The glittering hour, p.13
The Glittering Hour, page 13
They walked on, sharing the cigarette. It was stronger than she was used to and made her head spin; though that could have been the champagne they were drinking in great indelicate gulps, or just the effect of being with him. Perhaps he felt her movements slow, her body grow heavier because when a motorbus rumbled along and slowed down outside Evans & Co. he pulled her up onto the back step and held her against him as it swayed on its way again.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Somewhere where we can sit down.’ He brushed his lips against her ear. ‘Somewhere dark where I can hold your hand. Somewhere we can talk.’
She leaned against him and felt the warmth of his breath in her hair. An unfamiliar pulse was beating at the top of her thighs. The conductor’s feet appeared on the stairs above them and she wondered if Lawrence had any money, but it seemed tactless to ask. She kept an emergency half crown tucked under the insole of her shoe, but she couldn’t very well recover it now, and anyway, this was hardly an emergency. The bus slowed and she seized his hand and pulled him down into the road.
‘Jesus, Selina—’
They almost fell, but righted themselves just in time and, clinging together, stumbled into a side street. She was breathless and laughing. He caught her mouth and kissed her hard, almost angrily as the adrenaline of the fall pulsed through them both.
When they eventually pulled apart she felt jolted into sobriety. They were both breathing fast, and his eyes had a dark glitter that thrilled and unnerved her. She glanced around, realizing that the street they were in was narrow and unlit and was suddenly aware of the risk she was taking. Shaking him off, she stepped away, out of the shadows and into the road.
‘Selina? What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
‘It’s not nothing.’ He made to follow her, but stopped as she flinched away. ‘Tell me.’
She shook her head, trying to clear it. ‘It’s just – why does it feel like I know you when I don’t? I really don’t . . . not at all . . .’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Sorry. I’ve just realized how . . . foolish I’m being.’ She tried to laugh, but it splintered into sharp pieces. ‘I’ve never been very good at obeying rules, but this is madness, even by my standards. I’ve been drunk before and I’ve absconded from plenty of parties, but never with . . . a stranger . . .’
A motorcar came round the corner, headlamps swinging in a wide arc. He moved quickly, pulling her onto the pavement, then immediately let her go. Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he half-turned away. The noise of the motor receded. She wondered if he was going to be angry and felt defensive indignation rising within her.
‘And that’s what we are. Strangers.’
The softness of his voice caught her off-guard. He turned back to her. His head was lowered, that heavy lock of hair falling forward again. He pushed it away and sighed.
‘You’re right. God, I’m so sorry. Do you want to go back?’
‘Back?’
‘To the party.’
She pictured the Grosvenor Square house she had left without a second thought or backward glance; the brightly lit rooms, the oppressive heat, the band and the drunken high spirits that by now would be tipping into disorder – an obligatory food-fight, someone removing their clothes or having them removed, ostentatious same-sex kissing and scandalously provocative dancing.
‘No.’
‘Then what?’
‘I want to get to know you.’
‘Get to know me? How?’
‘I don’t know . . .’
‘Shall I call at your house tomorrow afternoon? Take you out for tea? Bring my friend Sam along to vouch for my good character?’
He was teasing, but serious. She got the impression that he would do all of those things if she said they were necessary. His earnestness made the panic ebb away a little and she laughed.
‘No.’
‘Good. Because much as I would love to take you out for tea, I wouldn’t like to risk Sam in anywhere smart and I’m not sure he’d vouch for my good character. Edith might be a better bet.’
‘Who’s Edith?’
‘My artist friend.’ He pulled the edges of his jacket apart to flash his painted chest. ‘She did the Napiers’ portrait and she owns the studio where I work.’
‘How did you meet her?’
‘At the Slade. We were students there together, though she’s older than I am. And far wiser and more respectable. What else do you want to know?’
‘Everything.’ They had come together again and she seized the lapels of his stolen coat. ‘Who you are, where you come from—’ It sounded so trite that she laughed again. ‘And much more than that. Let me see – did you have a pet when you were growing up? What did your father do, what was your mother’s name? Do you have any brothers and sisters? What food do you love, what do you hate, what’s your favourite place in the world? What’s your earliest memory, your happiest one—’
She was drunker than she’d thought. The champagne they’d stolen and swigged so fast was hitting her bloodstream, making her talk too quickly, too wildly, and all the things she’d wondered about him in the past maddening weeks spill out into the inky-blue dark. He pulled her towards him, pressing his mouth to hers to capture her words.
‘Elizabeth,’ he said, against her lips. ‘My mother’s name was Elizabeth. My father was a signwriter.’ He paused to kiss her properly. ‘No pets, but a brother – older – and a sister – younger. I hate sardines. I love—’ he kissed the corner of her mouth, her jaw, her earlobe. ‘Oranges. Strawberries. Buttered toast. Earliest memory . . .’ He pulled away, still holding her hands. ‘My mother, pouring me a glass of milk in the kitchen. I must have been two or three, I suppose.’
Her lips tingled from the graze of his stubble. Her head reeled as she processed this feast of information. She was delighted and dazzled by it, and distracted by the idea of him as a tiny boy of two or three. She could picture him; dark, serious eyes and soft lips. ‘A glass of milk. Why do you remember that?’
‘Because it was beautiful. In that moment she was beautiful. It was morning, and the sun was coming through the window and making everything glow, like a Vermeer painting.’ His tone was wry. ‘Though I don’t suppose I made that connection at the time. I remember how white the milk was. My mother was . . . expecting a baby. Her stomach was round and tight. It was . . . frightening and fascinating.’
‘The baby was your sister?’
They were walking again, a little way apart, their steps distracted and directionless.
‘No. A boy. He died soon after he was born. Too soon to have a name.’
‘Oh—’
‘I was ten when my sister was born. My mother lost another one in the years between. She was besotted with Cassie from the start. We all were.’
There was something in his tone that made her look across at him, but the street was too dark to see his face.
‘Is she terribly spoiled?’
‘I wish.’ He kicked a loose stone, hard, so it clattered across the road and ricocheted off the opposite kerb. ‘She and my mother both died, in the influenza outbreak after the war. She was eight.’
‘Oh, Lawrence . . .’
It had been a game until then, but suddenly it wasn’t anymore. She went to him, sliding her arms around his waist beneath his jacket, holding him tightly and feeling the movement of his lithe body as he walked, the bump of his hip against hers. He kissed the top of her head.
‘There was another question, but I’ve forgotten what it was.’
‘So have I.’
‘Tell me about you, then.’
‘You know about me. You know where I come from and what my father does.’
‘That’s not who you are.’ He pulled away a little, enough to look down at her. A streetlamp threw his face into sharp relief, with deep hollows of shadow beneath his cheekbones. ‘If it was you wouldn’t have run away from that party with me.’
They walked on, his arm around her shoulders, his body warm against hers. They were in the heart of Soho, passing pubs from which the sound of raucous laughter and the smell of beer spilled out, and groups of swaggering men who would have intimidated her at any other time. She moved amongst them unnoticed now, protected by his proximity.
‘When I was a child I always wanted to run away,’ she said, resting her cheek against his shoulder. ‘From Blackwood Park – our house in Wiltshire, which looks lovely but felt like a prison. Everyone else in my family was always going to more interesting places – up to town or to stay with friends or to school, and I was stuck there on my own, up on the nursery floor with Nanny and the governess of the day. Once I got as far as the station, but the stationmaster spotted me hiding amongst the milk churns and stopped me getting on the train.’
‘Where were you going to go?’
‘Cambridge, I think, to ask my brother if I could live in his rooms. I didn’t have any money, so I wouldn’t have got far. Did you ever want to run away?’
‘Not when I was a kid.’ They came to a junction, where an inky puddle of water in the gutter reflected the stars. He took her hand as they jumped it, her frilled petticoats bouncing. ‘I suppose I had a lot of freedom, compared to you. I used to go down to the beach and wander for miles, or spend time with the fairground people when they were there.’
‘The fairground people?’ She was instantly intrigued. ‘That sounds fun.’
‘I knew them. My father painted their signs and they used to put me to work touching up the paintwork on the carousel horses. I slept there quite often, under a tarpaulin on the carousel.’
‘How romantic. Didn’t you want to join them? To live that life?’
He shook his head. ‘It was romantic, in a way, but it was hard. Poor and basic. I wanted bright lights of a different kind.’ He spread his arm wide, taking in the layers of life around them on all sides. ‘I wanted to read books and learn things.’
‘I spent all my time trying to avoid learning anything, mostly by thinking up ways to torment the governesses and make them leave. I didn’t realize that the person who would end up losing out was me. I’m woefully ignorant, and it serves me right.’
He pulled her into the shelter of a doorway and kissed her lightly on the lips.
‘What did you do to the poor governesses?’
In between kisses she confessed about apple pie beds, earwigs slipped under eiderdowns and dramatically faked illnesses. His eyes gleamed with amusement as she told him about the elaborate hoaxes she’d set up to convince the more nervously disposed that the nursery floor was haunted. ‘That was my most successful tactic, I’m ashamed to say. Two of them left within the first three days, poor things. My only defence is that I was bored. Bored and frustrated and resentful, which is no defence at all.’
‘What were you resentful of?’
She looked past him, to the glistening street and the slice of sky above. The moon was just visible between the chimneypots; a watery smudge behind a veil of clouds. She took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. ‘This is going to sound appallingly crass but I resented my own privilege, I suppose. That’s what it amounts to, anyway. I resented the rules and restrictions and the rigidness . . . The hypocrisy and control . . .’ She met his eye with a self-mocking grimace. Poor Little Rich Girl. It was the musical hit of the year – the song one heard everywhere. ‘Their favourite punishment was to withhold food, and I resented being sent to bed hungry while downstairs seven courses were being served in the dining room and people were only picking at each of them. And the more resentful I was the naughtier I became and the more I was punished . . .’ She laughed. ‘I spent my childhood feeling permanently ravenous.’
It had been Polly who pointed out that she was punishing herself in the same way, years later.
‘And now?’ He came towards her, his jacket falling open to reveal the ridged contours of his chest with its galaxy of swirling stars. ‘Are you still hungry?’
‘Yes. Always.’
‘Come on then.’ He took her hand. ‘Let’s go and eat.’
*
He took her to a tiny restaurant on Old Compton Street, hidden behind an unassuming façade that looked like an ordinary house.
La Normandie was owned by a French couple, Monsieur and Madame Aucourt, whose sons had grown up and returned to their homeland (one of them permanently, since he was buried in a cemetery near Verdun). It was simply furnished, with scrubbed pine tables and chairs that clattered noisily on the terracotta floor. The walls were covered with playbills, posters and gaudy paintings in a variety of styles and stages of competence, alongside charcoal sketches, pen-and-ink cartoons and caricatures (mostly of Madame) produced by the artists who made up a large proportion of the clientele. Monsieur cooked in the tiny kitchen at the back – vats of soup and fragrant stews, fillets of pork sautéed in the cream and apples of his native Normandy – while Madame presided over the front of house. She was particularly fond of Lawrence, a fact he was aware of exploiting in turning up after midnight and asking for a table.
The kitchen was closed, though diners still lingered at smoke-wreathed tables littered with bottles and smeared glasses. Madame, once she’d kissed him resoundingly on both cheeks, told him off for arriving so late and rolled her eyes at what he was (or wasn’t) wearing, ushered them through to a room at the back where the tables were all empty and bustled off to see what her husband could heat up for them. Before she went she swiped a stubby candle from one of the other tables and ordered Lawrence to light it.
As the candleflame leapt Selina arched an eyebrow at him. ‘I consider myself to be something of a favoured guest at Claridge’s and the Savoy Grill, but I don’t for a moment think they’d open the kitchen for me at this hour.’
‘This isn’t exactly Claridge’s, but Madame has a soft spot for undernourished artists.’
‘I can see that.’ She looked around the crowded walls. ‘Are any of these yours?’
‘Yes, actually . . .’ He nodded in the direction of the frame in the centre of the wall.
‘The photograph?’ She frowned. ‘I thought you were an artist – a portrait painter.’
‘I am.’ He lit another stolen cigarette, inhaling the rich smoke as he watched her face. ‘But that’s by necessity, to make a living. Photography is what I’m most interested in. What I’d like to do.’
She grimaced, shrugging off her borrowed jacket and dropping it over the back of the chair. ‘You don’t want to be one of those dreadful little men who sneak into parties and lurk outside nightclubs to snap unflattering pictures for the newspapers, do you?’
‘No, not that sort of photographer. And not one that does studio portraits either, flattering debutantes to simper against painted backdrops and trying to get bored children in sailor suits to stand still.’
‘I wouldn’t have known there were any other kinds.’
She got up, and went over to examine the photograph. He had taken it one lunchtime, sitting at a table by the window at the front, and it showed Madame, smiling and wreathed in steam, serving customers with bowls of stew. The light had been difficult and most of the frames he’d taken were far too dark, but he’d caught one lucky moment, when her face had been turned towards the window and the steam had made a halo around her, turning her into a plump Madonna. For all her
protests that her hair was a mess and he’d showed her double chin, the photograph had been framed and hung in a prominent position, beneath the arc of light from the wall sconce.
He took a deep drag on the cigarette, waiting for Selina to say something, unwilling to acknowledge how much he wanted her to like it. After what seemed like an age she looked round at him.
‘It’s extraordinary, Lawrence. As beautiful as a painting, but better, because it’s real.’ She turned back to it. ‘What else do you photograph?’
He shrugged, tapping ash into the little tin ashtray on the table. ‘Just . . . people. In cafés and pubs and on the street. Their faces. Hands. I like capturing a moment . . . a fleeting moment in an ordinary day. Stopping time.’
‘Do you sell them? To magazines and newspapers? Exhibit them somewhere?’
‘If only it were that easy. I don’t have the right names in my address book, which is why I’m still painting portraits.’
Madame came bustling back, bearing a tray laden with bowls of fragrant pot au feu and a bottle of red wine, setting them down onto the table and making a great show of leaving them in peace to eat. Lawrence noticed the covert glances she threw in Selina’s direction and knew that she was bursting with curiosity. On a good day Madame could have given the Grand Inquisitor a run for his money, and usually made it her business to vet all guests brought by her regulars. On this occasion he was grateful for her restraint, and her uncharacteristic tact.
As she took the first mouthful Selina gave a groan of pleasure.
‘Oh God, it’s delicious . . .’
He sipped the smoky wine and watched her. La Normandie was not the kind of place he would have imagined bringing a girl like Selina Lennox, until he’d discovered that Selina Lennox wasn’t actually the kind of girl he’d assumed she was. The flickering light of the candle brushed her exposed shoulders, the swell of her breasts spilling out of the corset, with gold. He barely tasted the food he swallowed, and even as his bowl emptied his stomach remained hollow with desire.
They talked in fits and starts, their voices overlapping, words tangling, just like their eyes across the table. Answering her questions, he found himself telling her about his family; about Stephen, who had seen action at Loos and the Somme, but no one knew what kind of action, because he hadn’t spoken a word since he’d been invalided home in 1916. About Cassie too, talking about her in a way he hadn’t for years so that things that were buried and forgotten came back with piercing, poignant clarity. Her love of elephants (Lawrence used to draw them for her to colour in), her infuriating habit of waking up ridiculously early and waking him too. He would take her out sometimes, to let his mother sleep on, and they would walk down to the beach to watch the fishermen come in. She was desperate for him to teach her how to skim stones across the surface of the water.
