April 1928, Davenport House, London
During her early days in London, Jean had frequented The Little Boat, a working-class pub known for its mainly female clientele – ‘Dykes, in other words,’ she told Bettina, who was both shocked that such a place existed and annoyed that no one had told her about it. Jean made friends there – most of whom she slept with, naturally. Some of these were women of her ilk – suffragettes, academics, artists – but the majority were prostitutes or ex-service staff. There was a smug sort of pride in Jean’s bearing as she disclosed this – what a darling she was, befriending tramps and drudges.
One such woman, Megan, had once worked as a nanny for a wealthy family. ‘According to her,’ Jean told Bettina, ‘the husband pushed her into the coal house and flopped out his weenie. And when she rejected his advances, he ran to his wife and said he’d caught her stealing.’
Megan arrived at the Dawes’ house for an interview one cloudy morning. Bettina had never been so sleep-deprived – flashing purple stars appeared at the corner of her vision like fireworks set off behind her head, and every time she closed her eyes, she heard snatches of disjointed conversation, as if her skull contained a miniature market square. ‘Babies are awful,’ said Bart in a weary monotone, Tabby lying on his lap, her tiny fists clenching and unclenching. ‘I daresay, even a little evil.’ Bettina burst into dizzy giggles, spilling strong coffee onto her knees. It was at this point that a quick rat-a-tat announced Megan’s arrival.
Bettina jumped up from her chair and started dabbing her knees with one of the baby’s muslin cloths, succeeding only in transferring milky sick to her stockings. ‘Oh for God’s sake.’ She threw the cloth on the table. ‘I don’t care if this woman has a satanic pentagram tattooed on her head, we’re hiring her.’
Her eyes – that was the first thing and the best thing; they were set far apart and slanted up at the corners slightly, and the green irises were flecked with gold – not brown, but actual gold. And her cheekbones … she’d had a maths teacher with cheekbones like that – Miss Moody – and Margo had once said that a small family could pitch up a tent and camp under those cheekbones, and if it were to rain, they’d stay perfectly dry. Her hair, underneath her hat, was bobbed and black.
Étienne glanced at Bettina knowingly. With a panic-eyed grin, she breathed in deep through her nose and ushered the woman through to the drawing room. ‘You are in trouble,’ Étienne whispered to her.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she whispered back, her eyes on Megan’s large behind.
She’d been wrong about the eyes – they weren’t her best feature.
Megan had been raised in an orphanage in Cornwall. Her father was a loveless drunk who’d died in an alleyway somewhere, his head kicked in, his pockets emptied and his one gold tooth plucked out, and her mother – also a drunk – passed away shortly after giving birth to her, of a haemorrhage. The orphanage was predictably terrible and Megan still had the scars along her right arm from all the lashings, which she eagerly showed Bettina, rolling up her sleeve and pointing them out one by one with an accompanying back-story – ‘This is from when they caught me trying to read under the covers at lights out’, ‘This is for backchat’, etc. A lot of them were for backchat.
Bart called her ‘Meg the Mouth’ behind her back.
‘Don’t be mean, Meow,’ Bettina admonished, the first time he said it.
They were smoking on the bench at the end of the garden.
‘You want to fuck her.’
‘Shh! Keep your voice down. I don’t want to do anything of the sort.’
‘Why not? She’s a sexpot.’
‘She’s Tabby’s nanny.’
‘She’s a lowly commoner – at least be honest, Betts.’
‘That’s not true.’ Bettina flicked her cigarette butt away and immediately lit another. ‘Well, maybe it’s true.’ She side-glanced at Bart, coolly, and they both laughed.
‘So if Étienne was a cleaner of lavatories or something like that, would you have fallen for him?’
‘Étienne is dirt-poor. His mother ran a brothel.’
‘Yes, but he’s an artist,’ she said. ‘And it was a French brothel.’
‘You’re diverting the conversation away from yourself.’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t want to sleep with the nanny. I already have a lover. Stop talking about it. Oh, look out – she’s coming over.’
Megan was carrying the baby with one crooked arm and shielding her face from the sun with the other. How lovely she’d look painted, just like that.
‘You want to lick her nipples,’ whispered Bart.
Bettina abruptly rose to greet Megan. ‘Hello there.’
‘Beautiful day, isn’t it?’ said Megan, looking up at the sky. ‘Thought I’d give the little madam some fresh air and sunlight. You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Of course not,’ said Bettina. ‘Please, join us.’
‘Oh no, I wouldn’t want to impose.’ She spoke with a clear voice – the vocal equivalent, Bettina thought, of a splash of cool mountain water in one’s face on a clammy day.
Bart held his arms out, gesturing for Megan to hand the baby over.
‘She’s just had a feed so mind she doesn’t sick up on you,’ she said, passing her over.
‘Oh, I don’t mind if she sicks up on me. Do I, little sweetheart? No, I don’t. No, I don’t. Daddy would eat your vomvom with a sugar spoon.’
‘You’re getting ash on her head,’ said Bettina, leaning over and swiping away the flecks. She looked up at Megan, smiling wryly. ‘Rule number one of parenting: babies are not to be used as ashtrays.’
Megan snapped back her head and laughed, her bosom shaking underneath the white blouse. Lovely soft handfuls of—
No. Stop it.
Jean seldom entertained and usually ate by herself in her small dining room, reading a book as she ate. Tonight she’d got out all her best silverware and serving dishes and ordered food from a Portuguese bistro. She served it herself, shirt sleeves rolled up, a cigarette dangling from her mouth. The smell of spiced sardines fused with cigarette smoke and the deer-fat tallow of the table candles.
It was a special occasion: a ground-breaking sapphic book by Radclyffe Hall called The Well of Loneliness had just been published and Britain was going wild for it – in both the good and bad sense. Jean had sold all her copies that afternoon and was waiting for a new shipment, which would undoubtedly also sell out. Twice this week she’d had to clean smashed egg from her shop windows.
They finished eating and moved into the sitting room. This was the first time Bettina had met any of Jean’s friends and she felt unusually shy. Scoobie was a fifty-plus-year-old American. She wore a pinstriped suit with spats and her knuckles were thick with gold sovereign rings. She was stout and unlovely with a dirty laugh and she smoked cigars, constantly moving them around her large slug mouth like a dog working on a bone. She looked at Bettina with a tilted chin and approving eyes, as if evaluating a prize mare. Triss, her partner, was a Russian-born thirty-year-old with a sweet, welcoming nature but horrible teeth. She was the ‘woman’ of the pair and wore a long, dowdy woollen dress with a tan leather purse belt around her waist and cream ankle boots.
Both were heavily involved in the literary world and published their own monthly journal celebrating women’s writing (their proudest achievement was printing a quartet of poems by Mina Loy). They also bred racehorses.
Bettina drank fast, tapping her glass for refills. She noticed Jean casting worried little glances – she was showing her off like a rare locket, expecting her to shine. Scoobie did most of the talking – she personally knew Radclyffe Hall, she was now saying, and had just that week had lunch with her.
‘What’s she like?’ Bettina asked.
Scoobie tapped her cigar into an ashtray on her knee. ‘She’s an asshole.’
‘And a fascist,’ added Triss.
‘I’ve heard this about her,’ said Jean, nodding. ‘And her little wifey – have you ever seen her? Eyes like a dead shark.’
Scoobie leaned forward to peer at Bettina. ‘Have you read it?’
‘I have,’ said Bettina.
‘What did you think?’
‘I loved it.’
Scoobie pursed her mouth. ‘Did you now?’
‘Don’t make fun of her,’ said Jean, sliding a protective arm around Bettina’s shoulders.
‘I’m not,’ said Scoobie.
‘You’re about to.’
Scoobie grinned. ‘It’s a horrible book. Virginia Woolf thinks it’s a piece of shit. It’s a hand-wringing apology from a self-loathing bull-dagger. An overwritten turd. Just horrible.’
‘A lot of people would disagree,’ said Jean.
‘Well, it’s ground-breaking,’ said Bettina. ‘And very brave.’
Scoobie nodded. ‘It is brave. I will not argue with you there. But honey, a piece of shit is a piece of shit is a piece of shit.’
‘It’s all subjective,’ said Jean.
‘Would you listen to that?’ Scoobie said to Triss. ‘“It’s all subjective.” Coming from someone who I know agrees with me. Our Janine is pussy-whipped.’ She enacted a whip being snapped. Jean’s cheeks flushed. She started filling up people’s glasses.
‘I wrote a letter to Radclyffe Hall yesterday,’ said Bettina.
‘Oh?’ said Scoobie.
Jean gave her another of those worried little glances.
‘What did you say?’ said Triss.
Bettina cleared her throat. ‘I wrote, “Dear Raddiepoohs. Fancy a dip in my well?”’
A moment of frozen silence. And then the room burst into laughter, with Jean laughing the hardest and longest. Ah, the locket does have a special shine to it after all.
The way she stated her opinion as if it were fact – pure fact. ‘The theatre is dead, everyone knows it.’ That’s what she’d said. Bug-black eyes coolly assessing him over her wine glass.
‘Bettina, darling, I do believe your ladyfriend is declaring me extinct,’ he’d replied, trying to keep his voice merry. For Bettina’s sake.
‘Hey now, I’m not saying you’re extinct,’ said Jean. ‘Acting in itself will never cease to be. Just those great proscenium arches you choose to act under.’ She lit a cigarette. He noted her long fingers.
All the better to go and fuck herself with.
‘You’re handsome – you have options. Movies …’ She waved a limp hand – et cetera, et cetera. ‘Did I offend you there? What I said about the theatre?’
He glanced at Étienne, who was trying to hide a smirk.
‘Yes. But then you called me handsome, so all is forgiven.’
They laughed. Ha haha! He took three long swallows of his wine.
‘I have a friend who works at Warner Brothers,’ she said. ‘I could put a word in for you.’
‘Oh?’ he said. ‘What does your friend do at this studio?’
‘He’s a producer. He’s been put in charge of some new department. He writes me fairly regularly. How about it? It’s the least I could do’ – she smiled in a way that was probably supposed to be impish but came across as condescending – ‘after so rudely insulting you.’
He glanced again at Étienne, who was raising his eyebrows with encouragement.
‘I thank you,’ he said, dipping his head, ‘but it’ll probably be a waste of time.’
‘A waste of time? What are you talking about? They’d lap you up in Tinseltown, Mr Shakespeare. Silent movies are on the way out—’
‘Something else you decree to be extinct?’ said Bettina, smiling.
‘Absolutely. Dead as a dodo. Talkies are coming, silence is dying, end of story.’
‘“Silence is dying,”’ said Bettina, thoughtfully. ‘I like that.’
‘Then by all means,’ Bart said to Jean, ‘tell your friend about me.’ She smiled, satisfied with herself – her natural state, by the looks of things. ‘Thank you,’ he added, quietly.
‘I might use it in my novel,’ Bettina said, half to herself. ‘“Silence is dying”. It has a duality of meaning. Yes … I’m going to jot it down.’ She went into her handbag for the new notebook she carried around with her, at all times. She’d decided to start writing a novel shortly after Monty’s death, and now it was all she ever talked about.
‘So how did you come to be friends with a Hollywood producer?’ he asked Jean.
She snatched her attention away from Bettina (she was gazing at her like a stupid doe) and said, ‘Uh?’ with an almost-scowl.
‘I said, so how did you come to be friends with a Hollywood producer?’ He could feel his jaw tightening.
A bemused chuckle. ‘We’re still talking about that?’
Under the table his fingernails were digging into the tops of his thighs.
‘Creative types tend to flock together, I think,’ she said. ‘Queer creatives even more so.’
‘Queer, is he?’
‘The queerest.’
‘That’s true about us flocking together,’ said Bettina. ‘There’s Étienne the artist, Bart the actor and me the fledgling novelist … though I’m probably getting ahead of myself and shall end up an abysmal failure.’ She laughed with all her teeth showing – it was a laugh of childish vulnerability. She clearly thought this was going well.
‘So what do you do?’ Bart asked Jean.
She slanted her head in confusion.
‘Well, we’re all creatives and your Hollywood friend is a creative.’ He flashed a friendly smile. ‘So what exactly do you create?’
Her face paled – it was already horribly pale to begin with – and she started to fidget with her cigarette tin, opening and closing it with a snap – creak, snap, creak, snap.
Bettina leaned in. ‘Fantastic orgasms!’ she said.
They all laughed, even Jean, but her eyes were entirely humourless.
‘Quelle heure est-il, Monsieur le Loup?’
Étienne lay on the grass, holding Tabby above him. He bared his teeth – ‘Il est trois heures’ – and brought her down to his face, kissing her nose. She wriggled her legs and gurgle-giggled. She’d started laughing a week ago. It had become Bart’s favourite sound, replacing the ‘pock’ of a struck tennis ball and even the soft slap of testicles hitting another set of testicles.
The sun was close to setting – it was nearly nine – and the shadows stretched long and slender from the bottoms of the trees. Bats could be seen flitting high up, but always, teasingly, from the corner of the eye. They were all drunk and sprawled on the grass, except for Megan who was inside running a bath for Tabby, and Jean, who preferred the bench so she could watch all proceedings from her high vantage point, smoking and almost-smirking. Bart had only known the woman for a few hours but he’d already formulated a nickname for her: the Duchess of Disdain.
‘Quelle heure est-il, Monsieur le Loup?’ Étienne growled. ‘C’est l’heure du dîner!’ He lowered Tabby once more and play-bit her neck and she shrieked and chuckled.
‘Don’t get carried away, Uncle Étienne,’ said Bart. ‘We know what happened last time you did that.’
Étienne stopped. ‘Mais oui! You did a little wee-wee on your uncle’s shirt.’
‘In all fairness, it’s not as if she needs an excuse to piss everywhere,’ said Bettina, lighting a cigarette and looking around for Jean, who’d disappeared from the bench. She’d been nipping to ‘the john’ all evening. Bart wondered if she didn’t perhaps have a cocaine habit. He imagined following her in and catching her at it. Would he tell Bettina? Or ask for a line?
Étienne started flying Tabby around like an aeroplane, Bart and Bettina watching and smiling.
‘Isn’t she gorgeous?’ said Bettina.
He nodded. ‘She’s the most gorgeous baby I’ve ever seen, and I honestly doubt parental bias comes into it.’
‘Oh, of course. Entirely objective. She’s objectively the most superior infant in the world, ever.’ She drained the rest of her drink, upending the glass and letting the trickles fall into her mouth. Suppressed a burp with her hand. ‘I can’t believe we made her,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I honestly can’t believe it. We made a little human being.’
‘No. You made her. My part was exceedingly minimal. You grew her.’ And I’m so proud of you, he wanted to add. But she would invariably make a joke about wanting to vomit, or something like that. Instead he took her hand and kissed her knuckle. She raised a sultry eyebrow. ‘Are we having a moment? A tender moment?’ She licked her lower lip, slowly. ‘Shall we fuck?’
And they laughed, falling onto the grass.
‘So,’ she said, once they’d regained their composure. ‘What do you think of her?’
‘Who?’
‘Jean, you turnip. What do you think of her?’
‘I think she seems like a very interesting person.’
‘That’s your way of saying you think she’s horrible.’
‘No! She’s intelligent and full of character. As you know, I like people who are intelligent and full of character.’
Étienne was lying on the ground again, arms and legs spread out like a snow angel, singing ‘Ah! Les Crocodiles’ to Tabby, who was lying on his belly. ‘Les crocrocro, les crocrocro, les crocodiles, sur les bords du Nil …’
‘I know she can be challenging. But once you get to—’
‘Bettina. I like her. And I’m glad she’s making you happy.’
‘Honestly?’ said Bettina.
‘Honestly,’ said Bart.
‘Why are you stopping?’ said Étienne. He was eating salted peanuts from a greasy cardboard box.
‘Hold on a second,’ said Bart, looking out of his side window and scanning the dark shopfronts – it was two in the morning, or thereabouts. He could see a delicatessen with round blocks of cheese on platters and thighs of smoked pork hanging in the window; a ladies’ hat shop – he’d gone in there once to buy a peach-ribboned boater for Bettina. A bit further on there was a tobacco shop and – ah, there it was.
He edged the car forward until he was alongside the shop.
The Cave of Virtue.
Fucking stupid name.
‘What are you doing?’ said Étienne. ‘I want to go home to my bed. I’m exhausted.’
‘I bet you are,’ said Bart, half smiling. They’d just come from Hampstead Heath. Bart had taken a man in his mouth while Étienne fucked him from behind. Vigorously.
He wound down his window then opened the glove compartment and took out a carton of eggs.
‘What are you doing, Bart? Bart?’
He took out an egg and aimed it at the shopfront.
‘Bartholomew?’
He threw the egg and it cracked and splattered all over the glass. He let out an excited, braying laugh and took out another egg, glancing mischievously at Étienne.
‘I don’t like this,’ said Étienne, giving him a dark look. He had powdered salt on his lip.
‘Well, I like it enough for the both of us,’ said Bart, turning back to the window and aiming.