"Don't," Kate said, pushing my door closed with her back, "don't say anything." She leant against the door for a moment, and then moved forward, towards me where I sat stiff on my bed. She sat, gently, on the blankets, and her weight pulled me down, closer to her. She leant in, and all around me I could smell her perfume. She leant closer, her lips within a handspan of mine, her breath caressing my cheeks, and then I woke up, every night. It was always the same dream, the same sequence. Sometimes, I knew I was dreaming. You aren't real, my dream self said, you're an illusion, a figment of my wild dreamings. Yet Kate closed the door anyway. "Don't say anything," she said, and as her mouth came closer to mine, the light of love and lust shining in her eyes, I no longer cared about reality.
The memory of that dream stayed with me, all through the waking day, and I moved through the world wrapped in it. My fantasies provided me a barrier against the world's realities, the precariousness of my situation and lifestyle. It's safer, perhaps, I thought, to love a dream girl than a real one. Dream girls don't break your heart, and you can't break theirs. It's better, this way; there's no muck ups, no fights and arguments, no scandalized neighbours listening in, peering through twitching net curtains as you open the front door, stood too close together for propriety's sake. There's no disapproving parents, no pastors preaching you to Hell. And so I decided, in the end, that I would no longer long for something that could not be; that I would have friends, relations, co-workers and colleagues, but I would not look for anything more. From time to time, when other, more physical, demands grew stronger, there are places people like me could go, hidden away places filled with secrets and sex. The decision strengthened me, fortified me, and for a time I thought that it would work. Until, that is, my best laid plans crumbled and fell beneath me.
xXx
We are sat in Kate's room, Gladys, Kate and I, listening to Ella Fitzgerald – Kate's latest record purchase – and talking aimlessly about soldiers. Well, Kate and Gladys are talking about soldiers, and I am sat on a chair in the doorway, legs crossed, hands in pockets, not thinking about much at all. I confess, I lost the train of their conversation a while ago, not caring much for the dancing exploits of yet more uniformed men. Kate laughs, and the sound breaks through my reverie. "Don't!" she exclaims, "Don't say it Gladys!" I am back in the room, attention and focus firmly on the girl not three feet from me.
Her phrasing is too similar, too reminiscent of my nightly visions, which spring suddenly before my eyes. "I'm going for a drink," I say, abruptly standing up. Kate and Gladys follow, searching for their purses and coats. "Not the Tangiers," I say, forestalling them. "Somewhere else – you're not invited." It sounds harsh, I know, and Kate's face falls a little, cutting me ever deeper. I leave before I can have a change of heart, heading out into the night with just one destination in mind.
The bar is down a darkened alley, its beaten outside looking less like a place of entertainment and more like industrial storage. I knock on the door, a quick succession of measured beats, a signal to the doorman. He opens the grille in the door, peering out into the street. "Who's there?" he asks, cautious. I reach up on my toes, put my face close to the metal, so he can see I am no threat, no copper's trap. "It's you," he says, opening the door. "Long time no see – we thought you'd left us for good!" I walk past him into a shabby corridor, and up onto a narrow staircase.
"Me, leave?" I ask. "I'd never do that to you, or to myself!" We laugh, and he shuts the door behind me. Inside, the bar is filled with the smell of smoke and spilled drink and bodies pressed against each other. I fight my way to the bar, and order a whiskey from the bar tender. Drink in hand, I turn and lean my back against the bar, surveying the press of people. Some familiar faces fill the crowd, and one or two previous acquaintances nod in my direction as I catch their eye. Not tonight, I think. I am not here to chew the cud, gossip and socialize. This is not the Princess' godforsaken country club, and tonight I have a different aim. Along the bar, two or three people down from me, I see a girl, who I think for a moment is Kate. Slim, with red hair brushing her shoulders. What is Kate doing in a dive like this? And how did she get here before me? I start to make my way over to her, before she turns and I see that, other than the hair, they look nothing alike. I think I might turn back, stop the game before it starts, but she has already seen my approach, caught my eye and smiled.
If you thought I seduced you, Kate Andrews, I think, just watch this. I push in between the girl and her conversation partner. "Buy you a drink?" I touch her arm, lightly, suggestively, and flash her my biggest smile. She smiles back, prettily, and nods. I wave the bartender over and order, doubles for the both of us. The woman behind me, whose night's pursuit I have stolen, starts to protest, to complain, but I turn around and smile at her too. "Another night, bud," I say, and my new companion giggles. We stand close, talking into each other's ears over the din of the jukebox in the corner. Not long after, she leads me over to a darkened corner, the kind of place bars like these are infamous for. Dark and out of sight, these places are made for lovers, and those on their way to being so.
I push her against the wall, and kiss her. She bites my lip, too hard, teeth catching unpleasantly, and I pull back, tasting blood. I raise my hand to my mouth, rub my lips. "Ow," I say, "that hurt!" She pulls me back down, kisses me gently, all lips and tongues, until the sore lip is forgotten. I open the buttons on her blouse, exposing the pale skin beneath, and press my kiss there. My hands now are moving from her waist, down over the curve of her backside, down the line of her legs, and now back up, under the material of her skirt, fabric bunching around my wrists. I stop as my fingers reach the line of her panties, waiting, playing with the elastic, but not slipping underneath. She moans into my hair, and moves down, onto my hand, urging me closer still, more intimate, and her hand moves my arm, pushing me up, telling me where to go. We stand like that, pressed together, as the music swirls around us, slow now then faster, more upbeat, a tempo you can follow, dictating each movement's speed. She shudders against my hand, tightening about me, head thrown back against the wall's peeling paint, hands digging sharply into my shoulders. There is no love, no tenderness, in this - it's all lust and desire, a carnal press and pull of flesh, and is not at all what I want. I turn my head from her mouth, still my hand against her flesh. We lean together against the wall for a moment, silent and breathing.
"She's a bloody fool, whoever she is," the girl underneath me says. I pull back, look at her, puzzled. She must see the question on my face, for she continues. "Letting you go out worked up like this? If you were mine, I wouldn't let you out of my sight." I smile, embarrassed now, and fiddle with her blouse, closing the buttons gently across the mark on her breast.
"I'm the fool," I say. I think of how sure I was, so confident in my prize, that I barely considered the possibility of rejection. I thought I had been perfectly clear towards her, and she towards me, but I had miscalculated, under-thought her father's influence and the hold of her God and his unbending rules. "I'm the fool". She pushes my hair back from my face, having come out of its pins and drooped forward as we stood together.
"Come on," she says, taking my hand and pulling me out of the dark corner back towards the bar, "let's get drunk and forget your troubles."
Later, as I stumble down the hallway of the boarding house, trying not to use the walls as a support, I pass Gladys, on her way to the bathroom. Her face crumples in disgust, like I am a bad smell under her nose and in all fairness, I probably am. "Not again Betty," she says, and I remember all the times in Kate's long absence when Gladys was the one to pick me up, put me to bed, and feed me the morning after. Her sympathy, then, knew no bounds, but now, it seems, she has had enough of my waywardness. And who can blame her. Kate must hear our voices from her room, for she too comes out to the corridor.
"Betty, you're drunk!" She grabs my arm, to steady me, then recoils as the alcohol fumes hit her. "You're not just drunk," she exclaims, "you're very drunk!" Her tone, her look of utter scandal, Gladys' disapproving resignation. It's funny. It's very funny. I laugh, uncontrollably, stumbling through the door into my room and falling onto the bed, laughing, giggling and sobbing all at once. Kate follows me, haltingly, and hangs awkwardly in the doorway, plucking nervously at the edge of the curtain. She mumbles something about getting me a drink, and flits away.
She is gone for so long, I think she's not coming back. I think Gladys has told her to leave me be, to let me sleep it off. My clothes are uncomfortable now, tight and hot and itchy, and I want to sleep, to lay on the bed and slide blissfully into oblivion. I pull off my jacket and shirt, and drop them carelessly on the floor. My brassiere and boots follow, piling on top of the growing heap of discarded clothing. I am shimmying my trousers and underclothes down over my legs quite successfully, until I hear my soft gasp from the direction of the corridor. I turn, and see, through the corner of my eye Kate standing open mouthed, tumbler in her hand, standing just inside my room. Suddenly aware of my own nakedness, I step back and onto the heap of clothes behind me. The sole of my shoe gives away beneath me, twists, and I slip and fall, legs confined by the cut of my trousers. My head grazes the edge of the bed, and I lie sprawled on the floor, dazed by the blow, glazed by the whiskey, and quite content to stay there till morning.
Kate puts the glass down on the dresser beside her, comes forward into the room. She kneels down next to me, and her eyes never slip from my face. I was so sure, back then, that she was like myself, so sure, even as she left. "You're bleeding," she says, gently wiping my forehead with her thumb. She cleans my face, the flannel coming away bright red with the evidence of my fall, and helps me to the bed and under the blankets. I would be embarrassed, I think, if it were anyone but her. I am asleep almost straight away, but I feel her lean over me and press a gentle kiss to my forehead before she leaves the room. So sure, I think, and drift off into unconsciousness.
In the morning my head hurts like I dropped a 25-pounder on it. I drag myself from the bed and to the sink in the corner of the room. Still bleary eyed, I turn on the water and drag wet hands across my face, trying to clear the sleep and booze from my vision. I lean on the sink, water running down my cheeks, and dare to look up into the flecked mirror. Immediately I can see why my head hurts – the alcohol has done its work, red and puffy eyes, the right one framed by a darkening bruise and a sharp, jagged looking split above my eyebrow. I try to fix my hair so that it will cover the mark, but it doesn't, and I give up, knowing that my turban will pull all my hair off my face anyway. It's going to sting, I think, as the amatol fumes drift up and into the wound. On the streetcar, and in the line for the shift, Kate is distant, quiet, will not quite catch my eye, and I wonder what Gladys said to her last night, wonder what I did and have forgotten.
My face draws attention, in a way the bruise alone didn't last time. Mrs Corbett pulls me aside, asks me what happened. I know I blush, and wonder how much to confess. "I trod on my shoe, fell, and hit my head on the bed frame," I tell her. It's the truth, just minus the inordinate amount of booze I had consumed. I think, though, she can read between the lines of my truth, see from my bloodshot eyes the rest of the story.
"As long as you're alright to work, McRae," she says, and lets me carry on to the line. The noises of the factory are loud today, too sharp and clear for my hearing to take, and the smells of the chemicals are nauseating, forcing my stomach to roil and rage, churning endlessly inside me. Never again, I think. Never again will I drink so much the night before a morning shift. It's not the first time I have made myself such a promise, and nor, I ruefully acknowledge, is it likely to be the last. The day passes, and I do not pass out, or throw up, or do anything to embarrass myself further.
That evening, Kate is still quiet and withdrawn. She does not look at me straight on, or smile, or pass a friendly word over dinner.
"I'm sorry Kate," I say, "that I was so drunk, and you had to deal with me like that. I just met up with some old friends from home, you see, and got rather carried away…" She cuts me off with a slice of her hand.
"Don't lie, Betty," she says, and her words are hard like bullets, spat at me with surprising ferocity. "I know where you went, and what you did." She can't, I think, she can't possibly know. Such things don't cross the minds of girls like Kate, sheltered, innocent, good. They are beyond the imaginings of ordinary, decent folk, it takes time and practice, lots and lots of practice, to sink to that level of depravity, of shame, of regret. "I could smell it on you," she continues, "another girl's perfume. And the rest." She does know. I am shaking my head, retreating under the onslaught of her anger, my hands held palm out in front of me, a poor defence against her words. I splutter incoherent denials, lost for words once again. "You must think me stupid, or blind," she says, still advancing, hands gesticulating fiercely, "to think I wouldn't notice, wouldn't care. How dare you do that to me?" She is shouting, now, loud enough for the whole house to hear. Her face is flushed, suffused with the outward signs of her anger. Her anger sparks my own, some kind of emotional fortification to ward off the slings and arrows of her outrage.
"How dare I?" I ask, trying to keep my voice low. "How dare I? You can't have it both ways, Kate. You can't have me hanging on, enjoying having me waiting desperately for you to show me some attention, and then tell me to shove it when you want to dance with some bloody soldier." You are a horrid, selfish being, I tell myself, even as I speak. You're twisting everything she says to suit yourself, and if you were really her friend, you'd stop. You'd see it from her point of view, you'd wait and understand, and accept whatever terms she proposes. The thought does stop me, and I lower my hands, and sigh. "I'm sorry Kate," I say, "I just don't know what you want from me". I have calmed myself, but Kate is still strung tight, and now within arms' reach of me.
"What I want? You want to know what I want?" I nod, mutely now, and swallow. She reaches for me, then, her hands on my jacket, pulling me close. The kiss is fumbling, raw and unpolished, but fierce and passionate, the way I had never dreamed it could be between us. My hands, too, come up to rest on her back, curl into fists around her cardigan, tangling themselves tight against her.
A noise outside, footsteps in the corridor, someone fumbling with their door, break the moment. Kate pushes me away, drops her hands to her side, steps back. She shakes her head, mouth open, and raises her hand to cover her mouth. "Don't," she says, and I can easily predict what comes next, "don't say anything to anyone". I, too, shake my head, and smile at her, I hope reassuringly. "I won't," I promise her retreating back, as she turns and flees the room, leaving me stood unsteady in the middle of my room.
xXx
And that's how it went: night after night, my dream was re-enacted for real. Every night, she would close the door to my room behind her, and we would lie on the bed, wound tight around each other, not speaking, sometimes kissing and sometimes not, and sometimes she would cry and I would hold her close and whisper loving reassurances. I tried, through my kisses and my hands, to communicate all that I felt for her, and how sorry I was for all that I had said unkindly, or out of turn. Slowly, I hoped, if I repeated it enough times, one day she, and I, would forgive me. In the hours between our nocturnal meetings, I had to fight to maintain my friendly façade around her, to act the happy friend, to laugh and smile as she danced with soldiers, as she sang with Leon and the band, as boy after boy tentatively asked if he could write to her from overseas. "No!" I wanted to yell, to insist, "She's mine", but did not.
One night, as we prepared for a dance at the Sandy Shores, I left to pick up my purse and coat from my room. Through the curtain, I could half hear Gladys and Kate's conversation in the other room. "You are dreamy these days, Kate," Gladys said. "I'm half beginning to think you're in love." I sat, ears cocked and listening hard, a mix of fear and hope and sick anticipation rushing through me. Kate's reply was muffled, undecipherable, but it was clearly a denial – a shake of the head, perhaps, eyes cast down at the floor – for Gladys continued, "Come on, you can tell me. I'm as quiet as the grave about these things." Again, Kate's reply was too low to hear, and I moved towards the corridor as softly as possible, hoping to hear something, anything, to my advantage. "Ah, you're no fun," came Gladys' voice again, "I'll have it out of you eventually." I had no doubt Gladys would, she had managed to winkle out of me all my deepest secrets I had never intended to tell anyone. I just hoped that I would like what she found out.
Kate danced with four separate soldiers that night, and one in particular marked her card for three dances, smiling and chatting as he whirled her competently around the dance floor. The old snake of jealousy still writhed through my insides, but its hissed insinuations had less power now. Kate loves someone, I thought, did before she came here, and she's only just met you, boyo. I watched her, as she pulled in admiring glances from many men, and dealt with them all with grace and elegance, and saw how much she had changed since that first dance when we stood awkwardly next to each other for hours. She loves someone, I thought, and I hope to every God anyone ever believed in that, despite everything, it's me.
And then at lunchtime, a few weeks later, in the factory canteen, the girls were talking, as they often did, about marriage and weddings, each one detailing their plans and dreams. They never asked me what my plans were, an unspoken acknowledgement that those things, so desired by most girls, were the farthest things from my mind. "What about you, Kate?" Edith asked. "Any young men caught your eye?" I could feel, rather than see, Gladys' eyes swivel in my direction, waiting to see how I would take the news she was certain was coming. Not diverting my eyes from the still speaking Edith, I kicked her swiftly under the table, and continued eating. Kate smiled, and shook her head.
"Not as such," she said. "I don't think I'm cut out for marriage and children. I'm just not that sort of girl." She shrugged, awkwardly, and if she had anything else to say, it was cut off by a chorus of Edith and Vera telling her that she'd find someone, in the end, and then all her opinions would change. As we got up, and filed away our trays, Kate lined up behind me, and said softly, so no-one else could hear, "I'm more of a best-friends and roommates kind of girl, you know?" That night, tucked under the covers of my bed, Kate broke routine, and spoke. "Gladys thinks I have a secret lover," she said, and smiled. "She won't give up, until she has it out of me. I think I should tell her. After all, we don't intend to spend the rest of our lives in a boarding house, do we?"
The dream, of Kate pushing the door closed and admonishing me not to speak, stopped soon after, and was replaced by constantly changing dreams of our future, dreams that now I think may actually come true.