37
They certainly don’t make giving up crime easy. Mr Markby had some idea of me ending up in a university, but no university was going to take me with a criminal record. There were better jobs going than helping out in the Notting Hill restaurants, but I had to fill in a CV and Mr Markby told me then I had to mention all my form because they’d check with the police records anyway and the result was that I never got any of the jobs concerned.
When Lucy stepped down from the dock and never even looked at me, I knew it was well and truly over. I supposed she’d come out of Holloway eventually and go back to her dad’s palace or somewhere like it, and maybe end up by marrying that old boyfriend Tom she dumped what seemed like years and years ago. So I decided to forget her, but it was hard. Just as hard, it seemed, as getting into university or a decent job. But I needed a new life, that was what I needed.
One of the restaurants I worked in was called Il Deliciosa in Westbourne Terrace. No one who worked or cooked in it was at all Italian. Alysia was the manageress, a tall dark-haired woman with greenish eyes that were always wide open in surprise at finding a dirty ashtray or unswept crumbs on any of the Deliciosa’s tables. She definitely ruled the place, and most of them in the kitchen and all the girls who did temporary waitressing to pay their university debts were scared stiff of her. I wasn’t scared because I got the feeling she fancied me, and I thought she wasn’t so bad with all the flashing eyes and dark hair she pushed away from her face when she was really angry. One day when we were in the kitchen she said, ‘We ought to have a date. I’ll take you dancing.’ It seemed a sort of order, like, ‘We’ll do Italian meatballs or stuffed aubergines for the special tonight.’ So I agreed to go dancing with her on a Monday night when the restaurant was closed.
‘I’m going to take you real dancing,’ she told me, ‘not this present-day rubbish where you just wiggle your bottom and wave your fists in the air. None of that at all. Strictly ballroom. You’ll be able to do that, won’t you, Terry?’ At that time I had no idea how strict the ballroom was going to be.
We met at a bar in Shepherd’s Bush. Alysia had high-heeled shoes and a skirt full of pleats and she was clearly excited. I was wearing the only suit I’d been able to save up for. Alysia took me to a place called the Palais Glide off Hammersmith Broadway. At first I looked round in astonishment. There was a small three-piece band playing tunes I didn’t recognize and couples like us in suits and pleated skirts with their arms round each other’s waists and holding up each other’s hands so that they were in close contact gliding, or sliding or sometimes just walking round the floor. I suppose my Aunt Dot and my Uncle Arthur might have danced like that some time, but it wasn’t anything I knew about.
Before I could draw breath, Alysia had grabbed me and had me joining in. She was going backwards but she led me definitely. She occasionally leaned right back and made me lean over her. Then she pushed me back and leaned over me. She called out for me to do something called ‘chassé at the bends’, and I gave a little hop because I had no idea what she was talking about. We went on dancing for what seemed like hours. I was pulled this way and that way, I was told to lean over and lean back by Alysia, her eyes shining with excitement.
There was no licence in the Palais Glide so from time to time we stopped for a Diet Coke. In one of these rest periods Alysia asked me where I lived and I told her over the sushi restaurant. It was then she asked me if I had a big bed.
Well, by now you’ll have guessed what happened, and at midnight Alysia got out of my bed, which isn’t as big as all that, and started to put on her clothes. When I asked her what the matter was she told me. ‘You’re no good at ballroom and when were in bed you were thinking of someone else. Go on! Admit it.’
I should never have done it, I suppose, but I’d got in a way of trying to be honest. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘quite honestly I did sometimes think of her.’
‘Sometimes! Who was she anyway?’
‘Someone I knew. She said she wanted to do some good in the world when I met her.’
‘Do some good!’ The green eyes were very angry, which I knew was only to be expected. ‘How very disgusting! What’s she doing? Feeding the starving Africans, I suppose. What is she, a missionary or something?’
‘No, she’s in Holloway Prison. She’s doing three years for burglary.’
‘That’s not true!’ Alysia couldn’t believe it.
‘Quite true.’
‘How disgusting!’ She was buttoning up as though she couldn’t wait to get out of my place.
‘Not too disgusting. I think she wanted to be like me.’
‘Well, you haven’t done three years for burglary, have you?’
‘Not really. The last time I was inside I got four.’
She was still then, very still. Then she said, ‘Does Geoffrey know that?’ Geoffrey Parsons being the owner of Il Deliciosa.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You never told him?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘It was one of the jobs where I didn’t have to produce my CV. That’s why I took it.’
She was out of my place like a flash. It was the end of our conversation and the end of my job too, because Mr Geoffrey Parsons gave me the sack. I knew I had no one to blame but myself. I should never have gone dancing.
‘I was trying to be honest,’ I told Mr Markby when I next saw him. ‘That was a mistake, wasn’t it?’
‘Not necessarily. Honesty’s quite important in our sort of work.’
‘You think I should be a probation officer?’
‘You might be quite a good probation officer with all your experience of prisons. Unfortunately it seems that your convictions make it impossible. Though I have thought of one job,’ he was actually smiling at me, ‘where you might just possibly be rather successful.’
‘What’s that?’ I wasn’t expecting very much.
‘I just have to consult a few people,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you later.’