Lying Together by Gaynor Arnold Page A

His face was even handsomer in the lamplight, his eyes even blacker around the rims. ‘Why,’ he said, with a look of such pleasure that my heart battered against my ribs. ‘It’s my little waitress! My little waitress who thought a shilling was too much for a tip.’ I didn’t know what to say as he stood there smiling with the box in his hands. He must have seen what it was, although he gave no sign. I was tremendously excited to see him, of course, and felt relieved to be in the middle of a group of normal people after my fright with the chemist, but I was embarrassed about him standing there with that box on display.
    â€˜I’ve just been running an errand for a friend,’ I explained. ‘Well, not really a friend – someone from the hotel.’
    â€˜Well, don’t let us keep you. It must be urgent. You’re quite out of breath.’ He handed back the box. I realized I was panting hard with fright, and that my hands were shaking so much I couldn’t put it back into its bag. The cheap brown paper began to tear as I tried to shove it in.
    â€˜Let me do it.’ Another pair of hands came forward. A woman’s. Work-worn and sensible, with a silvery wedding ring. A kind face, pale dried skin, as if she had powdered with talc. ‘Jack told us about you, you know. We thought you were rather marvellous, refusing a tip. Jack always overdoes the compensation.’
    I was astonished that the young man had discussed such a thing with his friends, and with this woman who I thought for a moment might be his wife, but who looked too old. ‘Oh, it just didn’t seem fair,’ I replied. ‘I thought maybe he needed it more than me.’
    There was a burst of very hearty laughter from the small group around us. I felt very silly and very young. ‘I have to go now,’ I said hastily. ‘Miss Jennings is relying on me.’
    Jack smiled. ‘Off you go, then,’ he said. ‘Sweet dreams,’ he added, raising his hat.
    I couldn’t think of anything else that night – and for every night afterwards – except for the mysterious Jack raising his hat and smiling at me. Each teatime I waited for the sight of him, hoping to see his narrow head bent over that old red book. On my first afternoon off, I even gave up the chance to see Leslie in It’s Love I’m After so I could walk to the building where I’d seen him. There was a brass plate on the door. It said ‘The Carlton Rooms and Exhibition Hall’. The door was shut and there was no way of telling what went on inside. Mr Reynolds, when I asked him later, said all sorts of things happened there. People hired out rooms, he said. He had himself been to a meeting of the Antiquarian Society there only last week. ‘What’s your interest, Elsie?’ he said. ‘You should be going out dancing or to the flicks, not bothering about a musty old place like that.’ I said I had run into someone I knew there, but didn’t know where that person lived to look him up. ‘Ah,’ said Mr Reynolds. ‘He’ll be doing the looking up himself, if he’s got any sense.’
    But I knew Jack was never going to look me up. He didn’t know who I was, and even if he remembered me kindly, it was simply as a ‘little waitress’. I was too young and too common to interest him in any other way. And of course there was my skin. It was flaring up badly then, spots creeping up my neck and behind my ears. But all the same, on my next day off I was back at the Carlton Rooms, like a moth to a candle. This time the door was open and there was an elderly gent on duty in the lobby. ‘What can I do for you, young lady?’ he said in a friendly sort of way when he saw me hovering around. Then he made a lot of fuss getting out a big ledger from behind the desk, and after much turning of pages, checking and re-checking of dates and tracing about with his