Chapter 37: Juliet - The Golden Hours

PART SIX: SUMMER 1965

Some months in, she had bought a sewing machine – quite a good one, a little portable electric Singer Featherweight, pale green with a foot pedal and carrying case. She longed to use it. Her old black and gold treadle manual Singer was so heavy she’d had to leave it at Bank House. Then she’d found an even older one in Portobello, with a hand wheel, like Aunt Rachel’s; it cost next to nothing and she’d lugged it all the way to the boat in a taxi at great expense before realising that it was effectively seized up. She got new needles and fixed it as best she could, but it ended up so oily that it completely ruined some very pretty fabric she’d got on Broadwick Street. So with no electricity, while they were living on this boat, both machines remained useless.

And when she said ‘they’ – well.

It wasn’t that he didn’t come. And when he did, he was so kind, so sweet.

‘Did you miss me?’ he’d cry, and the sense of their new adventure together just sprang back to life. ‘I’ve been looking at estate agents,’ he’d say – but why not with me? she thought – or ‘I’ve been thinking about paint colours’ – but for where? she thought.

‘It’s going to be wonderful,’ he said, and she was so keen on this idea that she didn’t want to challenge it with interrogation. He took her to jazz clubs and paid the rent and the bills and gave her cash – more than she needed, to be honest. Work was going well for him, even if it wasn’t for her. He brought her flowers, a battery-operated radio, a guitar neither of them could play, a silver puzzle ring, and a puppy. The puppy slept with her, so warm and wriggly, red and silky, ‘to match your hair’, he said.

When he wasn’t there the dog would look at her accusingly. Or was it soulfully? It followed her into the loo. She tried to remember to call the loo the heads but really, why bother? It stank and she hated it and there was nobody on the boat to care what she called it and, if humanly possible, she would only ever go somewhere else. Shirley’s caff or the pub. Sometimes it was the only reason she went out. That and Red. When she went out with Red different people spoke to her – not just men wanting to pick her up, but children and mothers and old ladies. Everybody wanted to talk to somebody with a puppy.

And she talked to the puppy, all the time. A man from the pub taught her four chords, but guitar lessons are a perilous activity – all those arms around shoulders – so she had to bring that to a stop, and taught herself, from listening. Her voice was tuneful but thin. Neville wasn’t interested in her feeble version of ‘Downtown’, and she couldn’t bring herself to try ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’.

Anyway, he liked her to be there. She drew endless designs for dresses she would make when she had electricity, when they moved, when they would live together properly. She even made a couple up by hand.

‘You don’t need to sew your own clothes,’ he said, and gave her more money.