The First Time I Saw Your Face (16 page)

When Cress had rung off because, as she put it ‘Beelzebub in a leotard’ had just turned up for her fitness-training session, Jen pulled the duvet right up over her head. That conversation had been like having a tooth extracted. And she wasn’t sure she’d been entirely truthful about seeing where it led with Matt Harper because she already knew: the exciting, all-singing, all-dancing destination of friendship. Laughy, joky, conversational friendship, when what you really wanted was to put your hand on someone’s bare chest and feel what you did to their heart.

CHAPTER 14

The first read-through was always exciting, everyone looking forward a little nervously to what the coming weeks would bring. Over the rehearsal period they would put aside all their usual gripes and disagreements and bond into a family. Well that was the theory. In reality there was usually the odd flurry of backbiting and bitchiness before everyone pulled together.

But looking round the circle of people in the hall tonight, Jennifer couldn’t help feeling that ‘odd flurry’ should read ‘prolonged blizzard’. Angus was being particularly tactless about the fact he’d snaffled the part of the Duke, the part Neale wanted, and Neale was sitting straight-backed with his arms crossed, talking to no one. Lisa had failed to get the seat next to Matt Harper and was leaning across a miffed-looking Jocelyn to try to talk to him. Marjorie was looking daggers at Pamela the leech, because she was busy talking, when Marjorie presumably wanted to explain how important it was not to gabble
Shakespeare. And most of the men were impatient to get started as there was a Newcastle match on the telly.

Matt Harper was simply looking like a sensitive pirate.

‘OK,’ Finlay said, getting to his feet. ‘As I explained at the first meeting, there are many things going on in this play – how people are not always what they seem, and how, sometimes, it is our own desires that make it easier to deceive us. That’s particularly true for poor old Malvolio, whom Neale will be playing.’ Finlay looked at Neale a little uneasily, ‘The poor man’s fooled into thinking his mistress loves him and that she wants him to do all kinds of weird things to prove his love for her, which gets him locked up as a madman.’

‘Not much of a stretch for you then, Neale,’ Angus said, and Finlay hurried on, ‘There are all kinds of misunderstandings along the way until it’s resolved at the end with Viola and Sebastian reunited, the Duke realising it’s Viola whom he really loves and Olivia marrying Sebastian.’

Jocelyn, who was delighted she was playing Olivia, smirked at Matt Harper and Jennifer felt as if she were standing at the wrong end of a telescope, miles away from the centre of things.

‘Any questions?’ Finlay asked.

‘Will we get home for the footie?’

‘Absolutely not.’ Finlay let rip with a big gust of laughter. ‘Not even if there’s injury time – with the football, not the rehearsal. Right, one more thing before the warm-up. We have the lovely Jennifer with us tonight.’ Jennifer gave a weak smile towards no one in particular. ‘She’ll be our
prompt when you’ve learned your words, but for now she’s helping Lydia and Wendy in the Blue Room with costumes. If you haven’t already given Jennifer your measurements, pop in this evening when you can. All right, chairs away, let’s get those shoulders rolling.’

Jennifer stayed long enough to see Lisa sprint for a place next to Matt Harper for the warm-up exercises before walking unenthusiastically towards the Blue Room. Measuring and sewing came pretty far down her list of ways to spend her time, possibly only just above listening to Mr Armstrong read soft porn out aloud.

Two women, both with similar grey helmets of hair, were perusing the doublets and breeches, bodices and skirts that were piled on the floor. Lydia, the elder of the two, had sharp features to match the cutting nature of her tongue, and while Wendy standing near her was no retiring violet either, her feistiness was tempered by a tendency to kindness that had become more pronounced since she’d been widowed. The two liked to score points off each other whenever possible and Jennifer feared she would be playing the role of referee.

‘We’re looking to see what costumes we can recycle,’ Lydia said, holding up a dark-blue doublet. ‘Got that cast list?’

Wendy was examining a red velvet skirt and flexing the waistband. ‘This is going to be too tight for most of the women. Although maybe Jocelyn …’ She peered at Jennifer’s list and made a mocking noise. ‘Size twelve? She’s never size twelve.’

‘Might be,’ Lydia said, ‘it’s a long time since you were a size twelve, Wendy.’

‘That doublet,’ Jennifer asked, quickly taking it from Lydia’s hands, ‘would it do for Lisa?’

Wendy looked at it. ‘Maybe, but we’d need some heavy-duty strapping to keep those breasts of hers under control.’

‘Shame you can’t strap up her nether regions too,’ Lydia snapped, and both Jennifer and Wendy decided almost in unison, to bend down and take a much closer look at the clothes. Club gossip suggested that Lisa had once been discovered snogging Lydia’s husband in the costume loft at an after-play party.

Jennifer started matching clothes to actors, conscious of the chatter and laughter coming from the hall and then listening out for individual voices as the cast started to read through the play. She could not discern a trace of West Country burr in the one she was really listening out for.

When the cast started to appear in dribs and drabs, they were either handed costumes and sent to try them on, or stood looking uncomfortable while Jennifer measured them. Out came the old, slightly nervous jokes about warming the end of the tape measure when getting anywhere near an inside leg.

Pamela the leech, being laced into a bodice, was flapping her hands around and complaining that it was too tight and she couldn’t breathe properly, something Jennifer thought might be a blessing.

Which was when Matt Harper walked in.

‘So, jumper off, I guess,’ he said, putting his glasses on the table.

Jennifer watched him pull it off over his head and the tape measure became like a piece of unmanageable rope in her hand.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

Underneath the jumper he had on a thick black T-shirt which made his eyes and hair look even darker.

‘Thermal,’ he said, with a rueful grin, pushing his hair out of his eyes. ‘So what do you want first?’

What did she want first, or last or ever? What was she doing standing here with this tape measure in her hand? If she reached up and pushed that stray bit of hair out of his eyes would he mind?

‘Chest,’ she said and he raised his arms obediently. He was like a little boy – in which case she was having completely inappropriate thoughts about a minor. She took a step nearer and leant in towards him and tried to keep her head down and put her arms around him to position the tape measure without her breasts actually coming into contact with his chest. She could feel the heat coming off him, a slight tang of something citrusy and she wondered what his chest looked like under that T-shirt. There was certainly no flab. She straightened up and read the measurement.

‘Puny?’ he asked, laughing, and she kept her eyes on the tape and wrote down 97 cm next to his name on her notepad.

‘And now?’ he said, raising his eyebrows.

‘Shoulder to wrist.’

She placed the tape on his shoulder and ran her fingers down it to keep it taut, ending up at his wrist. Every inch of the journey down his skin stirred up something in her she didn’t want stirred up.

Go away and leave me alone.

She bent over the notepad again.

‘Waist,’ she said when she came back, thinking of something else, of the river at home and of the warmth of the kitchen, something baking in the oven. She kept her head down as she put her arms around him again and passed the end of the tape measure from one hand to the other and then pulled it tight. That figure got written down, and as she wrote, the spectre of the next set of measurements she would need hung over her.

He was looking embarrassed, as if his mind had also galloped ahead.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘bit … um … all this, isn’t it? Do you want me to do the um … inside leg … thing.’

Is it worse to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’?

‘Hip measurements too,’ Lydia shouted across and Jennifer decided now was the perfect time to do some acting.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said lightly, ‘it will take no more than a minute.’ She bent and fed the tape around his hips, concentrating on a patch of his T-shirt just above the buckle on his belt. Quite a nice belt really, compared with the jeans. Kind of punky.

Do not look at his groin.

‘OK,’ she said before whisking the tape measure away from his hips and getting down on her knees.

‘If you could just open … I mean, stand with your legs wider apart?’ She remembered other times and other men, kneeling like this. Of bedroom carpet under her knees.

‘Of course, of course,’ he said and moved his feet apart and she delicately, delicately, as if his whole groin area was radioactive, measured from the centre seam in his jeans to a point just level with his knee.

She was pretty pleased with how well that had gone until she stood up and splashed back into those brown eyes. He was looking down at her intently and she could not understand what his expression meant. It was there for an instant and then gone.

Lassoing him with the tape measure, pulling him towards me and kissing him would be too forward, would it?

‘All finished?’ He stepped backwards.

She managed to write down 84 cm for his inside leg measurement and then couldn’t remember the figure she’d had in her head for his hips.

After he’d told her his shoe size, making some joke about really needing bigger ones for all his walking, he said thank you, picked up his jumper and left. Wendy had to run after him to give him back his glasses.

‘Now Jen,’ Lisa said, coming into the room next, ‘is there any way, even though I’ve got to wear bloke’s stuff, that you could make it, like, a bit sexier? Maybe show off my arse?’

‘No,’ Lydia said sharply.

‘Jen?’ Lisa’s tone was plaintive.

‘We’ll see,’ Jennifer mouthed at her, happy to lose herself in thinking about Lisa’s body rather than the one she had just had under her hands.

In the pub afterwards, she sat at the large, round table listening to the excited chatter about who had messed up the reading and who had not, and wondered if anyone would be interested in how she’d threaded a needle, pinned a pattern. There was no adrenalin rushing round her body after managing to stitch a seam.

She came back into the conversation as Gerry was bemoaning how badly he’d read his part of Andrew Aguecheek. Steve, who was playing Sir Toby Belch, seemed engrossed in checking his ponytail for split ends, but did break off to say, ‘Oh come off it, Gerry, you were great. Particularly the way you read out the stage directions as well.’

Jennifer had always enjoyed this gentle bitchery in the pub, the mix of whispered, almost camp asides and full-on ribbing. No harm was meant, none taken. But you had to be careful with Jocelyn and Neale. One could tear your ego to shreds with a barbed, throwaway verdict, and the other was not above having a hissy fit and stalking off.

Right now though, Neale looked as if he was putting aside his earlier disappointment at not getting the part he wanted. ‘I think I can make something of this Malvolio chap,’ he confided in Jennifer, and she had the waspish thought that Shakespeare had already made something of it – all Neale had to do was not unmake it.

Laughter rippled round the group as Angus, already on his third pint, his neck and cheeks flushed, pronounced that he felt the Duke and he were very much alike because both of them were ‘in love with love’. When Steve flicked his ponytail and said dryly, ‘in love with sex, you mean’, Angus looked delighted.

Jennifer glanced across at Matt Harper talking by the bar, looking relaxed and slightly dishevelled, and felt the desire to go over to him and stand just close enough to be able to see the extraordinary brownness of his eyes. Instead she watched Lisa make an attempt to corner him before Doug appeared to block her.

Lisa retreated to a seat near Jennifer. ‘He’s nice, that Matt guy, isn’t he? Bit dorky, but I’d still give him one.’

Lisa’s conquest of men was such a force of nature, like a wave curling to shore or a squall of wind, that Jennifer was always amused when people judged her. It seemed a pointless waste of time. Lisa’s heart was in the right place, however far other bits of her body might roam. Jennifer remembered her coming to visit after the accident, picking her way over the farmyard in her high-heeled shoes and just as expertly navigating a route through Jennifer’s misery. There was no patronising; no avoidance. ‘That scar’s minging, Jen,’ she had said, before hugging her and adding, ‘but not half as minging as thinking of you being dead.’ Other times she had just popped in to sit and witter on about work and who she’d been knocking around with: all the gossip and small talk that represented some much-needed normality when everyone else seemed too afraid of saying the wrong thing.

Jennifer saw Jocelyn circling and agreed with Lisa that, ‘Yes, Matt Harper did seem nice.’

Jocelyn pulled up a stool. ‘Heard you kicked Alex into touch. Not lining Matt up as a replacement, are you?’

Jennifer heard the message under the words: that such an idea was laughable and felt the usual jumble of embarrassment, shame and anxiety. This trip to the pub was shaping up to be as bad as the last one.

‘Bugger off, Jocelyn,’ Lisa said, eloquently.

After she’d gone, Lisa said she’d really like to ram Jocelyn’s broomstick up her backside, and Jennifer put her hand on her arm and said, ‘Jocelyn lashes out at all of us, it’s just my turn. Don’t get yourself worked up, Lisa, I’m really not upset.’

There it was again: the need to make everyone feel better but herself. Why couldn’t she lose her temper, fight back?

Lisa was looking over in Matt Harper’s direction again. ‘I’d be doing everyone a favour ripping his clothes off, wouldn’t I? They’re minging. If only Doug would get out of the way. Oh, hang on.’ Her mobile was ringing and she went out into the porch to answer it. When she came back she grabbed her jacket off the back of the chair.