And All That Jazz Episode 01
Lizzy was bored. She’d been watching the sun inch across the floor for the last half an hour from the chaise in the lounge, her arms flung above her head in a perfect dying swan pose.
“Bea,” she said.
“Hmm?” Her roommate, Beatrice, scrubbed at her palette with her brush.
She had a scowl on her face, as if the canvas had done her some terrible injustice.
“Bea, can I move a little? Half of me has gone to sleep and the other half is in agony.”
“Five minutes.”
Lizzy sighed. That was the problem with artists.
People were as much of a prop as a vase of lilies or a bowl of fruit.
“It’s no good.” Lizzy sat up, stretching.
Bea tutted, tucking the palette under her elbow.
“You’re worse than a child!” she exclaimed.
Lizzy grinned, adjusted the wrap she was wearing and padded towards the easel.
“Let’s have a look,” she insisted.
Bea stood in front of the painting.
“It’s not finished. Besides, you’re such a terrible model,” she told Lizzy.
Lizzy leaned past her, peering at the picture.
Bea’s style was modern, her brushstrokes heavy and the paint laid in blocks.
The whole effect was rather brutal.
Lizzy didn’t always like her friend’s paintings, but this one had caught her profile well.
“Not bad.” She shot Bea a smile. “It helps you to have such a beautiful muse, of course.”
Lizzy crossed to the window and flopped down on the seat to enjoy the sun’s ray.
“Do we have any tea left?” she asked.
Bea put down her palette and brushes and emptied the dregs of the pot into two cups.
She came to sit beside Lizzy, pulling her feet up under her long, paint-spattered smock.
The two of them had been sharing a flat since Lizzy saw Bea’s card in a newsagent’s window the summer before.
Lizzy had recently had a terrible argument with her mother, and had stolen the card so no-one else would be able to contact Bea before she had the chance to.
Lizzy looked round their shared lounge, admiring the lampshades draped in silk scarves.
She gazed at the large Chinese fan and Bea’s paintings mounted on the walls.
Did she love the place so much because she knew her mother would thoroughly disapprove? Who knows.
Bea was watching her closely.
“How’s your sister?” she asked cautiously.
Lizzy shrugged.
“She lives in perfect isolation in her beautiful mausoleum in Edgbaston.”
She sipped her tea, though it was cold, bitter and floating with leaves.
“She bakes cakes for the church and takes tea with Mother every week,” Lizzy continued. “I think she’s aiming for sainthood.”
“You are a beast. She lost her husband,” Bea reminded her.
The familiar irritation flared in Lizzy’s chest.
“Half the women of the world lost their husbands, sons, brothers or fiancés,” she retorted.
She swallowed the sour taste in her mouth.
“Life must go on, or what was the point of it all?”
Her sister Dora had been widowed in the last year of the war.
She had married Walter before he returned to the Front after his last leave.
They’d met at a regimental dance but had hardly known each other.
They had been married only for two months when the telegram came.
Lizzy saw the expression on Bea’s face.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she told the artist. “You don’t know what it’s like being the black sheep of the family.”
Bea shot her a sharp look, swinging her arm around the lounge.
Lizzy chuckled.
“Well, you do, but at least you only have brothers. You’re not forever compared to a perfect older sister,” she explained.
Bea snatched a chiffon scarf from the back of a chair and draped it over Lizzy’s face like a veil.
“Then give up this bohemian nonsense and find a young man to marry,” Bea replied.
“I’d rather die!”
Bea tapped her fob watch.
“If you don’t get down to the exchange now, Mrs Haden will be furious.”
“Oh, what time is it?” Lizzy asked.
“Half past.”
Lizzy jumped to her feet, dashing to her room to scramble into her work clothes.
As it turned out, she was only two minutes late.
Mrs Haden was at the other end of the exchange, standing over one of the new operators like a black-clad praying mantis.
Lizzy winked at the girl beside her – a good sort called Doris who Lizzy had covered for more than once – and slipped into her seat.
She put on her headphones just as her first call came through.
During the day her mind kept returning to the conversation about Dora and Bea’s appalled expression.
Was she really too hard on her older sister?
It had never occurred to her before, but now the thought stabbed at her like a clumsily placed hat pin.
After her shift, Lizzy stood out on the street, enjoying the lowering sun that peeked over the rooftops.
Her limbs felt like blocks of wood after hours spent sitting in her hard-backed chair.
She started walking, hoping the exercise would shake off the day’s stiffness, and soon she found herself heading in a familiar direction.
To be continued…