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There’s something about the office at the weekend. All the typewriters have stopped clicking, and the lights seem clearer somehow, as if there’s more air in the room. It’s not as though Lix dislikes her co-workers – far from it, actually – but god knows she doesn’t get much peace and quiet in that positively shitty flat above the haberdashers. Her own fault really; she ought to have married a man with a pile in the country, given herself somewhere to escape to. Though, in her experience, marriage rarely proves to be anything like an escape.
Flicking through the new report on her desk, Lix reaches for her teacup. The china’s cold to the touch; it usually is by this time of day, the tea stewed and dark, a filmy skin formed over the dark brown liquid. She takes a drink, the bitter, almost ashy taste of it covering her tongue. Closing her eyes for a second, Lix just sits there, the pounding in her head resuming slowly as the aspirin wears off. Finally she sits forward again, removing her glasses as she pinches the bridge of her nose. She could really do with a slice of fruitcake or something – she wonders if the canteen is still open or whether it would be better to nip down to the café on the corner.
Lix looks up at the wall, only to find the clock is no longer there – battery must’ve run down or something. She roots around on her desk for a minute or two, shuffling paper to see if she can locate her watch. Eventually she finds it in a cigarette packet in her top drawer. Five to four. “Café it is, old chum,” she mutters to herself as she stands up, shrugging her trenchcoat on.
They stumble back to Bel's flat at arse o'clock in the morning - all dizzy on beer and those violently green concoctions Bel had mistakenly pointed to at the bar. As Bel attempts to get the key to the door, she falters, laughing as she falls back against the wood. Freddie lurches forward, gripping onto the doorjamb in an attempt not to stumble straight into her. "What - what is it?"
Bel manages to gasp an explanation between laughs, "Just remembering, your charming dance partner at the Christmas party."
Freddie bursts into giggles, his hand pressed tight to his mouth, "Oh god, Marge. What on earth made you think of her?"
"No idea!" Bel yelps, tipping her head back against the door hard. She frowns as she reaches up to rub the back of her head; Freddie looks away, the arch of her throat, her bitten lip things he can’t afford to focus on right now.
“Miss Rowley, if you don’t get this door open, I will fall asleep, drunk, in your corridor and thoroughly shock Mrs Hathaway in the morning when she goes out for her milk.”
“You do it,” Bel says sullenly, passing the keys to Freddie, shifting across slightly to allow him access. He leans forward, shakily getting the key in the but when he pushes, it doesn’t give. “This bloody door,” Bel snipes before leaning forward and throwing her back against the wood, hard. Freddie looks on, slightly horrified, as her body makes a large thud, but the door gives way behind her, creaking open wide. The momentum knocks Bel off her feet and he has to catch her arm to stop her from falling altogether. She laughs against his shoulder for a second, the sound of it warm even through the tweed of his jacket and he closes his eyes. Bel twists away from him then, heading inside the flat.
"Home sweet home," she mutters quietly, kicking off her, leaving them in her wake for Freddie to trip over as he follows her inside. As he trips, he tries to steady himself on the hat stand, but he and the stand both clatter to the floor.
"Oh god, why did we ever go to that pub?” He moans to the floor, the carpet muffling the sound slightly.
“Because Linus was bloody awful this afternoon and Lix bought the first round?”
Freddie finally levers himself up. “That Storm woman will be the death of me. When my liver goes, kindly tell her that it’s all her fault, would you?” When he actually looks around he realises that Bel is nowhere to be seen, but there is a somewhat suspicious rattling coming from the kitchen. He takes the second to look around a little; through beer-blurred eyes he can still see pretty well. He’s not been up here much, not this place. The day she moved here from her old flat in Clapham he’d rolled his eyes: “Just like you to move when I finally get used to the place.” Here’s much brighter, the blue walls a vast improvement on the peeling chintz of the last flat, the space far easier to negotiate.
“God Bel, this is quite the gin palace isn't it?" he laughs as Bel appears over him, swinging a bottle of gin from her fingertips.
“My mother has only ever taught me three things: one, never be without a handkerchief and a pen; two, that peroxide would never suit me and three, a house without gin is never a home.”
“Well, who am I to argue with such excellent advice?”
--
The bottle is greener than he remembers it being earlier, almost as if it’s brighter than before. He stares at it as he holds it up, losing his train of thought. “Sorry, where, where was i?”
“In five years’ time,” Bel mumbles from beside him, head resting against the sofa.
“Oh right, in five years’ time, we - we will have changed the British Broadcasting Carpar – sorry, Corporation - for the better!" He finishes proudly as he passes the bottle back to her. For a moment, as their fingers graze over the neck of the bottle, he starts thinking.
If I lean just a little closer, I could kiss her. Right here on this godawful carpet, I could kiss her.
It’s precisely thinking like this that makes him sit on the opposite side of the booth after a fourth pint of beer, or a seat apart in the back of a BBC-bought cab, or across the table after a long night at work. It’s the way he starts to think when she gets too close, proximity mixing with lack of inhibition. As a rule, he usually tries to avoid drinking with her alone but recently, things being the way they have – the falling by the wayside of another banker, Lix’s awful encouragement, long painful hours – it’s proved much harder not to.
The worst part is that it’s not as if Freddie doesn't feel that way most of the time. He makes no effort to hide his feelings from himself, has never had any illusions about that at all. From the minute they started talking to the day she dragged him to that tailor, he’s known it was inevitable. The thing is though, most of the time he's clear-headed enough not to jump off that particular precipice. But sometimes, when his sleeves are rolled up and he's too tired to notice anything but the bright way she speaks and the soft wave of her hair, he wonders whether that leap would be so bad.
There's a sudden jab into his ribs and he shakes his head to find Bel up on her knees, leaning close and staring at his face. “You haven’t been listening to a word I’m saying,” she says, scowling at him. Her nose wrinkles and he can’t help but find it utterly ridiculous, a laugh pouring from him even as he bites his lip to stop it.
As she adds some whiskey to her fresh cup of tea, Lix looks up at the wall, her photographs, her cuttings. “When you’ve been at the centre of a firefight, if you have any sense at all, you are loathe to go there again,” she once told Isaac when he asked her about why she didn’t stay in Spain. It was never as simple as that of course, but that’s not what you tell a young man like Isaac. As much as he wants to be a reporter, wants to be in the field, he’s not got the stomach for conflict, she knows that much.
She lost too much of herself out there; that much she knows, too.
The sidelines are better for a woman like her these days, all the better to observe, to study. She simply doesn’t have the patience for the chase anymore; she’d rather a glass of whisky and an old source any day. So when the young ones arrive, like Freddie, like Bel, all bright and desperate to shine, she pulls a bottle from under her desk.
A silent toast to burgeoning talent.
Long may it prevail.