The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets (47 page)

‘Maybe
he’ll come out round the front,’ suggested Charlotte.

‘We’ve
sent Lorraine to check,’ said Deborah, who had an answer for everything. ‘If he
comes out, she whistles, high as you like, and we bomb round the front in time
to catch him. Personally, I think we’re going to be lucky out here.’

I had
my doubts. Sarah, who had plastered herself in so much pancake powder and rouge
that her unquestionable good looks had been entirely destroyed, was rustling
around in her handbag. At length, she pulled out a bottle of gin.

‘Swiped
it from Nan’s bag,’ she giggled, unscrewing the lid. ‘You want some? It keeps
out the cold.’ She took a big swig herself, carefully so as not to smudge her
lips, then wiped the top of the bottle with her coat sleeve and passed it to
Charlotte. Naturally enough, Charlotte accepted the offer.

‘When
in Rome,’ she muttered under her breath to me, taking a large gulp. ‘Ugh! Gin
really is the most hideous sin of a spirit. What I’d do for a brandy,’ she muttered.

‘You
want some?’ Deborah asked me. ‘Or do you not do gin? Not posh enough for you,
eh?’

‘Don’t
be stupid,’ I said, idiotically, and grabbed the bottle. Goodness, it was
strong! I nearly choked, and my eyes watered, but I looked away so that none of
them noticed. I passed the bottle back to Deborah who passed it to Sarah, and
before long nearly all of it had gone, because honestly, it was the only thing
to do. I agreed with Charlotte. It was a horrible drink with the most
insufferable aftertaste. Of course it was also addictive. After another ten
minutes, Lorraine appeared, striding towards us in a cream trench coat. They
may have been girls from the village, but they certainly knew how to dress up.
Lorraine looked at Charlotte and me with amusement.

‘Oh,
you made it!’ she said. ‘Where were you sitting?’

‘Front
row,’ said Charlotte promptly. ‘Johnnie kissed Penelope.’

There
was a stunned silence.

‘That
was
you?’
wailed Sarah. ‘In “Walking My Baby”? Why didn’t you tell us
you had that seat when we asked you the other day?’

‘I didn’t
know it was any different from any other seat,’ I confessed.

‘Bloody
hell, and you call yourself a
fan!’
exclaimed Deborah infuriatingly.

‘How
did you get your tickets, then?’ asked Lorraine, full of curiosity.

‘A
friend,’ I said quickly. ‘He — er — got them to thank me for doing something
for him.’

‘Tell
him I’ll do whatever it is, next time,’ sniggered Sarah.

‘Yeah,
how far did you have to go?’ demanded Deborah to gales of laughter.

I
grinned. ‘It’s not like that.’

‘Aw,
come on!’ Lorraine looked at me with new respect and offered me another swig of
gin. As I drank, I felt like Marina. I suddenly wished that Harry was here to
see all of this — to see me standing in my heels, gin-drunk on the corner of
Argyll Street, waiting for Johnnie Ray under the dirty glow of the starless
London night sky, my mind dizzy with the thrill of Johnnie’s kiss, my heart
surprised by the sudden swell of the incoming summer. That April night there
was already cherry blossom under our feet. Harry would have loved it, I
thought, because although he had never understood our love for Johnnie, he
understood what it meant to feel so strongly for something that it nearly sent
you berserk. I pushed aside the feeling of missing Harry that had swamped me
during Johnnie’s songs that I associated with our afternoon in the Long Gallery
and hoped that he was happy with Marina. What was it about that afternoon that
I guarded so preciously? It wasn’t as if either of us had mentioned it since …

‘I don’t
think he’s coming,’ moaned Deborah, after another five minutes had passed.
Several of the other groups of girls had given up already, some of them sobbing
quietly.

‘He has
to leave the building somehow,’ said Sarah impatiently. ‘Let’s open another
bottle, Deb.’

We were the last group of
girls left, an hour later, and certainly we were the most drunk. Charlotte and
I flopped onto the pavement, and the others followed suit, crashing on top of
each other in fits of laughter.

‘Ow!’
moaned Deborah. ‘You’re on me foot, Lorraine!’

‘What
do we do now?’ asked Charlotte.

‘Go
home, I suppose,’ said Sarah gloomily. ‘Bloody long way home, too.

‘Hey, I’ll
swap you your shoes for me coat,’ said Deborah, prodding Charlotte’s arm.
Charlotte grinned.

‘You
can have them, darling,’ she said. ‘I don’t want your coat, thanks awfully.’

‘Whass
wrong with me coat?’ slurred Deborah. Charlotte gave her one of her most
shattering looks.

‘There
simply isn’t enough time for me to discuss exactly what’s wrong with your coat.
I will try your gloves, however.’

So we
sat there, watching Charlotte try Deborah’s gloves, and Deborah manoeuvre
herself into Charlotte’s shoes — not an easy task when one is as drunk as she
was. I think another half an hour must have passed before the stage door opened
again, and a man stepped out of the shadows.

‘Johnnie!’
cried Sarah weakly.

‘No. He’s
gone, girls. You should get yourselves home to bed; it’s gone half-past
midnight,’ said the man, small and dressed in uniform and about as far from
resembling Johnnie as it was possible to be.

‘Why
didn’t he come and say goodnight?’ wailed Lorraine. ‘We’ve come all the way to
London to see him.’

‘You
girls’ll catch your death,’ said the man kindly. ‘Shall I help you to find
yourselves a taxi cab?’

We
staggered to our feet like newborn fawns, struggling to stay upright and
holding on to one another as we started to sway.

‘You
tell him from us that we came all the way from Wiltshire to see him,’ said
Deborah.

‘You
tell him—” began Sarah, but the man had already left us again. ‘People are so——’
she began, but her words were drowned out by the low throb of a car engine, and
round the corner, blinding us all in the glare of the headlamps, came the huge,
angular beauty of a foreign car. A car that belonged to the silver screen, a
car that looked so out of place in London, it might as well have been a
spacecraft. An American car.

‘Christ!’
offered Deborah, clasping her hand to her forehead. ‘The aliens have landed!’

‘It’s
bloody Jimmy Dean!’ yelled Lorraine.

Charlotte
reacted faster than I, which was not surprising, as my reflexes were steeped in
gin.

‘Shit!
That’s Rocky’s car!’

‘Rocky?’
I repeated, my jaw dropping. ‘No!’

The car
stopped just in front of us, and the driver’s door opened.

‘Maybe
it’s Johnnie’s getaway vehicle?’ cried Deborah hopefully, stumbling towards the
vehicle, arms outstretched like a zombie.

‘I’m
afraid not,’ said that blissfully familiar American voice. ‘Penelope, Charlotte
— what on earth are you doing?’

‘Rocky!’
I cried, and stumbled towards him. He caught me before I fell.

‘Gin!’
he said drily. ‘How extravagant of you, girls.’

‘What
are
you
doing here?’ I demanded, unable to wipe the silly smile off my
face, as my eyes drank in the beauty of his dinner jacket, the dark shadow of
stubble across his jaw and the wonder of his moustache.

‘I just
finished a dinner at Claridges,’ he said. ‘The people on the table next door to
ours were talking about Johnnie Ray at the Palladium and saying ‘how there were
queues of girls thronging around the stage door waiting to see him. I had a
strange feeling I’d find you here.’

Sarah
hiccuped.

‘But I
didn’t think I’d find you so damn drunk,’ continued Rocky, glaring at her. ‘Come
on, then. You had better get in.’

‘What
do you mean? We’re waiting for Johnnie,’ I said petulantly. ‘Then we’re going
back to Charlotte’s aunt’s house.’

‘Not
likely,’ muttered Charlotte. ‘I’ve just realised I’ve forgotten my keys.’

‘Waiting
for Johnnie, my ass,’ said Rocky tersely. ‘If the guy has any sense, he will
have left the theatre before you guys even got out of your seats.’

‘But—”
began Deborah.

‘No
buts. And who are this lot?’ demanded Rocky of Deborah, Sarah and Lorraine.

‘They
live in the village. They love Johnnie too,’ was the best I could manage.

‘Right.
You can all squeeze in but let me warn you — if any of you throw up, you can
get straight out again.’ I sensed he wasn’t joking.

‘Where’s
he taking us?’ asked Sarah, gleefully piling into the back.

‘He’s
quite safe, we know him,’ said Charlotte smugly. ‘Red leather seats!’ squeaked
Lorraine. ‘Hey! The wheel’s on the wrong side of the car!’

It was
quite some feat, getting five drunk Johnnie Ray fans into the car, but Rocky
managed it. Deborah, Lorraine and Sarah got the most terrible giggles and asked
Rocky a series of ridiculous questions, the answers to most of which I was agog
to hear.

‘Who d’you
have to bump off to get a car like this?’ He ignored that one.

‘What
kind of car
is
this, anyway?’

‘It’s a
Chevrolet.’

‘Lord,
I’d love Kevin to see this.’

‘Kevin?’
asked Rocky.

‘My
son.’ Deborah blushed. ‘Gone to stay this week with me sister up north. She’s
got a little boy called Jack. Gets on with Kevin, does Jack. They like Johnnie
Ray. too, but London’s no place for kids.’

‘How
old are you, Deborah?’ asked Charlotte, on behalf of me, Rocky and herself.

‘Eighteen.
And Kevin’s only a baby, before you go thinkin’ bad things about me.’

I
looked at her with a funny sort of respect. Through a mist of gin, she seemed
much wiser than me. Yet Mama was the same age as Deborah when she had me, I
realised with a sudden jolt. Both babies with babies, no matter what your
background or the size of your house.

‘Is
this the same car that Johnnie has?’ demanded Lorraine, who obviously felt
Kevin and Jack were not gripping topics of conversation for the back of a
Chevrolet.

‘I have
no idea, nor do I care.’

‘How
can you not care about Johnnie?’

‘I don’t
like the guy’s wailing, all that continual weeping, sounding sad on the radio,
breaking hearts in mono — it drives me crazy after a while.’

Deborah
laughed. ‘Breaking hearts in mono!’ she exclaimed.

‘That’s
good.’

‘How’d
you get the car ‘ere in the first place then?’ persisted Lorraine.

‘I had
it shipped here from New York.’

‘Do you
live in New York?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Do you
have a wife?’

I
sharpened my ears for the answer to this one.

‘No,’
Rocky replied evenly. ‘Nor do I have any grandparents, pets or children. And
after tonight, I thank the Lord for that.’

‘Who do
you most admire in the movie business?’ asked Sarah conversationally. She
seemed to be sobering up faster than the rest of us.

‘Myself,’
said Rocky automatically.

‘Why
are you here and not in America?’

‘Business.
Why are you?’

‘We
live
here!’ said Lorraine who was as stupid as Deborah was sharp. She looked at
him curiously. ‘Are you famous?’

‘Not at
all.’

‘Are
you rich?’

‘Rich
enough to be driving five girls all the way from London to Wiltshire in the
middle of the night.’

Charlotte
and I, side by side in the front passenger seat, nudged each other.

‘And
what, may I ask, would you have done if ‘I hadn’t driven past the theatre?’
Rocky asked us without glancing our way.

‘I don’t
know,’ said Charlotte dreamily. ‘Sold our bodies and souls to the cruel night,
I suppose.’

‘Speak
for yourself,’ I said primly. I saw Rocky fighting a smile.

We reached Westbury at
five in the morning. The trio in the back had fallen asleep for the last hour
of the journey. as had Charlotte beside me, her head lolling about on my
shoulder. I stayed awake, if only because I knew that I would curse myself for
ever if I forgot any moment of a drive from London to Magna with Rocky.

‘Wake
up,’ I whispered to the back seat. ‘We’re here!’

‘Where
do you girls live?’ Rocky asked a sleepy-eyed Deborah. ‘Oh, we’ll get out on
the green,’ she yawned. Giving a stretch, she dug into her bag. ‘Can we give
you anything?’ she asked.

‘You’ve
been so kind, driving us all the way home in your lovely car. I feel like a
film star or something.’

‘Just
promise me you won’t go hanging around after singers for the rest of your
lives,’ said Rocky, opening the door for them.