Bettina used to come to this room to practise new dances with Bart; it was large, uncarpeted and situated above the kitchen, ensuring no one below would be disturbed by the staccato thudding. They learned the Charleston here, and the Black Bottom, both of them pink-faced and sweating through their clothes. Now it was crammed with books, the floor littered with teacups, half-melted candles and discarded clothes. It smelled strongly of men – sour ale, cologne and the fungus stink of unwashed genitals.
‘Not too cold?’ said Jean. ‘Good. Take off your clothes.’
Bettina laughed. ‘What?’
Jean took off her bowler hat and tossed it onto the bed. Her hair was short, the front bits hanging sleekly down almost to the jaw like straps of oiled leather, the back and sides climbing jerkily shorter. Looking at Bettina with a bored, irritated expression, she loosened her tie. ‘Take off your clothes.’ She pulled out the dressing-table chair, sat on it, leaned back. Crossed her legs the man’s way, an ankle resting on a knee.
‘No preamble?’ said Bettina, giggling.
‘Take off your clothes.’
Bettina looked down at herself. ‘But I’m pregnant.’
Jean waved an impatient hand. ‘Take. Off. Your. Clothes.’ She took out a box of cigarettes and lit one, her dark eyes never leaving Bettina.
Christ. Bettina shifted her weight from one leg to the other. She had in all earnest just wanted to go somewhere quiet to sit down. Have a bit of a flirt, maybe. Her feet were aching. She wasn’t drunk enough. This was all a bit much. She could just go – leave. She pulled off the headdress and groped for her dress fastener, eyes on the silver tulle curtains, her skin tingling. A kiss. That was how it was supposed to go. Not this. The dress started to drop and she held it in place with her hands.
Jean nodded.
She let it fall to the floor. Looked down at her large, blue-veined breasts, the skin goose-prickled, her taut, round stomach. A human life growing inside. Absurd.
‘And the rest,’ said Jean, her features grotesquely twisting and blending behind the thick cigarette smoke.
Bettina lifted one foot onto the bed and undid one garter, followed by the other. There was nothing about the striptease in this. Absolutely nothing. Her hands were shaking. She felt like a berk. Really, there was nothing to stop her leaving. She could put a stop to this with one word. Oh, she badly wanted a cigarette! She pinched the elastic of her knickers. God. She hated being a redhead. It was so vulgar, that nest of orange frizz. Why would anyone want anything to do with that?
‘Can’t I keep them on?’
Jean glared at her, blinking slowly.
She pulled down her knickers. Kicked them away, far away. Stood, arms covering her breasts, in the middle of the room. The squeal of a saxophone came from downstairs.
A great plume of smoke. ‘And the rest.’
She looked down at her body. ‘What do you mean, the rest? I’m quite naked.’ She put her hands on her waist. Then quickly crossed them over her breasts again. ‘Shall I take my skin off, too?’
Smiling (only just), Jean touched her upper lip. Tapped it.
The moustache. Oh, for goodness’ sake. She actually wanted to cry. This was awful. She ripped the moustache away and dropped it, watching it swoop to the floor like a baby bird’s feather. ‘Satisfied?’
‘Not even close. Sit on the edge of the bed.’
‘I’m starting to feel cold now, couldn’t—’
‘Sit on the edge of the bed.’
She sat on the edge of the bed.
Jean stood up, cigarette pinched between her lips. She undid her dress jacket, folding it in half and draping it over the arm of the chair, and then took off her cufflinks and pulled up her sleeves. She did all of this very slowly and fastidiously, the fag still pinched in the crook of her mouth. She undid her tie and took her shoes off, followed by her socks. She stood up straight, took one last puff of smoke and threw the butt on the ground. ‘Open your legs.’
Bettina stared at her thighs. They looked like squeezed slabs of luncheon meat.
Jean clapped her hands right in front of Bettina’s face. ‘Open!’
Her thighs snapped open.
‘As wide as they’ll go.’
Bettina spread them to capacity.
‘You’re a belligerent little bitch, aren’t you?’
‘How dare you?’ said Bettina. How dare she?
‘Shut up.’
Jean hunched over Bettina, placing her hands on her thighs, just above the knees. She was going to kiss her. Well, she wouldn’t kiss back. ‘Bitch’? How dare she?
But she didn’t kiss her – instead she abruptly pushed her back onto the bed with a firm shove to the breastbone. The shock of it caused a dribble of urine to come out. Jean grabbed her around the backs of the legs, yanked her closer to the edge of the mattress. And got down onto her knees.
Jean dressed slowly, an obnoxious self-satisfaction griming her face, and sat in the chair to light a cigarette. She’d hopped out of bed like the damn thing was on fire. No cuddles, no kisses. Well, of course not.
Bettina needed to use the toilet. There was an en suite just to the right of where Jean was sitting, but she remembered that the door didn’t close properly.
‘What’s your favourite Sappho poem then?’ said Jean.
So they were back to this. ‘I wouldn’t say I had a particular favourite.’
‘Right, right,’ said Jean, tapping her chin.
‘You think I haven’t read any?’ In actual fact, she had – Étienne had once bought her a copy of Sappho’s collected fragments. ‘Well, I don’t care what you think.’
‘Yes, you do,’ said Jean.
Bettina climbed out of bed and retrieved her clothes from the floor. ‘You’re very smug, aren’t you? Insufferably smug.’ She pulled on her knickers, glaring at Jean. ‘Ultimately, you’re not very nice.’
‘Nice? Who wants to be nice?’
‘I do. Most people do.’
Jean uncrossed her legs and leaned back, legs spread wide. ‘Want to know something?’
‘What?’ said Bettina.
‘Me and Petunia, we had a thing going once.’
Bettina’s fingers froze in the process of clipping stocking to garter belt. ‘That’s a lie.’
‘It’s a fact.’
‘Tuna likes men.’
‘She liked me plenty enough.’
‘Tuna and you? That’s – dear God.’
‘You’re upset?’ said Jean, smiling.
Bettina laughed. ‘You wish I was upset, you bloody sadist.’ She sat heavily on Jean’s lap. ‘Upset? This is the juiciest, most delicious gossip I’ve tasted all year.’ She went to pluck the cigarettes from Jean’s breast pocket and Jean slapped at her hand.
‘Ask first,’ said Jean, wriggling around under the weight of her. ‘And stop rolling your goddamn eyes – it’s like you’re twelve years old.’
‘Please may I have a cigarette?’
‘You may.’
‘Dish the dirt then,’ said Bettina, ‘before I die of boredom.’
‘It’s quite simple. She came into my shop looking for books on the occult. She flirted with me, which is no great oddity – married women are always flirting with me because I’m an obvious target to which they can affix their desperate need for attention.’ Jean was stroking Bettina’s nude bump, fingers trailing so lightly they felt like silk handkerchiefs. ‘So she invited me over for a tarot reading, and afterwards we fucked.’
‘Just the once?’
‘A few times. I put a stop to it once I realised she was getting attached. She bought me a silk-lined cloak for Valentine’s Day. I wouldn’t accept it. She dropped the cloak into a vat of wallpaper paste. It was a very fine cloak. This was a year ago, but naturally we’re pretending to be friends now to show what good sports we are. Thus my invitation to the party.’
‘I’m flabbergasted,’ said Bettina, ‘absolutely flabbergasted. All this time and I could have confided in her about—’
‘No, no, no – don’t ever confide in her about anything. She’s got a big mouth.’
‘I’ll have you know she’s very dear to me.’
‘Still got a big mouth.’
Bettina looked down at the hand on her stomach. Around and around, counter-clockwise, feather-light. Her fingers were long, her nails neat and clean. ‘When you were with Tuna, was it like how it was with us?’
‘That’s between me and Petunia.’
‘Are you like that with everyone?’
‘Why d’you ask?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t want to come away from this feeling so cheap. And used.’
‘Maybe I want you to feel cheap and used.’
‘Oh, give it a rest, will you? I hope you realise what a cliché you are. At least kiss me or something.’
Jean considered this with the benign reluctance of a father giving in to his daughter’s request for more shoes. Then she kissed her. Nicely.
*
It was snowing, a light diagonal flurry that coated the hedges, bushes and the morose limestone figures rising out of Tuna’s Grecian fountain, but not the ground, not settling, so there was a resultant lack of any silly romanticism. It was most definitely unromantic. The plump flakes swirling busily under the warm yellow glow of the porch light and the specks landing on Jean’s bowler hat and shoulders – nothing romantic here. Romance had come to this house tonight to die.
‘Well, cheerio,’ said Bettina, as they made their way down the porch steps.
‘Thanks for an interesting evening.’
Jean touched the brim of her hat. ‘Same.’
They stood, glancing at each other with a kind of awkward expectation. Jean looked like she was about to say something. A snowflake landed on her cheek and she brushed it away. Bettina saw her car driving up the path, its headlights illuminating the lopsided snowflurry.
‘“On soft beds you satisfied your passion, and there was no dance, no holy place.”’ Bettina smiled. ‘See? I do read Sappho.’ And she knocked Jean’s bowler hat off her head and ran towards the car, laughing gleefully, snowflakes catching on her tongue. She heard Jean yelling after her: ‘You’re a child!’ and yelled back, ‘Then you fucked a child!’ and, still laughing, she reached the car and waited as the driver got out and rushed around to open the door for her. She climbed in, turning finally to look at Jean. She was angrily dusting her hat down. Good.
The car started, setting off down the long gravel path. Jean was going to come for her after this. She was going to casually enquire after her address from Tuna and she was going to pursue her. Because she’d challenged her. Piqued her interest. Bettina knew how people worked. People were easy to figure out. And, well, when she came around sniffing, Bettina was going to slam the door in her face – no, she would say something first. She was going to say—
She pressed her hand to her stomach. A kick! The baby was kicking – a flutter, a mischievous rat-a-tat! And she was here, alone, in the back of a chilly car, experiencing this for the first time, without Bart. Another flutter. A foot, an elbow, a hand? Did it have fingernails yet?
Well. It was really in there. Irrefutably.
‘Pleased to meet you, little one,’ she whispered, feeling like she might cry.
The car braked suddenly and she was flung forward, her hands coming up just in time to protect her face from the seat in front.
‘Sorry, Mrs Dawes – he came out of nowhere.’
There, staggering around in the middle of the path, was Bone, his nose bloodied – snowflakes were caught up in the blood, like mould on jam. He was struggling to keep hold of a large framed picture; an oil painting in vivid streaks of clashing colour of a portly red-haired woman with exaggerated, disproportionately sized breasts – completely naked, she was, her legs spread ludicrously wide, almost to the point of doing the splits, a hot-pink slash up the middle. She was smiling. But not like she meant it.