‘Breakfasts’ve gone down a bit,’ Albert said on the way back to London, and Lenny reminded him that Mrs Roope had had a bit of family trouble. ‘Dropped Charlie Cooke, I see,’ Lenny said, referring to a Crystal Palace player. He handed Albert the
In Paper Street, a week after their return, she put on her peach-coloured corset and the dress she’d worn the first time they’d gone afternoon dancing – blue-green satin, with a small array of sequins at the shoulders and the breast. It felt more silent than ever in the house in Paper Street, because in the past Poppy used to chat and giggle in just the same way as she had as a girl, lavishly spraying scent on herself, a habit she’d always had also. Alice closed the door of Number 41 behind her and walked quickly in Paper Street, feeling guiltier than she had when the guilt could be shared. She’d tell some lie if someone she knew said she was looking smart. She’d probably say she was going to Bingo, which was what they’d both said once when Mrs Tedman had looked them up and down, as though suspecting the finery beneath. You could see that Mrs Tedman hadn’t believed that they were going to Bingo, but Poppy said it didn’t matter what Mrs Tedman thought. It was all a bit frightening without Poppy, but then everything was something else without Poppy, dull or silent or frightening. Alice caught a bus, and at a quarter to three she entered the dance-rooms.
‘Well, well!’ Grantly Palmer said, smiling his bright smile. ‘Well, well, stranger lady!’
‘Hullo, Mr Palmer.’
‘Oh, child, child!’
‘Hullo, Grantly.’
It had always been a joke, the business of Christian names between the three of them. ‘Alice and Poppy!’ he’d said the first time they’d had tea together. ‘My, my, what charmin’ names!’ They’d just begun to use his own Christian name when Poppy had died. Funny name, Grantly,’ Poppy had remarked on the bus after he’d first told them, but soon it had become impossible to think of him as anything else.
‘Where’s Poppy, dear?’
‘Poppy died, Grantly.’
She told him all about it, about last year’s holiday at Southend and the development of the illness and then the funeral. ‘My God!’ he said, staring into her eyes. ‘My God, Alice.’
The band was playing ‘Lullaby of Broadway’: middle-aged women, in twos or on their own, stood about, sizing up the men who approached them, in the same expert way as she and Poppy had sized men up in their time. ‘Let’s have a cup of tea,’ Grantly Palmer said.
They had tea and Swiss-roll slices and Danish pastries. They talked about Poppy. ‘Was she happy?’ he asked. And Alice said her friend had been happy enough.
In silence on the balcony they watched the dancers rotating below them. He wasn’t going to dance with her, she thought, because Poppy had died, because the occasion was a solemn one. She was aware of disappointment. Poppy had been dead for more than a year, after all.
‘It’s a horrible thing,’ he said. ‘A friend dying. In the prime of her life.’
‘I miss her.’
‘Of course, Alice.’
He reached across the tea-table and seized one of her hands. He held it for a moment and then let it go. It was a gesture that reminded her of being a girl. On television men touched girls’ hands in that way. How nice, she suddenly thought, the chap called Ashley was in
He went away and returned with another pot of tea and a plate of Swiss-roll slices. Leo Ritz and his Band were playing ‘September Love’.
‘I thought I’d never lay eyes on you again, Alice.’
He regarded her solemnly. He didn’t smile when he said that the very first time he’d met her he’d considered her a very nice person. He was wearing a suit made of fine, black corduroy. His two grey hands were gripping his teacup, nursing it.
‘I came back to tell you about Poppy, Grantly.’
‘I kept on hoping you’d come back. I kept on thinking about you.’ He nodded, lending emphasis to this statement. Without drinking from it, he placed his teacup on the table and pulled his chair in a bit, nearer to hers. She could feel some part of his legs, an ankle-bone it felt like. Then she felt one of his hands, beneath the table, touching her right knee and then touching the left one.
She didn’t move. She gazed ahead of her, feeling through the material of her dress the warmth of his flesh. The first time they’d had tea with him he’d told a joke about three Jamaican clergymen on a desert island and she and Poppy had laughed their heads off. Even when it had become clear to Poppy and herself that what he was after was sex and not love, Poppy had still insisted that she should chance her arm with him. It was as though Poppy wanted her to go out with Grantly Palmer because she herself had gone out with the air-raid warden.
His hand remained on her left knee. She imagined it there, the thin grey hand on the blue satin material of her dress. It moved, pushing back the satin, the palm caressing, the tip of the thumb pressing into her thigh.
She withdrew her leg, smiling to cover the unfriendliness of this decision. She could feel warmth all over her neck and her cheeks and around her eyes. She could feel her eyes beginning to water. On her back and high up on her forehead, beneath the grey frizz of her hair, she felt the moisture of perspiration.
He looked away from her. ‘I always liked you, Alice,’ he said. ‘You know? I liked you better than Poppy, even though I liked Poppy too.’
It was different, a man putting his hand on your knee: it was different altogether from the natural intimacy of dancing, when anything might have been accidental. She wanted to go away now; she didn’t want him to ask her to dance with him. She imagined him with the pink woman, fondling her knees under a table before taking her to Maida Vale. She saw herself in the room in Maida Vale, a room in which there were lilies growing in pots, although she couldn’t remember that he’d ever said he had lilies. There was a thing like a bedspread hanging on one of the walls, brightly coloured, red and blue and yellow. There was a gas-fire glowing and a standard lamp such as she’d seen in the British Home Stores, and a bed with a similar brightly coloured cloth covering it, and a table and two upright chairs, and a tattered green screen behind which there’d be a sink and a cooking stove. In
