Chapter 22: Juliet - The Golden Hours

Going home to the family for dinner always cheered Juliet up. The way you could just drop in, and someone would be there, and there’d be food. When they’d still lived in Brook Green it had been easy to ricochet home from Notting Hill on the 27 bus when she felt like it. Home was reliably warm, with dear Mum and funny old Dad. If she needed to feel that she mattered, or if she hadn’t anything for the gas meter, or if Mrs Collings the landlady had been giving her grief about ‘gentlemen callers’ – when she never had any, and certainly not after ten o’clock – or when gentlemen (ha! Such a misnomer) had been giving her grief about all the things men just did give girls grief about, she could nip down there. She adored the children, though she’d caught herself about to say, ‘My, how you’ve grown,’ recently, which was a bit shockingly ageing, she felt, and of course she loved Clary and Archie. Family just holds on to you, doesn’t it? Like a little gold anchor under your skin, pulling a little if you wander too far. But since they’d all moved in together in Mortlake it was hard to get to – that kind-of-overground train, or endless buses. It was like trying to get to the country. Perhaps one day she’d have a car. She’d already had driving lessons, and passed her test.

On the bus to Hammersmith, she sat near the platform on the long seat, putting up with the cold in order to be safely near the clippie, not to be alone upstairs or at the front. A little MG, she thought, or something Italian. An Alfa Romeo? Chic and small. Then she wouldn’t need to accept lifts home from men with one thing on their mind. But if you can’t afford your own taxi, Juliet, how are you going to afford a car? Other girls just got boyfriends. Well, she’d tried that. It just didn’t work out. It never had. Men were just all over you. Octopuses! Some girls liked that, she knew. Not her. Were all men like that? They just – oh, she didn’t understand. They all wanted to kiss you and stick their tongues in your mouth and then if you let them, you were a tart. And if you didn’t, you were a lesbian. She hadn’t known what that was. Her friend Chrissie, who called herself Pansy now, explained in the end and, to be honest, Juliet was quite surprised. She thought Mum ought to have told her, really, that such a thing existed. But Zoë hadn’t told her much at all, and hadn’t explained anything. Just said, in effect, Beware of men, they’re only after one thing. Juliet had slightly hoped Clary might fill in the gaps for her, but Clary was always off busy with her own life.

And if you weren’t a lesbian, you were frigid. She hadn’t known what that was either, and when she learned she wondered if perhaps she was. Pansy thought Juliet was just scared of sex, and that it wasn’t surprising as it could be scary if you weren’t used to it. And also, to be honest, if you were.

A man moved past where she sat, then turned around to give her a good stare. Sensing it, she automatically froze.

Don’t sit next to me, just don’t –

She felt embarrassed, as if he knew she was thinking about sex and that’s why he stopped.

He grunted softly, and moved on. She breathed out, and spread her bag a little wider on the seat beside her.

Pansy went to bed with men all the time – or said she did. She claimed to love it, and to be in love with them, and then she cried and cried when they didn’t ring her up. It just went round in the same circle: she’d meet someone, she was madly in love with him, she’d let him take her to bed, he’d go quiet, she’d cry for a week. It was idiotic! What was wrong with her? This much Juliet had worked out: men wanted sex, and didn’t care where they got it; women wanted love, and sex was the price they had to pay. So no, thank you.

Pansy was in other ways a girl like her. She had a family in Hertfordshire or somewhere, she wanted to be an actress but was mostly modelling even though she was quite plain – she was tremendously thin, much thinner than Juliet, but her main attraction was her long hands, smooth and languid with shapely nails. Pansy was always being shipped off to Paris to wear diamond rings and hold up pots of hand cream, then she’d sleep with the photographer or the jeweller or the man from the agency and it would all be floods, again. Just as well she’s not a proper model, Juliet thought, because her eyes are always red. Not that I’m one to talk. She had done some modelling, not hands because her nails were bitten to the quick; not fashion because her bosoms were too big, and Louise wouldn’t let her do underwear because it was, she said, ‘an unsavoury world’. But she had done some catalogues, alongside some pretty-peasant roles in historical dramas. This week she’d had her first job as an actual actress, with words: she’d had to wear a very itchy outfit with a fair amount of cleavage, and call out, ‘But my lady!’ to Sybil Thorndike – a great honour apparently. She was fairly sure Louise had shipped her in as emergency cover for someone else who had let them down – she’d got the call at ten in the morning and everyone kept calling her Anne. But even so. One of the producers was on set, some chap called Joseph, who Juliet was pretty sure was in love with her. With Louise. Not with Juliet. Nobody was in love with Juliet. Some old slimebags would pretend they were but she saw right through them. Married toads with Jaguars. Arm-along-the-back-seat-of-the-banquette men. Wolfish, dirty-looking men who called themselves intellectual and smoked all the time.

She knew she was beautiful. Everybody said so and she could see it in the mirror. But what was the point of being beautiful? Why did everybody go on about it when all it meant was that men were all over you and you had to try to be polite while also trying to get them to leave you alone? Auditions and interviews were a nightmare. No, I don’t want to go to dinner with you, I want the job!

It seemed that she didn’t really have much else to offer, beyond being pretty. It was quite depressing really. It must be rather wonderful to be clever like Clary, or successful like Louise. Or a countess loved by all and living in a huge house, like dear Polly. Even Harriet and Laura are clever at school. And I wasn’t even that, she thought.

Anyway, she wanted something more than yelling at Sybil Thorndyke, who wasn’t exactly glamorous. I mean, she’s not Twiggy. It seemed so unfair to want, so badly, and just not know what it was that you wanted! Was it a career? A husband and family? A change? An adventure? Admiration? Backbone? Character? Money! She would sit and stare into her coffee and just want. She’d been so excited to go to Pinewood but, to be honest, she’d hardly seen the famous people at all. And there had been a great deal of hanging around. It did feel good to have a car sent for her, though.

She went into a little dream as the bus crossed Hammersmith Bridge: twinkling lights, the lion on the screen roaring in its golden film reel, the swell of the soundtrack, and her name writ large:

STARRING

JULIET CAZALET

Oh, silly.

Across from her on the bus an older woman sat with a small dog like a mop-head on her lap. It seemed to be called Anastasia. Perhaps I want a dog, Juliet thought – but she knew that was copping out somehow. Perhaps I could make a list of what I don’t want, she thought, and work it out by a process of elimination. It can’t be that hard. I’m not stupid. For a moment she wondered if she was stupid. Then decided stupid people would be too stupid to ask that question.

She wanted money, that was for sure. She wanted to be in a taxi now, not on a bus. But how can a girl get money? Mostly, they’d inherit it, or marry it. Well, Mum and Dad didn’t really have any, and she didn’t want to marry anybody. She didn’t want to be married. Some man telling you what to do. Keeping house. God, no. She just needed to get a proper part in a film, JULIET CAZALET, become incredibly famous and successful, then she’d be free. And what would she do with her freedom? I’d go dancing, every night, she thought. I’d dance till dawn, I’d be famous for not going home with anybody, I’d have a chauffeur waiting outside the nightclub to drive me back to my houseboat in Chelsea, or my huge warehouse in Wapping.

She stopped herself.

She had, briefly, had what she wanted, eight years ago, when she was fifteen. He’d said he would marry her when she was old enough, that they would live on a houseboat, or in a warehouse, and be happy. He’d rolled that plastic emerald ring from the cracker across the dinner table to her, in front of the whole family; she’d caught it, their eyes had locked. Later, he had kissed her.

‘Neville,’ she whispered.

There was nobody she could talk to about this.

And it had been snatched from her. Or, it had deserted her. She’d been too young to know what was happening, and she hadn’t seen him since. Everybody had been strange and secretive about it and nobody had explained! Which they should have. And he just went away, without saying anything to her, which was not very brotherly. She wasn’t to talk about it.

Then apparently he was getting married, in Cuba.

She hadn’t understood, back then, that half-brothers and sisters aren’t allowed to marry. Now, she did. But she still didn’t understand why he had said it. He was an adult – even then. He’d been twenty-five. The age she was now. Old enough to know things.

She thought about Cuba often: palm trees, dancers. Huge stars wheeling across tropical skies. Crystal waters. Wild music.

Nobody had told her anything else.

She loved him all right. And he loved her, she knew that. People assumed things, assumed you knew things and were just like them, like everybody else. But she did not always understand. Sometimes people looked at her with exasperation, as if she were stupid, as if she ought to just know. But she didn’t. She couldn’t make sense of it.

One thing she was beginning to understand: she was not like most people assumed everyone to be.

When Juliet got back to Clanricarde Gardens, Mrs Collings was there in the hallway in her housecoat, long grubby plaits down her back, twisted belt knotted at the waist. Mrs Collings lived in the basement, like a gnome, and had a habit of coming up to the hall and lying in wait until a lodger arrived, in order to complain about their behaviour. It was only eleven, but she wanted to know where Juliet had been, asking in her genteel voice, insidious and impertinent. It was none of her bloody business!

‘I’ve been having supper with my parents,’ Juliet said, spotlessly.

Mrs Collings looked disbelieving.

Juliet smiled and squeezed past her.

‘I’ve my eye on you,’ Mrs Collings said, and Juliet suddenly wanted nothing so much as a bath. But the bathroom was horrid: she shared it with the other women, plus their smalls hanging on nylon wire across the window. Why were people so obsessed with sex? Ugh, she thought, racing up the stairs with a sudden burst of energy.

‘No running!’ Mrs Collings yelled. ‘At this time of night. You’ll wake my gentlemen!’

Juliet slammed her door.

She hadn’t been able to tell Louise what had happened at the audition for the TV show. It was probably her fault, but she’d thought that as the show was glamorous she’d better look glamorous, so she’d worn a little sleeveless dress, snug to her figure. She’d made it on Aunt Rachel’s ancient old hand-operated Singer, from a Liberty tana lawn of big white flowers on black, with a neat little belt and a boat neck. It looked pretty good. The part was a girl in a coffee bar, so she’d left her shiny auburn hair down like a teenager but put on plenty of eyeliner and mascara in the beat style. In her mind, red lipstick meant sex and white lipstick meant style, so she only ever wore white. But this man – Arnold; fortyish, big square black spectacle frames and a knitted tie – evidently didn’t share her colour code.

She had thought that his being a friend of Louise would keep her safe, but he was eyeing her up the moment she walked in; he immediately sent his secretary off on an errand, and within five minutes he was kneeling behind her pulling at her hemline to tighten the fabric over her bum and saying that as it was a beach scene – nobody had said anything about a beach scene! – he really did need to see her figure properly. ‘I’m not asking you to take your pretty frock off,’ he said, through the cigarette in his teeth, as if he could easily make her if he chose to, ‘but let me just get a proper view of the hourglass.’ The proper view involved his hands readjusting her hips while he stood close behind her and she felt his faggy breath on her neck. He probably thinks this inflames me with lust, she thought. In fact, it made her feel like throwing up right there. And, actually, scared inside. Do they know how they scare us? If they know, do they care? She wanted to kick him. In the balls!

She stepped away.

‘Oh, don’t be like that,’ he’d said, and for a moment she’d wanted to cry she was so disappointed – but why would she expect anything else? So instead she’d laughed.

Arnold smiled, relieved. ‘That’s better,’ he said.

He’s going to call me a silly little rabbit or something, she thought. Derisive, she thought. That’s how I feel. I deride him! Pansy would probably fall in love with him right now, big black spectacles and all. But I’m getting so well-armoured by now that nobody will ever be able to get through. Unless they’re already there.

‘I think this might work very well,’ Arnold was saying. ‘Turn around for me.’

She turned around.

‘I’d love my producer to meet you,’ he said, adjusting her shoulder straps and breathing in her face. ‘Can you come back this evening, six thirty?’

She gave him her dazzling smile, the one Pansy’s friend Robert called her FUCK OFF smile – he insisted it had to be in capitals. Thinking of that made her smile even more dazzling. ‘Of course,’ she said.

At six thirty she was with Pansy and Robert on their way to Eel Pie Island, to listen to a blues band. She’d plaited her hair and tucked it up on her head; swapped the dress for jeans and a jumper, extended the eye-liner. She loved Robert, who was a medical student and, funnily enough, what Pansy called a pansy, i.e. queer. The Pansies were Juliet’s best friends. Safe and funny and didn’t expect anything of her. She told them about Arnold and they all roared with laughter. They called men like that DOCs – Disgusting Old Creeps.

* * *

A few days later she was woken by Mrs Collings yelling up the stairwell: ‘Telephone, Miss Cazalet. Don’t think I’m coming up there with my knees. Miss Cazalet! There’s a telephone call for you. You are responsible for answering your own calls, Miss Cazalet, may I remind you . . .’

Juliet, wrapped in her kimono, hair flowing down her back, stepped gingerly in her bare feet on the grubby stairs. ‘But how can I, Mrs Collings?’ she said as she descended. ‘How can I know who is about to telephone me, or when? I would love to have the gift of foresight but I simply don’t, you must understand . . .’

In the hall, Mrs Collings thrust the receiver at her. ‘It’s a lady,’ she said, almost sarcastically, Juliet thought. Had it been a man, Mrs Collings would have held Juliet personally responsible.

It was Louise. ‘How was Pinewood?’ she asked. ‘I didn’t hear from anyone.’

‘It was lovely,’ Juliet said. ‘I really enjoyed it. I was going to pop by the office today to say thank you’ – it just occurred to her, and now that she had said it she probably wouldn’t have to. She could have a bath, if the Ascot deigned to work.

‘Oh well, do,’ said Louise. ‘Come at lunchtime; we’ll have a sandwich at Gino’s. I’ve got another thing for you.’

Well, why not? It was always fun to go into Soho, drink coffee, watch people. And she’d have some money soon. She could look at the fabrics on Berwick Street Market and the patterns in Fenwick’s, wander down Carnaby Street, look in the boutiques. She glanced up at the dusty fanlight over Mrs Collings’s front door. It seemed to be sunny outside.

* * *

As usual, Gino greeted Louise with joyous fervour: an embrace, some words of Italian, and a cheese and salami toastie.

‘He toasts the whole thing,’ Louise said. ‘Not like most places, where they just put some cheese between two slices of toast, so it doesn’t even melt.’

Juliet chose a modest and pale ham salad roll, and they went to sit on Louise’s preferred bench in Golden Square. They sat with their handbags beside them, light sun on their faces, the hum of traffic from Regent Street and Piccadilly Circus in the distance, George the Second with his stone robe and wreath, still holding his hand out to eternity before them.

‘It’s a kind of perfection, isn’t it?’ said Louise, and Juliet agreed, not thinking so really. How can this be perfection for Louise? she wondered. It’s just ordinary, isn’t it? Or is this what adult life comes to? Joy at the state of your sandwich? Being hugged by a waiter? Having a favourite bench? Or is it something about her, Louise, about how she sees things, which makes it perfect?

Juliet was eating her ham, and throwing clammy little snatches of soft bread to the sparrows and pigeons hopping about at their feet. They seemed ferociously grateful.

‘Just a golden moment,’ Louise said. Then she crumpled up her greaseproof paper and popped it in the bin beside them. ‘So!’ she said. ‘Guess what! I have another job for you. It’s only a TV ad but you’re the lead. You’ll wear a pretty dress and wave orange juice around.’

‘How can I wave orange juice?’ said Juliet, before grabbing the actual point and saying, ‘Oh, but that’s wonderful, thank you so much!’

‘It’s frozen in sort of cardboard tubes,’ Louise said. ‘You unpeel them, apparently. I can’t imagine how it works. It’s American, of course. Florida? Anyway, it’s another emergency. Poor you know who –’ Louise was nothing if not discreet, but always managed to let Juliet know what was going on ‘– can’t do it, and you’ll be doing me a favour. It shouldn’t be more than two days, plus it’s nice money for you. Let’s just get it out of the way, then we’ll discuss your future re the whole stage/TV/film/advertising thing next week.’

‘Wonderful!’ said Juliet, giving Louise the smile. More money! She should really save, but she needed a new sewing machine. It would be an investment, really . . . She’d made dresses for friends before and if her career were to go bung, she’d have to have something more modern than Aunt Rachel’s stone-age apparatus . . . Something electric, with a treadle! And perhaps embroidery. She was imagining big flowers round a neckline, or just down the sides of a sleeveless shift dress, nothing on the front or back. Wouldn’t it be funny, though, to have decoration on the back of a dress, and not the front?

‘Imogen will sort out the contract and get it over to you,’ Louise was saying. ‘It’s Monday and Tuesday, on Wardour Street . . .’

Juliet was thinking about appliqué.