Sins (7 page)

Dougie had never had what he thought of as a proper family, with aunts and uncles, and cousins of his own age, and the obvious warmth and attachment between Ella, Janey and Rose drew him to them. OK, they might not strictly be cousins, but they were ‘family’. Weren’t they?

It would be easy enough to find out–but not by declaring himself. He wasn’t ready for that yet.

He was still clutching the coats the girls had given him and he could see that they were turning away from him and looking into the room. This might be his only chance to find out for sure.

Clearing his throat, he said as nonchalantly as he could, ‘So where’s Emerald, then?’

The effect on all three of them was electric. They turned almost as one to look at him. Well, at least they knew who
she
was. Dougie had been half afraid that they would look blankly at him and that he’d be forced to accept that he had got it all wrong.

‘She’s still in Paris,’ Ella informed Dougie.

‘Do you know Emerald then?’ That was Janey.

‘Er, no,’ Dougie admitted, ‘but I’ve heard about her. That is, I’ve heard her name.’

They knew Emerald all right, but for some reason the mention of her name had changed the atmosphere from easy warmth to quite definitely very cool.

‘Emerald isn’t like us,’ Janey explained, taking pity on the young Australian, who was now looking self-conscious. ‘You see, Emerald isn’t just Emerald, she’s
Lady
Emerald.’ As she finished speaking Janey turned to scan the room.
Pleasant though the young Australian was, he wasn’t Dan. ‘Excuse us.’ She smiled at Dougie, heading into the centre of the room, leaving Ella and Rose to follow her.

Within a few minutes of joining the party the girls had become separated, Janey deliberately escaping from Ella’s watchful eye so that she could find Dan, Ella ending up in the kitchen where she was asked so often for a clean glass that she had busied herself collecting empties and washing them. At least it gave her something to do and helped her to feel less self-conscious. Nearly all the other girls were wearing the same kind of clothes as Janey. None of them was dressed like her. But then none of them was as big and lumpy and plain as she was. One girl, with hair such a bright shade of red that it could only be dyed, did have large bosoms, which she was showing off proudly in a thin black jumper, but she was the sort who obviously didn’t mind flaunting herself. Ella shuddered over the kitchen sink at the thought of the way the other girl had laughed when one of the men had touched her breast. Ella went hot and then cold with horror at the thought of being subjected to that kind of treatment.

‘’Scuse me…oh, sorry,’ a tall dark-haired young man apologised to Rose as he tried to get past her and ended up almost spilling his drink over her. ‘Blame my friends.’ He indicated a group of young men congregated by the table of drinks. ‘If I don’t reach them soon, they’ll have drunk all the beer we brought with us.’

‘Hey, Jew boy, stop trying it on with the Chink and get over here.’

Just for a second before he masked it with a small
shrug of his shoulders and an easy smile, Rose saw the anger tightening his mouth.

‘Sorry about that,’ he apologised to her again. ‘He’s got a big mouth and, like they say, empty vessels make the most noise.’

Rose inclined her head and looked away. She wished she could move away as well, but that was impossible with the room packed so tightly with people.

‘Over a hundred years my family have lived in London, and yet I still get identified as an outsider because of the way I look.’ He was smiling–apparently more resigned than resentful–revealing strong white teeth and a dimple in the middle of his chin.

Her surprise that he should continue the conversation had Rose looking back at him before she could stop herself.

‘What about you? Have your family been here long?’

‘That depends which side of my family you’re asking about. My mother never made it here from the slums of Hong Kong, whilst my father’s family have lived here for many generations.’

‘That must be hard for you.’

‘What must? Looking like my mother when I’m living in my father’s country?’

‘Living here, but feeling like you aren’t accepted,’ he corrected her gently.

Rose stiffened, but either he hadn’t seen how much she disliked the direction the conversation was taking or he didn’t care, because he continued, ‘The trouble is that when you’re like us you’re an outsider wherever you go. I worked on a kibbutz in Israel after I finished my
national service. There were Jewish kids there from all over the world, we were made welcome, but we weren’t at home. The thing is that people like you and me, we aren’t the past because we don’t fit in, but our children will be the future. One day we and they will be the past, just like the Romans are, and the Vikings and all those others who came here as outsiders. What’s your name? Mine’s Josh, by the way. Joshua.’

‘Rose–Rose Pickford.’

He nodded, then demanded, ‘So what do you do, Rose Pickford, when you aren’t out partying?’

‘I’m training to be an interior designer.’

To her surprise he gave an exultant whoop of approval. ‘You know what? I think that you and me were destined to meet, because what I need right now more than anything else is an interior designer.’

Rose eyed him suspiciously. ‘I really must go and find my friends,’ she told him coolly, but as she made to edge past him, someone pushed by her, and would have sent her slamming into the wall if Josh hadn’t reacted quickly and scooped her towards himself so that it was his forearm that connected with the wall and not her back.

She could feel his exhaled breath against her forehead.

‘Are you OK?’

This close up she could smell the scent of his skin, sort of citrussy, causing her to clench her stomach muscles. Her gaze was almost on a level with his Adam’s apple and her heart jerked. Rose struggled against a backwash of unfamiliar emotions.

‘Yes, thanks, I’m fine.’ Her response was unsteady. It was impossible for her even to think about trying to
stand independently of him, the room was so packed. He was towering over her, his shoulders broad, the prominent hook of his nose casting a shadow over the olive-toned flesh of his face, his hair thick and as dark as her own, although a very different texture with its natural wave flopped over his forehead and curled over the collar of his shirt. He was undeniably handsome and Rose suspected probably very sexy, but there was also a kindness about him that, like his natural ebullience, disarmed her and somehow drew her to him.

He was bending his head towards her ear. ‘Want to guess what I do?’

Rose wanted to shake her head, but without waiting for her response he told her, ‘I’m a hairdresser.’

Now he had surprised her.

‘That’s why I need an interior designer,’ Josh continued. ‘I’m setting meself up in business and I’ve got this salon, see, but it needs tarting up a bit, and I reckon you could be just the person to help me get it sorted.’ He grinned at her.

Josh was aware that a new mood was rushing across the Atlantic from America and sweeping Britain’s youth up into its very own new culture. Rock and roll had arrived, a brand-new form of music that belonged only to the young, and one that demanded that the young changed the way they looked and acted to separate themselves from their parents’ generation. New hairstyles were a part of that culture, and Josh intended to ride the crest of the new wave by opening his own salon so that he could make his name and his fortune.

‘I can’t pay you anything,’ he continued, ‘but I’ll give
you a free haircut and it will be the best you’ll ever have.’

He had so much confidence, and so much vitality and energy, Rose couldn’t help but smile.

He was looking at her hair and Rose automatically touched her chignon protectively.

‘I don’t want my hair cut.’

She was a one-off and no mistake, Josh decided, amused by her defensiveness. Normally he had girls pushing eagerly for his attention within minutes of meeting them, even if some of them masked their interest in him by acting all hoity-toity. This one was different, though, with her serious dark eyes and her cautious manner, as though she were afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing. Josh had a large and a very warm heart. He had grown up in the East End in a community where you looked out for your own and protected them. Rose, he recognised, aroused that protective instinct in him. She was looking as though she wanted to get away from him, but he didn’t want her to.

‘All right, I won’t cut it then, but I still want you to sort out the salon for me.’

‘But how can you say that? You don’t know anything about me.’

‘Well, that’s soon solved, isn’t it? Come on, I’ll go first and tell you my life story, then you can tell me yours.’

There was no stopping him, Rose decided with resignation.

‘My dad wanted me to be a tailor, like him, and even now he still doesn’t think that hairdressing is a man’s job, even though I’ve told him that it’s his fault that that’s
what I do. He was the one who got me a Saturday job sweeping up hair from the floor of the salon close to where he works, and he’s the one who taught me how to use a pair of scissors, even it was on cloth and not hair. He didn’t speak to me for a week when I told him that I wanted to be apprenticed and learn to become a proper hairdresser. He told me he’d rather disown me, but my mother talked him round in the end, and once he’d met Charlie, who owned the salon where I wanted to train, and realised that he wasn’t a pouf, he calmed down a bit.’

Josh wasn’t going to say so to Rose, but Charlie had been as rampant as a ram and ready to get his leg over anything female that moved, including most of his staff, as well as his younger and prettier clients. But it was the fact that he drove a fancy car and swaggered through the salon, come Saturday afternoon, wearing a sharp suit, eyeing up the birds for a date for Saturday night that had helped to make Josh decide that he wouldn’t mind a bit of that life.

Rose was a cut above the girls he knew, Josh could tell that, not because she talked posh–that would never have impressed Josh–but because she was…he hunted around for the right way to describe her and then gave a satisfied nod when he finally came up with the words…
delicate and refined
. That was it: Rose was refined, and needed to be treated right.

‘I’d seen Charlie coming into the salon all dressed up in a fancy suit, and I’d reckoned that hairdressing must be a good way to make a bit of money. And, of course, me being a Jew boy, I fancied making a bit meself.’ He grinned at his joke. ‘He worked his apprentices damn
near into the grave and paid us peanuts, but I learned a lot whilst I was working for Charlie.’

He certainly had. Josh had quickly learned about offering to do the prettier girls’ hair for free in their own homes on his day off, and getting to have a bit of a smooch with them in payment.

‘Of course, I’d got my sights on better things, even then. I’d made up my mind that as soon as I was qualified I was going to find myself a job as a stylist at some posh West End place and start saving for my own salon. That’s where the money is: owning your own place. Only I had to do my national service first, of course, and then this other hairdresser, another Jewish lad, persuaded me to go out to Israel with him,’

‘To work on the kibbutz?’ Rose asked, remembering what he had said earlier. She was more interested in his story than she had expected.

Josh shook his head. ‘Not exactly. Or at least that wasn’t the original plan, although we did end up doing a spell in one.’

Rose’s eyes widened. ‘You went there to fight,’ she guessed.

‘It wasn’t my idea,’ Josh told her. ‘It was Vidal’s. And by the time I’d realised what he’d volunteered us for, and that it wasn’t a few weeks in the sunshine picking fruit, it was too late. I reckon that Vidal was hoping that would be the end of me, what with us both wanting to open our own salons and me being a better hairdresser than him.’

He was laughing to show that he was only joking, so Rose smiled too.

‘Me and Vidal both worked for Raymond, Mr Teasy Weasy,’ he explained to Rose. ‘You’ll have heard of him?’

Rose nodded. Raymond was one of London’s best known society hairdressers.

‘Tell me all about him…’ she said.

Ella was longing for the evening to be over. Not because of the smoke-filled air that was stinging her eyes, or because she was tired, but because for the last five minutes Janey had been sitting in a dark corner of the room with a decidedly louche-looking dishevelled type, whom she was snogging for all she was worth, and who right now had his hand on her mohair-covered breast.

Ella was filled with anxiety and misery. She wanted desperately to go over and put an end to what was going on but at the same time she didn’t want to do anything that would draw attention to her sister’s reckless behaviour.

Meanwhile, Janey felt bitterly disappointed. She’d waited and waited for Dan to arrive, but he hadn’t done, and then she’d heard one of the girls from a theatrical school in Markham Square saying that Dan and some of the others from their crowd had gone to Soho to a new jazz club instead of coming to the party. And then Larry had pounced on her and she was trapped with him now, because she hadn’t had the heart to say ‘no’ when he had looked so pleased to see her. She’d been so excited about the party but it was turning out to be anything but enjoyable. Larry’s breath smelled of beer, and being kissed by him wasn’t a bit like being kissed by Dan, and she wished she hadn’t got involved with him.

Dougie didn’t quite know what to do. He knew what he wanted to do, of course. The pretty little actress hadn’t shown–not that Dougie was too disappointed; there were plenty of other equally pretty girls here, after all–and, more importantly,
they
were here: the three girls who could tell him so much that he didn’t yet know about the dukedom, and the duchess’s feelings about someone taking what should have been her own son’s place.

Although Dougie understood all about the law of primogeniture, he still felt uncomfortable about stepping into shoes that should belong to someone else, especially when he was pretty sure that they weren’t going to fit him or be his style. There was a big difference between the dusty boots worn by outback stockmen and the laced-up brogues and polished leather shoes of the British aristocrat.