The Girl From Barefoot House (24 page)

‘What are you going to do with yourself today, honey?’ Estelle asked over breakfast.

Josie had the day all worked out. ‘See all my favourite places one last time – Chinatown and Fifth Avenue, St Patrick’s Cathedral, then Macy’s because I’ve got a few dollars left and it would be a shame not to spend them. Tonight, I’m going to see
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
in Central Park, then have a coffee in Greenwich Village.’ She sighed. ‘I can’t believe I’m going home tomorrow.’

‘We’ll miss you, honey. It’s been a pleasure having you here.’ Matthew vigorously nodded his assent. ‘But don’t forget,’ Estelle went on, ‘you’ve been invited back. We might see you again some time.’

‘It would be worth coming back if only for your lovely pancakes.’

She felt sad, walking round the vivid, noisy streets of Chinatown, not sure if she would ever see them again. She could promise herself she’d come back until she was blue in the face, but fate might not allow the promise to be kept. In life, nothing could be relied on – she’d learned that a long time ago.

She stayed quite some time in the cathedral, savouring the calm, the aroma of incense just discernible in the cool
air, and prayed she would find a nice place to live when she got home, a nice job, that she would be happy. She prayed for Louisa, for Lily and everyone she could think of.

It was time for lunch when she came out, so she ate in the nearest diner – hamburger, a banana split, Coca-Cola. Afterwards, she set off for Macy’s, where she roamed the aisles of clothes for hours before buying a long narrow black skirt and a baggy cerise jumper. There were just enough dollars left for a dead cheap evening meal and a final coffee in Greenwich Village.

He was at the next table, a slim young man with straight, coal black hair falling in a careless quiff on his forehead. Dark eyes sparkled in his lively, mobile face, which had a slightly dusky hue. He looked Italian, Josie thought, or Spanish, something foreign. The table he was at was crowded, and the young man was clearly the centre of attention. Everyone seemed to want his opinion, vying to make him notice them, clutching his arm, shouting each other down.

His name was Jack. Or perhaps it was Jacques. He might be French. He wore black pants and a dark blue shirt with the top button undone. His check tie was pulled loose. Every now and then he would throw back his head and laugh, and there was something joyous and uninhibited about the laugh, as if it came from deep inside him.

The coffee-bar was called Best Cellar, reached down a poky stairway on Bleecker Street. She’d been there twice before. The young man – she couldn’t take her eyes off him – was animatedly sounding off about something to do with politics, waving his arms about. His listeners regarded him silently, with respect.

Josie glanced at her watch. Half past eleven. It was time she was getting back, she had a plane to catch tomorrow. But she was reluctant to leave while the young man was there, which was crazy. He hadn’t even glanced in her direction. Did she intend to sit there in the hope that everyone would go except him, leaving
her
to be the object of his undivided attention?

She was already feeling dead peculiar, anyroad.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
had been a magical experience. Dusk had fallen over Central Park halfway through the performance, then night came, stars appeared. The grass on which the audience sprawled, mostly couples, felt cooler, and the scent of a million flowers was almost overpowering. As the sky grew dark the stage became brighter, the actors’ voices louder, more resonant, the audience more rapt. Something stirred in Josie, an acute awareness of the beauty and the clarity of her surroundings and the sheer brilliance of the lines the actors spoke. Then came something else, a longing to have someone with her. Not Lily, a man, a boyfriend, in whose arms she could lie as she watched the play draw to a close, and they would experience the beauty of the magical night together. Would she ever meet a man like that?

Then she’d come to Best Cellar, and there he was.

Suddenly, the young man leapt to his feet and removed himself from her life for ever. He raced up the stairs two at a time. The occupants of the next table seemed to droop, as if his leaving had removed a vital element from their lives, though after a while they began to talk quietly amongst themselves.

‘Oh, well.’ Josie gave a wistful shrug, drained her third cup of coffee, picked up her bag and made for the stairs. Halfway up, she met the young man hurtling down.
‘Forgot my jacket,’ he muttered. He smiled, but she could tell he wasn’t actually
seeing
her.

‘Some people’d lose their heads if they weren’t screwed on,’ Josie remarked, which, given the circumstances, was probably the most stupid thing she could have said but was all she could think of when they had to stop on the stairs to squeeze past each other.

They were standing sideways, facing, touching, and the young man was looking at her, astounded. ‘Was that a Liverpool accent I just heard?’

Josie’s heart thudded, unnaturally fast, unnaturally loud, as the dark eyes smiled into hers. ‘Yes.’

‘Oh, then please can I kiss you? I haven’t kissed a girl from Liverpool in almost fifteen years. What’s your name? Where are you from? I mean, what part of Liverpool?’

‘Penny Lane,’ she stammered. ‘I’m Josie Flynn.’

‘And I’m Jack Coltrane from Old Swan.’ He kissed her on both cheeks. ‘Pleased to meet you, Josie Flynn.’

She could hardly breathe. There was a weird sensation in her stomach, as if everything had collapsed inside. He was looking at her with a slightly puzzled expression. Suddenly he laughed. ‘You’re very beautiful, Josie Flynn. Can I kiss you again?’

Next day, instead of going back to Liverpool, she moved in with Jack Coltrane.

It was like a dream, or a film, or a book. No, it was like none of those things, but something else, impossible to describe. She had become another person, quite literally lost her senses.

He had invited her to dinner. She was about to explain that she was leaving tomorrow when she realised he meant have dinner
now
, at midnight. On the way to the restaurant the ground felt different where she walked, and the things she touched weren’t real, and when she looked at people they were slightly askew. It didn’t help her surreal state to be faced with spaghetti bolognese and a bottle of wine at a time when she would normally have been in bed, or at least thinking about it.

She also seemed to have lost her voice, which didn’t matter because Jack didn’t stop talking. Before the war, he told her between mouthfuls of spaghetti, his father had been a doctor in Old Swan. In 1939, with war threatening, the family had upped roots and moved to America, where an uncle on his mother’s side already lived. They settled on the coast of Maine. At first, it was only supposed to be temporary, but his father started practising again, his mother, a trained nurse, returned to work, and by the time the war was over there was no question of going back to England. They applied for American citizenship.

‘And Dad thought the new National Health Service was the work of Communists. Free health care for the masses? No way. I realised me and my family hadn’t much in common. I left home at nineteen. I’ve hardly seen my folks since.’ He grinned. ‘So, that’s how I ended up a Yank instead of a scouse.’

Josie listened, only half taking it in, wondering if he was as fascinated with her as she was with him. Had he only asked her for a meal because they had Liverpool in common? Would she see him again after the meal had finished?

Apparently she would. ‘Let’s dance,’ he said, when the wine had gone and their plates were empty.

‘Here?’ she glanced around the crowded bistro. There wasn’t a soul dancing.

He laughed. ‘No, sweetheart, on a dance floor. There’s a club just around the corner.’

She could easily have fainted, at the ‘sweetheart’ and the pressure of his thin arm around her waist when he led her out to the still busy street. He stopped on the pavement and took her in his arms and she could feel his heart beating against her own. She slid her arms around his neck, and rested her head on his shoulder, knowing this was the place where God had intended her to be. His hand moved to the small of her back, to her neck, to her face. He stroked her hair, as if he was trying to make sure she was real. Then, regardless of the passers-by, he kissed her. As she stood within the shelter of his arms, Josie had the oddest feeling that nothing real, nothing of importance, nothing that mattered, had ever happened before, that she had crossed a bridge and entered another world, a magic, brilliantly lit other world, inhabited by Jack Coltrane.

Their lips parted. Jack’s dark eyes were moist. They stared deep into hers, and she felt as if he were seeing into her soul. He sighed. ‘So, this is it, then?’ he whispered. ‘Shall we forget about dancing and go home?’

Josie nodded. But, despite his words, Josie was never truly sure if Jack had entered the other world with her.

His apartment was over a dry-cleaner’s in a busy street in Little Italy. Opposite was a greengrocer’s with a green and white striped awning, a tiny cinema that screened only Italian films –
Stromboli
, with Ingrid Bergman, was showing the day Josie collected her suitcase from Thumbelina’s and moved in – and an ice-cream parlour
with window-boxes upstairs full of bright flowers and trailing ivy.

Matthew had expressed concern when she told him she wasn’t going back to Liverpool. ‘Are you sure you’re doing the right thing, girl?’

‘Course she is. Just look at her face.’ Estelle had hugged her hard. ‘Be happy, honey. You’ll never have that look again.’

The apartment consisted of two largish, badly furnished rooms, a bathroom and a kitchen that was only used to make coffee as Jack usually ate out or had food delivered. The gloomily patterned wallpaper looked as if it had been up for decades but, as with the awful furniture, it didn’t seem to matter. It wasn’t just because Jack was there, with personality enough to totally eclipse his surroundings, but the place had a warm, well-lived-in feel, full of evidence of his active life. Books and papers were piled on the floor and political posters covered the walls, as well as several paintings done by his friends. More friends had showered him with objects they had sculpted, chiselled, moulded or carved – a lovely hand-woven rug hung over the unused fireplace. The front room was a cross between a second-hand shop and a small art gallery.

‘Let’s christen the bed,’ Jack said the very second Josie had plonked her suitcase on the floor.

‘We christened it last night, oh, half a dozen times.’

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her chastely on the brow. ‘Yes, but now you’re permanent. It’ll feel different.’

Permanent! The word gave her a thrill, yet at the same time made her feel uncomfortable. She was a good Catholic girl, who had never faintly envisaged living in sin with a man. It just wasn’t
done
, at least not in
Liverpool where people got married first. What on earth would she tell Lily when she wrote to say she was staying in America for good? And she must let Louisa know she was in love.

‘Hey, you having second thoughts?’ Jack kissed her again, this time on the lips, this time more urgently.

‘Gosh, no.’ She’d probably go to hell, but it was worth it. She relaxed against him. ‘What are we waiting for? Let’s christen the bed.’

Jack Coltrane was a playwright – there were eight scripts on a shelf to prove it. With the first six, he’d got nowhere but the next,
The Disciples
, had been taken up by an off-Broadway theatre and received excellent reviews.

‘I thought I’d made it until Joe McCarthy stuck his big nose in.’ Jack glowered darkly. He rarely lost his temper, but could never control his anger when he spoke about the way his play had been treated. ‘I was small fry, not important enough to be called before his damn committee, but it didn’t stop one of his goons having a word with the theatre, and my play was pulled. The manager was very apologetic, but a play with a socialist message wasn’t appropriate in the present climate. Arthur Miller could get away with it, but not someone like me.’

Senator Joseph McCarthy was a hated figure in the eyes of every liberal-minded person in America, Josie learned. His Anti-American Activities Committee had ruined the careers of hundreds of illustrious figures from all walks of life, including many from the theatre and cinema.

Jack had since written another play. He was writing one now, sitting solidly in front of the typewriter for four hours every morning because he was a driven man with a head full of dreams, ideas, plots, that simply had to be put
down on paper. But there was no point in submitting them, he said with a sigh. ‘I’m only trying to say the same thing as in
The Disciples
.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘I’d have to send it under a different name, and I’m not prepared to hide behind a pseudonym. There isn’t a theatre in America that would even
read
a play by Jack Coltrane, let alone stage it. Word gets around. I’m a bit of a pariah.’

‘Only for now,’ Josie said stoutly. ‘Things might change.’ Had it been someone else, she would have suggested they forget the politics and write a thriller or something funny, but she had quickly learned that Jack had too much integrity to write about what he didn’t strongly feel. He was, he explained once, trying to get across man’s inhumanity to man, the social injustice in the world, trying to fathom out why some people had so much and others had so little, yet most folk didn’t seem to care.

Josie remembered reading once that couples were never equal, that one loved more than the other. There was a giver and a taker. She suspected from the start that she gave and Jack took. There was nothing selfish about it – he hadn’t a selfish bone in his body – but it was the way the dice had fallen, or how the cookie had crumbled, as they said in America. Only in bed where, time after time, they brought each other to a rapturous, scarcely bearable climax did she feel totally certain that he was committed to her and her alone, that she was
extra
special.

It was an undeniable fact that Jack had the knack of making the whole world feel special. His warm smile was free to anyone, his normally sunny disposition shared with everyone he met. Josie watched his numerous friends, men and women alike, watching him, waiting for Jack to notice
them
, to smile his all-embracing smile
just for
them
, to shake their hand, give them a hug, a kiss, a friendly slap on the back. They adored him.