Took the half a week’s wages owing to her out of the night’s takings and went without a forwarding address. That’s loosely what Mr Douglas said, if you prefer it that way.’
‘Oh, Christ,’ sighed Francis. He took his cigar out of his mouth and stared gloomily at the shiny, wet end of it. ‘Let’s think. No use hoping that they could do without anyone. The company’s stripped to the bone as it is, and Douglas wouldn’t stand for it. Who can I send up there halfway through a tour?’
Mattie knew. She saw her chance, shining at her like a beacon through the banks of cigar smoke. ‘I’ll go.’
Francis snorted. ‘You? What do you know about stage management? Edge knew what she was doing, if she could get herself off the horizontal for long enough. We’ll have to advertise.’
Mattie jumped up and went round to his chair. She perched on his desk, gripping the splintered wood with her fingers to contain her eagerness. ‘I can do it. I’ve got experience. It’s only amateur, but I know what to do. Let me, Francis.’
He was silent for a second, and her heart jumped in her chest. She pressed on recklessly. ‘I could go straight away. Tomorrow, if you like. You won’t get anyone else that quickly.’ When he still said nothing she begged him. ‘Please, Francis. Send me.’
Francis looked down at her knees. They were smooth and nylon shiny. He put his hand over one of them and squeezed it. For once Mattie didn’t pull away. He was remembering the first time he saw her, singing with old Jessie. She can’t sing, he had thought, but she’s got plenty of other talents.
A rare generous impulse took hold of Francis. He liked her, and she deserved her chance. She was also the worst typist he had ever known. ‘You can go as a fill-in. Just until I find a proper replacement.’
Mattie put her arms around him and kissed the top of his head. Francis leaned back, resting against her breasts, glowing with the pleasure of being rewarded, for once, for having done the right thing. ‘You’re not going for good,’ he reminded her hastily. ‘Just for half a six-month tour. I need you here.’
‘Not for good, of course,’ Mattie agreed. Just for as long as it takes.
Three days later, Julia and Felix were seeing her off from Euston Station. There had been a surprise addition to the send-off party – at the last minute Josh had turned up too.
Mattie leaned out of the carriage window. Sprouts of wet, stale steam separated her from Julia and Felix, and now that the time had come she didn’t want to leave them. In the last weeks in the square they had become a family. But Felix had heaved her one suitcase into the rack over her seat, and her single ticket was stowed in her purse.
‘Goodbye,’ she called. ‘I’ll write, lots and lots.’ As if she was going to Australia. It felt like it, suddenly. She wanted to whisper to Julia, ‘Be as happy with him as you like. Just don’t make him be your happiness.’ There was no chance of saying anything of the kind now, even if she could have found words precise enough to express her uneasiness. Julia was smiling, waving, with Josh’s arm round her shoulder.
Mattie wanted to whisper to Felix, too, but she had even less idea of what she might have said. There was just something in his face, behind his smile. Perhaps bewilderment. Josh’s other arm rested on Felix’s shoulder, drawing the three of them together, into a little circle of light. Josh’s vitality and charm had that effect, Mattie thought.
They might have been a picture, the three of them on the platform. Called something like Au Revoir, or We’ll Meet Again. That was another effect of Josh’s. He didn’t seem to belong, quite, to reality.
The guard’s whistle blew. Steam was thickened with smoke, and the train jolted forwards. She was going, anyway. She would miss them, but she wouldn’t miss her chance.
‘Goodbye! Good luck!’
‘Be a good girl, Mattie!’
She leaned out as far as she could, and blew kisses. ‘Not if I can help it!’ Julia and Felix stood waving, linked by Josh, until the guard’s van of Mattie’s train swayed out of sight.
‘I wish she hadn’t gone,’ Julia said, but she could only make herself aware of Josh. When he was with her everything else faded into insignificance, even the bleakness that she suffered when he wasn’t.
Since the flying weekend he had come to see her two or three times, appearing as if he had just thought of the idea five minutes earlier. His seeming casualness hurt Julia, but she accepted it because there was nothing else she could do.
Josh fitted well into the family in the square. Jessie always had time for good-looking young men, and although Mattie was wary of him for Julia’s sake, her touchiness disappeared when he brought a pile of American records in their paper sleeves and lay on the floor beside her to play them. One of the records was by Bill Haley, and that was the first that Mattie and Julia heard of rock and roll. From that time on, the sound of it belonged to their bedroom over the square, and to Josh.
Julia watched him with admiration, and pride, and such unmistakable love that made Jessie sigh for her. Only Felix held himself apart. He almost never looked straight at Josh. Whenever he was there, Felix was busy in the kitchen or in his own room. If Jessie insisted that he join them, he spread his work out on the table so that he could keep his head bent over that. He did one drawing, of Julia and Josh and Mattie listening to ‘Rock Around the Clock’, and he kept it pinned to the wall in his room.
Felix walked all the way from Euston to the block of flats in Ladbroke Grove. He walked quickly, with his head bent, and the rhythm helped to drum some of the impatience out of him. He didn’t enjoy being with Julia and Josh, but when he was apart from them he found himself thinking about them.
Felix shrugged so angrily that two girls who were passing giggled and stared. He didn’t suppose that Julia and Josh thought about him. He didn’t have any reason to suppose that Joshua Flood thought about anything at all except his various appetites. So why did he occupy Felix’s own consciousness like a splinter under a ball of flesh?
Deliberately, with an effort of will, Felix turned the thought away. He was going to work, and he would concentrate on that.
Felix had given up the pretence of studying art on a formal basis. The building work on the flats belonging to Mr Mogridge’s friend was almost complete, and there were six empty shells waiting to be fitted. Felix discovered that he was expected to be designer and decorator, and he was enjoying the challenge. On a tiny budget, and with his employer’s instructions to make the flats look ‘classy, you know the kind of thing, but not overpowering’, he was struggling to turn his ideas into cupboards and curtains.
Felix hated almost everything to do with modern design. He disliked splashy prints in harsh colours, and spindle-legged furniture, and synthetic materials. Felix dreamed of country houses and acres of brocade, Aubusson carpets and crystal chandeliers and the faded splendours of inherited treasures. It was hard to know how to translate that yearning into the reality of six spectacular conversions in Ladbroke Grove, or even how to recreate the particular atmosphere of the flat above the square, but Felix was going to do his best. By the time he reached the site he had almost forgotten Julia and Josh. On a Saturday afternoon the flats would be empty of builders and their sneering foreman, and he could walk around and think in peace.
So long as he was working, he could keep the darker anxieties at bay.
It was dark, with the sudden depressing weight of a northern
