September 1921, Wadley House, Brighton
It couldn’t be – he wouldn’t bloody dare. She opened her window and squinted out into the granular black night. He wouldn’t dare though. He’d have to be blasted off his father’s spirits, throwing stones and shouting his head off like that, with Heinous Henry just yards away, him with his nose like a beak, like a huge disgusting puffin’s beak, rummaging around in everyone’s business, plucking out grubs.
‘Who’s there?’ It might even be one of the drunks from the munitions factory her father owned, someone recently fired. One of them had once shat into the bird bath and lopped all the rose heads from their stems.
‘I would speak with you!’
It was him. Bart. Under the giant oak with his back to the trunk and his whole form in shadow.
‘“Love grew apace, rocked by the anxious beating of this poor heart, which the cruel wanton boy took for a cradle!”’
He was doing Cyrano de Bergerac again. ‘What are you doing?’ she hissed. ‘Go home!’
‘Never in a trillion years!’ Yes, drunk. His late father had left behind an impressive collection of liquors and spirits, the bottles carefully arranged, labels facing out, on top of two large bureaus in his dank and terrifying study. Some were imported from countries as far away as Japan and South Africa (and some dating back to the eighteenth century). Bart’s mother Lucille had felt reluctant to part with them or drink them, so there they still stood, testament to Frederick Dawes’s passion for accumulating rare and exotic fancies, the big joke being that he’d been teetotal; he might as well have been a cripple who collected running shoes or a whore who collected chastity belts. Bart was always taking a nip here and there of the less rare stuff. And he was annoying enough when sober.
‘Go away,’ she said again, glancing at the butler’s dim window – the servants’ quarters stuck out of the main house like the bottom of the letter L and Heinous Henry’s room was across from her, diagonally so. He was most likely still downstairs, seeing to the accounts or bullying the cook, but you could never be sure. She imagined him – the awful creep – crouched below his windowpane, eyes greed-shiny in the gloom, ear cocked, hands down his trousers. And why imagine him with his hands in his trousers? What did that have to do with anything? Anyway, he was an awful, awful creep. ‘Go away,’ she repeated. ‘I’m bored of you already. Genuinely.’
Bart stepped out from the dark, stopping under the high lantern. ‘Come down to me or I’ll wake up the whole fucking house, Bettina.’
Another glance at the butler’s window. ‘The house is still awake, you turnip – it’s only ten. Go home.’
‘I’m going to start singing. I’m going to sing. I really will – you know I will. I’ll tell everyone that you tempted me with your flame-red tresses and your gorgeous wobbly boobies. You tart. I’m going to start singing.’
‘Christ.’ He was always trying to get her into trouble. He minimised the consequences because he had in his head that her parents were these easy-going, liberal-minded poodles, when in fact they were just playing a part and cared deeply what the old guard thought of them – even those they made fun of, such as the parson and his wife, who had ‘such sticks up their backsides, they were basically God’s lollipops’, but heaven forbid that Venetia and Montgomery Wyn Thomas ever express a contrary opinion in their presence, atrocious frauds that they were.
‘Go to our spot, I’ll come and meet you. If I get caught I shall kick you where it hurts.’
He fell to his knees, hand on his heart. ‘Oh, please don’t make promises you cannot keep, my goddess.’
‘I actually hate you.’
A small wood stood between Wadley House and the beach. Bettina loved this wood and as a child had considered it her own private playground, imagining faeries and wood-imps and will-o’-the-wisps behind every tree, and sometimes spying on the maids as they swam half naked in the waterlogged ditch they mistook for a lake. The moon was bright and the clouds sparse, allowing just enough illumination to see by. Bettina knew her way perfectly well, having made this journey thousands of times over her life and many of these in the dark (thanks to Bart), but still her slippers stumbled over rocks and into dips in the dry cracked mud – she hadn’t dared bring a light of her own; there were too many eyes around here, twitching bright eyes like gold coins. She picked up a snapped-off branch and used it like a blind man’s stick. Her robe was red. But it had no hood. And wolves did not exist in this part of England, not any more.
‘Absurd,’ she said to herself, in a whisper. ‘Absolutely raving.’
Soon the wood faded, its trees growing sparser, its tangled undergrowth turning to pale, shorn grass. The sea lay ahead of her, its dark rolling mass swallowing the panorama. The moon was bright out here, in the open, without its pauper’s beard of trees, causing a silvery gleam to coat the flat pebbles which preceded the sandy beach. She followed the thin boardwalk, seeing a small light up ahead, coming from under the pavilion. Her father had had it erected on Armistice Day, and for days afterwards it was kept lit through the night and was filled with drunk, exuberant people who tossed booze from their glasses as they danced uninhibited to live brass music or sat shivering in their winter coats and scarves with slippery smiles on their faces. One man had got so drunk that he went in the sea for a swim – this in the early hours of the morning – and got stunned by the freezing waters and was swept out with the current and drowned. Idiot. He’d been an unmarried schoolteacher, supposedly, from the boys’ college. His death had been like a bucket of slop thrown over the party and the revellers went home finally and returned to their daily, sober miseries.
This was three years ago and still the pavilion stood, its steel rivets super-rusted by the salted air, the canvas awnings covered in gull shit, one half drooped and sulking. Bart was sitting on the ground inside with a paraffin lamp at his side, casting a defiant orb of light around him. In his lap was a bottle of rum, which was apt, since he looked as drunk as a sailor, his blond-tipped lashes bobbing under the weight of collapsing eyelids.
She’d played with Bart from a young age, since they were babies practically, and still they were monkey-nut close, writing daily letters to each other during term time and meeting by night in the holidays (her father, being a hypocrite and a tyrant, didn’t approve of their spending time alone together). They had the same sense of humour, affecting a dry, ironic outlook, and they eschewed exclamation marks in their correspondence and looked down on earnest people. Sarcasm, contrary to popular belief, was the highest form of humour. Everyone else was wrong. Everyone else was stupid.
Bettina sat down opposite him, legs crossed, and fixed him with her most withering look (she practised these looks in the mirror). ‘Bartholomew, you bastard,’ she said, punching his shoulder. ‘Dragging me out here at this hour.’ She hit him again and he tried to bat her hand away. ‘I could’ve been eaten by wolves, you awful nightmare.’
He smiled devilishly at her and offered the bottle of rum. ‘Go on, don’t let me drink alone.’
‘I’ve got to pack for school tomorrow.’
He pushed the bottle in front of her face. ‘Then let’s celebrate the end of the holidays.’
‘No, let’s not.’
‘Let’s. Please. We haven’t got long to have fun like this; we should take our opportunities. Soon you’ll be a horrid debutante and you’ll acquire a horrid husband and I’ll never get to see you again, and it’ll be fucking horrid.’
‘You are relentless. I loathe this quality in you. I absolutely loathe it.’
The wind outside blew against the canvas flaps and they made a loud thwap-thwap sound. ‘Drink, my goddess,’ he said. ‘Drink.’
She felt something cold and wet under her ankle – a ribbon of seaweed. She tossed it at him and took a sip of the rum. It was warm and disgusting. She didn’t have a taste for alcohol, not really, except the creamy liqueurs her mother sometimes let her have at Christmas, and even these she would weaken with extra cream.
‘Cigarette?’ said Bart, taking two out of a silver case with a falcon engraved on the lid (it’d been his father’s) and lighting both before she could answer.
‘Thank you,’ she said – she did in fact want one.
He snapped the case shut and leaned on one elbow, tilting his head back to blow out the smoke. ‘I can’t believe you were willing to leave without saying goodbye.’
‘I was planning to say goodbye on the way to the station. I was going to wave my hanky out of the carriage window in a mournful fashion.’
‘Bugger off. A proper goodbye, I meant.’
‘So this is a proper goodbye? Drinking stolen booze under a mouldy canopy?’
‘Indeed.’ He squinted as though through a monocle. ‘A jolly good send-off. The sea air in your lungs, what could be better, old chap?’
‘My bed.’
He wiggled an eyebrow. ‘We could do that.’
‘Don’t be disgusting.’
‘Drink more,’ he said.
‘No. I’ve had enough.’
‘Go on – drink more.’
She rolled her eyes and drank more. Bart could never take no for an answer. Better to get it over and done with. Once, when she was six and he seven, he’d persuaded her to eat a worm. He’d gone on about it for ages, dangling it in front of her face and coming up with a never-ending supply of reasons for why she should do such a thing, almost managing to package the idea attractively (only a very brave girl would eat a worm, only the very best, bravest, most boy-like girl would dare), and she finally accepted the challenge. The governess, Madame Choubert, a mean old toad with an entire forest of nose hair, caught her with the worm half in her mouth and slapped the back of her head to make her spit it out, slapped it hard, and all the while, Bart’s hand was over his mouth to keep the hysterical laughter from exploding out, and the governess turned to look at him like a St Bernard spotting a squirrel, and she grabbed his ear and forced him to his feet and dragged him across the garden with her almighty buttocks swishing the train of her skirt and him wriggling in pain but still laughing, his earlobe stretched like warm toffee, and the next day he’d shown her the red tear under his ear. This was a typical memory.
‘So Daddy Dearest wouldn’t relent?’ he said, taking the bottle from her.
‘No. I’m going to take another crack at him tomorrow though.’
‘Well. It is a damned good school. For a girls’ school, I mean. Unless you’d prefer to learn etiquette at Lady Foster’s Academy for Dead-Eyed Shrews.’
‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘But what’s the point?’
‘Education is the point.’
‘Yes, an education! Think of all the Aristotle I shall quote to impress my future husband’s family. I shall order my scullery girl in only the best Latin. And Bart – I shall write my shopping lists in iambic pentameter. Give me the rum.’
Bart had picked up a cockle shell and was twisting the hot end of his cigarette against its serrated surface, twisting it into a point, ash and sparks flying off.
‘Bart?’
‘Hmm?’
‘I said—’
‘Are you going to miss me?’ he said, a queer, thoughtful look in his eyes.
‘Miss you? Well, I should think so, a little. In the same way that one misses a boil on one’s nose after it’s been lanced.’
‘I’ll miss you. Awfully.’
Bettina looked down at the sand. She dragged her finger through it, making a spiral. She and Bart were so seldom ‘nice’ to each other. She drank from the bottle, still avoiding his eyes.
‘I always look forward to the holidays,’ he said, ‘because it means I’ll get to see you. I always think of you, at school.’ He laughed suddenly, and she glanced up, relieved. He was smiling. The lantern’s flickering light cast shadows across his face, spreading his smile in a dark and clownish fashion. ‘I love to make you squirm.’
‘Those who take pleasure in the displeasure of others are generally regarded as evil,’ she said. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
‘I meant what I said though.’ He took her hand and laced his thin, dry fingers through hers. ‘I really did.’
She could feel her face tightening. She really should say something kind back to him, something real and true, a collection of words forming a stark, nude emotion, a collection of words like a brand-new baby. But she needn’t have worried about it, about words, because suddenly Bart was plucking his cigarette out of his mouth, stabbing it in the sand and coming for her, his face for her face, his lips for hers, a look of brave focus in his grey-green eyes, like the look of someone who resolves, finally, to enter the burning building to rescue the child, and there was no time for Bettina to decide what she should do and what she wanted to do and what she might do, because his mouth was on hers and his body upon hers, and the weight of him was pushing her back to the sand, and as his soft lips wrestled against hers and his soggy tongue found entry, two distinct thoughts uttered, voice-like, in her mind:
I’m going to get sand in my hair.
And:
I might as well try this.
His breath came out of his nose as he kissed her, a warm zephyr from each nostril, in and out. His spit was a ghastly soup of liquor, smoke and onion. He rotated his hips, pressing his groin into hers. He put his hand on her breast. On it, just on it. He did not build up to this and he did not caress it or squeeze it. Just put his hand on it. And left it there, neither loose nor clamping. She blasted laughter into his mouth, wild shocked laughter, and he pulled his head away and looked down at her, gormlessly. She brought her arm over her face, pushing her nose into the fleshy crook of her elbow and laughed hard, her body shivering under him.
He rolled off and his arm reached out piston-like for the bottle of rum.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. But the laughter was still bubbling wickedly. She wiped her eyes and stretched her cheeks down and tried to breathe. ‘Genuinely, Bart, I’m sorry.’ He was looking down at the sand with his face in shadow. ‘Please don’t be angry with me. Please don’t, Bart. I didn’t mean to laugh.’
He glanced up finally. Expressionless. He took out two cigarettes and lit them slowly, his hands shaking. He chuckled. Shook his head. Handed her a cigarette. ‘You’re going to think I’m being vengeful now, but I promise you I’m not,’ he said. ‘But this is the thing of it: I didn’t—’ He shook his head again. ‘You’ll think I’m being mean. You’ll think I’m feeling rejected and want to hurt your feelings.’
She sat up straight. ‘Well, you can’t leave it unsaid now.’
‘I promise you, my motives aren’t petty.’
‘Bloody well say it then.’
He nodded. ‘Here’s the thing. I didn’t really feel anything, Betts. I thought I’d feel something. But I didn’t. I mean – sorry to offend your delicate female sensibilities and all that, but not even half a cock-stand—’
‘Bart!’
‘I’m sorry. I thought you could handle the fact that I possess male genitalia. I’m just being honest. I felt nothing. Sweet fuck all. And look at you – you’re Aphrodite. I wonder what could be the matter with me.’
She considered this, smoking her cigarette slowly. ‘That’s all right. I didn’t feel anything either.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘You’re not just saying that because you feel slighted?’
‘No! I mean, I suppose I would lie if I felt slighted, wouldn’t I? To save face. But I’m one hundred per cent not lying. I felt nothing.’
‘Save amusement?’
‘Save amusement,’ she agreed, nodding. ‘And profound embarrassment.’
He gave her a look she knew well – he was about to say something rude, something that tested her. And he did: ‘So in effect, you gave me the flop and I, in turn, turned your vagina to ice?’
‘Bart!’ She slapped the side of his head. ‘Why do you always have to take everything too far?’ She hated the v-word, and he knew it.
He was hunched over, laughing. And soon – she couldn’t help it – she was laughing too, clutching her stomach and shaking, both their glowing cigarette ends dancing under the pavilion’s dark arms.
‘I’ve never admitted this to you,’ she said, once the laughter was spent, ‘on account of your overflowing vanity, but I do think you’re handsome. Very handsome, actually. Bizarre, isn’t it?’
‘Maybe we’re too close friends, do you think?’ he said, lying down on his side, propped up with an elbow. ‘Like siblings?’
She shrugged. Bart had once had a sister. Tabitha. Bettina could still remember her, just about – a fat, ringletted little thing, very sweet, always eating. One of her earliest memories, in fact, was of standing in the Dawes’s stables, staring down at a dark-stained spot in the hay and noticing a scrap of bone with dried blood on it. From Tabitha’s skull? She’d been about to prod it with her foot when the stable hand saw what she was looking at and quickly scooped her up in his arms and took her back to the house. ‘Oh, the poor little thing just wants a sister again,’ Venetia would say, whenever Monty caught Bart sneaking in through the servants’ entrance to play with Bettina. ‘Even so, it’s a bit off, those two being so tight,’ he’d say, or something like this. As if six-year-old girls and seven-year-old boys were in the habit of eloping. Idiot.
‘That was the first time I’ve kissed a girl,’ Bart said. ‘Don’t say anything unkind.’
‘I wasn’t going to.’
‘I thought I should try it, you know?’
‘I thought I should go along with it.’
‘That’s why I got so bonkers drunk. Because I was going to try it.’
She stubbed out her cigarette in the sand. ‘Well. Perhaps it’s a good thing you tried it. Because now we know. Now we don’t have it hanging over us. Did you feel it hanging over us? Because I did.’
He nodded. ‘I meant what I said about missing you and all that.’ He reached out with grasping fingers and she took his hand. He brought his head down and kissed her knuckle. ‘I suppose we’re just not meant for each other, in that way. Perhaps I only long for blondes or brunettes. Or older women.’
‘Or livestock,’ said Bettina.
He laughed with his mouth wide open, all his teeth showing. He really was very handsome, even considering his eyebrows fighting to get to the centre of his face and the cluster of pimples on his forehead. He was probably right; they were too much like siblings. One day she’d be kissed by a man she did not know so intimately, one she hadn’t known all her life, who hadn’t made her eat worms. This strange unattached man from the future would grab her as Bart just had, kiss her as Bart just had, and she’d feel the quickness in her bosom like the women characters from a penny dreadful.
‘One day we shall swoon for others,’ she said, squeezing his hand.
He nodded, squeezing back.
‘I think that would make a good poem,’ she said. ‘“One day we shall swoon for others.” Don’t you think?’
He wrinkled up his face. ‘God no. Do the world a favour and never write a poem as long as you live. Ugh.’