The Secret Keeper

  God it was hard though. From the first moment he’d seen her, sitting with her friends at a table in the street corner cafe, he’d been a goner. He’d looked up from the delivery he was making for the grocer, and she’d smiled at him, just like they were old friends, and then she’d laughed and blushed into her vanilla cup of tea, and he’d known that if he lived to be a hundred years old he’d never see a more beautiful vision. It had been the electric thrill of love at first sight. That laugh of hers that made him feel the pure joy he remembered from being a kid, the way she smelled of warm sugar and baby oil, the swell of her breasts beneath her light cotton dress—Jimmy shifted his head with frustration, and concentrated on a noisy gull as it flew low overhead towards the sea.

  The horizon was a faultless blue, the breeze was light, and the smell of summer was everywhere. He sighed and with it let the whole thing drift away—the silver dress, the policeman, the embarrassment he’d felt at being cast as some sort of danger to her. There was no point. The day was too perfect to argue, and no harm had come of it anyway, not really. No harm ever did. Dolly’s games of ‘let’s pretend’ confused him, he didn’t understand the urge she had to make believe and he didn’t especially like it, but it made her happy so Jimmy went along with it.

  As if to prove to Dolly that he’d put the whole thing behind him, Jimmy sat up suddenly and dug out his faithful Brownie from his haversack. ‘How about a picture?’ he said, winding on the spool of film. ‘A little memento of your seaside rendezvous, Miss Smitham?’ She perked up, just as he’d hoped she would—Dolly loved having her photograph taken—and Jimmy glanced about for the sun’s position. He walked to the far side of the small field in which they’d had their picnic.

  Dolly had pushed herself to sitting and was stretching like a cat. ‘Like this?’ she said. Her cheeks were flushed from the sun, and her bow lips plump and red from the strawberries he’d bought at a roadside stall.

  ‘Perfect,’ he said, and she really was. ‘Nice light.’

  ‘And what exactly would you like me to do in the nice light?’

  Jimmy rubbed his chin and pretended to consider this deeply. ‘What do I want you to do? Answer carefully now, Jimmy boy, this is your chance, don’t blow it … Think damn it, think …’

  Dolly laughed and he did too. And then he scratched his head and said, ‘I want you to be you, Doll. I want to remember today exactly as it is. If I can’t see you for another ten days, at least I can carry you round in my pocket.’

  She smiled, a small enigmatic twitch of the lips, and then nodded. ‘Something to remember me by.’

  ‘Exactly,’ he called. ‘Won’t be a minute now, I’ll just fix the settings.’ He dropped down the Diway lens and, because the sunshine was so bright, pulled up the lever for a smaller aperture. Better to be safe than sorry. By the same token, he took the lens cloth from his pocket and gave the glass a good rub.

  ‘All right,’ he said, closing one eye and looking down into the viewfinder. ‘We’re read—’ Jimmy fumbled the camera box, but he didn’t dare look up.

  Dolly was staring at him from the middle of the viewfinder. Her chestnut-coloured hair fell in wind-loosened waves that kissed her neck, but beneath it she’d unbuttoned her dress and slipped it from her shoulders.

  Without taking her eyes from the camera she started peeling the strap of her bathing suit slowly down her arm.

  Christ. Jimmy swallowed. He should say something; he knew he should say something. Make a joke, be witty, be clever. But in the face of Dolly, sitting there like that, her chin lifted, her eyes issuing him a challenge, the curve of her breast exposed—well, nineteen years of speech evaporated in an instant. Without his wit to help him, Jimmy did the one thing he could always rely on. He took his shot.

  ‘Just make sure you develop them yourself,’ said Dolly, buttoning up her dress with trembling fingers. Her heart was racing and she felt bright and alive, strangely powerful. Her own daring, the look on his face when he’d seen her, the way he was still having trouble meeting her eyes without blushing—it was intoxicating, all of it. More than that, it was proof. Proof that she, Dorothy Smitham, was exceptional, just as Dr Rufus had said. She wasn’t destined for the bicycle factory, of course she wasn’t; her life was going to be extraordinary.

  ‘You think I’d let any other man see you that way?’ said Jim-my, paying extravagant attention to the straps of his camera.

  ‘Not on purpose.’

  ‘I’d kill him first.’ He said it softly, and his voice cracked slightly under a burden of possession that made Dolly swoon. She wondered if he would. Did such things really happen? They didn’t where Dolly came from, the semi-detached mock Tudors standing proud in their soulless new suburbs; she couldn’t imagine Arthur Smitham rolling up his sleeves to defend his wife’s honour; but Jimmy wasn’t like Dolly’s father. He was the opposite: a working man with long, strong arms and an honest face and the sort of smile that came from nowhere to make her stomach turn back flips. She pretended not to hear, taking the camera from him and staring at it with a show of thoughtfulness.

  Holding it in one hand, she glanced playfully from beneath her lashes and said, ‘You know, this is a very dangerous piece of equipment you carry, Mr Metcalfe. Just think of all the things you could capture that people would rather you didn’t.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Why,’ she lifted her shoulder, ‘people doing things they shouldn’t, an innocent young schoolgirl being led astray by a more experienced man—just think what the girl’s poor father would say if he knew.’ She bit her bottom lip, nervous but trying not to let him see it, and leaned closer, almost—but not quite—touching his firm, sun-browned forearm. Electricity pulsed be-tween them. ‘A person could get themselves into rather a lot of trouble if they got on the wrong side of you and your Box Brownie.’

  ‘Better make sure you stay on my good side then, hadn’t you?’ He shot her a smile beneath his hair, but it disappeared as quickly as it came.

  He didn’t look away and Dolly felt her breaths lighten. The atmosphere had changed around them. In that moment, under the intensity of his stare, everything had changed. The scales of control had tipped and Dolly was spinning. She swallowed, uncertain, but excited too. Something was going to happen, something she had set in motion, and she was helpless to stop it. She didn’t want to stop it.

  A noise then, a small sigh from between his parted lips and Dolly swooned.

  His eyes were fixed still on hers and he reached to brush her hair behind her ear. He kept his hand where it was but tightened his grip, holding firmly to the back of her neck. She could feel his fingers shaking. The proximity made her feel young suddenly, out of her depth, and Dolly opened her mouth to say something (to say what?), but he shook his head, a single quick movement, and she shut it. A muscle in his jaw twitched; he drew breath; and then he pulled her towards him.

  Dolly had imagined being kissed a thousand times, but she’d never dreamed of this. In the cinema, between Katharine Hepburn and Fred MacMurray, it had looked pleasant enough, and Dolly and her girlfriend Caitlin had practised on their arms so they’d know what to do when the time came, but this was different. This had heat and weight and urgency; she could taste sun and strawberries, smell the salt on his skin, feel the press of heat as his body moved against her own; most thrilling of all, she could tell how badly he wanted her, his ragged breaths, his strong muscled body, taller than hers, bigger, straining against its own desire.

  He pulled back from the kiss and opened his eyes. He laughed then, in relief and surprise, a warm husky sound. ‘I love you, Dorothy Smitham,’ he said, resting his forehead against hers. He pulled gently at one of the buttons on her dress. ‘I love you and I’m going to marry you one day.’

  Dolly said nothing as they walked down the grassy hill; her mind was racing. He was going to ask her to marry him: the trip to Bournemouth, the kiss, the intensity of what she’d felt … What else could it all mean? The realisation had come with overwhel
ming clarity, and now, waiting in limbo, she yearned for him to say the words out loud, to make it official. Even her toes tingled with longing.

  It was perfect. She was going to marry Jimmy. How had it not been the first thing she thought of when her mother asked her what she wanted to do instead of starting work at Father’s factory? It was the only thing she wanted to do. The very thing she must.

  Dolly glanced sideways, noting the happy distraction on his face, his unusual silence, and she knew he was thinking the same thing; that he was busy even now, working out the very best way to ask her. She felt elated; she wanted to skip and twirl and dance.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d said he wanted to marry her; they’d teased around the topic before, whispered conversations of ‘Imagine if …’ at the back of dim cafes in the parts of town her parents never went to. She always found the subject deeply exciting; unspoken, but implicit in their playful descriptions of the farmhouse they’d live in and the life they’d have together, was the suggestion of closed doors, and a shared bed, and a promise of freedom—both physical and moral—that was irresistible to a schoolgirl like Dolly, whose mother still ironed and starched her uniform shirts.

  Imagining the two of them like that made her giddy, and she reached for his arm as they left the sunlit fields and wound their way through the shaded alleyway. When she did, he stopped walking, and pulled her with him to stand against the stone wall of a nearby building.

  He smiled in the shadows, nervously it seemed to her, and said, ‘Dolly.’

  ‘Yes.’ It was going to happen. Dolly could hardly breathe.

  ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about, something important.’

  She smiled then, and her face was so glorious in its openness and expectation that Jimmy’s chest burned. He couldn’t believe he’d finally done it, kissed her like he wanted to, and it had been every bit as sweet as he’d imagined. Best of all was the way she’d kissed him back; there was a future in that kiss. They might come from opposite sides of town, but they weren’t so different, not where it counted; not in the way they felt about each other. Her hands were soft within his own as he said what he’d been turning over in his mind all day, ‘I had a phone call the other day from London, a fellow called Lorant.’

  Dolly nodded.

  ‘He’s starting a photojournalistic magazine called Picture Post—a journal dedicated to printing images that tell stories—he saw my photographs in the Telegraph, Doll, and he’s asked me to come and work for him.’

  He waited for her to squeal, to jump, to clutch at his arms with excitement. It was everything he’d dreamed of doing, ever since he’d first found his father’s old camera and tripod in the attic, the box with the sepia photographs inside. But Dolly didn’t move. Her smile was lopsided now, frozen in place. ‘In London?’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re going to London?’

  ‘Yes. You know, big palace, big clock, big smoke.’

  He was trying to be funny, but she didn’t laugh; Dolly blinked a couple of times and said on an exhalation, ‘When?’

  ‘September.’

  ‘To live?’

  ‘And work.’ Jimmy hesitated; something was wrong. ‘A photographic journal,’ he said vaguely, before frowning. ‘Doll?’

  Her bottom lip had begun to tremble and he thought she might be going to cry.

  Jimmy was alarmed ‘Doll?—What is it?’

  She didn’t cry though. She flung her arms out to the side and then brought them back to rest on her cheeks. ‘We were going to be married.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said—and I thought—but now—’

  She was cross with him, and Jimmy had no idea why. She was gesticulating with both hands now, her cheeks were pink, and she was speaking very quickly, her words a blur so that all he could make out was ‘farmhouse’ and ‘Father’ and then, oddly, ‘bicycle factory’.

  Jimmy tried to keep up, didn’t succeed, and was feeling pretty bloody helpless when finally she gave an enormous sigh, planted her hands on her hips, and looked so spent from the whole monologue, so indignant, that he couldn’t think what to do except take her in his arms and smooth her hair as he might have done with a cranky child. It could have gone either way, so he smiled to himself as he felt her calming. Jimmy walked a pretty steady emotional line and Dolly’s passions caught him off guard sometimes. They were intoxicating, though: she was never pleased if she could be delighted, never annoyed if she could be furious.

  ‘I thought you wanted to marry me,’ she said, lifting her face to look at him, ‘but you’re going to London instead.’

  Jimmy couldn’t help laughing. ‘Not instead, Doll. Mr Lorant is going to pay me, and I’m going to save everything I can. I want to marry you more than anything—are you kidding? I just want to be sure and do it right.’

  ‘But it is right, Jimmy. We love each other; we want to be together. The farmhouse—the fat hens and a hammock and the two of us dancing together in bare feet …’

  Jimmy smiled: he’d told Dolly all about his father’s childhood on the farm, the same adventure stories that had used to thrill him as a boy, but she’d embroidered them and made them her very own. He loved the way she could take a simple truth and turn it into something wonderful with the silvery threads of her incredible imagination. Jimmy reached out to cup her cheek. ‘I can’t afford the farmhouse yet, Doll.’

  A gypsy caravan then. With daisies on the curtains. And one hen . .

  . maybe two so they don’t get lonely’

  He couldn’t help it: he kissed her. She was young, she was romantic, and she was his. ‘Not long, Doll, and we’re going to have all the things we’ve dreamed about. I’m going to work so hard—you just wait and see.’

  A pair of squawking gulls cut through the alley overhead, and he reached for her, running his fingers down her sun-warmed arms. She let him take her by the hand and he squeezed it firmly, leading her back towards the sea. He loved Dolly’s dreams, her infectious spirit; Jimmy had never felt so alive as he had since he met her. But it was up to him to be sensible about their future, to be wise enough for the two of them. They couldn’t both fall prey to fancies and dreams; no good would come of that. Jimmy was smart, all his teachers had told him that, back when he was still in school, before his dad took his turn. He was a quick learner, too; he borrowed books from the Boots lending library and had almost read his way through the fiction section. All he’d been lacking was an opportunity, and now, finally, one had come his way.

  They walked the rest of the alleyway in silence until the prom came into view, brimming with afternoon sea-goers, their shrimp paste sandwiches all finished now, and returning to the sand. He stopped and took Dolly’s other hand, too, slotting his fingers between hers. ‘So,’ he said softly.

  ‘So.’

  ‘I’ll see you in ten days.’

  ‘Not if I see you first.’

  Jimmy smiled, and leaned to kiss her goodbye, but a child ran by just then, shouting and chasing a ball that had rolled into the alley, and the moment was spoiled. He pulled back, oddly embarrassed by the boy’s intrusion.

  Dolly gestured with her body towards the promenade. ‘I guess I should be getting back.’

  ‘Try to stay out of trouble, won’t you?’

  She hesitated, and then leaned to plant a kiss square on his lips; with a smile that made him ache, she ran back towards the light, the hem of her dress flicking against her bare legs.

  ‘Doll,’ he called after her, just before she disappeared.

  She turned, and the sun behind made her hair seem like a dark halo.

  ‘You don’t need fancy clothes, Doll. You’re a thousand times more beautiful than that girl today.’ She smiled at him, at least he thought she did; it was difficult to tell with her face in shadow, and then she lifted a hand and waved and she was gone.

  What with the sun and the strawberries and the fact that he’d had to run to make his train, Jimmy sl
ept for most of the return journey. He dreamed of his mother, the same old chestnut he’d been having for years now. They were at the fair, the two of them, watching the magic show. The magician had just closed his pretty assistant inside the box (which always bore a rather striking resemblance to the coffins his father made downstairs at W. H. Metcalfe & Sons, Undertaker and Toy- maker) when his mother leaned down and said, ‘He’ll try and get you to look away, Jim. It’s all about distracting the audience. Don’t you look away.’ Jimmy, eight years old or so, nodded earnestly, widening his eyes and refusing to let them blink, even when they began to water so badly that it hurt. He must’ve done something wrong though, for the door to the box swung open and—poof!—the woman had gone, disappeared, and Jimmy had somehow missed the whole thing. His mother laughed, and it made him feel queer, all cold and juddery in his limbs, but when he looked for her she was no longer beside him. She was inside the box now, telling him that he must’ve been daydreaming, and her perfume was so strong that—

  ‘Tickets, please.’

  Jimmy woke with a start and his hand went straight to his haversack on the seat beside him. It was still there. Thank God. Foolish of him to fall asleep like that, especially when his cam-era was inside. He couldn’t afford to lose it; Jimmy’s camera was his key to the future.