered her most cheerful smile, setting her elbows on the table. “Does Lucien know you can't cook?”

Sophie slid Margie a wry smile. “If I marry him, I'm hoping I won't have to.”

• • •

Outside on the wet pavement, big red double-decker buses rumbled by, engines belching smoke, pungent aromas wafting out of the fish and chip shop. Margie pushed open the door of the Marlborough Arms, releasing a thick blanket of cigarette smoke into the street, and marched toward the bar, announcing loudly: two whisky sodas, large. She and Sophie took their drinks to a dingy corner table, sliding into sticky seats.

“Here's to you.” Margie raised her glass.

“Thank you,” Sophie said.

“I wish Fred would ask me to marry him.” Margie took a long sip from her drink. “I just don't think he's that interested.”

Sophie smiled at her sympathetically. Margie had fallen in love with the cellist with the dark hair and doe eyes last autumn. He liked to play Elgar for her through the open door as she lay in the bath, and he cooked omelettes sometimes on a Saturday morning after staying over, though he always slept on the couch, never once trying to get into her bed.

“If I were to leave, what would you do about the flat?” Sophie asked.

“Oh, I don't know. I'd probably keep it on. I couldn't be doing with the bother of moving. You never know, Fred might decide to come and live with me. I don't want to be with anyone else, but sometimes I think he'll never make up his mind.”