September 1924, London
She’d been staying with her cousin Petunia almost two months now in a huge Georgian house near Twickenham which overlooked the Thames. Petunia as a child had been an absolute brat – an under-table pincher, a petty blackmailer, a pot-stirrer, always ready to run to the parents with a twisted version of facts which placed her as the victim. She was thick-waisted and over freckled with thick, springy red hair that drew (unflattering) comparisons to Queen Elizabeth.
As an adult she was much changed. She now possessed the most full, sensual, plum-skinned mouth which served as her centrepiece and encouraged one to forgive any other imperfections – her freckles hadn’t gone anywhere and her hair was the same frizzy mess, impervious to even the most brutal of treatments and therefore hidden always under a silk scarf or a cloche hat. She had enormous breasts, one noticeably far bigger than the other, a pot belly and shapely legs. Her eyes were a lovely green, her voice husky; she sounded like a fifty-year-old woman who’d chain-smoked since adolescence. She made everyone call her Tuna, as she was, in her own words, ‘more fish than flower’. She didn’t seem to mind how long Bettina stayed for, enjoying a busy house and putting on lavish meals almost every night for artists, intellectuals and other such ‘free-thinkers’. Her husband Max was abroad most of the time and she was, by her own admission, terrified of being alone.
Jonathan came to visit on some weekends, staying in the guest room two doors down from Bettina. Her brother liked to go to museums and cricket matches but disliked clubs and pubs, and in the evening stayed in playing cards or snooker with whichever of Tuna’s guests horrified him least. Only one night had Bettina succeeded in dragging him out to a club, and he’d refused to dance with her, predictably, remaining seated at a table and watching the band with a look on his face as if he were on the verge of throwing up. She called him a bore and danced with various men, drinking cocktails between songs, and it wasn’t until she was properly drunk that she was jolted by an epiphany: Jonathan didn’t like loud noises in confined spaces because Jonathan had fought in the trenches. How ridiculously obvious! What a thoughtless, self-involved boob she was – really, what a child. ‘Let’s go,’ she said to him, taking his hand (clammy, of course) and leading him out of the club. They went home, raided Tuna’s larder and stayed up till five in the morning, playing tiddlywinks and eating French cheese.
It wasn’t as if she could ask Bart to go dancing either, because Bart was being a perfect misery lately, often choosing to stay in and drink by himself. Ever since that actor friend of his got busted for that grubby business in the park. Which was interesting – tick-tock went her thoughts, tick-tock, tick-tock, what’s up, Mr Dawes? And she remembered something her father had once said – back when Bart was nearing adolescence, this was. Venetia and Monty had been arguing about whether to let Bart and Bettina go on an Easter egg hunt alone together – there’d been a big hoo-ha about it, with Monty being dead against it, Venetia trying to change his mind and Lucille oblivious to the fact that a battle was even taking place. Bettina had listened to the argument through their bedroom door (as she often did) and heard her father say, ‘Mind you, I’ll admit this much: there’s as much chance of that boy taking a fancy to Betsy as there is of me mounting a house cat, mark my words.’ Tick-tock, tick-tock.
The pale mauve moon was just visible from a slit in the carriage curtains and a hanging lantern slowly swayed, its orb of light swelling and shrinking, swelling and shrinking, and the darkness surrounding it like a gently squeezing hand. And then there was the lovely clip-clop of the horses. Bettina felt serene and snug, the alcohol a light heat in her belly and veins – this one had broken the one-drink rule, topping her up after every mouthful practically. And this one was gorgeous.
‘Can I have one?’ she asked, as he took out his Turkish cigarette case.
‘Of course.’ His thigh pressed against hers.
His name was Francis Fitzgerald. He had wavy black hair slick with pomade, the parting down the side so straight and white it was like a perfect scar, and a long beautiful nose. Isobel, her American friend from St Vincent’s, had introduced them at a garden party in Buckinghamshire and Bettina had looked at him and felt immediately floored by his good looks – giddily and blushingly floored. She asked him if he’d ever considered crossing the Atlantic and trying his luck in Hollywood and he’d laughed and said, ‘You’ve no idea how many people have said that exact thing to me.’ And she’d understood that it was a question he was bored by, but not coming from her. ‘I have no acting talent, not like your friend, Mr Dawes.’ She tilted her head back and said, with a playful smile, ‘I’m sure you have other talents.’ She was not one given to flirting, in fact she found it vomit-inducing, but she couldn’t have this marvellous specimen dismissing her as an attached woman. Bart was someone she need only dangle in front of the eunuchs and crustaceans.
‘Why a carriage?’ she asked him now. ‘Are you trying to invoke a romantic atmosphere in order to seduce me?’
He laughed. ‘I have two answers to that question: the one I tell most women, and the truth. Which would you rather?’
‘Both.’
‘All right. It’s because I believe both in embracing modernity and preserving the past. Motorcars are our future, yes, as well as electric lights and telephones in every house and the vote for all women. But why completely dismiss the methods of the past?’
‘Is that the truthful answer?’
‘No, that’s what I say in order to impress women.’
Bettina wasn’t sure about the way Francis showed his inner workings. It was designed to flatter her ego – it was saying, You, and only you, are beyond the superficial frivolity of most other females.
‘And what is the truth?’ she said.
‘I’m scared of motorcars.’
She laughed. ‘Really?’
‘Yes, really. Have you ever seen a crash? They crumple like tinfoil and the poor blighter stuck inside gets smashed to bits. I saw a chap once go flying through the windscreen. He was almost decapitated. His head was hanging on by a thread.’
‘Oh my word.’
He placed a hand on her forearm. ‘I’m sorry, dear. Was that too much?’
She nudged him with her elbow. ‘I am not made out of flowers.’
‘No, I dare say you’re made out of thorns!’
She elbowed him again and he clasped a hand over his ribs as if mortally wounded.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said.
‘You make me silly.’ He took her hand and lifted it to his lips, looking silkily at her. His pale blue irises just around the pupils were flecked with tiny splinters of brown – but no one would ever say that. They would say gold.
This was it. He was going to make his move. Her legs were locked shut, the bony nubs of her ankles digging into each other. Staring at his just-open mouth, she relaxed her shoulders and then her legs, leaving a small, shivery gap between the knees. He took the cigarette out of her hand and tossed it out of his window – a flurry of amber sparks streaked the rushing black. This was it. He leaned in and let his lips stop just short of hers, his breath mingling with her breath. He kissed her, very softly. She kissed back, reaching up to stroke the back of his neck, which after all was the done thing. She took his tongue in her mouth and curled her fingers through his hair. The done thing. She imagined how they must look together – marvellous. He licked the soft wet flesh of her lower lip and she let out a little moan, and immediately distrusted the sincerity of it. He trailed a fingertip down her throat and chest and traced a spiral around the cloth-muted bump of her nipple. Another moan, a handful of his oily hair, an arching of her back. This is something I’ve read in a book, she thought, or seen in a picture. I’m playing a part. The weight of his body pushed her down on the seat and he was over her, on her, slipping a hand under her dress and trying to fumble his fingers inside her underwear. The carriage went over a bump and he grabbed her to stop her slipping off the seat. He was breathing hard and she was also breathing hard, and for the life of her, she didn’t know how much of this panting was real and how much performed, and she guessed maybe it was a forty/sixty split – but then, if she was capable of roughing out percentages while his fingers were dabbing at the moistness down there, then it could hardly be that real, more like twenty/eighty, and admittedly, there was that moistness, she was wet and tingling, but if it had been Margo’s hand down there, she would not be thinking of numbers and ratios, she would not be thinking at all.
He fidgeted a finger inside her and she gasped, in shock this time, not pleasure or performed pleasure in some silly estimated ratio, in genuine shock, because things had gone quite far enough. She pushed him away and he fell to the carriage floor with a heavy thud.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he yelled.
She sat up straight and shuffled to the very end of the seat, her shoulder pushed up against the door. She put her left breast back into her dress and smoothed down her hair. Clamped her legs together.
He climbed back onto the seat and stared furiously at her.
‘Well, what the hell did you expect?’ she said.
‘You can’t do that to a man,’ he said.
‘I bloody well can!’ She let out a long breath, blinking rapidly. ‘Do you think I’m a whore, Francis?’
He moved his mouth but no words came out.
‘I’ll ask again: do you think I’m a whore?’
‘Of course not, I—’
‘Seriously, Francis, did you think you were going to take my virginity in the back of a bloody carriage? Seriously?’
‘You were leading me on!’
‘I let you kiss me. I did not sign a contract offering you my virginity. Do you think I’m a bloody idiot, to let you do that to me?’
‘You might have put a stop to it sooner.’
‘You might not have started it! Really, I feel quite irritated by you right now, Francis. You top up my drinks and flatter me because I’m so bloody different to all the other girls, so bloody interesting, but actually, your motives were very singular, very ruthless.’
He shifted around on his seat and ran a hand through his hair, wiping the grease onto his trouser leg. ‘I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s just, I thought you were the kind of girl who might like to, you know, have a bit of – I don’t know, I mean … you like to drink and smoke and I—’
She let out a harsh bark of a laugh. ‘So a woman who smokes automatically opens her legs to men? What an idiotic correlation. My mother smokes, why don’t you test that theory out on her? Go on. Drive down to Brighton in your whimsical hansom and fuck my mother in a cloud of her tobacco smoke.’
He raised his hands in surrender. ‘I’m sorry, really, I’m sorry. My judgement was poor this evening. I haven’t behaved like a gentleman.’
She scrutinised his face. It was pale and wretched and vulnerable. A child caught at the sugar bowl. She crossed a leg over a knee and leaned back. ‘Well, I haven’t exactly behaved like a lady, either. Let’s have a cigarette and forget the whole thing. A cigarette, by the way, is merely a paper tube filled with tobacco and not a symbolic guarantee of sexual intercourse. You’d do well to remember that, hotstuff.’
Francis laughed and she laughed and the tension flew out of the window. He passed her a cigarette. ‘You’re awfully fun, Bettina. I feel like I’ve wasted you tonight. Treated you like a conquest when I should have been treating you as – well, as a serious prospect. I do hope we can still be friends.’
‘Of course.’ She reached out and patted his hand. She wasn’t angry with him. In fact, she was probably being a hypocrite about the whole thing. ‘I’d like you to drop me off at the Chelsea. I want to visit a friend.’
He nodded, cigarette wobbling in his mouth, and then leaned over to instruct his driver. His buttocks were divine. But then, so were sunsets and thunderstorms and Debussy’s nocturnes.
‘Little cleft in his chin?’ said Bart, pointing to his own chin.
‘Yes.’
‘I know of him. Been to a few of the same parties. Tragically good-looking, you’re not wrong there.’
Bettina opened the window (the room was smelly). The stars and moon were concealed by fog. London was horrible, actually. Down below, a hatless woman covered in sores was sitting on a bench, loudly sobbing and kissing what looked like a photograph. There – horrible. She blew smoke out of the window, watching the breeze snatch it away. ‘Quite charming too, Barty. He knew exactly what he was doing.’
‘Oh, I don’t doubt it.’ Bart came over and handed her a drink. He was unshaven and sleepy-eyed. He kept yawning and his tongue was crusted yellow. ‘Well done you for thwarting his advances.’
‘Well, it wasn’t that difficult. My heart wasn’t in it.’
‘No?’
She shook her head, sipping at her drink. ‘I won’t lie, my body responded. Somewhat. I mean, I think I could have gone through with it and it wouldn’t have been entirely disgusting.’
Bart went over to the gramophone and set the needle over the record already in place – his current favourite, ‘Crazy Blues’ by Mamie Smith. He was forever playing it – a cry for help probably. ‘The thing is,’ she continued, ‘there was something missing. Know what I mean? No frisson, no passion. I felt … clinical.’ Clinical yet wet, she wanted to say.
Bart sat in his armchair, draping a long pyjama’d leg over the other, and held his drink with both hands. ‘You don’t need me to tell you why, do you?’
A melancholy, dead-eyed shrug. ‘He was so handsome.’
‘And yet …?’
‘And yet.’ She sat on the floor by his feet, resting her head against his thigh and closing her eyes. Half-listening to the woman sing about her horrible life and horrible man. He ran his hands through her hair, his fingers grazing her scalp. ‘How are you feeling, my lovely boy?’ she said.
He sighed. ‘A bit down, actually.’
‘Oh? I had no idea. You’ve been such a joy.’ She got up and climbed into his slippery lap (his pyjamas were silk). ‘You can tell me anything, you know,’ she said, running her finger along the small scar just over his right ear.
‘I can’t.’
‘I tell you everything.’
‘Nobody tells anybody everything.’
‘Oh, shut up. I tell you as much as I’ll ever tell anyone.’
He stared at her. His eyes were glassy and the skin around his nose was tightening and wrinkling, as if he was suppressing tears. ‘You don’t have to tell me anything,’ she said, gently. ‘But I bet that if you do, I’ll be the most understanding person ever, literally ever, in the whole wide world. And I’ll bet you something else …’
‘What?’
‘I bet I already know what’s wrong. It doesn’t take a genius.’
‘Bet you anything you don’t.’
She rolled her eyes. How boring. ‘Will he tell me, will he not tell me, when will he bloody tell me?’ She grabbed his face and twisted it so that he couldn’t look away. ‘You like men.’
He stared at her, his eyes fierce, his cheeks squished between her hands. She wanted to laugh – those fierce eyes coupled with the puffed cheeks and his lips like a sausagey figure eight. But this was a serious moment. What if he grew angry and denied everything? Perhaps she’d got it wrong after all; perhaps she was trying to make him the same as her so that she’d feel less … yucky; perhaps, these last couple of months, she’d built up this convenient, neat narrative, romantic in its way, with the two friends fantastically mirroring each other’s persuasions, two best friends, the same all along, the same since childhood, when in actual fact, Bart was simply in love with a married woman or anxious about finances or dissatisfied with his career. How disgustingly alone she would feel.
‘Marry me,’ he said.
She let go of his cheeks. ‘What?’
‘Marry me.’
‘Jesus, Bart. What are you trying to prove?’
He sat up straighter and again stared into her face, but this time with urgency. ‘Nothing. You’re right – I like men. I do, I fucking well do! And you like women. Let’s get married. We love each other, don’t we?’
She climbed off his lap, dazed, and headed straight for the drinks table. She poured wine into a fresh glass and downed it. Bart had followed her over and was standing next to her. ‘Think about it,’ he said. ‘Take as long as you like.’
‘You’re genuinely serious?’ she said, lighting a cigarette with shaking hands.
‘Oh, I’m deadly serious! I think this might be the best idea I’ve ever had. Think about it, Betts: we live together, as friends. Perhaps we have children,’ he waved a hand, ‘some way or other, I don’t know. We have people over for dinner, we behave like we always do, we have parties, we have fun, we go for long walks and have lovely darling picnics. If you meet a girl you like, I look away, if I meet a boy I like, you look away. No judgement, no shame, no secrets.’
‘Us, have children? Are you joking?’
‘Pretend I didn’t say that bit. But the rest … can’t you see?’ He went over to the gramophone and put a new record on, a lively jazz number. He was smiling and tapping his slippered foot. ‘Don’t you see how lucky we are? Two good friends with the exact same – with the same problem and the means to help each other out? Don’t you see how – look, just … it’s almost as if … it’s almost as if … no, I won’t bring God into this. But it does whiff of fate. Something like that.’ He looked at her with his hands spread out. ‘Look. Imagine this: you marry a man. You have to sleep with him most nights. Maybe he’s gorgeous like Francis and you tolerate it. By the way, I’m exceedingly attracted to Francis. I can say that now.’ He laughed, almost manically. ‘Oh my God, I’m so fucking relieved! You’re married to this man, Betts, and let’s say you grow fond of him. Like – he’s like a Labrador who follows you around all the time. But after a year of this? Two years, ten years? You pretend to have a headache some nights, but you can’t have a headache that lasts forty years. Are you seeing this? Do you want this?’
‘Of course not! But it might not go that way! Some people are just very picky. And there was … I might just be very picky.’ And there was that wetness – that’s what she’d been about to say.
He gave her a look of mildly disgusted impatience, the sort her father excelled at. ‘Horseshit. It’s horseshit. I know you. Marry me, Bettina. Don’t you see how perfect this is? We always said we’d get married, as children, don’t you remember?’ He was pacing now, his cigarette going from mouth to hip, mouth to hip, little blasts of smoke jettisoning from the side of his mouth. ‘You’ve always considered yourself a rebel, Betts, always sneered at the common arrangements, the stale institutions and all that, and now, well, here’s your chance to show you’re not all talk, like your parents.’ He was packaging this for her in a way he knew would entice, just like that time he’d made her eat the worm – only the bravest, boldest girl would dare eat a worm. Only the rarest trailblazer would sham-marry her queer best friend. ‘And I’ll tell you something else, Betts: I would mean my vows. Honest to God, I would. Well, except the fidelity bit.’
She looked at the glowing tip of her cigarette thoughtfully. ‘This Keith fellow. Were you and he intimate?’
He nodded, his jaw clenching.
‘And did you – I mean, have you—’
‘Of course I have.’
‘You don’t even know what I’m going to ask you.’
‘You’re going to ask if me and Keith ever—’
‘No, I wasn’t. I was going to ask if you’ve ever done what he’s done. Hyde Park at midnight and all that.’
‘Oh. Well. Why do you ask?’
She gave him a withering look. ‘Really, you have to ask? You want me to be your wife and you have to ask? Clearly you haven’t thought this whole thing through.’
‘I never judged you over the Margo business.’ He sucked too hard on his cigarette and coughed out smoke, his eyes watering. ‘Now, see, this is why I didn’t want to tell you in the first place!’
‘This isn’t about judgement, you big nit. Just put yourself in my shoes for a moment. Yes – now it’s your turn to imagine hypothetical situations. I’m your wife, everything’s all tickety-boo, and then one night I get arrested for, I don’t know’ – she rolled her eyes – ‘canoodling with some strange woman in a shrubbery at Hyde Park or Hampstead Heath – don’t laugh, Bart, I know it’s absurd. But listen – the next morning it’s splashed all over the papers and not only is my reputation ruined forever, so is yours.’
Bart was still laughing, a hand over his mouth. ‘A shrubbery?’
‘If you want me to take this seriously, then so must you.’ It was funny. Though why it should be funny that women do this, and not men, she had no idea.
‘You might not believe me,’ he said, ‘but I haven’t ever done anything like that. Nor will I.’ He didn’t quite look at her as he said this – a flickering glance. ‘I’m in the theatre, I’ve no shortage of opportunities. Fairies practically falling from the rafters!’
The fast song finished and was followed by a slow waltzy number.
‘You’d have to be extremely careful,’ she said.
‘It sounds as though you’re considering this.’
She shrugged. ‘It’s a very pragmatic idea. I’m just not convinced yet that it’s necessary. I haven’t given up on myself. I’d like you to give me another year.’
‘Really? You’ll marry me in a year?’
‘Maybe. If.’
‘If?’
‘Yes, if. Surely you can wait another year for your inheritance.’
‘Oh, piss off,’ he said, smiling. ‘If I was that keen to come into my inheritance I would’ve married the first inbred society whore my mother nudged my way.’ He held out his arms and ushered her over. ‘Why do that when I already have the prettiest inbred society whore right here?’
She fell into his arms, laughing. ‘I knew you were going to make that joke.’
They held each other and swayed to the music. ‘Did you love Keith?’ she said.
‘No. No. Infatuated, I think.’
‘His Romeo was wonderful.’
‘It was all right.’
She felt his arm move about and heard the ‘puh’ sound of him sucking on his cigarette and then smelled the smoke drifting around her head, and still they moved together, slowly, and she imagined how it would be to be joined to this man forever. What would their life look like? Him in a smoking jacket entertaining other men after dinner, she playing cards with her friends, the tinkling of ice cubes in glasses and creaking leather seats and the monotonous droll chatter, their bedrooms separate but close – is that how it would work?
Anyway, it wouldn’t come to that.