Читать книгу Obstacles to Young Love - David Nobbs - Страница 7

They’re late. Lunch is ready. It’s annoying.

William offers a second glass of sherry. This is very unusual, but they can’t just sit around with empty glasses, waiting. It embarrasses him to have to do it, he’s not a drinker, so he has to pass a little comment. ‘It is New Year’s Day, after all,’ he says. When he’s finished pouring he stops for a moment in front of the picture over the piano. It shows a Norfolk wherry sailing away from the staithe at Wells-Next-the-Sea. Naomi knows that, just for a moment, her father is sailing away from a staithe somewhere, and is happy. This worries her. She has become more sensitive to atmosphere over the years, and senses that something is afoot today. She feels uneasy, edgy, tense.

They’re having curry, in the English style, quite hot but not fearsomely so, and sweetened with sultanas and slices of apple. On the side there will be mango chutney, slices of banana and finely minced coconut. The curry can be held quite easily in the Hostess trolley, but the rice may dry out. It’s annoying that they are late.

‘Where are they?’ Penny cries.

‘They’ll have got utterly and totally arseholed last night,’ says Julian. ‘No discipline, artists.’

He’s very grumpy today.

‘Please, Julian, not in front of the child,’ says his mother.

‘I don’t like that expression, “the child”, Mum,’ says Naomi. ‘She does have a name.’ The words are a rebuke, but Naomi speaks them very gently and without any hostility. Penny is tense today. There’s that telltale working of her mouth when she isn’t speaking.

‘What’s “arseholed”?’ asks Emily.

‘It’s not a word you need to know, dear. It’s a word silly lawyers who’ve never quite grown up and still want to shock their parents use. It means having too much to drink.’

‘Dad used to get “arseholed” sometimes, didn’t he? He still gets “arseholed” sometimes when he takes me out for a meal. He has a double gin and then a whole bottle of wine and then he drives me home.’

‘Yes, yes, Emily. That’s enough. And does he indeed? Right.’

‘I prefer Dad when he isn’t “arseholed”. He’s much nicer. I don’t intend to get “arseholed” at all when I’m grown up.’

‘Yes, Emily, thank you, good, I’m really glad, you stick to that, but we’ve had enough of that word, thank you.’

Emily is six. She isn’t usually annoying, though sometimes she comes out with awkward things, the way children do. Once Auntie Constance, whom she doesn’t like – you can’t be made to like people just because they’re your auntie – had said, ‘You’re as bright as a button, aren’t you?’ and Emily had drawn herself up to her full height, which at the time was two foot eleven, and said, ‘I’m much brighter than a button, excuse me. I never saw a button do anything clever.’ Pink spots had appeared on both of Auntie Constance’s cheeks.

There’s a welcome crunch of gravel.

‘They’re here!’

Relief sweeps over Penny’s face. Emily dances up and down. She loves Uncle Clive and Uncle Antoine. She takes them completely for granted and has never seen anything funny in their being two men together, but then she has no concept of the idea of a lover. Long may she not have.

But it’s the delight on the faces of Penny and William that amazes Naomi. She hasn’t realised how far they have travelled since they first met Antoine over twelve years ago, when she was eighteen. How embarrassed they had been in 1978. How affectionate they are in 1991. Clive and Antoine enter with beaming smiles and exciting parcels. The whole mood lifts. Well, no, not quite. Julian’s mood doesn’t lift. He never exchanged another word with Teresa after Naomi’s eighteenth birthday supper, but to him Antoine will always be what Teresa called him, ‘That Frog poofter.’ On the surface it’s prejudice, but deep down it’s even sadder than prejudice. Deep down it’s a defence mechanism against the sight of a man being so much more at ease with himself than he is.

There’s a round of kissing in the French style, on both cheeks and slightly formal. Even William, not a natural kisser, manages to kiss both Clive and Antoine, and does it with a bit of panache. ‘You’ve turned us all French now, Antoine,’ he says with shy pride.

Clive and Antoine don’t kiss Julian, though. His face is set in unkissable mode. His face is like a Pennine crag.

And almost immediately Antoine is on the floor, level with Emily, in front of the cosy, crackling winter fire.

‘So, Emily, do you want me to help you with the jigsaw or do you want to finish it on your own?’

‘Help me, please, Uncle Antoine.’

Naomi and Clive give each other a long, loving hug. Julian pours himself another sherry. Antoine finds a piece of sky. Emily squeals with delight. Penny’s mouth moves anxiously. Something is up.

‘What about the presents?’ asks Emily from the floor.

‘After lunch,’ says Penny.

‘Are you sure, Penny?’ asks William.

‘Well, no. Yes, now.’

Naomi realises that this exchange is meaningful. She just doesn’t know what the meaning is.

‘Julian,’ she says.

‘What?’

‘The day you don’t hand round the presents, this house won’t be L’Ancresse any more.’

Julian pretends not to be pleased.

Clive and Antoine have brought lovely presents for everyone, they’re really good at presents, and living in Paris does help, though how they get them all on the plane is a mystery. But things like weight restrictions don’t matter to Antoine. He charms his way through.

In their turn, Clive and Antoine express great delight at the presents they have been given.

‘Late night last night?’ asks Julian.

‘Yes,’ says Clive. ‘Good party. Francis Bacon was there.’

‘Name dropper.’

‘Excuse me, we hate name dropping,’ says Antoine from the floor, where he has just found the piece that completes the funnel. ‘I was saying so to Brigitte Bardot only yesterday.’

‘Who’s Brigitte Bardot?’ asks Emily.

‘A beautiful French actress who was better treated by animals than by people,’ says Naomi.

‘But that’s not why we’re late, Julian,’ says Clive. ‘We set off in good time. Had a problem with the ruddy car. Hire cars!’

‘Right,’ says Penny firmly, finding a suitable cue at last. ‘Well, you’re here anyway. Lunch.’

They take their seats at the table. The dining room smells even more of disuse now that all the children have left home. The table is plainly laid, as ever, but there are crackers.

‘I know it’s not Christmas,’ says Penny, ‘but Emily loves them.’

‘Uncle Antoine loves them too,’ says Emily.

They pull their crackers, with much laughter as Julian is left without any of the insides of either of the two crackers he’s pulled, laughter which is killed stone dead when he says, ‘You see. Can’t even pull crackers.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m not in the mood for paper hats,’ he says, but Naomi says, ‘Julian!’ and she can wind this gruff, awkward brother of hers round her little finger. He puts on his paper hat – it’s a bright yellow crown – without protest.

‘What do you get if you cross a fish with two elephants?’ reads out Clive.

‘A very large bouillabaisse?’ suggests Antoine.

‘No. Swimming trunks.’

There is a loud, communal groan, but Emily laughs with delight.

Penny begins to serve the meal. She has made a special curry, not quite so hot, for Emily. Naomi waits for her to make some kind of disparaging remark to Antoine about the food. If only her mother had more self-confidence. The remark duly comes.

‘It’s only curry, I’m afraid, Antoine. Well, the food over Christmas has been rather rich and a bit bland, I mean, let’s face it, turkey is bland, there’s no getting away from it, so I thought it might make a nice change.’

‘It’s perfect, Penny. I like your curry. It’s one thing we French are not good at.’

‘Charming as ever, Antoine.’ William beams as he says this, trying to show that he’s not being sarcastic. But it doesn’t quite work. Everything he says sounds at least faintly sarcastic. It’s the schoolmaster in him.

‘Antoine’s charm is his weakness,’ says Clive. ‘You should see him in Paris. He makes Maurice Chevalier look like a yob. People have to meet him at least five times before they realise he’s sincere. It’s held him back enormously in the art world.’

‘How is business?’ asks William.

‘Not good. We struggle on. Couldn’t do it without Clive’s regular earning.’

Clive teaches English, and teaches it well. He has inherited his father’s talent.

‘He’s a strange one, isn’t he?’ says Clive. ‘The more way out his art gets – I mean, he’s letting the cat walk over the paint now – the more he dresses like a bank manager.’

Clive is in jeans and an open-necked shirt. Antoine is wearing a suit and tie.

‘Too many artists live their art instead of painting it,’ says Antoine.

‘What do you mean about the cat, Uncle Clive?’ asks Emily, who loves cats.

‘I slosh wet paint on a canvas and let her walk over it,’ explains Antoine. ‘The marks she makes become incorporated into the structure of the painting. She does it brilliantly. Sasha’s very artistic. She’s a natural. It’s the element of chance in life that I need, you see. You can have too much composition. There is no composition in life. Sacha is therefore an essential element in my work, and doesn’t she know it? She doesn’t even mind too much when I have to use turps to wipe her feet.’

Emily laughs. She is so happy about the cat.

‘I thought you were bringing your girlfriend, Julian,’ says Clive.

‘Just noticed, have you?’

‘Well, no, I noticed when we arrived but I thought maybe she was in the bathroom or something. It was only when we were all sat down and there was no empty chair that I was sure. It’s not easy, Julian, to broach the question of your love life with you. One usually finds one has touched on a sensitive spot.’

‘Well, this time it’s not sensitive at all, because it’s good riddance.’

‘Oh!’

‘She was coming. We had a row in the station.’

‘Terminal?’

‘Yes. King’s Cross.’

It’s not often that Julian makes a joke, so everyone laughs a little too much at it, and then realises that it’s rather heartless to laugh at his predicament, so they all stop laughing rather suddenly.

‘But you’re getting on all right with your partners at work, are you, Julian?’ asks William.

Naomi has never seen her father taking such an active role in the conversation. Something is definitely up.

‘Oh, yes,’ replies Julian. ‘Well, they’re all men. I don’t have problems with men.’

William goes round the table, pouring more wine. This is without precedent, not because he’s mean, he isn’t, but because he never even thinks about drink. But today he is drinking as well. Naomi’s anxiety grows.

Penny offers seconds, again with, to Naomi’s mind, an unnecessary verbal accompaniment. ‘I didn’t give you too much first time around, in case you all felt you’d been eating too much over the holiday period, or in case it was too hot for you. But I thought, you can always come back for more.’

Everyone comes back for more.

‘It is very good, Penny. No more self-criticism, please,’ says Antoine sternly.

Her father raises his glass. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I think we ought to drink to Naomi, and wish her good luck with her sitcom.’

He’s ticking off the conversational boxes one by one, thinks Naomi, smiling with a modesty that, sadly, is not false, as they toast the success of her upcoming sitcom, which goes into production in a couple of weeks and will be on the screens in April.

‘Yes,’ says her father. ‘We’re very proud of our little girl.’

‘Dad, I’m thirty.’

‘That’s young. Only thirty, and a starring role in a sitcom.’

‘What is this sitcom?’ asks Clive.

‘It’s about a couple who keep having children. It’s about how the mother has to do all the work. It’s about the stresses of motherhood and of marriage, only it’s funny.’

‘Well, that sounds a good part,’ says Julian encouragingly. Only on matters to do with Naomi does he brighten in the family these days. Naomi almost wishes that he wasn’t so loyal to her. It makes it hard for her to criticise him for the rest of his unsatisfactory life.

‘I don’t play the mother,’ says Naomi. ‘I play the neighbour.’

‘But you’re regular,’ says her father. ‘You’re in it every week. Aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s a start. You’ll be back at the Coningsfield Grand. “Starring Naomi Walls from…”. What’s your series called?’

She doesn’t want to tell them. She still hopes the title may change.

‘It’s not quite decided.’

‘It’s a pity you boys couldn’t come over from Paris to see her in the touring production of Antony and Cleopatra at the Grand,’ says her father. She has never known him anything like so talkative.

‘She was wonderful,’ admits her mother. ‘She really was the Queen of Egypt. I couldn’t believe it was my little girl.’

‘Mum!’

‘Well. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.’

‘The drama group from the school went. And most of the teachers,’ says her father.

‘She’s had her ups and downs,’ says her mother. ‘Her bits of bad luck. A broken foot when she was down to play a lady footballer. A play cancelled when the leading man dropped dead in the dress rehearsal. Casting directors, if I’ve got the title right, who couldn’t recognise talent if they fell over it. But she’s come through. She’s going to be a star.’

‘Mum!’

Naomi is deeply embarrassed, not least because Emily is believing it.

‘Are you really, Mum? Are you really going to be a star?’

‘We’ll see, Emily. We’ll see.’

‘That’s my girl,’ says her father. ‘Modest to a fault.’

No, Dad. I don’t think so.

Over the apple pie and custard her father, who has undoubtedly drunk more wine than ever before, raises yet another new subject.

‘Do you ever see Simon at all?’

‘When he takes Emily and brings her back, on his days, if I can’t avoid him.’

‘Oh, dear. Still…still bitter, then?’

‘Dad, he’s Emily’s father. I don’t want to talk about him in front of her.’

‘I was on the stairs when you talked about him to Felicity the other day,’ says Emily. ‘I heard what you said.’

‘Oh, my Lord, what did I say? Or should I not know?’

‘You said when you went away on holiday he was…I didn’t really understand it ‘cause I didn’t know what it was, but you said something about he was a cornflakes adult.’

‘What? Oh! Oh, yes. Oh, Lord. I said he used to look round in hotels even during breakfast to see if there were any girls he could try to seduce later that day. I described him as a cereal adulterer. Cereal as in cornflakes.’

‘Yes, we did get it,’ says Clive.

‘I hope the jokes in your sitcom are better than that,’ says Julian.

I hope so too. I ha’e me doots.

‘What’s an adulterer?’ asks Emily.

‘It’s a childerer who’s grown up,’ says Antoine.

Emily giggles. Antoine can always make her giggle.

‘No, what is it really?’

‘It’s a person who’s married who goes off with someone else and spends time with them when he should be spending time with his wife,’ says Naomi.

‘Or husband, as the case may be,’ says Julian.

‘Was Dad an adulterer when he went to the gym then, ‘cause he went to the gym nearly every day?’

Very probably he may have been, Emily, but we won’t go into that.

‘No. Not every time, Emily. Some of the times he was supposed to go to the gym. He works there.’

Emily is still a bit puzzled, but William leaps up, rubs his hands together, and says, ‘Come on, Emily. I’ve got a job for you. Well, it’s a game really.’

Immediately, Penny leaps up too and says, ‘I’ll make coffee. Coffee everyone?’

Emily, William and Penny all leave the room.

‘What’s going on?’ asks Clive.

‘I don’t know,’ says Naomi, ‘but something is.’

Penny enters with a tray of cups but no coffee. William returns from the garden.

‘I’ve got her collecting twenty different kinds of leaf,’ he says. ‘That should give us time. Sorry, everyone, I don’t want to spoil your day, and it’s a bad start to the year, but there’s no way of telling you this except very directly, and there it is, but…well…the fact is…er…’

‘I’ve got cancer,’ says Penny.

There’s a shocked silence. It’s a remark that people hear all too often in their lives, but rarely when they are all wearing paper hats.

‘How long have you known?’ asks Clive.

‘About a fortnight.’

‘We didn’t want to spoil Christmas, especially for Emily,’ says William.

There’s another moment of silence. Naomi can’t bring herself to speak.

‘What’s the…er…the diagnosis?’ asks Julian.

‘Terminal, I’m afraid, Julian.’

Julian blushes, regretting his earlier joke, though there is no reason for him to.

‘I don’t believe that,’ says Antoine. ‘With a family like yours, and a medical service like yours – Coningsfield General has a good reputation, no…?’

No. Everybody thinks it, but nobody says it.

‘…And with a spirit like yours, I’m sure you can prove this diagnosis wrong. Come on. You are British. You are fighters.’

Emily enters with a bunch of leaves.

‘Twenty-two different leaves,’ she cries, with proud excitement.

Her innocence bruises their souls.

Maggie has been up since six o’clock, cleaning. She does two rooms every morning. There are fourteen rooms in the house if you include bathrooms and lavatories, so this means that she cleans each room once a week. That might not sound too bad, but this is no ordinary clean. This is a spring clean every week. Maggie has slowly become obsessive over the years. From her first waking moment – at six, with the alarm, meaning Timothy wakes up too and never drops off properly again – she is planning her battle against germs. It’s May, a lovely spring morning, the first morning of the year on which none of the good people of Coningsfield, or indeed the bad people, of whom there are plenty, dream of being on the Algarve or in Southern Spain. Maggie goes round the house opening windows, letting the stale air out, but she doesn’t have time to pause to breathe in the scents of yesterday’s first mowing of the ragged lawn at number ninety-two and of the massed daffodils which are not yet quite dead all along the central reservation of the main road. Maggie never has time to smell the flowers.

Timothy reaches out sleepily and runs his hand gently over Naomi’s soft, sleepy, still-slender body. His prick is as stiff as a dead curlew. But this can’t go on. It’s wrong. It’s an invasion of her privacy, even though she will never know. He drags himself out of bed, kneels at the side of the bed, and prays to God to save him from his desires. O Lord, I know it’s wrong. And, as you know, because I’ve told you, which of course I didn’t really need to do, because you know everything, I must not covet my neighbour’s wife or Simon Prendergast’s wife. Prendergast. How can his precious Naomi now be Mrs Prendergast, which is what he assumes she still is. Oh, blow. He’s lost his place in his prayer. Where was I, Lord? The Lord doesn’t prompt him. Maybe Tuesday mornings are busy. Oh, yes. Not coveting her. Please, O Lord, give me the strength to have only clean thoughts, for I am ashamed of my wickedness.

He wishes he could just get dressed and go next door straight away, past the board which actually still says ‘R. Pickering and Son – Taxidermists’, for they are keeping up the pretence that his father still takes a major part in the work. Yes, they are living in Ascot House, formerly a B & B run by Miss de Beauvoir (Mrs Smith). Charlie Smith ran off eighteen years ago after falling head over heels for a physiotherapist. This has long been a sore point with Timothy’s father, who regards it as less disgraceful than being abandoned for a plumber. Mrs Smith decided that Mrs Smith was no sort of name for the owner of a B & B with pretensions towards being select (she hated the word ‘posh’), and became Miss de Beauvoir. She sold up five years ago. ‘I’m getting out while the going’s good. Mrs Percival at the Mount has been forced to take in people sent by social workers. She’ll end up with immigrants, you mark my words. I’d hate to be young. What chance have the young got of running select B & Bs?’

But first there’s the kids to be got ready. Sam is seven and Liam five. Why on earth did they call him Liam? Everyone will think he’s Irish. Oh, well, too late now, and he doesn’t seem to mind. Liam is cheeky, a bright spark, freckly, could almost be mistaken for Irish. Sam is dark like his father, serious like his father, showing real promise at his lessons, like his father. Maybe in his case the promise can come to fulfilment. His teachers think Sam could be clever. He isn’t as quick as little Liam, but there’s a solidity there, an understanding of all his subjects, which is rare in a boy so young. Timothy in truth doesn’t know either of his boys very well; he loves them, of course, loves them utterly in their good and bad moments alike, but he leaves them mainly to their mother; he isn’t awfully good with smaller children, his time will come when they are stronger and they can play football properly together and play card games and board games and go to visit beautiful places together. That is when his time will come, when he can show them the world.

He has to supervise their dressing and get their breakfast and make them eat it and make sure they clean their teeth because Maggie has been so busy cleaning that she only just has time to get herself dressed and tidied and ready for school.

At last she’s ready and the kids are ready and she leaves the house with them. It’s a short walk across the park, and she passes the junior school on her way to the senior school where she still teaches, so it’s all very convenient.

The most wonderful sound in the world is that bang of the front door closing. She has gone. The house is his. He knows he should go next door. He’s got a fox to finish. But first he goes right round the house, opening the door of every room, savouring the emptiness of every room.

Now Timothy is at peace. Now he can face his work. At weekends and during the long, long school holidays he loves his work, it’s an escape, but during the week he resents every moment that he cannot spend in his gloriously empty home.

He enters number ninety-six. The front door no longer squeaks. He has bought ample supplies of WD40.

He is surprised, as he is every morning, by the darkness of the house. Roly is standing in the cold vault of a kitchen, waiting. Whatever time Timothy enters in the morning, his father has had his breakfast and washed up and is standing in the kitchen, waiting.

‘What are we doing today?’

The ‘we’ is royal, though Roly doesn’t realise it.

‘There’s the fox to finish, and then I thought we might tackle Mrs Lewington’s lurcher.’

‘Righty ho. Anchors away.’

‘Absolutely.’

Roly won’t do much except fetch a few things that Timothy has deliberately left in the wrong place so that his father can fetch them and think he is useful. He can still see to move around the house, in which no piece of furniture has been moved for at least twelve years, but he can’t see to do useful work any more. He has a blind stick for when he goes out on his own, but he never uses it, because he never goes out on his own. Maggie is a treasure, taking him to do all his shopping for the week at Tesco’s every Saturday.

Timothy’s spirits droop at the thought of Mrs Lewington’s lurcher. He has tried to turn the business more in the direction of wild life taxidermy, but the location is against him. People knock on the door and buttonhole him in the street. ‘He’s seventeen, Mr Pickering. We’ve had him seventeen years. If Cecil hadn’t been taken by the good Lord I know he’d want me to keep him. I’m going to put him where he always loved to sit, in his old basket, just to the left of the grate.’ Timothy hates doing pets, asks three times the normal price, and the silly people accept the estimate without a tremor, in the hopelessness of their love.

‘I’ll be out for an hour or so late morning,’ he hears himself say.

His father looks surprised, and so does he. He hadn’t known he was going out. But suddenly the urge is irresistible.

‘I’m sure there was nothing in the diary.’

His father can’t actually read the diary any more, but he can see enough to know if a day is blank.

‘No, it’s not in the diary. It’s just cropped up.’

It’s not the sort of thing you can put in a diary. ‘12.15. Drive past Naomi’s house. 12.20. Drive back past Naomi’s house.’

For that is what he is going to do. It’s something he has never done before, and it’s a serious escalation of what could easily become an obsession. Maybe he needs an obsession too, to challenge Maggie. The thought of driving down Lower Cragley Road, past L’Ancresse, in both directions, excites him. It’s naughty. It’s dangerous. It’s blissfully futile.

It’s the sitcom what’s done it, he thinks. Seeing her, every Thursday, on BBC1, in his lounge. Awful to see. Nappy Ever After is a stinker. A stinker full of jokes about stinking, as the critic in his paper gleefully pointed out. How many jokes can there be about potty training? Hundreds, according to the writers of Nappy Ever After. And what a dreary part. What miscasting. The neighbour! Always coming round to borrow sugar, but really to hear the latest gossip and to drool over the babies because her own life is so sterile. Naomi, sterile, drooling, using baby talk, silly. How dare they? He’d use a very naughty word to describe them if he wasn’t religious. The humiliation of watching it. The impossibility of not watching it. No wonder his thoughts have turned to her.

The fox is finished all too soon and he has to make a start on the lurcher. At ten to twelve he can bear it no longer and breaks off.

‘You’ll be back for your sandwich?’

‘Of course, Dad. Wouldn’t miss my sandwich.’

‘That’s my boy.’

Roly makes them a sandwich every lunchtime. It’s his task. Just occasionally Timothy has lunch with a client. ‘Lunches with clients! I don’t know! What’s next? Buckingham Palace?’ exclaims his father. But this is rare. Nineteen times out of twenty, his dad makes a sandwich for him. It’s his task. It’s his life.

‘Well then, off you go, boy, if you’re going. Chocks away.’

Timothy drives along the route of the twenty-eight bus. He’s so excited that he has to take great care not to cause an accident, whether on the road or in his trousers, or both. This is madness. He knows it, and loves it.

He turns into Lower Cragley Road. Bliss. And nobody is following. He can drive really slowly.

There it is, across the road on his right as he slips slowly down the hill. L’Ancresse. Solid. Really rather attractive. Serene. So serene. There’s the bay window of the lounge. That’s where the curlew was, on top of the chaise longue. He wonders if she still has the curlew, if it’s still in the house, or if she has taken it away with her. He wonders if she is still in their flat in…West Hampstead, was it? Strangely, it doesn’t cross his mind that she might no longer be with Simon. When he watches her in Nappy Ever After he feels jealous of Simon, so Simon remains, in his eyes, a part of her life.

He wishes that he could go back and have her eighteenth birthday again because this time he wouldn’t be nervous about the curlew, this time it would be simply the most wonderful evening of his life. But of course you can’t go back.

But he can go back up Lower Cragley Road, and he does. It doesn’t look as if there is anybody in L’Ancresse. It’ll be quite safe.

There’s no traffic at all this morning. Well, afternoon now, let’s be pedantic. What a lovely day. Words come into his mind in Ken Dodd’s voice. ‘What a lovely day for looking up an old lover.’ Careful. He doesn’t want to sound like Nappy Ever After.

He becomes very bold and pulls up right outside the house. His heart is racing. Supposing she’s there. She might be visiting. There’s no sign of a car, but maybe she hasn’t got a car. Actresses are probably funny that way. Maybe she can’t afford a car.

He is safe. Nobody goes in or out. He should leave. It would be better to leave. But he doesn’t.

He thinks about the last time he spoke to her, nine years ago, in Iquitos. He thinks about the last time he saw her in the flesh. A year ago, at the Coningsfield Grand, as Cleopatra. He’d had to go with Maggie. It had been a dreadful evening, because suddenly, seeing her on the stage, he had realised that he no longer adored Maggie, he had only been pretending to do so for a long time now, she had become obsessive about cleaning, she bravely tolerated occasional sex, it was her duty, and she lived for her thirty-four children, the two that were her own and the thirty-two that were her duty.

He had thought, as they had sat waiting for the curtain to go up – well, not the curtain exactly, he could remember every detail, they hadn’t used a curtain – as they had waited for the lights to go down, he had realised that it would be very difficult for him to break away from Maggie, present himself at the stage door, and say, ‘I’d like to see Miss Walls, please. I’m an old friend and I want to tell her how marvellous she was.’

But that had been the worst thing of all about that awful evening. She hadn’t been marvellous. She hadn’t been bad, of course she hadn’t, in fact she’d been quite good, but it was no good being quite good, not as Cleopatra; she had never for one moment been the Queen of Egypt, she had been Naomi Walls bravely portraying the Queen of Egypt. The stillness, the power that she had shown as Juliet, it hadn’t been there. Of course she was as good an actress as ever, you couldn’t lose abilities like that; there must have been some other explanation, anything, a dislike of the actor playing Antony, an unsympathetic director whose vision had clashed with hers, an illness perhaps from which she had only just been recovering, or perhaps, even for the best of them, in long runs, there were performances where you’d got it, and performances where you hadn’t. It had let his emotions off the hook about going round to see her, because he couldn’t have gone if he couldn’t have told her that she had been marvellous, but it had been terrible to witness. At the end, the applause had risen when Antony had come on for his solo bow. It hadn’t dipped for her, but it hadn’t risen further, and it should have done, and she had known it, and he had known that she had known it.