Cooper Jilly: Emily

I cried half the morning, trying to decide what to do; then the manager presented me with my weekly bill, and I realized I could only just pay it. Next week I should have to get a job.

I had a bath and washed my hair. I looked frightful, like one of those women that wait for the bodies at the pit head — even make-up didn’t help much. I can’t even make any money as a tart now, I said dismally — I’d have to pay them .

When I got to Bond Street, I felt giddy. It struck me I hadn’t eaten for days. I went into a coffee bar and ordered an omelette, but when it arrived I took one bite and thought I was going to throw up. Chucking down a pound I fled into the street. Four doors down, I went up the steps to the agency that used to find me work in the old days. How well I remembered that grey-carpeted, grey-walled, potted-plant world that I hoped I’d abandoned for ever. I started to sweat and tremble.

Audrey Kennaway, the principal, agreed to see me. She greeted me in an immaculate, utterly awful primrose yellow dress and jacket. Her heavily made-up eyes swept over me.

‘Well, Emily,’ she said in cooing tones, ‘it’s nice to see you. How are you enjoying your new jet-set life? Are you on your way to Newmarket or the Cannes Film Festival?’

‘Actually, neither, I’m looking for a job,’ I blurted out.

‘A job?’ She raised eyebrows plucked to the edge of extinction. ‘Surely not, but I thought your handsome husband was doing so well, he had such a success in the papers this morning.’ Her red-nailed fingers drummed on the table.

‘That’s all over,’ I muttered. ‘It didn’t work out.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. I’m not surprised, I could see her thinking, she’s let herself go so much. Her manner had become distinctly chillier.

‘There’s not a lot of work about at the moment, people are laying off staff everywhere,’ she went on.

‘Oh dear,’ I said feebly. ‘In my day, they were always laying on them.’

Audrey Kennaway smiled coolly.

‘You’ll have to smarten yourself up a bit,’ she said.

‘I know, I know,’ I said. ‘I haven’t been very well. I used to type a bit, do you remember?’ I went on. ‘And when I was thin, you sometimes got me television commercials or a bit of modelling. I’m much thinner than that now.’

‘I don’t think I could find you anything in that field at the moment. Let’s see if there’s any filing clerk work.’ Her long red talons started moving through the cards in a box on her desk. I felt great tears filling my eyes. I struggled to control myself for a minute, then leapt to my feet.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I couldn’t do a filing job. I can’t even file my nails without setting my teeth on edge. It’s a mistake for me to have come here. You’re quite right, I couldn’t hold a job down at the moment. I can’t hold down anything.’ Bursting into tears, I fled out of the office, down the stairs into the sunshine. Two streets away was Rory’s gallery. Gradually, as though pulled by some invisible hand, I was drawn towards it. I went into a chemist’s to buy some dark glasses with my last pound. They weren’t much help, they hid my red eyes but the tears kept trickling underneath. Slowly I edged down Grafton Street. No. 212, here it was; my knees were knocking together, my throat dry.

There was one of Rory’s paintings of the Irasa coast in the window. Two fat women were looking at it.

‘I don’t go for this modern stuff,’ said one.

I entered the gallery, my heart pounding. Then, with a thud of disappointment, I realized Rory wasn’t there. I looked around, the paintings looked superb, and so many already had red ‘sold’ stickers on them. By the desk an American was writing out a cheque to a chinless wonder.

I wandered round the room, proud yet bitterly resentful that people should be able to buy something that was so much a part of Rory.

The chinless wonder, having ditched the American, wandered over.

‘Can I help you?’ he said.

‘I was just looking round,’ I said. ‘You seem to have sold a lot.’

‘We did awfully well yesterday, and we sold four more this morning — not, I may add,’ he whispered darkly, ‘through any assistance on the artist’s part.’

‘What do you mean?’ I said, startled.

The chinless wonder smoothed his pale gold hair.

‘Well, he’s talented, I admit, but quite frankly, he’s an ugly customer. Doesn’t give a damn about the show being a success.’

He put stickers on two more paintings.

‘Always thought the fellow was pretty cold-blooded,’ he went on. ‘Didn’t seem to care about anything, but he’s certainly cut up at the moment. Apparently his wife’s left him. Can’t say I blame her. Only been married six months. He’s absolutely devastated. I mean, he was a dead loss at the private view on Thursday. I’d lined up a host of press boys to meet him, and he wouldn’t speak to any of them. Just hung around the door, hoping she might turn up.’

I leant against the wall for support.

‘D-did you say his wife has just left him?’ I said slowly. ‘Are you sure it’s his wife he’s cut up about?’

‘Certain,’ said the chinless wonder. ‘I’ll show you a picture of her.’

We moved into a second room, where I steeled myself to confront one of Rory’s beautiful voluptuous nude paintings of Marina.

‘There she is,’ he said, pointing to a small oil opposite the window. I felt my knees go weak, my throat dry — because it was a painting of me in jeans and an old sweater, looking incredibly sad. I never knew that Rory had painted it. Tears stung my eyelids.

‘Are you sure that’s the one?’ I whispered.

‘That’s her,’ said the chinless wonder. ‘I mean it’s a great painting, but she’s not a patch on that gorgeous redhead he was always painting in the nude. Still, I suppose there’s no accounting for tastes. I say, are you feeling all right? Would you like to sit down?’

Then he looked at the painting — and at me.

‘I say,’ he said, absolutely appalled, ‘how frightfully rude of me. That painting — it’s you, isn’t it? I really didn’t mean to be rude.’

‘You haven’t been,’ I said, half laughing, half crying. ‘It’s the nicest, nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me in my life. Do you possibly know where he’s staying?’

I ran towards the tube station, rocked by conflicting emotions. It was the rush hour. As I battled with the crowds, I tried to calm the turmoil raging inside me. It couldn’t be true, it couldn’t be true. Then suddenly, as I reached the bottom of the steps, I was absolutely knocked sideways by an ecstatic, whining, black heap leaping up and licking my face, its tail going in a frenzy.

‘Walter,’ I sobbed, flinging my arms round his neck. ‘Oh Walter, where’s your master?’ I looked up and there was Rory.

‘Come here, you bloody dog!’ he was shouting from the other side of the crowd. His slit eyes were restless, ranging from one person to another, sliding towards me. Then, as if drawn by the violence of my longing, they fastened on me, and I saw him start in recognition.

I tried to call his name, but the words were strangled in my throat.

‘Emily!’ he yelled.

The next moment he was fighting his way through the crowd.

‘Oh, Emily, Emily, darling,’ he said. ‘Don’t ever run away again.’

And pinning me against the wall, hunching his shoulders against the pressure of the crowd, he began to kiss me greedily, angrily, as tears of love and happiness streaked my face.

After a few minutes I drew away, gasping for breath.

‘We can’t stay here,’ said Rory, and dragged me in my tearful blindness, muttering incoherently, out into the street and across the road to his hotel, where he kissed me all the way up in the lift, utterly oblivious of the lift man. Walter Scott jumped about trying to lick my hands.