Authors: Monica Dickens
She set herself out to make this clear. If Norman wanted to keep her, he would have to live up to her, that was all. When she went out with him, she began by showing off and usually ended by quarrelling. He hated the change in her. Terrified of losing her, he grew sadder and more silent than ever. She was slipping away; he watched it with dumb agony. He spent money he could not afford on better seats at the cinema and more expensive restaurants, as abject as if he were responsible for the things about them which did not please her. Even the motor cycle did not please her now. She said it smelled. She did not like the carrier. If they must go out on a motor bike, why couldn’t it be one with a side-car?
When the tribal sanction was at last bestowed on the nuptials of Lorrie and Leonard, Jo and Norman were invited to the wedding.
Jo was thrilled with the synagogue service. She had had no religious upbringing beyond a few surreptitious Christmas visits to church with her mother, who did not know the hymns or the responses, and the school Scripture lessons, in which it had
been fashionable to do your prep. She had no idea that people could enjoy going to church or that a service could be so colourful and romantic, with Lorrie and Leonard, awed and uplifted, standing together under the canopy, and the shattered wine glass, and the Rabbi howling at them like one inspired.
The synagogue, with its red upholstered scats and rich carpets looked as prosperous as the guests. There was champagne at the reception, and a three-tiered cake made by Lome’s uncle, who was in the fancy bakery business. The white satin dress and flowing veil made a dazzling radiance of Lome’s fruity looks.
If only Jo and Norman could have a wedding like this! But her father would never let her be married in church, much less in white satin with arum lilies and a dangling silver horseshoe. If there was any party afterwards, she thought bitterly, it would probably be at the flat, with Kitty Baines pressing everyone to cold liver sausage and brawn from the cooked meats department below.
At nineteen, your fancy marries you to almost every man who looks at you twice. Sometimes, Jo toyed with the idea of marrying Felix McOsterburg, until she considered how his back view would look to the congregation. True, he had not asked her yet, but he would. He was working up to something, and in spite of Lorrie and Norman’s warnings, his intentions so far had seemed quite gentlemanly.
After the wedding, Jo let Norman take her out to dinner. She was wearing a new dress, a swooping coal-heaver hat with a scarlet quill, and the silver fox on which she would be paying instalments for another two years. She had made up her face more than usual, with blue eye shadow and clotted mascara. Her lower lip was a glistening scarlet sausage.
When she told him where she wanted to go, he sought glumly through the pockets of the hired suit which decked him awkwardly, like an ox for the sacrifice. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t enough cash on me, dear –’
‘Not enough cash on a Sunday! What’s happened to your wage packet?’
‘I always set some aside, you know, to pay my room and
laundry, and next week’s lunch money, and my savings account – ’
‘You’re so
careful,
Norm,’ she expostulated. ‘It’s so stick-in-the-mud to know exactly where your money’s going before you’ve even spent it. You ought to live dangerously!’ She flung up her arms.
‘That’s all right for a bachelor,’ he said.
‘Well what are you – Bluebeard?’
He knew by experience that if he said he was saving to get married, she would take the opportunity to say ‘Who to?’ so he let this drop.
‘Let’s go to the Grand Metro, Norm,’ she said daringly, still buoyant from champagne. ‘Busman’s holiday. We could go down to the Grill; be a bit of a lark.’
‘But Jo!’ He looked at the money in his hand. ‘I haven’t got near enough for that.’
‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘I know one of the waiters down there. We’ll get his table and he’ll let us pay later. What’s more, we’ll go in a taxi. I’ll pay for that if you won’t. Don’t just
stand
there, Norm. Get me a taxi. Felix always finds one directly, wherever we are.’
Of course, the waiter would not give them credit. Jo had gaily ordered cocktails and wine, and when they could not pay the bill, the manager turned them out with an ominous ‘I’ll see
you
Monday,’ to Norman.
All the way home, he worried in silence. Jo was not worrying. She had enjoyed herself. She was feeling very gay as they walked from the station. It seemed wicked to go back to Denbigh Terrace, a waste of her fur and new hat to consign them so soon to the box in which she hid them from Vi on top of the cupboard. As they passed the Moores’ house, she saw Billy’s red car, much shabbier than when she had ridden in it more than a year ago. So he was at home. Light and voices came through the drawing-room curtains. Two people were on the balcony with cigarettes.
‘Tell you what, Norm, let’s go and call on the Moores!’ She dragged him towards the house.
He tried to pull her back. ‘They wouldn’t like it.’
‘Why not? They were glad enough to see us in the old days.’
‘No, Jo, we can’t. We’re not their sort. You are, perhaps, but not me.’
His humility infuriated Jo. ‘Well, I’m going, even if you won’t,’ she said. ‘I know them quite well, as a matter of fact.’
‘All right.’ He dropped her hand. ‘You go on. It’s not for me to stop you.’
She had to go in now. She had not been there since she took her father’s begging letter. She had often wanted to, but something that might be pride or shame had held her back.
This was a good opportunity, since she was looking so smart. She went up the steps, swinging her hips and tossing back her fur with bravado, while Norman stood on the pavement like a man watching his loved one go aboard an ocean liner.
‘Is Mrs Moore at home?’ Jo asked the maid in a high, social voice, hoping she would not connect her with the bedraggled outcast she had seen before. She went inside without looking back, and Norman turned away.
There were six people talking in the drawing-room. When Jo was shown in, their faces dropped in various degrees of dismay. Their talk died away.
Margery Moore recovered quickly. ‘Why Jo, how nice!’ She uncoiled herself and came forward to welcome her. So this was what happened when you tried to give someone a leg up. What had she started? ‘How – er – how well you look. Quite different from last time you came. Why have you stayed away so long?’
‘You know what it is, what with one thing and another.’ Jo gave an affected little laugh and handed Mrs Moore her finger tips in black suède gloves. ‘I’ve said to myself ever so often I really ought to visit you.’ Mrs Moore winced at the ‘reely’ and Captain Moore, straddling by the fire, wrinkled his forehead, trying to make out who it was.
‘All the family’s here.’ Mrs Moore looked vaguely behind her for support. ‘Here’s Wilf and Tess, and my husband – you remember Jo Abinger, don’t you dear?’ she asked him nervously, hoping he would not remember why he remembered Jo.
‘Rather,’ he said, the name conveying nothing to him, and shook hands as heartily as Jo’s languid finger tips allowed.
‘And Colonel and Mrs Parrott.’ They said how do you do,
Mrs Parrott went on with her darning, and Colonel Parrott lowered himself the bare half inch he had risen, and said: ‘Humph.’
They were quite old and dowdy; nothing to fear from them. Nothing to fear from Tess either; she had not progressed as Jo had progressed. Her hair was still dumpily cropped and her clothes unsuccessful. She still had the eager, open face that made her look as if anyone could take her in.
Jo accepted a cigarette, and sat on the sofa, not nervously on the edge like last time, but well back with her legs crossed and her skirt riding up.
No need to be nervous. She was as good as anyone in the room. Imagine ever having looked up to the Moores! She might almost look down on them now. None of them had ever had clothes like this. She had been to places they had never seen.
‘We were just going to have some bridge,’ said Mrs Moore. ‘Do you play?’
‘No, I don’t really,’ said Jo. ‘I’ve always said’to myself I ought to learn. I don’t mind trying now if you like.’
Colonel Parrott said ‘Humph’ again. Captain Moore, who had been getting out the cards, put them away again hastily.
Mrs Moore changed the subject. ‘You must have some coffee, Jo, or perhaps you’d rather have a drink. Wilf will get you something.’
‘Whisky, brandy, sherry?’ Wilfred, who had grown into a quiet, tidy medical student, went to the cupboard. He always did the butling. He mixed a better cocktail than anyone, and on Sunday nights, cooked and served the supper, and washed up with science and speed. He would make a wonderful husband, girls told him, adding ‘for someone’, to make it clear they did not mean for them.
‘I don’t mind a whisky,’, Jo said, relieving Wilfred’s qualm that she might ask for a small white port.
‘Soda, water, or ginger ale?’
‘Straight please,’ swanked Jo.
‘Shocking habits for a girl of your age,’ said Wilfred, handing her the glass. ‘You ought to see what it does to your liver.’
Jo shuddered delicately. ‘I don’t care for it drowned,’ she said, quoting Felix McOsterburg. She sipped at the whisky, praying it would not choke her. Conversation languished. Mrs Parrott darned like an automaton. Captain Moore fidgeted, wanting his bridge. Colonel Parrott looked at his watch.
Mrs Moore started a few stillborn hares and then said helplessly: ‘Wilf, tell Billy to come in from the balcony.’
‘Oh, is he at home?’ exclaimed Jo, feigning surprise. ‘I have come on a lucky night then, haven’t I?’ She sat up still straighter and adjusted her skirt.
‘Oh, Mum, but Billy and – ’ Tess began.
‘Never mind. He must come in and see Jo.’ Billy would relieve the strain. He always knew what to say to everyone.
Captain Moore got the cards out again and began to set up the card table. Billy could talk to this whoever she was, while they had their rubber.
Billy stepped through the curtains, bending under the window. He came into the room grinning. ‘Well, well, well!’ he said, and if her appearance surprised him, he did not show it. ‘How’s the old playmate of my criminal youth?’
His father swung round. Was
that
who she was – the grocer’s daughter, who had nearly landed his family in jail? Well, there you are. He had always said she would go wrong, and now look at her. He had half a mind to order her out of the house. He would have in the old days, but as he grew older, he found himself shirking scenes.
Jo had expected Billy to be in uniform. But this was even better – a dinner jacket, and double-breasted too, as the craze was nowadays. His ungreased hair still rose in a crest on his round head. He was still as brown as he had been at Sea-combe. His teeth were as white and his eyes as clear; that pale blue which Mrs Moore had always compared unfavourably with Jo’s when they were children, saying that her cornflower eyes made his look faded.
He still had the same clear, carrying voice that had made Norman sit on his head when he raised it in the hut. He still had the same look of confidence that the world was no worse for his being in it.
He still had the same unintentional cruelty. When she said: ‘I’ve always wanted to explain why I wasn’t at Seacombe when you came back,’ he said, without waiting for her explanation: ‘It didn’t matter. I couldn’t have taken you anyway,’ and turned back to the window.
A fair pale girl was stepping through, a girl who was plainly but beautifully dressed, with hair that swung like a smooth yellow tassel. A girl whose eyes smiled when she looked at Billy, a girl with whom he had been out on the balcony in the dark.
Jo’s voice rose to steeper heights of gentility. She began to act, leading the conversation, bringing in Felix, whom she spoke of as ‘My Friend’, quoting his opinions.
Unconscious rebuke for forgetting that Norman was supposed to be her friend came from Tess. ‘What happened to those two boys, Arthur and Norman, we used to play with? I’ve often wondered. They were so poor. Perhaps we could have helped them in some way.’
‘Oh Tess!’ The family laughed at what was evidently a familiar joke. Tess could never see a newspaper story about an ill-treated child or dog, or pass a shuffling old man in the street without wanting to adopt the child, or buy the dog, or bring the old man in for a hot meal and a pair of shoes.
‘Awful tykes they were,’ Billy said. ‘Remember, Wilf? The eldest was always fighting me,’ he told the fair girl. ‘By God, I’d like to meet him again now. I’d knock the daylight out of his verminous head.’
‘Pair of blackguards,’ said his father. ‘Both safely in jail by now, you bet. Let’s get this bridge going. Margery, come on. Dora and Jack, rouse yourselves. Wilf, you don’t want to play.’ It was an order rather than a question.
Jo was struggling on the sofa with a desire to stick up for Norman. Their talk of him evaporated her own criticisms. All her feeling for him rose up in a wave of offended loyalty, but her small voice at its lower natural pitch was lost in the hurly-burly of Captain Moore organizing his card game.
In a moment, her first impulse past, she was glad she had not been able to champion Norman. If they spoke like that of
him, how would they speak of her when she had gone? She wanted to think of them exclaiming to each other in admiration knew she would go far. She wanted that fair girl to be jealous and ask Billy who she was. She wanted him to call her Josie before she left.
It must be the whisky that was making her eyes prick and smart. She was not enjoying herself. She would go, and let them get on with their silly cards; let Billy get back to the balcony with his silly girl, who ought to darken her eyelashes and have a perm.
‘Whoever would have thought,’ mused Tess, when Jo had gone, ‘that she’d turn out like that? Remember, Mummy, last time she – ’ Mrs Moore kicked her gently with a sandalled foot and made a
moue
towards her husband.
‘I wonder why I always say the wrong thing,’ said Tess, with interest.
‘Want to go out again?’ Billy asked the fair girl. ‘Sorry about the interruption, but you know our family. We’ve got all kinds of odd friends.’