He brought me a drink, while the show went on: ‘Do you want a job? All you do is stand around the place. Twenty pounds a week. We’ve been short of a man since we opened. You’ll have to be okayed by Mr Moggerhanger, but you’ll pass, on my recommendation.’
I gagged at the name, but asked in a cool way: ‘Do you get many fights?’
‘A few,’ he said, very reticent. ‘But it’s not too exciting on the whole.’
I wondered why not. ‘When do I start?’
‘You’ve started,’ he laughed. ‘If that was your audition you passed with flying colours.’
June congratulated me: ‘You’ll be all right working here.’
‘I’d better take the job, then,’ I laughed. ‘It’ll be somewhere to leave my parcel.’
‘I wondered whose it was,’ she said.
‘It’s my luggage. I’ve got to find a room by tonight.’
She gave me her address: ‘If you can’t find one, you can at least sleep on the floor — under the gas stove in the kitchen it’ll have to be.’
‘You’re very kind,’ I said, not too keen on such accommodation. I’d never been brought as low as that before.
‘One good turn deserves another,’ she said, biting me in half. The manager’s name was Paul Dent, and I told him I’d start at two the next day if that was all right by him. He said it was, so after hanging around another half-hour, I got out on the street, feeling a free man because I’d left my parcel down in the club. All the same, I didn’t like the idea of having to work for a living, because that wasn’t what I’d come to London for, though there seemed nothing else for it at the moment. Almanack Jack wasn’t the only one who believed in fucking up the system. He might have been right down in it as far as his neck, but I intended to earn a living out of it as well if I could. In his confused brain he was still so chuffed at having made the bloody and ragged break from his former life (and who could say that it wasn’t a pack of lies he’d told me?) that he couldn’t see like I could that all he’d succeeded in doing was cutting his own throat, so that he was already more than halfway back there.
I met my delicious Bridgitte at the place and time of our telephone choice. We sat in the pub, she at tomato juice and me with a brown ale, and I saw that tears were about to drip from those luscious blue eyes that shone with a prick-stiffening mixture of depravity and innocence. ‘You must tell me,’ I said, when she didn’t want to. ‘After all, I’ve confided in you entirely. All the intimate secrets and scandals of my family. If Mother knew, she’d go pig-crazy. But she doesn’t,’ I laughed. ‘So drink up, my butter-love, and have another dose of that intoxicating fomentation.’
‘It’s nothing, really.’ She smiled. ‘The doctor’s wife went away for a couple of days, and last night Smog came into my bed. He sometimes does, for warmth, and when he’s asleep I put him back in his own. But before I could do so, the doctor walked into my room, and pulled the clothes right back off me. He thought I was alone, and I don’t know exactly what he wanted to do. But he got a shock to see Smog curled up against me with his thumb in his mouth. He was full of anger, and dragged Smog up in the air like an animal and carried him to his own bed. Smog was screaming all night, but I couldn’t go out to him because I know the doctor would have got me, so I had to stay behind my locked door with Smog crying and the doctor playing his bongo music. I think he is more insane than his patients. This morning at breakfast he told me if I didn’t mend my ways I would have to leave. So I think I must start to look for another job. But I will see if anything happens tonight. If it does I shall go from there.’
‘When’s his wife coming back?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe she left him.’
‘Is he going out tonight?’
‘I don’t think so. Otherwise I would have stayed in. He’s writing in his study.’
‘I’ll go back with you, and get into the flat. I’ll stay in your room and protect you. I know that sort of person. You can’t trust him. He’ll rape you and cut you up. You’re in England now. There’s a long tradition of that sort of thing. You remember I told you about my brother Alf? Well, he had a psychiatrist at one time who used to come to the Hall. Got quite friendly with the family in fact, and was liked by everyone, especially my mother, so that he became almost a resident headshrinker. One night he made a vicious attack on a sixteen-year-old cousin who’d come to stay with us. Fortunately, the gamekeeper saw him and raised the alarm. But it was a close call for her. You’ve got to expect it. They’ve all got a touch of the Rasputin in them. Otherwise they’re nice people. I’ve got nothing against them at all. You’ve just got to be on your guard if you’re a simple girl staying in their house. So it’d be best if I stayed with you.’
‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘It may be that his wife will be back tomorrow, and then there will be no more danger. But if you get in all right, how will you get out?’
‘We’ll cross that barbed wire when we come to it. The main thing is to see you right. Nothing else matters. I was supposed to see Mother later on, but it’s not too important. She’ll be at the solicitors’ till quite late because they’re old friends, but I needn’t be there if I don’t want to be. In fact I think she’d rather I wasn’t, but she was too polite to say so. The trouble with her is that she’s shouting fiercely at me one day, and the next she’s so tactful and considerate. It’s difficult, but I suppose we all have others’ foibles to put up with.’
She touched my wrist: ‘I love you.’
‘That makes me very happy,’ I said. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’
At half past ten we went up in the lift to the flat. I took off my shoes, and followed her inside. She walked along the corridor to her room. All the lights were on, and I highstepped after her. She closed the door. We’d made it. The excitement of getting secretly in with the doctor only a few doors away in his study made us turn spontaneously to each other with relief, and we made love there and then on her single but firm bed, a bit of a bang that got us both into a sweat, even though we stripped to our ribs. I lay back smoking while Bridgitte went to let Dr Anderson know she was in, her intention being to cover a large food tray for us in the kitchen, and bring it back. I lay with my knees drawn up, a Dutch newspaper opened on them like a lectern, trying to read the swaddled and complicated words. Even backwards they didn’t make sense, so I took a pencil and fiddled with anagrams, till I’d worn out three fags and realized that my sweetheart had been gone too long for my good, and possibly for hers. So I slipped on shoes and opened the door, seeing the lighted corridor and nobody in it. There were pictures along the wall, of a Scottish castle wrapped in a muffler of mist, then one of a tall façade of Glasgow slums on washday, then a picture of an English cottage. At the front door I bumped into a hat-stand and made such a clatter that in two flips I was back at Bridgitte’s room. ‘What do you want?’ said a little voice I knew so well.
‘Don’t you ever sleep, you little bleeder?’
‘I don’t bleed,’ Smog said. A door snapped open, so I pulled him inside. ‘I want a cigarette as well,’ he said, scratching himself.
‘You can’t smoke. You’re not seven yet.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Waiting for Bridgitte.’
‘I expect she’s sitting on Daddy’s knee,’ he said, innocently.
‘Does she often do that?’
‘Only when he pulls her on.’
‘Oh,’ I said, relieved, ‘does he pull her on often?’
‘Only when Mummy isn’t here. She doesn’t like it. That’s why she’s gone away. I think she’s gone into hospital to get a divorce.’