Bad Girls Good Women. Rosie Thomas

behind the glass-panelled door of his office. The door announced his name, and the name of his company in full, in not quite evenly painted white letters. Mattie saw at a glance that the office was a green-painted cell, furnished with two deal desks and a pair of battered metal filing cabinets, a telephone and an electric kettle, and a dog-eared copy of Spotlight. It smelt of linoleum and cigarette smoke and, rather strongly, of Mr Willoughby himself.

      ‘Come in, dear, come in,’ he said. ‘Make yourself comfortable.’

      He was looking at Mattie’s flushed cheeks and the corkscrews of blonde hair sticking to her forehead. Then his glance travelled downwards. Mattie was wearing a new circle-stitched bra and her jumper fitted tightly. She stumbled to the empty desk and perched on a typist’s chair with a broken back.

      ‘What I need, dear,’ Francis Willoughby announced with a show of briskness, ‘is a really efficient girl to help me with all aspects of this business.’ He waved his hand around the office. ‘Bookings, Contracts. Auditions. I’m a very busy man.’ He glanced at the telephone, but it remained silent. ‘There’s answering that thing for me. Are you used to the telephone?’

      ‘Oh, yes,’ Mattie assured him.

      ‘Typing, of course …’

      ‘I’m afraid I can’t type.’ I can’t pretend about that, Mattie thought desperately. Mr Willoughby glanced at her jumper again and ran his thumb to and fro over his thin moustache.

      ‘Well. Perhaps you could pick it up as you go along?’

      ‘I’m sure I could.’

      ‘The job pays six pounds ten a week.’

      Less than at the shoe shop. Mattie looked over Mr Willoughby’s shoulder and through the sweaty green walls. Beyond them was the stage.

      ‘Could you make it seven pounds?’

      Mr Willoughby’s smile showed his teeth, too white and even to be real.

      ‘Lots of girls want to do theatre management, dear. It’s not like ordinary office work, is it?’

      ‘All right,’ Mattie said quickly. ‘Six pounds ten.’

      She started work with Headline Repertory Companies the following Monday, leaving the shoe shop without a backward glance.

      While Julia listened to the clamour inside herself and waited, trying to contain it, Mattie went out to explore the limits of her new job. It seemed to consist mostly of explaining to angry-sounding voices on the telephone that Mr Willoughby was auditioning and couldn’t speak to anyone now.

      Mattie quickly understood that most of the anger related to the non-appearance of money. Francis would look up from his desk, squinting against the smoke from his cigarette, and hiss, ‘Cheque’s in the post, tell ’em.’

      Mattie knew that there was nothing of the kind in the post, because she did Francis’s few letters too, but she made a convincing job of lying for him, and he grinned approvingly at her.

      One caller was particularly insistent. His voice was deep and resonant, the perfect actor’s voice as far as Mattie was concerned. His name was John Douglas, he told her, and he was the manager of Francis’s number one company, currently on tour in the north of England.

      ‘Tell fucking Francis,’ the rich voice issued from the telephone mouthpiece, ‘that unless I get fucking paid in full and unless I get cash in hand to pay the fucking company every Friday night as well, I don’t take them or sodding Saint Joan to fucking Gateshead next week. Got that?’

      ‘I think so,’ Mattie murmured.

      Wincing as if it hurt him, Francis at last unlocked the big company cheque-book from the safe.

      ‘It’s all cash-flow, dear,’ he told her as he wrote a cheque. ‘If you don’t get the takings during the week, it isn’t there to pay the actors at the end of the week, is it?’

      When she bent down to find the company’s current address in the filing cabinet, Francis put his hand up her skirt. His fingers squeezed her thigh and then slid up over her stocking top. Mattie jerked away from him.

      ‘Six pounds ten a week doesn’t cover that, Francis,’ she told him wearily, and he chuckled. A large proportion of Mattie’s time was spent dodging his hands, but the more brusquely she shook him off the more Francis seemed to enjoy it. Sometimes, especially after one of his lengthy lunches, the atmosphere in the little office was so highly charged with his erotic tension that Mattie was half-afraid the spurt of flame from his cigarette lighter would set fire to it. But most of the time she felt sorry for Francis and his beleaguered existence. Were all men pathetic, she wondered, under the armour plate of their aggression?

      Mattie sighed and directed her attention back to whatever non-task Francis had set her between fumbles and phone calls. This was the theatre, that was the thing to remember. However marginally, she was involved in the magic world at last.

      At the end of the third week, Josh came. Mattie opened the door to him, and Felix saw Julia’s face when she heard his voice. It was as though a soft light had been turned on under the skin of her face. It shone out of her eyes and glowed through her bones. The blurring of familiarity lifted for an instant, and Felix saw her as if she was a stranger again. She’s beautiful, he thought.

      He went on calmly slicing the aubergines he had been preparing for their meal. Their rich colour made the backs of his hands look ashy by contrast.

      ‘You see?’ Julia whispered, to nobody. ‘I knew he would come.’ A moment later Josh stood in the kitchen doorway with his arm round Julia’s shoulder. He seemed to fill the space with his height and the breadth of his shoulders, although in reality he was no taller than Felix. Julia was laughing at something he had said to her in the hallway, gasping a little, as if she was short of breath.

      ‘Hi, there, Felix,’ Josh said easily. ‘What’s new with you?’

      The kitchen was so tiny that Felix noticed the sun-bleached tips of his eyelashes. He looked down at the worktop and saw the dark moon of his own face reflected in the blade of the knife.

      ‘Hello. Nothing new.’ He sounded stiff, but Julia and Josh were too engrossed in each other to notice. Josh swung her round so that he could look at her.

      ‘I’ve come to take you out. Is that okay? Or have you got a date already?’

      ‘If I did, I’d stand him up for you. Shall I change?’

      Julia had learned from Felix. Her clothes were simpler now, and she took more care with them. She was wearing a vivid green polo-neck jumper and tight black matador pants with flat black pumps. Jessie had lent her a pair of jet earrings that Julia coveted, and they swung when she turned her head.

      Josh touched one of them with the tip of his finger. ‘Don’t change,’ he said softly.

      Felix felt their intimacy like an electric charge. In the second’s silence he leaned against the sink, hating the scummy detritus of potato peelings, hating his own jealousy.

      ‘Let’s go, then,’ Julia said.

      Felix went on standing at the sink after they were gone. He saw that the enamel was badly chipped, and the shelf above it where he kept his saucepans was speckled with city soot. Suddenly he swept the potatoes and the aubergines and the chopping knife in a pile on top of the peelings in the sink. The clatter of the knife against the enamel didn’t change his feelings.

      ‘What the bloody hell’s the matter with you?’ Jessie shouted from her room.

      ‘I don’t feel like cooking tonight, that’s all.’

      ‘Don’t cook, then. Mat and I don’t care, do we, duck? And I don’t suppose Julia and that young man have got their dinners on their minds right now, either.’ Jessie laughed, her deep, coarse laugh, and Felix smiled in spite of himself and went through into her room. She was sitting with her bottle, and Mattie beside her with her nose