Eight

Bournemouth, 1938

DOLLY DIDN’T SEE HIM at first. She didn’t see much of anything. She was far too busy blinking back tears of frustration as she trudged along the beach towards the promenade. Everything was a hot angry blur of sand and seagulls and lousy smiling faces. She knew they weren’t laughing at her, not really, but it didn’t matter one bit. Their jolliness was a personal blow; it made everything a hundred times worse. Dolly couldn’t go to work at that bicycle factory, she just couldn’t. Marry a younger version of her father and, bit by tiny bit, turn into her mother? It was inconceivable—oh, fine for the two of them, they were happy with their lot, but Dolly wanted more than that … she just didn’t know yet what it was or where to find it.

She stopped short. A gust of wind, stronger than those that had come before it, chose the very moment of her arrival near the bathing huts to lift the silk dress, sweep it from the railing and send it scuttling across the sand. It came to rest right in front of her, a luxurious spill of silver. Why—she drew an in-credulous breath—the blonde girl with the dimples mustn’t have bothered to pin it down safely. But how could anybody care so little for such a beautiful piece of clothing? What was the point of renting a hut if not to procure the perfect place in which to stow such precious items while one was swimming? Dolly shook her head; a girl with such scant regard for her own possessions hardly deserved to have them. It was the sort of thing a princess might have worn—an American film star, a glamour model in a magazine, an heiress on holidays in the French Riviera—and if Dolly hadn’t come along right then it might’ve continued its flight across the dunes and been lost forever.

The wind returned and the dress rolled further up the beach, disappearing behind the bathing huts. Without another moment’s hesitation, Dolly started after it: the girl had been foolish, it was true, but Dolly wasn’t about to let that divine piece of silver come to harm.

She could just imagine how grateful the girl would be when the dress was returned. Dolly would explain what had happened—taking care not to make the girl feel worse than she already did—and the pair of them would start to laugh and say what a close call it was, and the girl would offer Doll a glass of cold lemonade, real lemonade, not the watery substitute Mrs Jennings served at Bellevue. They’d get to talking and discover they had an awful lot in common, and then finally the sun would slip in the sky and Dolly would say she really ought to be going and the girl would smile disappointedly, before brightening and reaching to stroke Dolly’s arm—‘What if you join us here tomorrow morning?’ she’d ask. ‘Some of us are going to get together and play a bit of tennis on the sand. It’ll be such a lark—do say you’ll come.’

Hurrying now, Dolly rounded the corner of the bathing hut after the silver dress, only to find as she did so that it had already stopped its tumble, having run straight into the ankles of somebody else. It was a man in a hat, bending down now to pick up the dress, and as his fingers grasped the fabric, as grains of sand slid from the dress, with them went all Dolly’s hopes.

For a split second Dolly honestly felt she could’ve murdered the man in the hat, happily torn him limb from limb. Her pulse beat furiously, her skin tingled and her vision glazed. She glanced back towards the sea: at her father, marching stonily towards poor flummoxed Cuth- bert; at her mother, frozen still in that attitude of pained supplication; at the others, those with the blonde girl, laughing now, slapping their knees as they pointed out the ridiculous scene.

The donkey let loose a pained and pitiful braying, echoing Dolly’s feelings so entirely that before she knew what she was doing she’d spluttered at the man, ‘Hey there—’ he was about to steal the blonde girl’s dress and it was up to Dolly to stop him—‘you. What do you think you’re doing?’

The man looked up, surprised, and when Dolly saw the handsome face beneath the hat she was briefly knocked off course. She stood, drawing quick breaths, wondering what to do next, but as the man’s mouth started to pull up at the sides in a suggestive way, she suddenly knew.

‘I said—’ Dolly was lightheaded, strangely excited—‘what do you think you’re doing? That dress isn’t yours.’

The young man opened his mouth to speak, and as he did so a policeman by the unfortunate name of Constable Suckling—who’d been making his portly progress down the beach—arrived beside them.

Constable Basil Suckling had been perambulating the promenade all morning, keeping an eye fixed firmly on his beach. He’d noticed the dark-haired girl as soon as she arrived, and had been watching her closely ever since. He’d turned away only briefly over that blasted business with the donkey, but when he looked back the girl was gone. It had taken Constable Suckling a tense few minutes to find her again, behind the bathing huts, engaged in what looked to him suspiciously like heated discussion. Her companion, none other than the rough young man who’d been lurking beneath his hat at the back of the bandstand all morning.

Hand on his truncheon, Constable Suckling jostled across the beach. The sand made progress more ungainly than he’d have liked, but he did his best. As he drew near he heard her say, ‘That dress isn’t yours.’ ‘Everything all right then?’ said the constable now, holding his stomach in a little tighter as he came to a stop. She was even prettier up close than he’d imagined. Bowtie lips with up-turned outer corners. Peachy skin—smooth, he could tell just by looking, yielding. Glossy curls around a love-heart face. He added, ‘This fellow’s not bothering you is he, Miss?’

‘Oh. Oh, no, sir. Not at all.’ Her face was flushed and Constable Suckling realised she was blushing. Not every day she met a man in uniform, he supposed. She really was quite charming. ‘This gentleman was just about to return something to me.’

‘Is that right?’ He frowned at the young man, taking in the insolent expression, the jaunty way he carried himself, the high cheekbones and arrogant black eyes. They gave the lad a distinctly foreign look, an Irish look, those eyes, and Inspector Suckling narrowed his own. The young man shifted his weight and made a small sighing noise, the plaintive nature of which made the constable improbably cross. Louder this time, he said again, ‘Is that right?’

Still there came no answer, and Constable Suckling’s grip settled on his truncheon. He tightened his fingers around its familiar shaft. It was, he sometimes thought, the best partner he’d ever had, certainly the most abiding. His fingertips itched with pleasant memories and it was almost a disappointment when the young man, cowed, gave a nod.

‘Well then,’ the constable said; ‘Hurry it up. Return the young lady’s item to her. ’

‘Thank you, Constable,’ she said, ‘it’s so kind of you.’ And then she smiled again, setting off a not unpleasant shifting sensation in the constable’s trousers. ‘It blew away, you see.’

Constable Suckling cleared his throat and adopted his most policeman-like expression. ‘Right then, Miss,’ he said, ‘Let’s get you home, shall we? Out of the wind and out of danger’s way.’

 

Dolly managed to extricate herself from Inspector Suckling’s dutiful care when they reached the front door of Bellevue. It had looked a little hairy for a while—there’d been talk of walking her inside and fetching her a nice cup of tea to ‘settle her nerves’—but Dolly, after no small effort, convinced him that his talents were wasted on such menial tasks and he really should be getting back to his beat. ‘After all, Constable, you must have so many people needing you to rescue them.’

She thanked him profusely—he held her hand a little longer than was strictly necessary in parting which was uncomfortable, for his skin was sticky—and then Dolly made a great show of opening the door and heading inside. She closed it almost but not quite completely and watched through the gap as he strutted back to the promenade. Only when he’d become a pinprick in the distance did she tuck the silver dress beneath a cushion for safekeeping and sneak back out, doubling back the way they’d come along the prom.

The young man was loitering, waiting for her, leaning against the pillar outside one of the smartest guesthouses. Dolly didn’t so much as glance sideways at him as she passed, only kept walking, shoulders back, head held high. He followed her down the road, she could tell he was there, and into a small laneway that zigzagged away from the beach. Dolly could feel her heartbeat speeding up and, as the sounds of the seaside deadened against the cold stone walls of the buildings, she could hear it too. She kept walking, faster than before. Her plimsolls were scuffing on the tarmac, her breaths were growing short, but she didn’t stop and she didn’t look behind her. There was a spot she knew, a dark juncture where she’d become lost once as a little girl, hidden from the world as her mother and father called her name and feared the worst.

Dolly stopped when she reached it, but she didn’t turn around. She stood there, very still, listening, waiting until he was right behind her, until she could feel his breath on the back of her neck, his very closeness heating her skin.

He took her hand and she gasped. She let him turn her slowly to face him, and she waited, wordless, as he lifted the inside of her wrist to his mouth and brushed across it the sort of kiss that made her shiver from way down deep inside.

‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered.

His lips were still touching her skin. ‘I missed you.’

‘It’s only been three days.’

He shrugged, and that lock of dark hair that refused to stay put fell forward across his forehead.

‘You came by train?’

He gave a slow single nod.

‘Just for the day?’

Another nod, half a smile.

‘Jimmy! But it’s such a long way.’

‘I had to see you.’

‘What if I’d stayed with my family on the beach? What if I hadn’t headed back alone, what then?’

‘I still would’ve seen you, wouldn’t I?’

Dolly shook her head, pleased but pretending not to be. ‘My father will kill you if he finds out.’

‘I reckon I can take him.’

Dolly laughed, he always made her laugh. It was one of the things she liked best about him. ‘You’re mad.’

‘About you.’

And then there was that. He was mad about her. Dolly’s stomach turned a somersault. ‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘There’s a path through here that leads out into fields. No one will see us there.’

 

‘You realise, of course, that you could’ve got me arrested.’

‘Oh, Jimmy! You’re being too serious.’

‘You didn’t see the look on that policeman’s face—he was ready to lock me up and throw away the key. Don’t get me started on the way he was looking at you.’ Jimmy turned his head to face her, but she didn’t meet his eyes. The grass was long and soft where they were lying and she was staring up at the sky, humming some dance tune beneath her breath and making diamond shapes with her fingers. Jimmy traced her profile with his gaze—the smooth arc of her forehead, the dip between her brow that rose again to form that determined nose, the sudden drop and then the full scoop of her top lip. God she was beautiful. She made his whole body yearn and ache, and it took every bit of restraint he had not to jump on top of her, pin her arms behind her head and kiss her like a madman.

But he didn’t, he never did, not like that. Jimmy kept it chaste even though it damn near killed him. She was still a schoolgirl, and he a grown man, nineteen years to her seventeen. Two years might not seem a lot, but they came from different worlds, the two of them. She lived in a nice clean house with her nice clean family; he’d been out of school since he was thirteen, taking care of his dad and working at whatever lousy job he could get to make ends meet. He’d been a lather boy at the barber’s for five shillings a week, the baker’s lad for seven and sixpence, a heavy lifter on the construction site out of town for whatever they would give him; then home each night to put the butcher’s gristly odds and ends together for his dad’s tea. It was a life, they did fine. He’d always had his photographs for pleasure; but now, somehow, for reasons Jimmy didn’t understand and didn’t want to unravel for fear of wrecking everything, he had Dolly too, and the world was a brighter place; he sure as hell wasn’t going to move too fast and spoil things.

God it was hard though. From the first moment he’d seen her, sitting with her friends at a table in the street corner cafe, he’d been a goner. He’d looked up from the delivery he was making for the grocer, and she’d smiled at him, just like they were old friends, and then she’d laughed and blushed into her vanilla cup of tea, and he’d known that if he lived to be a hundred years old he’d never see a more beautiful vision. It had been the electric thrill of love at first sight. That laugh of hers that made him feel the pure joy he remembered from being a kid, the way she smelled of warm sugar and baby oil, the swell of her breasts beneath her light cotton dress—Jimmy shifted his head with frustration, and concentrated on a noisy gull as it flew low overhead towards the sea.

The horizon was a faultless blue, the breeze was light, and the smell of summer was everywhere. He sighed and with it let the whole thing drift away—the silver dress, the policeman, the embarrassment he’d felt at being cast as some sort of danger to her. There was no point. The day was too perfect to argue, and no harm had come of it anyway, not really. No harm ever did. Dolly’s games of ‘let’s pretend’ confused him, he didn’t understand the urge she had to make believe and he didn’t especially like it, but it made her happy so Jimmy went along with it.

As if to prove to Dolly that he’d put the whole thing behind him, Jimmy sat up suddenly and dug out his faithful Brownie from his haversack. ‘How about a picture?’ he said, winding on the spool of film. ‘A little memento of your seaside rendezvous, Miss Smitham?’ She perked up, just as he’d hoped she would—Dolly loved having her photograph taken—and Jimmy glanced about for the sun’s position. He walked to the far side of the small field in which they’d had their picnic.

Dolly had pushed herself to sitting and was stretching like a cat. ‘Like this?’ she said. Her cheeks were flushed from the sun, and her bow lips plump and red from the strawberries he’d bought at a roadside stall.

‘Perfect,’ he said, and she really was. ‘Nice light.’

‘And what exactly would you like me to do in the nice light?’

Jimmy rubbed his chin and pretended to consider this deeply. ‘What do I want you to do? Answer carefully now, Jimmy boy, this is your chance, don’t blow it … Think damn it, think …’

Dolly laughed and he did too. And then he scratched his head and said, ‘I want you to be you, Doll. I want to remember today exactly as it is. If I can’t see you for another ten days, at least I can carry you round in my pocket.’

She smiled, a small enigmatic twitch of the lips, and then nodded. ‘Something to remember me by.’

‘Exactly,’ he called. ‘Won’t be a minute now, I’ll just fix the settings.’ He dropped down the Diway lens and, because the sunshine was so bright, pulled up the lever for a smaller aperture. Better to be safe than sorry. By the same token, he took the lens cloth from his pocket and gave the glass a good rub.

‘All right,’ he said, closing one eye and looking down into the viewfinder. ‘We’re read—’ Jimmy fumbled the camera box, but he didn’t dare look up.

Dolly was staring at him from the middle of the viewfinder. Her chestnut-coloured hair fell in wind-loosened waves that kissed her neck, but beneath it she’d unbuttoned her dress and slipped it from her shoulders.

Without taking her eyes from the camera she started peeling the strap of her bathing suit slowly down her arm.

Christ. Jimmy swallowed. He should say something; he knew he should say something. Make a joke, be witty, be clever. But in the face of Dolly, sitting there like that, her chin lifted, her eyes issuing him a challenge, the curve of her breast exposed—well, nineteen years of speech evaporated in an instant. Without his wit to help him, Jimmy did the one thing he could always rely on. He took his shot.

 

‘Just make sure you develop them yourself,’ said Dolly, buttoning up her dress with trembling fingers. Her heart was racing and she felt bright and alive, strangely powerful. Her own daring, the look on his face when he’d seen her, the way he was still having trouble meeting her eyes without blushing—it was intoxicating, all of it. More than that, it was proof. Proof that she, Dorothy Smitham, was exceptional, just as Dr Rufus had said. She wasn’t destined for the bicycle factory, of course she wasn’t; her life was going to be extraordinary.

‘You think I’d let any other man see you that way?’ said Jim-my, paying extravagant attention to the straps of his camera.

‘Not on purpose.’

‘I’d kill him first.’ He said it softly, and his voice cracked slightly under a burden of possession that made Dolly swoon. She wondered if he would. Did such things really happen? They didn’t where Dolly came from, the semi-detached mock Tudors standing proud in their soulless new suburbs; she couldn’t imagine Arthur Smitham rolling up his sleeves to defend his wife’s honour; but Jimmy wasn’t like Dolly’s father. He was the opposite: a working man with long, strong arms and an honest face and the sort of smile that came from nowhere to make her stomach turn back flips. She pretended not to hear, taking the camera from him and staring at it with a show of thoughtfulness.

Holding it in one hand, she glanced playfully from beneath her lashes and said, ‘You know, this is a very dangerous piece of equipment you carry, Mr Metcalfe. Just think of all the things you could capture that people would rather you didn’t.’

‘Like what?’

‘Why,’ she lifted her shoulder, ‘people doing things they shouldn’t, an innocent young schoolgirl being led astray by a more experienced man—just think what the girl’s poor father would say if he knew.’ She bit her bottom lip, nervous but trying not to let him see it, and leaned closer, almost—but not quite—touching his firm, sun-browned forearm. Electricity pulsed be-tween them. ‘A person could get themselves into rather a lot of trouble if they got on the wrong side of you and your Box Brownie.’

‘Better make sure you stay on my good side then, hadn’t you?’ He shot her a smile beneath his hair, but it disappeared as quickly as it came.

He didn’t look away and Dolly felt her breaths lighten. The atmosphere had changed around them. In that moment, under the intensity of his stare, everything had changed. The scales of control had tipped and Dolly was spinning. She swallowed, uncertain, but excited too. Something was going to happen, something she had set in motion, and she was helpless to stop it. She didn’t want to stop it.

A noise then, a small sigh from between his parted lips and Dolly swooned.

His eyes were fixed still on hers and he reached to brush her hair behind her ear. He kept his hand where it was but tightened his grip, holding firmly to the back of her neck. She could feel his fingers shaking. The proximity made her feel young suddenly, out of her depth, and Dolly opened her mouth to say something (to say what?), but he shook his head, a single quick movement, and she shut it. A muscle in his jaw twitched; he drew breath; and then he pulled her towards him.

Dolly had imagined being kissed a thousand times, but she’d never dreamed of this. In the cinema, between Katharine Hepburn and Fred MacMurray, it had looked pleasant enough, and Dolly and her girlfriend Caitlin had practised on their arms so they’d know what to do when the time came, but this was different. This had heat and weight and urgency; she could taste sun and strawberries, smell the salt on his skin, feel the press of heat as his body moved against her own; most thrilling of all, she could tell how badly he wanted her, his ragged breaths, his strong muscled body, taller than hers, bigger, straining against its own desire.

He pulled back from the kiss and opened his eyes. He laughed then, in relief and surprise, a warm husky sound. ‘I love you, Dorothy Smitham,’ he said, resting his forehead against hers. He pulled gently at one of the buttons on her dress. ‘I love you and I’m going to marry you one day.’

Dolly said nothing as they walked down the grassy hill; her mind was racing. He was going to ask her to marry him: the trip to Bournemouth, the kiss, the intensity of what she’d felt … What else could it all mean? The realisation had come with overwhelming clarity, and now, waiting in limbo, she yearned for him to say the words out loud, to make it official. Even her toes tingled with longing.

It was perfect. She was going to marry Jimmy. How had it not been the first thing she thought of when her mother asked her what she wanted to do instead of starting work at Father’s factory? It was the only thing she wanted to do. The very thing she must.

Dolly glanced sideways, noting the happy distraction on his face, his unusual silence, and she knew he was thinking the same thing; that he was busy even now, working out the very best way to ask her. She felt elated; she wanted to skip and twirl and dance.

It wasn’t the first time he’d said he wanted to marry her; they’d teased around the topic before, whispered conversations of ‘Imagine if …’ at the back of dim cafes in the parts of town her parents never went to. She always found the subject deeply exciting; unspoken, but implicit in their playful descriptions of the farmhouse they’d live in and the life they’d have together, was the suggestion of closed doors, and a shared bed, and a promise of freedom—both physical and moral—that was irresistible to a schoolgirl like Dolly, whose mother still ironed and starched her uniform shirts.

Imagining the two of them like that made her giddy, and she reached for his arm as they left the sunlit fields and wound their way through the shaded alleyway. When she did, he stopped walking, and pulled her with him to stand against the stone wall of a nearby building.

He smiled in the shadows, nervously it seemed to her, and said, ‘Dolly.’

‘Yes.’ It was going to happen. Dolly could hardly breathe.

‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about, something important.’

 

She smiled then, and her face was so glorious in its openness and expectation that Jimmy’s chest burned. He couldn’t believe he’d finally done it, kissed her like he wanted to, and it had been every bit as sweet as he’d imagined. Best of all was the way she’d kissed him back; there was a future in that kiss. They might come from opposite sides of town, but they weren’t so different, not where it counted; not in the way they felt about each other. Her hands were soft within his own as he said what he’d been turning over in his mind all day, ‘I had a phone call the other day from London, a fellow called Lorant.’

Dolly nodded.

‘He’s starting a photojournalistic magazine called Picture Post—a journal dedicated to printing images that tell stories—he saw my photographs in the Telegraph, Doll, and he’s asked me to come and work for him.’

He waited for her to squeal, to jump, to clutch at his arms with excitement. It was everything he’d dreamed of doing, ever since he’d first found his father’s old camera and tripod in the attic, the box with the sepia photographs inside. But Dolly didn’t move. Her smile was lopsided now, frozen in place. ‘In London?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘You’re going to London?’

‘Yes. You know, big palace, big clock, big smoke.’

He was trying to be funny, but she didn’t laugh; Dolly blinked a couple of times and said on an exhalation, ‘When?’

‘September.’

‘To live?’

‘And work.’ Jimmy hesitated; something was wrong. ‘A photographic journal,’ he said vaguely, before frowning. ‘Doll?’

Her bottom lip had begun to tremble and he thought she might be going to cry.

Jimmy was alarmed ‘Doll?—What is it?’

She didn’t cry though. She flung her arms out to the side and then brought them back to rest on her cheeks. ‘We were going to be married.’

‘What?’

‘You said—and I thought—but now—’

She was cross with him, and Jimmy had no idea why. She was gesticulating with both hands now, her cheeks were pink, and she was speaking very quickly, her words a blur so that all he could make out was ‘farmhouse’ and ‘Father’ and then, oddly, ‘bicycle factory’.

Jimmy tried to keep up, didn’t succeed, and was feeling pretty bloody helpless when finally she gave an enormous sigh, planted her hands on her hips, and looked so spent from the whole monologue, so indignant, that he couldn’t think what to do except take her in his arms and smooth her hair as he might have done with a cranky child. It could have gone either way, so he smiled to himself as he felt her calming. Jimmy walked a pretty steady emotional line and Dolly’s passions caught him off guard sometimes. They were intoxicating, though: she was never pleased if she could be delighted, never annoyed if she could be furious.

‘I thought you wanted to marry me,’ she said, lifting her face to look at him, ‘but you’re going to London instead.’

Jimmy couldn’t help laughing. ‘Not instead, Doll. Mr Lorant is going to pay me, and I’m going to save everything I can. I want to marry you more than anything—are you kidding? I just want to be sure and do it right.’

‘But it is right, Jimmy. We love each other; we want to be together. The farmhouse—the fat hens and a hammock and the two of us dancing together in bare feet …’

Jimmy smiled: he’d told Dolly all about his father’s childhood on the farm, the same adventure stories that had used to thrill him as a boy, but she’d embroidered them and made them her very own. He loved the way she could take a simple truth and turn it into something wonderful with the silvery threads of her incredible imagination. Jimmy reached out to cup her cheek. ‘I can’t afford the farmhouse yet, Doll.’

A gypsy caravan then. With daisies on the curtains. And one hen . .

. maybe two so they don’t get lonely’

He couldn’t help it: he kissed her. She was young, she was romantic, and she was his. ‘Not long, Doll, and we’re going to have all the things we’ve dreamed about. I’m going to work so hard—you just wait and see.’

A pair of squawking gulls cut through the alley overhead, and he reached for her, running his fingers down her sun-warmed arms. She let him take her by the hand and he squeezed it firmly, leading her back towards the sea. He loved Dolly’s dreams, her infectious spirit; Jimmy had never felt so alive as he had since he met her. But it was up to him to be sensible about their future, to be wise enough for the two of them. They couldn’t both fall prey to fancies and dreams; no good would come of that. Jimmy was smart, all his teachers had told him that, back when he was still in school, before his dad took his turn. He was a quick learner, too; he borrowed books from the Boots lending library and had almost read his way through the fiction section. All he’d been lacking was an opportunity, and now, finally, one had come his way.

They walked the rest of the alleyway in silence until the prom came into view, brimming with afternoon sea-goers, their shrimp paste sandwiches all finished now, and returning to the sand. He stopped and took Dolly’s other hand, too, slotting his fingers between hers. ‘So,’ he said softly.

‘So.’

‘I’ll see you in ten days.’

‘Not if I see you first.’

Jimmy smiled, and leaned to kiss her goodbye, but a child ran by just then, shouting and chasing a ball that had rolled into the alley, and the moment was spoiled. He pulled back, oddly embarrassed by the boy’s intrusion.

Dolly gestured with her body towards the promenade. ‘I guess I should be getting back.’

‘Try to stay out of trouble, won’t you?’

She hesitated, and then leaned to plant a kiss square on his lips; with a smile that made him ache, she ran back towards the light, the hem of her dress flicking against her bare legs.

‘Doll,’ he called after her, just before she disappeared.

She turned, and the sun behind made her hair seem like a dark halo.

‘You don’t need fancy clothes, Doll. You’re a thousand times more beautiful than that girl today.’ She smiled at him, at least he thought she did; it was difficult to tell with her face in shadow, and then she lifted a hand and waved and she was gone.

 

What with the sun and the strawberries and the fact that he’d had to run to make his train, Jimmy slept for most of the return journey. He dreamed of his mother, the same old chestnut he’d been having for years now. They were at the fair, the two of them, watching the magic show. The magician had just closed his pretty assistant inside the box (which always bore a rather striking resemblance to the coffins his father made downstairs at W. H. Metcalfe & Sons, Undertaker and Toy- maker) when his mother leaned down and said, ‘He’ll try and get you to look away, Jim. It’s all about distracting the audience. Don’t you look away.’ Jimmy, eight years old or so, nodded earnestly, widening his eyes and refusing to let them blink, even when they began to water so badly that it hurt. He must’ve done something wrong though, for the door to the box swung open and—poof!—the woman had gone, disappeared, and Jimmy had somehow missed the whole thing. His mother laughed, and it made him feel queer, all cold and juddery in his limbs, but when he looked for her she was no longer beside him. She was inside the box now, telling him that he must’ve been daydreaming, and her perfume was so strong that—

‘Tickets, please.’

Jimmy woke with a start and his hand went straight to his haversack on the seat beside him. It was still there. Thank God. Foolish of him to fall asleep like that, especially when his cam-era was inside. He couldn’t afford to lose it; Jimmy’s camera was his key to the future.

‘I said tickets, sir.’ The inspector’s eyes narrowed to slits.

‘Yes, sorry. Just a minute.’ He dug it out of his pocket and handed it over for punching.

‘Continuing on to Coventry?’

‘Yes, sir.’

With a whiff of regret that he hadn’t, after all, uncovered a fare cheat, the inspector handed back Jimmy’s ticket and rapped his hat before moving along the carriage.

Jimmy took his library book from his haversack but he didn’t read it. He was too het up with memories of Dolly and the day, thoughts of London and the future, to concentrate on Of Mice and Men. He was still a little confused as to what had happened between them. He’d meant to impress her with his news, not make her upset—there was something almost sacrilegious in disappointing a person as spirited and glowing as Doll was—but Jimmy knew he’d done the right thing.

She didn’t want to marry a man with nothing, not really. Doll loved ‘things’: trinkets and pretties and keepsakes to collect. He’d watched her today, and he’d seen her looking at the people in the bathing hut, the girl in the silver dress; he knew that whatever her fantasies about the farmhouse, she longed for excitement and glamour and all the things money could buy. Of course she did. She was beautiful and funny and charming; she was seventeen years old; she lived in a world of lovely people and fine things. Dolly didn’t know what it was to go without, and neither should she. She deserved a man who could offer her the very best of everything, not a lifetime of butcher’s leftovers got on the cheap and a drop of condensed milk in her tea when they couldn’t stretch to sugar. Jimmy was working hard to become that man, and as soon as he did, by God, he was going to marry her and never let her go.

But not until then.

Jimmy knew first-hand what happened to people with nothing who married for love. His mother had disobeyed her wealthy father to marry Jimmy’s dad, and for a time the two of them had been blissfully happy. But it hadn’t lasted. Jimmy could still remember his confusion when he woke up to find his mother gone. ‘Just up and disappeared,’ he’d heard people whispering in the street; and Jimmy had thought of that magic show they’d seen together just the other week. He’d marvelled, picturing his mother disappearing, the warm flesh of her body disintegrating into particles of air before his eyes. If anyone was capable of such magic, Jimmy decided, it was his mother.

As with so many of the great matters of childhood, it was his peers who showed him the light, long before a kindly adult thought to do the same. Little Jimmy Metcalfe got a bolter for a mum; ran off with a rich man, left poor Jim without a crumb. Jimmy brought the rhyme home from the school playground, but his dad had very little to say on the matter; he’d grown thin and tired looking, and had started spending a lot of time by the window, pretending he was waiting on the postman with an important business letter. He just kept patting Jimmy’s hand and saying they’d be all right, that the two of them would muddle through, that they still had each other. It had made Jimmy nervous the way his father kept saying that, as if he were trying to convince himself, and not his son at all.

Jimmy leaned his forehead against the train’s glass window and watched the tracks whizz by beneath him. His father. The old man was the only sticking point in his plans for London. He couldn’t be left alone in Coventry, not these days, but he was sentimental about the house where Jimmy had grown up. Lately, with his mind wandering the way it did, Jimmy sometimes found the old boy setting the table for Jimmy’s mother, or worse, sitting at the window as he’d used to, waiting her to come home.

The train pulled into Waterloo station and Jimmy slung his haversack over his shoulder. He’d find a way. He knew he would. The future stretched ahead, and Jimmy was determined to be equal to it. Holding tightly to his camera, he leapt from the carriage and headed for the underground to catch the train back to Coventry.

 

Dolly, meanwhile, was standing in front of the wardrobe mirror in her room at Bellevue, draped in a magnificent piece of silver silk. She was going to return it later, of course, but it would’ve been a crime not to try it on first. She straightened, and stood for a moment watching herself. The rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed, the bones of her decolletage, the way the dress rippled with life across her skin. It was like nothing she’d worn before, like nothing in her mother’s stodgy wardrobe. Not even Caitlin’s mother had a dress like this. Dolly was trans-formed.

She wished Jimmy could see her now, like this. Dolly touched her lips and her breaths shortened at the memory of his kiss, the weight of his eyes upon her, the way he’d looked when he took her photograph. It had been her first proper kiss. She was a different person now from the one she’d been this morning. She wondered if her parents would notice; whether it was apparent to everyone that a man like Jimmy, a grown man with rough edges and work-hardened hands and a job in Lon-don taking photographs, had looked at her with hunger and kissed her like he meant it.

Dolly smoothed the dress over her hips. Smiled a slight greeting to an invisible associate. Laughed at a silent joke. And then, with a swirl, she let herself fall back across the narrow bed, arms wide. London— she said it out loud to the paint that was peeling in curls off the ceiling. Dolly had made a decision and the excitement was almost enough to kill her. She was going to go to London; she’d tell her parents as soon as the holiday was over and they all went back to Coventry. Mother and Father would hate the idea, but it was Dolly’s life and she re-fused to be cowed by convention; she didn’t belong in a bicycle factory; she was going to do exactly what she wanted. There was adventure waiting for her out there in the big wide world: Dolly just had to go and find it.

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