From the moment that Anya had explained the complexities of the filing system to her, Sophie had enjoyed every moment of her new job. After ten days she knew it would break her heart to leave her dear little office, her wonderfully efficient coffee percolator, her electronic typewriter that scarcely seemed to need more than thoughts to control it. So when Mr Bland called her through into the inner office one morning at ten o’clock, after he had been closeted with Miss Ridge from Staff Appointments, she went with a heavy heart. She knew that Cynthia was not expected back just yet and guessed that he had arranged for someone else to do the job until her return – she had tried so hard to be what he wanted, it just wasn’t fair.
‘Sit down, Miss Markham.’
She sat down, heavy with dread. Her eyes noticed almost without her volition that he had several files on the desk before him and that he would soon be wanting another cup of coffee, for his present cup was nearly empty. A tape lay in his ‘out’ tray, waiting for her to take it for typing.
‘Miss Ridge tells me that you were told you were only here on a temporary basis.’
He waited for a reply, but disappointment kept her dumb. She nodded, her eyes on her hands, lying in her lap. If only she was glamorous, efficiency just was not enough.
‘But I know what the grapevine’s like, so I expect you knew that Cynthia wouldn’t be coming back – and why.’
Surprised, she met his eyes.
‘No, honestly! No one’s said a word about her, to tell you the truth.’
He grinned. The best thing about him, if you were looking for a hero-figure, was his white, even teeth.
‘That just proves you aren’t a gossip, like … like some. That’s a good thing, an advantage in a secretary. Well, now, let me fill you in. Cyn ran off with an actor who’d been working on one of my programmes. The chap got an offer from the States and they both upped and offed, Cyn without a word, mind you. I wouldn’t have her back even if she wanted to come, which is unlikely. Though how long …’ He broke off, looking slightly self-conscious. Sophie wondered what he had been about to say. ‘Well, as you can imagine, I can’t have someone working for me who’ll let me down like that.’
He paused again, so Sophie murmured agreement. She now realised why she had been thrown in at the deep end, why there had been no one to explain things to her.
‘So perhaps you can guess why I’ve called you through.’
‘Yes, I think so. You’ve engaged a permanent secretary and you’d like me to show her the ropes before I go back to the pool.’ She gathered all her courage and stared appealingly across at him. Her voice trembled with the force of her desire. ‘I’ll do my best, sir, but … could you possibly give me a reference for the next secretarial job that comes up? I’ve e-enjoyed working for you very much, and I’d like a secretarial job one day. I’m s-sure I could do it.’
He looked very surprised, she saw, but smug, too, as though he knew something that she did not.
‘It won’t be necessary. I’m offering you the job permanently, Miss Markham. And if you decide to take it, you’ll be Sophie and I’ll be Stephen; we aren’t a formal lot, here at the Centre.’
Sophie couldn’t speak, but she could smile. A beam spread from ear to ear. She knew she ought to say something sophisticated yet grateful, but she could think of nothing suitable. It would be lovely to have that little room for her own, to continue with the delightful salary that went with the job. It would be nice to continue to work for Mr Bland – Stephen – though she still could not think of him as a vulnerable, ordinary man, but only as someone who dictated very fast but very accurately, who knew exactly what he wanted but usually wanted it yesterday, and who sometimes blew his top and shouted and raged and had to be humoured and calmed down with coffee. Not that he had ever shouted or raged at her, or not yet, at any rate. It was usually the studio staff that got his goat, or some unfortunate actor or actress.
‘Well, Miss Markham? Is it to be Sophie?’
‘Oh yes please, Mr Bl … Stephen!’
When she had left him, Stephen sat and stared down at his blotter without seeing it, wondering whether he had done the right thing. Miss Ridge had been doubtful, because of the girl’s youth and also, frankly, because of her size.
‘Won’t you feel awkward down in the studio when she’s trying to follow you round to take notes?’ she had asked him, fixing him with her piercing, light grey eyes. ‘And what about location work – you often took Cynthia out with you, I know.’
‘Yes, but frankly, Ridgie, the girl’s incredibly efficient. She’s been with me ten days, she’s worked like a black, and she’s not made one serious mistake. Not many little ones, either. After the tortures of Dotty, it was sheer bliss to have someone I could trust – she’s a good deal better than Cyn was. The volume of work she gets through is unbelievable and she’s quite willing to work late, or work straight through her lunch hour. I do know what you mean about location shots, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For the time being, I’ll see that she’s kept in the background on the studio floor.’
But now, having got his own way, having burned his boats by telling Sophie that the job was hers, he was having doubts. She was very young, far more naive than he had thought it possible for a girl to be, and very self-conscious.
It was her weight, of course. She was terribly overweight and it was criminal, when you looked at her lovely face with those great big greeny-grey eyes and her soft, red-lipped mouth. He hated allowing his eyes to travel lower, to the bulging obesity of her body, the great legs like trunks ending in tiny, neat feet. Criminal! He had made sure that she was physically fit, checking her medical record with the company, though he had been certain that any sort of glandular abnormality would have meant that they would not have taken her on, even in the pool. He knew that she ate constantly, and all the wrong things, too; she probably thought he didn’t notice, but he did. Her mouth was rarely empty, her wastepaper basket frequently contained sweet and chocolate wrappers, biscuit papers, empty sandwich packages. He knew she seldom lunched in the canteen but when he got back after his own meal the room usually smelt of food – of soup, cooked up in the percolator no doubt, of salami sandwiches, of cakes and chocolate.
He wondered how she would feel, down on the studio floor where all the women were either actresses or efficient and shapely career girls. He knew that the other girls on this floor, who had been Cynthia’s buddies, would not mix with Sophie. Perhaps they would, of course, once they knew she was permanent, but more likely they would not. He knew that girls often hunt in pairs, though they would have indignantly denied it, and supposed that no one wanted to pair up with a girl who would make them look ridiculous.
He thought of her, stretching up to reach a high file. She was huge, terribly overweight, of course she was, yet she was still shapely, so that if you used your imagination you could see how different she could be if she could only bring herself to lose a few stone.
What would it take to bring her to her senses? Perhaps it would help to have a good job, some money to spend on clothes, and the eyes of the studio staff upon her? He did not know, he could only hope.
Sophie returned to the flat that night walking on air, hardly able to wait to share her great news with someone, to find her flatmates congratulatory but absent-minded. They were going out, not with Freddy and Jeremy, but with two new men who had come in to the television centre on business and had suggested to Penny that she and a friend might like to dine with them.
‘Mine’s gorgeous,’ Penny enthused, as the three of them snatched a snack in the kitchen. ‘Black, curly hair, white teeth, melting dark eyes … gosh, wait till you see him!’
It was taken for granted by both girls that Penny, having done the fishing, should have her pick of the catch. It was taken equally for granted that one did not do the dirty on a new male acquaintance by taking along anything but one’s most beautiful friend to a rendezvous. Indeed, it never crossed Sophie’s mind that Penny could have suggested she go along, and if Penny had done so, she would have died before agreeing. The sort of treatment meted out to an unwanted blind date could be too clearly imagined.
‘Black hair, white teeth and melting dark eyes sounds like a spaniel,’ Anya said practically. ‘Still, it takes all sorts. What’s mine like?’
‘Quite nice looking. Handsome, almost. Well, he’s chunkier,’ Penny admitted. ‘A year or two older than mine, but you’ll go a bundle on him.’
‘You mean he’s fat, bald, and pitiful,’ Anya said resignedly. ‘Oh well, so long as he can afford me.’
‘If he’s fat and bald, why are you going to wear your flame chiffon?’ Sophie asked curiously. Her flatmates’ actions were sometimes completely beyond her. Surely one wore one’s best clothes for important people, not just for ugly strangers?
‘Oh, Sofa, you’re so dumb!’ Penny groaned, but Anya was kinder.
‘I’m wearing it in the hope that they’ll take us somewhere smart and expensive, the sort of nightclub that we can grace with our presence,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you go up and tell John and Deidre about the job, Soph? They’ll be ever so pleased for you.’
John and Deidre were the couple who lived on the top floor. Sophie didn’t know if they were married or if they just lived together, but she supposed it didn’t matter. They were very friendly and am using, and Deidre was pregnant so she was home for most of the day and loved a bit of a chat. Sometimes Sophie thought they must be married because Deidre was pregnant and sometimes she thought that it didn’t follow. At home, it would have mattered a lot, but here in London you could get away with anything.
As soon as the girls left and the washing up was done, she hurried up to the top floor, arriving, breathless, to find that John and Deidre were getting ready to go out. John was in the shower but Deidre, who had showered first, was unwinding her curlers and about to brush out her limp, mouse-coloured hair, and she invited Sophie in to watch and talk whilst she finished her hair and did her face.
Sophie was only too delighted to tell Deidre all about the job, and how excited she was at the prospect of visiting the studio when Stephen was working down there, and of going on location with the cast. Deidre listened and nodded appreciatively, then picked up her best maternity dress, a blue thing with innumerable tiny pleats which hung from the shoulders, took off her stained skirt and smock and pulled the blue pleats over her head.
‘That’s marvellous, Sophie. You must be the baby’s godmother, like Anya. I’m sure you’ll be famous one day, you’ll be Discovered or something, and then think how proud my baby will be.’
‘I don’t think secretaries get discovered much,’ Sophie said, with a giggle. ‘But I’d be honoured to be a godmother, only hadn’t you better see what John says first?’
‘Why? What makes you think it’s his baby?’ Deidre’s face, emerging from the pleats, was grinning wickedly at the expression on Sophie’s. ‘It’s all right, you goose, I was only teasing. I asked John what he thought about having you ages ago actually, before fame came your way, and he agreed, so that’s all right. What are you going to do to celebrate? Like to come to the flicks with us?’
‘No, thanks all the same. I’m going to ring home and tell my folks, then I’ll have a really hot, luxurious bath since both the girls are out, and then … I say, if you and John are out, I suppose I couldn’t watch your telly for an hour or so? There’s a programme I’d love to see.’
‘You certainly could. Hang about, I’ve had another idea. If you aren’t in a hurry for your little bed, stay until we come back from the cinema, which should be around half ten, and we’ll have a drink to wish you luck in the new job. And we’ll stop off at the chippie and buy a fish supper for three. How’s that?’
‘Lovely, except that I don’t eat chips. But just this once …’
Deidre cast critical eyes over Sophie’s expanse.
‘I wish you really would try, love, because if you did you’d find your whole life would … Oh dear, you’ll think I do nothing but find fault.’
‘No I shan’t, but I am dieting, honestly. It just doesn’t seem to come off me the way it does off other people. You ask the girls, I hardly ever have lunch now and I don’t eat puddings after the evening meal, or chips, and I don’t buy cream cakes, I get fruit instead.’
Conveniently forgotten the caches of biscuits in her room, the feasts between meals at the office when Stephen was out, the forays into the pantry when everyone else was asleep for those last few cold potatoes or that piece of pie that someone had left.
‘Right. Keep on trying, love. Ah, here’s John, we’re off, then. See you at ten-thirty.’
‘Thanks Deidre.’ Sophie grinned at John, a sweet-tempered, chunky young man with a face like a bull terrier’s. ‘Don’t hurry home for me, I’ll be quite happy sitting in front of your telly.’
Once back in her own flat, Sophie contemplated her evening. She would ring home from the pay telephone in the hall, then have her bath and then go up to the top flat. She had bought the biggest box of chocolates she could find on her way home, and to sit in solitary splendour in front of Deidre’s television, watching an old smoochy movie and eating with no one to watch or criticise, struck her as the perfect way to celebrate. She took a handful of salted peanuts out of her bedside cabinet, in case it took her a while to get through to her home, and went down to the hall. She was lucky, the telephone only rang twice and then it was Devina who answered.
‘Sophie, darling, how lovely to hear your voice.’ She had written to her mother within two days of arriving in London, and phoned now and then, though she resolutely refused to give them an address or a telephone number through which they could contact her. Now, however, with the job and the flat behind her, there was no reason why they should not know where she worked and lived.
‘Hello, Mum. I rang to tell you I’ve moved out of the hostel into a super new flat, and I’ve got a wonderful job. I’m personal secretary to a television producer. He’s a marvellous person, and he thinks I’m pretty good, so I hope this will last for a while yet.’ Her tone implied that if it ended, it would be because she had found something better.
‘That sounds lovely – does it mean you might come home for a little holiday? We’re longing to see you again, we miss you terribly.’
I bet you do, Sophie thought crudely, like you miss Atilla the Hun, or chicken-pox. But she did not say so aloud. It was kindness which made her mother lie, and it was kindness not to burst the bubble.
‘Can’t take on a new job and a new flat and then come running home,’ Sophie said briskly. ‘I need every penny I can lay hands on at the moment; I’ve borrowed a few quid off one of my friends to buy bits and pieces for the new place.’ She had no intention of returning home until she was rich and successful – and glamorous, of course. Anyway, Lavvy’s temporary infatuation with Peter Brewer had proved far more permanent than anyone had supposed. Devina, who had never known why her third daughter had fled the party that dreadful night, frequently mentioned ‘The nice boy who came to Lavvy’s party – I don’t suppose you noticed him, dear.’ If she returned home, he would be produced for her admiration, and she didn’t want to see him or any of them again until she was … transformed.
Just how the transformation was to be performed she had only the vaguest of notions, but an essential part of it would be a young man of her own, whom she could flourish even more triumphantly than Lavvy could flourish Peter Brewer.
‘That is a pity, it seems so long since you were here.’ Devina’s voice was genuinely disappointed. ‘Elsa did say she might come up to London and have a day with you, when the weather is warmer. If it wasn’t such a long way … What did you say your new job was, darling?’
‘I’m personal secretary to Stephen Bland, he’s a television producer.’ Sophie’s voice rose alarmingly above the crackle caused by 200 miles of telephone wires. ‘I get a marvellous salary, and I work with him, I take notes for him on the studio floor and I go on location with him when he’s working on something that needs location shots. Did you get that, Mum?’ It was essential that Devina not only got it, but passed it on. Success had eluded Sophie totally for the first nineteen years of her life; she had not even won the yearly bonny baby competition run by the local Women’s Institute the way her sisters had, due to being short on hair at the critical time. She raised her voice to a positive scream. ‘Mum! Did – you – get – that?’
‘Yes, darling, you’re personal secretary to a television producer.’ Devina sounded satisfyingly amazed. ‘I always knew you had it in you to do something wonderful – all my children are talented.’
At this point the last of Sophie’s tens disappeared with a click, and they only had time for hasty goodbyes before the pips took over. Sophie replaced the receiver with a sigh of satisfaction, returned to the flat and ran her bath as hot as she could. Wonderful, to know that even now Devina was telling everyone that Sophie was as talented as the rest of her children – possibly she was sighing, saying how her daughter had changed, but that was on the credit side. A change might not be a transformation, but it was a start!
Once in the water she lay there for a long time, half-mesmerised by the heat and by the sweet, heady scent of Penny’s luxury bath salts which had been lent for the occasion. Just to make everything perfect she had made herself a plateful of honey sandwiches which she ate slowly, getting maximum enjoyment out of her hedonistic pastime. She felt wonderful, like Cleopatra in her asses milk or whatever it was that the Egyptian beauty had bathed in.
A glance at her watch, however, balanced on the cork-topped bathroom stool, told her that she would have to get herself dried and dressed soon or she would miss the beginning of her film. She struggled upright and as she did so, felt a horrible, unfamiliar drag on her hips. She stopped moving. Strange! She tugged, then tried to turn on her side, and realised what had happened. She was wedged firmly in the narrow end of the old-fashioned bath. Panicking, she lashed wildly from side to side, sending waves of water out onto the floor. But she remained trapped.
After five minutes of futile and tearful tugging, she sat still to consider the situation. The bath had probably been put in when the house was first built, a hundred years ago. It was sturdy, battered, but it could not possibly have broken the way she had been imagining. No, what she felt was not the awful grip of a crack in the enamelled metal, but merely suction. And suction could be broken, if she just used her common sense. If she did not, if she continued to tug and panic, she would find herself being rescued by the girls, or by their men friends, and that would be a humiliation far worse than drowning!
In the end she was visited by inspiration. She tweaked the plug out with her big toe and, once she was high and dry, she found it quite easy to get to her knees and then to climb out of the tub.
She was shaking all over though, and she sat for a long while on the bathroom stool, wrapped in a towel, trembling and feeling sick. She had missed her smoochy film and her bottom was black and blue, but more than that, she knew she should see this as a warning. Today the bath, tomorrow the lift at work! She must make an effort to lose weight.
But I am trying, she kept telling herself. I do eat very much less. Deep inside, a nagging little voice mocked her. Liar, liar, it said, you aren’t eating less, you’re just eating more secretively. But she would not listen to the little voice. It was a liar itself, how could one eat secretively, for goodness sake? She would heed this warning, though, she would begin to eat less. She would start tomorrow.
She glanced again at her watch, Nine-thirty. In an hour Deidre and John would be back, she must get herself dressed and up to their flat or they would suspect that something was wrong. Half-way up the stairs, she remembered the box of chocolates. She hesitated. She should not eat them, of course, but on the other hand they were bought, someone had to eat them, and she was celebrating the job. She turned back. She would just have a few, the rest she would give to Deidre. Poor Deidre would appreciate a few chocolates, shut up by herself in the flat all day.
She was eating the second layer and telling herself that she should stop any minute when she realised that, if she did as she had planned, Deidre would know that she had not been entirely truthful over her dieting. With a sigh, she pulled the box onto her lap once more; fingers, already sticky, selected the next chocolate. This would be a final blow-out before she cut sweet things right out altogether. Tomorrow.
Just after Easter, Anya and Penny decided to have a party.
‘Nothing too noisy or crowded, since we don’t want anyone to grumble. Just some drinks and a buffet supper. We could ask a couple of extra girls and a couple of extra men. Anyone you’d like to ask, Sofa?’
‘Well, what about John and Deidre?’ Sophie said, but Penny snorted.
‘No fear, it isn’t a married sort of party! Why don’t you ask Stephen?’
Sophie’s mind registered that John and Deidre were married and that Stephen was not, the last with some surprise. They were getting on very well at work, but she still knew almost nothing about her boss. She bought red roses on his behalf sometimes, and tickets for shows or for the ballet, and had thought it quite likely that he was either married or, at least, engaged to some glamorous actress or other.
‘I couldn’t ask Stephen, we’re not on those sort of terms,’ Sophie said, having thought the matter over. ‘Are you sure he isn’t married, Penny? Or engaged, or something?’
‘Sophie, you’re without normal human curiosity! Didn’t it occur to you to ask anyone if he was married?’
Anya was smiling, but Sophie was a little stung, nevertheless. She smiled back rather stiffly.
‘No, I never think about it. I just assumed that he was taking a wife or a girlfriend or something to the theatre and things, when he asked me to book tickets.’
‘He probably takes a different girl to everything,’ Penny said. ‘He likes women, does Stephen. You can ask him without feeling bad about it, you know; he’s quite different away from the centre.’
‘No I couldn’t. It wouldn’t do at all. Look, shall I go out for the evening? I could, easily. For that matter, I could stay out all night if it’s going to be a late party.’
Penny began to speak, possibly to say that it was a good idea, but Anya cut across her impatiently.
‘Really, Sofa, anyone would think you still felt an outsider in this flat, and I’m sure I’ve done my best to make you feel at home. Of course you must stay. I’ll invite some nice young man who’ll suit you down to the ground.’
‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ Sophie said quickly, with hideous visions of Peter Brewer crowding into her mind. ‘If that was what I wanted, I’d go out and look round for myself. Thanks.’
‘Yes, but that’s no guarantee that you’d find.’ That was Penny, sharp as ever. ‘Look, we’ll make it three extra girls and four extra men, that’ll make everyone comfortable.’
‘Except me.’ Sophie glared at Penny. ‘If you think it’s amusing to watch four men manoeuvring so that they don’t get landed with the fat girl, I don’t think much of your sense of humour. I said no and I meant no!’
Anya who usually took Sophie’s side, scowled at her.
‘Blimey, Sofa, what do you think we are, for God’s sake? This is a civilised get-together, not a mass screwing session or a gang-bang! We aren’t going to pair off for anything other than conversation.’
Abashed, Sophie mumbled an apology and promised to buy herself a new dress especially. It annoyed both Anya and Penny that, despite her large salary, she still bought very few clothes, apart from what they called ‘sensible stuff’ to wear to the office. This, as she had guessed it would, calmed them both down, and they were able to discuss the party without any more acrimony.
Next day, during her lunch hour, Sophie hurried along to C & A and bought a black lace dress with tiny thin shoulder straps and a plunging décolletage. Privately, she thought she looked like a sorrowing Spanish widow in it, but the girls thought otherwise.
‘It’ll do fine. Look, you must wear a bright scarf tucked into the belt and a pair of gaudy earrings,’ Penny said. ‘That way, you’ll catch eyes without drawing attention to your size. Are you going to give us a hand with the catering?’
This was tongue in cheek, and Sophie laughed obligingly. She was the only one of the three who was capable of anything but the most basic cookery, and the other two were loud in their praise when she decided to try out a new recipe. Furthermore, she was the only one who actively enjoyed cooking, so it was only fair that it should be her main contribution to the party.
‘I’ll do it all, how’s that? Then I’ll be so busy listening to the praise of my cooking that I shan’t waste time wondering whether I’m making a good impression.’
That was a dig at Penny, who had said in a moment of rage that Sophie spent far too much time wondering what other people thought of her instead of doing something about it. The truth in the remark had stung, but, as yet, Sophie had still not acted on what Penny had said. As yet, the diet was in the mind but not off the stomach. Being stuck in the bath had given her an awful fright, but it had not made her eat less. Instead, she shut herself in the bathroom, ran a bath and knelt in it, having inadequate sponge-downs. She excused herself on the grounds that it was only a temporary thing and that any day now she would lose the few extra pounds which had caused her humiliation.
The party, which had not given her much pleasure when they first talked about it, began to seem exciting as the day drew near. It was to be somewhat smaller than Penny had suggested, since now it would consist of the three girls themselves and Tara, a young actress who Penny knew vaguely. The men would be Freddy (Anya’s) and Jeremy (Penny’s), and two others, Garth and Phil.
‘Garth isn’t a name, it’s an old cartoon’ Sophie had objected, but Anya assured her that Garth was a nice young man, very respectable, who worked in a bank.
The evening, and the guests, arrived. Tara was not the total stranger that Sophie had expected; she remembered seeing her, vaguely, in crowd scenes in one of Stephen’s productions. She was very pretty, very catty, and very loud; her asides were delivered in such ringing tones that Sophie was sure they could be heard down at the television centre, and since the first of those asides dealt with her own weight, she hated Tara accordingly.
‘It’s Stephen’s new secretary, isn’t it?’ Tara had said to Penny, in a clearly audible hiss. ‘Darling, I’m sure she’s just as efficient as they say – there’s so much of her that if she hadn’t been efficient she’d have been extinct, like the good old brontosaurus.’
It had not helped that Penny had sniggered, nor that Garth, talking to Anya, had passed a hand across his mouth.
Furthermore, it soon became clear that the best laid plans were about to take a nose-dive. Garth, a friend of Anya’s, had been intended, in the nicest possible way, as a spare man who could talk to Sophie so that she did not feel out of it. But Jeremy had supplied his friend Phil for Tara, and Tara and Phil loathed each other on sight.
‘What is it, darling, a walking haystack?’ Tara had hissed. And Phil, eyeing her dyed black hair with little beads threaded into it, her see-through muslin blouse which revealed her small, droopy breasts, and the stage make-up which adorned a fairly unprepossessing countenance, had been equally unenthusiastic.
Garth, on the other hand, thought that Tara was fascinating. He laughed at her catty remarks, asked questions about her ‘work’ as though she was a budding Glenda Jackson, and when at last they went into the kitchen to help themselves to the buffet supper, was so firmly attached to her side that they looked as though they had been glued at the elbow.
Sophie, ruefully piling her plate, prepared to be haystacked all evening. He could, she thought resentfully, have cut a small hole in the front of all that hair, so that she could see whether he was looking at her or not. He should have got on so well with Tara, too! He, like she, had beads sewn into his thatch at intervals, what looked like a well-gnawed finger on a leather thong round his neck, and though he had drawn the line at a see-through blouse and voluminous skirt and wore perfectly ordinary jeans and a grubby sweater, both he and Tara were clad in those awful leather sandals which are held on by laces knotted, like varicose veins, around the calves.
Although Anya had waxed so indignant at the thought that they might pair off, that was exactly what happened. Sophie, hoping that Phil might prove to have an interesting mind, failed to find it beneath all that hair. Trying to ignore the increasingly amorous behaviour of everyone else in the room, she asked him some questions and found him to be a man of few words, and those that he did utter were in such a broad, if unidentifiable, accent that she was quite glad when he did not embark on any lengthy sentences.
‘Did you try some of the prawn fondue? It was nice, wasn’t it?’ she essayed, as they sat down and began to eat.
‘Yump,’ came the reply from somewhere under the hair. Sophie, watching closely, saw that he had a large mouth and a lot of very sharp teeth and presently discerned a pointed, longish nose reminiscent of a weasel’s. Occasionally small, beady eyes could be seen as he turned his head the better to tackle his supper. But since these glimpses merely served to confirm her impression of an animal at bay, it did little to ease the conversational desert they seemed to be wading through.
‘Umm … do you know Jeremy very well? I suppose you work together. What do you do, Phil?’
The chewing stopped. She could tell because his heard ceased to waggle up and down.
‘I don’t. I’monnerdole.’
‘Oh.’ She was only saved from saying, brightly, ‘That sounds interesting,’ by the sudden realisation that he had said he was on the dole. Quickly, her heart thudding at her near faux pas, she said, ‘Well, I expect something will turn up. Have you tried the barbecued chicken?’
The haystack swung from side to side; he had not tried the barbecued chicken. He appeared to be intimating that he would like to do so, however, so Sophie offered a piece of her own, holding it out rather fearfully towards where she imagined his mouth was.
He laughed. It was an odd laugh for one so large and hairy; it was squeaky, almost feminine.
‘I won’ bycher!’
‘No, I’m sure you won’t, but I’d better get you a piece of your own.’
She hurried into the kitchen and leaned against the sink, feeling quite dizzy with the effort of acting naturally. She was trying very hard not to notice Tara behaving in an uninhibited fashion on the floor with Garth, or Penny and Jeremy, who seemed, at first glance, to be inhabiting the same loose white shirt. Even the reliable Anya was lying on the cushions with Freddy’s head pillowed on her crotch. How long can I stand it, Sophie agonised. Phil had to be the weirdest; she could not face the thought of an entire evening spent making conversation with someone who did not even speak English!
She returned to the living room and her companion, but soon it became obvious that some people had drunk a lot more than they should have done. Penny was squirming across Jeremy’s lap, making movements which Sophie normally associated with randy dogs. She noticed and quickly moved so that her back was to the couple, which gave her a first-class view of Garth and Tanya; Tanya’s skirt was rucked up and her blouse was gaping. Pained, Sophie turned round a bit more, and discovered that Anya and Freddy had actually left the room. Gracious!
After that, the pattern of the evening was set, though Sophie did not realise it. Another twenty minutes of monosyllables from Phil and strained, self-conscious small-talk from her, and Penny and Jeremy also got up and staggered out. Sophie knew that they were going to Penny’s bedroom, and though she told herself she was not shocked, she did feel a little uneasy.
With reason, as it turned out. Five minutes later, Tara whined in her peculiarly resonant stage voice, ‘Why haven’t they gone, then? Bugger it, this is supposed to be a party! I’m not performing with them sitting there like the audience at the Lyric, Garth darling!’
Sophie glanced uneasily at the haystack. Suppose he realised that her bedroom was unoccupied, suppose he was waiting for her to suggest … She shuddered. If he had nurtured any such ideas, why hadn’t he even attempted to hold her hand? It was extremely insulting, really, except that he was such a turd that even he must know it.
‘Comeonen.’
He was standing up, holding out a hand to her. She noticed that in his other hand he was grasping the neck of a bottle of gin; he had been taking swigs out of it all evening.
Feeling every sort of fool, Sophie surged to her feet. She had better go with him, and then she would tell him that she had to go up to the top flat to see her friends, and would suggest, nicely of course, that it was about time he went home. He took her hand and pulled; he was surprisingly strong, really; she found herself close to him without any clear idea of how she had crossed the intervening space. Together, they went out into the hall.
‘Whichizit?’
‘If you mean my room, it’s that one, but …’
He pushed open her bedroom door, towed her inside, and shut the door behind her. Rather to her surprise Sophie felt a tingle, only partly of apprehension, run up her spine, She decided, on the spur of the moment, to be a good sport. After all, everyone else had been carrying on this evening, and if it was expected of her …
He pushed her onto the bed and grabbed her. His kiss was forceful and his mouth was wet, dribbly almost. What was more, his beard was prickly and uncomfortable and he definitely smelt. Of gin, yes, but of something else, something very much nastier. A strong, male, ammoniacal whiff which made her eyes water. He was kissing her again, pushing his tongue between her lips, tasting her in a very odd fashion which, despite her murmur of protest, was exciting in a horrible sort of way. Then he pulled and pushed her, as if she was made of some sort of malleable dough, until she was resting against the pillows, and his hand slid across the top of her dress, hesitated, then pushed inside.
She stiffened, her breathing quickening, for his hand, with its long, strong fingers, had the authority that his mouth lacked. He lifted her breast from the cup of her bra, not without difficulty, for her breasts were large and the dress fitted snugly across them- and began to squeeze and caress her nipple.
Somehow, she did not know how, he managed to free both her breasts from her dress. In the dim moonlight coming through the window he gazed at them, or she supposed he did. He certainly sat very still for a moment, with his head slightly bent, as if he was gazing at them. Then he supported one of them up to his mouth.
It was then that she knew what it was that made Penny move her body against Jeremy’s, why Anya and Freddy had left the party to be alone. She groaned his name, moving so that he might reach her more easily, and her hands went to his hair, sliding down the sides of his face, feeling the jawbone beneath the beard, the movements of his mouth as he began to suck.
When he pushed her away, she thought that it must be so that they could move on to some other phase of love-making. She lay, bare-breasted, looking up at him, consenting. But he was turning away, shuffling towards the door.
‘Gorrergo,’ he mumbled. ‘Fanks.’
‘Oh, but Phil …’
The closing door shut off her words, killed the plea in her throat. She rolled onto her stomach, the desire which he had roused in her still strong, so that she could not believe it was not the same for him, could not believe he would not, presently, come back. Had he gone to have a pee, perhaps? Or for something else to eat?
He had not. She heard the outer door of the flat close, heard his footsteps fumbling downstairs. She felt as though he had slapped her in the face – God, but she had been shameless, she had been prepared to let him do what he would, and for why? Lust? Had her big, overblown body lusted for a man without her even knowing it? She shuddered and wished she could blame the drinks she had drunk, but she knew it was not that.
Presently, she rolled off the bed and turned on her radio. She felt awful, degraded not by Phil the haystack, but by herself. The disc jockey had just put on one of her favourite records, perhaps she would feel better when she had heard it. She sat on the edge of the bed, willing herself to concentrate on Simon and Garfunkel and the sweet, schmaltzy music. She loved this one, she knew it well, it had comforted her often as she worked around the flat.
And then, suddenly, she was really listening to it, as though she had never heard it before, and the unconsidered words were being sung to her, were sharp as a knife, twisting in her bowels:
Asking only workman’s wages
I come looking for a job
But I get no offers,
Just a come-on from the whores
On Seventh Avenue.
I do declare,
There were times when I was so lonesome
I took some comfort there.
By the time it ended she was in a crumpled heap on the floor, sobbing, biting the back of her hand, almost out of her mind with the pain of it. No comfort! A man could find comfort of a sort with a whore and she had tried to find comfort with Phil, for that was all it would have been, the comfort of acceptance. But all she had known was the bitter taste of rejection, for Phil had not wanted her. What was it Tara had called her? A brontosaurus, someone so huge that they should be extinct. Tears, hot and blinding, channelled down her cheeks. She ached with misery; it was a physical pain so acute that she hugged herself, cradling her body in her arms, trying to give herself the comfort that Phil had refused her.
She could not have said how long she crouched there, nor how dark were the thoughts that festered in her mind. She knew that she had reached a watershed in her life, that after tonight nothing could ever hurt her quite so much again. She knew, too, that there had been a moment when there had seemed to be only one course open to her. A quotation, half-remembered from school, had floated in the shadows of her mind: Finish, good lady, the bright day is done, and we are for the dark. Finish, good lady.
She knew, then, that she could not go on like this, getting worse and worse, caring less and less. She might not end it now, but one day, when she had lost even more pride, when she had sunk lower, she would choose the dark.
She sat up, tear-blubbered, and made a vow. This must never happen again. She was young and healthy, she had will-power and determination. It was up to her to see that the life that had been given to her was not wasted, thrown away, because if she did not care, no one else would.