‘She’s just had a feed so mind she doesn’t sick up on you,’ she said, passing her over.
‘Oh, I don’t mind if she sicks up on me. Do I, little sweetheart? No, I don’t. No, I don’t. Daddy would eat your vomvom with a sugar spoon.’
‘You’re getting ash on her head,’ said Bettina, leaning over and swiping away the flecks. She looked up at Megan, smiling wryly. ‘Rule number one of parenting: babies are not to be used as ashtrays.’
Megan snapped back her head and laughed, her bosom shaking underneath the white blouse. Lovely soft handfuls of—
No. Stop it.
Jean seldom entertained and usually ate by herself in her small dining room, reading a book as she ate. Tonight she’d got out all her best silverware and serving dishes and ordered food from a Portuguese bistro. She served it herself, shirt sleeves rolled up, a cigarette dangling from her mouth. The smell of spiced sardines fused with cigarette smoke and the deer-fat tallow of the table candles.
It was a special occasion: a ground-breaking sapphic book by Radclyffe Hall called The Well of Loneliness had just been published and Britain was going wild for it – in both the good and bad sense. Jean had sold all her copies that afternoon and was waiting for a new shipment, which would undoubtedly also sell out. Twice this week she’d had to clean smashed egg from her shop windows.
They finished eating and moved into the sitting room. This was the first time Bettina had met any of Jean’s friends and she felt unusually shy. Scoobie was a fifty-plus-year-old American. She wore a pinstriped suit with spats and her knuckles were thick with gold sovereign rings. She was stout and unlovely with a dirty laugh and she smoked cigars, constantly moving them around her large slug mouth like a dog working on a bone. She looked at Bettina with a tilted chin and approving eyes, as if evaluating a prize mare. Triss, her partner, was a Russian-born thirty-year-old with a sweet, welcoming nature but horrible teeth. She was the ‘woman’ of the pair and wore a long, dowdy woollen dress with a tan leather purse belt around her waist and cream ankle boots.
Both were heavily involved in the literary world and published their own monthly journal celebrating women’s writing (their proudest achievement was printing a quartet of poems by Mina Loy). They also bred racehorses.
Bettina drank fast, tapping her glass for refills. She noticed Jean casting worried little glances – she was showing her off like a rare locket, expecting her to shine. Scoobie did most of the talking – she personally knew Radclyffe Hall, she was now saying, and had just that week had lunch with her.
‘What’s she like?’ Bettina asked.
Scoobie tapped her cigar into an ashtray on her knee. ‘She’s an asshole.’
‘And a fascist,’ added Triss.
‘I’ve heard this about her,’ said Jean, nodding. ‘And her little wifey – have you ever seen her? Eyes like a dead shark.’
Scoobie leaned forward to peer at Bettina. ‘Have you read it?’
‘I have,’ said Bettina.
‘What did you think?’
‘I loved it.’
Scoobie pursed her mouth. ‘Did you now?’
‘Don’t make fun of her,’ said Jean, sliding a protective arm around Bettina’s shoulders.
‘I’m not,’ said Scoobie.
‘You’re about to.’
Scoobie grinned. ‘It’s a horrible book. Virginia Woolf thinks it’s a piece of shit. It’s a hand-wringing apology from a self-loathing bull-dagger. An overwritten turd. Just horrible.’
‘A lot of people would disagree,’ said Jean.
‘Well, it’s ground-breaking,’ said Bettina. ‘And very brave.’
Scoobie nodded. ‘It is brave. I will not argue with you there. But honey, a piece of shit is a piece of shit is a piece of shit.’
‘It’s all subjective,’ said Jean.
‘Would you listen to that?’ Scoobie said to Triss. ‘“It’s all subjective.” Coming from someone who I know agrees with me. Our Janine is pussy-whipped.’ She enacted a whip being snapped. Jean’s cheeks flushed. She started filling up people’s glasses.
‘I wrote a letter to Radclyffe Hall yesterday,’ said Bettina.
‘Oh?’ said Scoobie.
Jean gave her another of those worried little glances.
‘What did you say?’ said Triss.
Bettina cleared her throat. ‘I wrote, “Dear Raddiepoohs. Fancy a dip in my well?”’
A moment of frozen silence. And then the room burst into laughter, with Jean laughing the hardest and longest. Ah, the locket does have a special shine to it after all.
The way she stated her opinion as if it were fact – pure fact. ‘The theatre is dead, everyone knows it.’ That’s what she’d said. Bug-black eyes coolly assessing him over her wine glass.
‘Bettina, darling, I do believe your ladyfriend is declaring me extinct,’ he’d replied, trying to keep his voice merry. For Bettina’s sake.
‘Hey now, I’m not saying you’re extinct,’ said Jean. ‘Acting in itself will never cease to be. Just those great proscenium arches you choose to act under.’ She lit a cigarette. He noted her long fingers.
All the better to go and fuck herself with.
‘You’re handsome – you have options. Movies…’ She waved a limp hand – et cetera, et cetera. ‘Did I offend you there? What I said about the theatre?’
He glanced at Étienne, who was trying to hide a smirk.
‘Yes. But then you called me handsome, so all is forgiven.’
They laughed. Ha haha! He took three long swallows of his wine.
‘I have a friend who works at Warner Brothers,’ she said. ‘I could put a word in for you.’
‘Oh?’ he said. ‘What does your friend do at this studio?’
‘He’s a producer. He’s been put in charge of some new department. He writes me fairly regularly. How about it? It’s the least I could do’ – she smiled in a way that was probably supposed to be impish but came across as condescending – ‘after so rudely insulting you.’
He glanced again at Étienne, who was raising his eyebrows with encouragement.
‘I thank you,’ he said, dipping his head, ‘but it’ll probably be a waste of time.’
‘A waste of time? What are you talking about? They’d lap you up in Tinseltown, Mr Shakespeare. Silent movies are on the way out—’
‘Something else you decree to be extinct?’ said Bettina, smiling.
‘Absolutely. Dead as a dodo. Talkies are coming, silence is dying, end of story.’
‘“Silence is dying,”’ said Bettina, thoughtfully. ‘I like that.’
‘Then by all means,’ Bart said to Jean, ‘tell your friend about me.’ She smiled, satisfied with herself – her natural state, by the looks of things. ‘Thank you,’ he added, quietly.
‘I might use it in my novel,’ Bettina said, half to herself. ‘“Silence is dying”. It has a duality of meaning. Yes… I’m going to jot it down.’ She went into her handbag for the new notebook she carried around with her, at all times. She’d decided to start writing a novel shortly after Monty’s death, and now it was all she ever talked about.
‘So how did you come to be friends with a Hollywood producer?’ he asked Jean.
She snatched her attention away from Bettina (she was gazing at her like a stupid doe) and said, ‘Uh?’ with an almost-scowl.
‘I said, so how did you come to be friends with a Hollywood producer?’ He could feel his jaw tightening.
A bemused chuckle. ‘We’re still talking about that?’
Under the table his fingernails were digging into the tops of his thighs.
‘Creative types tend to flock together, I think,’ she said. ‘Queer creatives even more so.’
‘Queer, is he?’