I had also left my mother and sat forward, willing the singer to do well.
She sang ‘Cry Me a River’. Her voice was soft and smoky. The longing and loss in her voice touched me and I guessed most of the people in the room. Everyone was silent, no glasses tinkled, no money rattled in the till at the bar. Everyone was transfixed by the beauty she brought to the song. As she sighed the last notes and hung her head in conclusion the place erupted with applause. She looked genuinely surprised and pleased, smiling and bowing, holding her hands pressed together between her knees.
She sang ‘Funny Valentine’, ‘Georgia’, ‘Me and Mrs Jones’ and all those sleepy, sexy songs that make you miss everything you thought you had but didn’t, or thought you wanted but couldn’t.
At the end of the set women were whistling and whooping and the MC, leaping back on to the stage from her position on a stool at the side, had trouble quietening them down. ‘Margo will be back in half an hour,’ she said, and there was a scattering of applause before people drifted to the bar. A jazz trumpet began sobbing softly through the PA system.
I went to the bar to order another bottle of wine. When I got back to the table it was empty. I knew where Lena would be: standing at the side of the stage talking to the singer. I wasn’t surprised. Lena was an old performer, she’d been a dancer and was very good at telling other artists how much she liked their work. Sometimes, as I did then, I sat and watched the recipients melt with pleasure beneath the warmth of her sweet praise. Margo smiled, looking down, frowning slightly with a deprecatory expression. Then Lena gestured towards our table and Margo smiled over at me and I nodded in reply. Lena was explaining something and Margo looked at her watch. Lena wrinkled her nose and patted Margo’s arm. Margo turned and went backstage and Lena returned to the table. ‘She’s going to join us for a drink,’ she said, pulling over an empty chair from the next table. ‘At first she said she wouldn’t but I convinced her that there would only be serious intellectual conversation and dry white wine at our table so she relented. I think she might even have a small interest in you. She said she’d heard of you when I mentioned your name.’ She raised her eyebrows at me and I raised mine back.
Feeling pleased with myself, I sauntered to the bar and called to the bar woman who was waiting as a glass filled with lager. ‘Wine glass,’ I mouthed. ‘For the singer.’ Across the heads of the crowd, she passed me a glass and gave me a wink. The stud in her nose flashed.
I had just sat down when Margo came to the table, moving worriedly through the crowd, smiling occasionally at people who said hello. She was wearing another dress, red, short and tight, with high red sparkling shoes. I felt confident that the Jigsaw suit was good. She sat down and Lena introduced us.
‘You’re a barrister,’ Margo said. I nodded. Sometimes it turns people on that you’re a barrister and I was happy with that.
‘And you’re a wonderful singer,’ I said, pouring wine into her glass. ‘How long have you been singing?’
‘Not long,’ she said. ‘A year or so. Are you a wonderful barrister?’
‘Oh, the easy ones first. I don’t know if I’m wonderful, but I think I’m quite good and I fight hard. Why? Do you need a barrister?’ I hoped she didn’t, since a professional relationship might interfere with the relationship I had in mind.
‘Maybe. Don’t we all sometimes?’
‘I suppose so, possibly, mmm.’
Lena said, ‘I’m just going to talk to …’ and slipped away.
I was looking at Margo’s almond-shaped eyes. There were lines at the corners and her mascara was slightly smudged, but they were the deepest blue I had ever seen.
‘Why are you wearing dark glasses?’ she asked me.
‘I have a black eye,’ I said. ‘It’s a long story.’
‘Take them off.’
Reluctantly I removed the glasses. She raised her hand and gently smoothed her fingertips over the bruise. Her hand was cool. ‘You can hardly see it,’ she murmured, kindly. ‘Don’t put them back on. You have lovely eyes. I like brown eyes.’
‘How did you come to be singing here tonight?’ I asked. I watched her mouth as she spoke about knowing the bar woman who was a friend of the manager and the band they’d booked having let them down and the manager having rung her friend who had rung her. She spoke softly and slowly and her full red-stained lips formed the words hypnotically. I had to stop myself licking my own lips.
She looked at me watching her and smiled. For a moment neither of us spoke. She looked at her watch.
‘I’ve got five minutes. I need to get some fresh air before I go back on stage,’ she said. ‘Do you want to come outside while I have a smoke?’
We walked to the side of the stage and she led me out through a fire door into the chill dark air. We were in an alley, with high brick walls on either side. The narrow rectangle of the sky was clear and there were some stars. ‘Can we see the Plough from here, do you think?’ I asked her.
She leaned against one wall and took a pack of Camel cigarettes from the small bag on her wrist.
I don’t like smoking – I don’t like the smell of smoke, I dislike the sight of a saucer filled with squashed cigarette butts, I hate it when people smoke in the non-smoking compartments of trains, but now I was standing in a dark alley next to a woman with a cigarette in her hand. And at that moment all I wanted in the world was to slip my hand in my pocket, pull out a silver lighter and flick it open to light her cigarette. But I didn’t have a silver lighter, or any lighter at all, and she lit her own cigarette with a match which she waved out with a snap of her wrist.
She rubbed one arm with the other.
‘Are you cold?’ I asked, ‘Do you want my jacket?’ I went to take it off.
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘You’ll get cold too.’
I leaned against the wall opposite and watched her as she smoked, inhaling deeply, creasing her eyes against the smoke. ‘It always feels so good, up there on stage,’ she began, looking down the alley. ‘It’s such a buzz.’ She shook her head and inhaled again. ‘It’s so different from the rest of my life. I feel like a different person, a stranger. And tonight there’s you. I don’t know what’s happening. I’ve never spoken to a barrister before.’ She looked me straight in the eye. ‘I didn’t know barristers could be lesbians.’
‘Barristers can be anything,’ I said. ‘It’s not who we are, it’s what we say that counts. I suppose it matters sometimes …’ I could feel myself getting boring, but I couldn’t stop. ‘Sometimes you don’t get the briefs. But that’s usually because you’re a woman, not because of who you sleep with.’
‘How long have you been a barrister?’
‘Ten years.’
‘Ten years is a long time. What would my life be like if I’d started doing this ten years ago?’
‘I don’t know, what was your life like ten years ago?’
‘Well, ten years ago it wasn’t bad, it just got worse as time went by.’ She shook her head again, then looked up. ‘What did you say about the Plough?’
We both gazed up at the sky. I took a step forward and could feel her close to me. I ran my hand down her arm and felt her shudder. We looked at each other and I took another step towards her and put an arm across her shoulders, watching her face to check her reaction.
She was an inch or two shorter than I was and she looked up at me with her head on one side. I pushed her gently back against the wall and put my hands on either side of her head. She slid her arms around my waist and closed her eyes.
She felt soft and ripe in my arms. I bent my face into her hair and smelt perfume and cigarette smoke. She raised her eyelids and looked at me while I put my hand against her cheek. It felt like peach down. I tilted