Here We Are

by Graham Swift

  —

  Now Evie White is seventy-five. It’s 2009, not 1959 when she first wore that engagement ring. Fifty years! She looks at her face in a mirror.

  The idea was that if they got the Brighton season—and they did—then they’d get married that September, when the show closed and they had the breathing space. They’d take a honeymoon and generally take stock—of Pablo and Eve, that is, not of Ronnie and Evie, though weren’t they the same?

  It’s September now, 8th September. Almost exactly fifty years. And it’s exactly a year since something else happened, in this very bedroom. Evie is sitting in it now. And suppose Ronnie could see her. Perhaps he can. Through the window the late afternoon light, deep gold, is starting to fade. She can see the yellowing leaves of the crab-apple tree in the garden.

  She has taken off her pearls. It has been a taxing day. She might take off her face. She thinks she might just take off everything, though it’s not so long since she put it all on, and lie down for a nap in the bed behind her.

  Already a whole year, but it seems, today, like only yesterday. For a whole year now it has been the only constant fact, and not all the unchanged familiarity of this house and all its stubborn denials—framed photos of Jack everywhere, his jackets, his coats still hanging where he last put them—can make the fact any less of a fact or make it any more bearable.

  And has she kissed the photos? And has she thrust her face into the jackets and coats, and even—? Of course she has.

  Exactly one year ago, and the house is no less full of goneness. That’s the word she still likes to use in her head: gone. Not dead. Not death. She had never liked to use those uncompromising words of Ronnie either. Just gone. ‘Gone’ implied it might be only temporary, or even—and even quite believably in Ronnie’s case—an illusion, a word, she recalled, that Ronnie had always been keen on.

  And not all the remembered voices that had once filled this house—the parties! the evenings!—can make its silence now any less crushing.

  Once her mother had said to her that life was unfair, but her turn would come. And look what a turn it had turned out to be. Fifty years with Jack Robbins. Or not quite. Forty-nine. How unfair. But now, anyway, here she was, sitting pretty in Albany Square, guardian, curator and beneficiary of her late husband’s shining career.

  If you can be sitting pretty at seventy-five. If you can be sitting pretty in a state of unrelenting bereavement.

  Gone. ‘I’ll just be gone for a while, Evie.’ As if he might have simply said it. And so, any moment now ...

  She was to marry Ronnie that September, and hadn’t her turn already arrived? Every night she decked herself out before a mirror bordered with glaring light bulbs that would be cruel now. At least her dressing-table mirror can be kindly angled and at least she can still summon up in it—it’s not magic, it’s merely memory—the tiara with the white plume, her carefully combed blonde fringe, the sparkling earrings, her bare powdered shoulders, the long white gloves almost reaching her armpits.

  Beneath her then, extraordinarily, was the sea, swirling and splashing, and her silver sequins might have made her think of the glistening scales of fish, but she can’t remember ever having had that thought then, even while the sea sploshed beneath her. Evie White: silvery and slippery as a fish.

  The last thing she would put on was her smile, though did she really need to? Wasn’t it just part of her, like her flashing blue eyes? In a moment she would get up and turn and, glancing over her shoulder, check herself from behind. She would place her palms on her hips, run her fingers under the rims of her tight costume, pull and pluck if necessary. She would give a little sober shimmy to test the other fanning plumes that might be called her tail. All this in a few seconds and by quick routine. Or she might use, in the same way, Ronnie as her mirror. Are my seams straight, Ronnie, are my feathers all right? Every night he might have this task and pleasure, but in a few moments the whole audience would have it. That was the idea.

  The quivering feathers, no less than her smile or her eyes, would simply seem part of her.

  Ronnie, meanwhile, would have given the final tweaks to his bow tie, pulled on his own white gloves. He would have put on his cape and checked its fastening. He would need to be able to undo and flourish his cape all in one movement. He would check everything he had in his pockets. That was important too. With his make-up on, his dark eyes would look all the more intense. He had become ‘Pablo’ now. She had become ‘Eve’. With his make-up on too, his face would have acquired its peculiar stage gravity. She had to keep smiling and twirl and wiggle.

  Neither of them had to speak. Or sing. Hadn’t she found her perfect situation?

  It was Jack who used to say that Ronnie in his stage get-up looked like Count Dracula’s little brother. He never said what she looked like. Jack simply looked like Jack Robinson. But she used to imagine Ronnie privately (she never told him) as some swerving toreador, in a tight glittering costume to match her own. He had the red-lined cape after all and the bullfighter eyes. And the borrowed name. You would not believe this man came from Bethnal Green. And on stage he had the bold fluid movements too. He could dance in his own special way. She often thought that, whatever else their act was, it was a kind of dance, a ballet of silent intersecting actions. They never exactly planned it, it just happened. Ronnie would change on stage. He had learnt to do it. A separate kind of magic.

  ‘All set, Evie?’

  He would place his hand under her feathers and give her silver backside a pat, a little squeeze. It was his privilege. Then they’d make their way up to the wings, to be in their positions behind the curtains, and before they got there they could already hear Jack doing his after-the-interval number, dancing and singing—he could do both things—in front of the curtains, in the silver spotlight, before it was their turn.

  By the light

  ... tappity-tap tappity-tap ...

  Of the silvery moon

  ... tappity-tap tappity-tap ...

  I like to spoon

  ... tappity-tappity-tappity-tap ...

  * * *

  —

  But life is unfair. Jack had died, exactly a year ago. In this bedroom, in the bed behind her. In the bed, beside her. She had not known he had died, since she was asleep. Perhaps he hadn’t known either, for the same reason. She hoped so. It was the death we would all want.

  But it was not, in her case, the awakening anyone would wish for. She hated remembering that awakening. Whenever it popped into her head, which it did constantly, she thrust it aside immediately. She often wished she might go to sleep and not wake up, just as Jack had done. But not wished.

  George had rung last week and said, ‘No pressure, Evie, no pressure at all, you may have other plans, you may want to be alone, but I haven’t forgotten what day it is next Thursday. Would you like to have lunch? Would you like to raise a glass or two with me to the old boy?’

  So she had put on her pearls and gone. She did not like George’s expression ‘old boy’, but George, despite being—as Jack had sometimes affectionately called him—Jack’s ‘fast and loose’ or ‘wily’ or even ‘cut-throat’ agent, was a kind, a considerate man.

  And still the devoted agent of Jack’s ghost.

  Jack Robbins. Seventy-seven. Jack Robbins CBE. Never, quite, though there’d been talk, Sir Jack. Jack Robbins, the actor and even, in his heyday, occasional film star. Actor, then director, then producer, then actor-producer-director all in one and even with his own company. Rainbow Productions. All it took, as he liked to say, unassumingly, was a couple of ‘lucky hits’ and everyone was laughing.

  All the way to the bank. But he didn’t say that, he left that implied. He always knew, in interviews, how to say just enough. Or to say nothing much really, but say it entertainingly. His company, but hers too. He liked to acknowledge it. ‘Oh I have the most wonderful business
partner, you see, and managing director. Wife actually.’ The first two with a strong hint of a wink (the eyes now a little crinkly), the last with a rare unacted grateful directness.

  ‘My wife is my inspiration, you see. I’d be nothing without her.’

  Oh come off it, Jack, don’t overdo it. But didn’t it contain more than a grain of truth?

  Jack Robbins. She could already feel him now—or the man the public knew—becoming a memory, a ‘name’. Jack Robbins. Wasn’t he in that TV show long ago? That sitcom that ran for ages. Such Is Life. When he’d stopped doing variety, stopped calling himself Jack Robinson. When he’d changed into Terry Treadwell. Wasn’t that his first big lucky break, the one that really got him an audience?

  Break? Lucky? Don’t you believe it. He was the one who said it was a lucky break. A favourite phrase. All modesty and innocence. But it was Evie White (sometimes known as Mrs Robbins) who’d put him there, Evie White who’d marched him down to Lime Grove and said, ‘Sign, Jack, and say thank you to the nice people.’

  She had flashed her smile. She had, too, a certain presence, a certain force. Jack had said, ‘This is Evie White.’ He hardly ever said ‘Mrs Robbins’. And from that day on, until further notice, Jack became Terry Treadwell, and Jack Robinson faded even further into the past.

  In the mirror she might see him now if she peered hard enough—he’d never really gone, just popped out—standing behind her, his hands on her shoulders, stooping to kiss them, each one, to kiss the nape of her neck, to clasp round her neck the pearls he’d given her. It was twenty years ago. These pearls that she’d just taken off, pearls for a pearl wedding.

  Jack Robbins. Jack Robinson. Mr Nod-and-a-wink, Mr Make-’em-laugh, make-’em-smile, make-’em-swoon. Mr Moonlight. Just an old song-and-dance man, just an old handsome dreamboat, never short of a girl or three. But, as it turned out, an actor of surprising depth and range and, more surprising still, and all things being relative in the world of entertainment, a remarkably uxorious man.

  She could vouch for it. Who would know better?

  Listen to me, George, since we’re here to honour the old boy: what’s more extraordinary, that actors turn into these other people—how on earth is it done?—or that people anyway turn into people you never thought they might be?

  Evie White. Chorus girl. Prancer and dancer. Up for anything really. Even one-time magician’s assistant. But, as it turned out, hard-headed and sharp-eyed business woman. She could vouch for that too. And Jack Robbins’ wife for nearly fifty years. Not Ronnie Deane’s. Who would know better?

  And what’s more extraordinary: that magicians can turn things into other things, even make people disappear and appear again, or that people can anyway one day be there—oh so there—and the next day never be there again? Never.

  She might have said such things over their lunch, but she didn’t. And George might have listened and said, ‘Well, that’s quite a lot to chew on, Evie.’

  All things being relative. And who cares about the famous two-week fling, back in the Seventies (Eddie Costello went to town on it in the News of the World), with a well-known rising actress (and where is she now, and what was her name again?). Did ‘Mrs Robbins’ (as Eddie called her) care? Jack came back, tail between his legs.

  Did she care now? Come back, Jack, tail wherever you like.

  And did she have any right, even then, to complain? How, after all, had their not-quite-fifty years begun? And who would have believed—was there no justice?—that they would have contained so much? Including even at least one kind of fiftieth, not so long after the launch of Rainbow Productions: Jack Robbins, fifty years on the stage. They had thrown a big party, in this house. She had ordered secretly a massive cake (never mind Jack’s expanding waistline) and had specified that on it there should be, in gold icing, the two famous masks, but not in this case of comedy and tragedy—both masks must be smiling.

  Jack, before cutting it, had demanded her assistance. So there had followed a flustered little performance, or competition, of hands. Whose hand should go on top to press down and guide the other’s? Everyone had seen: it was like a wedding. And everyone had seen, despite the two smiling masks and the general laughter, the tears that had dripped for a second down Jack’s face. Real tears, not actor’s tears. No illusion.

  Flash bulbs had popped. A riotous speech had followed. Oh the parties! The evenings! And one golden anniversary anyway.

  Jack Robbins, who’d first trodden the boards in June 1945 in Cliftonville, Kent. She might picture it: tap shoes and a pint-sized penguin suit. Fourteen years old.

  She fingers her pearls. His company and hers. More hers in fact. Now effectively all hers. She had always had the controlling share. His generous concession. ‘Should anything happen to me, Evie ...’ Well it had. Rainbow Productions. It was their entirely private understanding that he had red, orange and yellow and she had blue, indigo and violet. And green. Why ‘Rainbow Productions’? Never mind. It was well named. It had brought them a pot of gold. It had bought them Albany Square. And she had green, the middle and deciding colour, the controlling share.

  Though hadn’t she always had it? Long before Rainbow Productions was a twinkle in their eyes (but mainly hers). Hadn’t she always wound Jack up and set him off in all the right directions? Just as his mother had done, just as her mother had done with her. The obituaries had simply noted the fact that they’d had no children. No ‘survived bys’. Well, need she make any comment? Too busy with Jack, hands full with Jack. If it wasn’t obvious.

  Hadn’t she made her move and placed her bet and hadn’t it come good? Hadn’t she once long ago when, yes, he was just a song-and-dance man and when they were all, really, just small glittery fish in a big sea, found the all-important little key in the small of his back and learnt how, carefully, lovingly, to turn it, when all the others were too busy just wrapping their legs around him?

  * * *

  —

  Oh the things Ronnie would do to her, every night. For how many nights? A whole summer’s worth. And for all to see. Or not exactly see. Not see at all. That was the whole point.

  He would put her in a box and, while she was in it, take a sword—two, three swords—and run her through. But this was not before he’d put her in another box, all hunched up like a trussed turkey in an oven, and then locked the door, wielding first the magic key—the magic golden key!—and made her disappear. And then—another locking and relocking, another wielding of the key—made her come back again. That was kind of him. Only to run her through with swords.

  But then he would put her in another box, lying down this time, her head sticking out at one end, her feet at the other. And he would take—no, he would brandish, he would wave it about—a saw. He would push one half of the box, the one with her head sticking out, round the stage, while the other half, with her legs, stayed put.

  And if Evie White or ‘Eve’ didn’t know how to sing, she knew how to scream, very convincingly (and this was her idea, challenging Ronnie’s idea that the whole thing should be done in ghastly silence). Her scream could make them all gasp, sometimes even scream themselves. Her scream was worse than the saw.

  Outside, on the pier, the punters could go on all sorts of contraptions—the dipper, the helter-skelter, the ghost train—that could make them scream too, scream with a kind of strange wild joy. Wasn’t this, plainly, one of the reasons why people came on holiday—to be frightened to death? So didn’t it all fit in with the general requirement: give them what they wanted?

  When he locked her in that first box, all curled up, and her tail feathers got caught accidentally-on-purpose in the closing door she would give a little, a not so little, an audible ‘Ooo!’ Which made them not know what to do: giggle or wince? And that was her idea too.

  Oh the things she wouldn’t submit to, the things she wouldn’t go through for Ronnie (or, as he was at the
time, Pablo). Yet the strangest thing of all was that amid all this savagery and torture she would maintain her indomitable and gleaming smile. She would, whenever the boxes were opened, step forth smiling, her tiara glinting, her arms flung up in their white gloves in a gesture of triumph and delight. She would cock one knee then the other and sway her hips, and whenever she had to move from one box to another, from one position of atrocity or mere jeopardy to another, she would do so with a similarly happy display of her shining invulnerable self.

  The ring that shone on her finger, gold like the magic key, only made it inevitable that Ronnie would start making the joke, whenever he introduced her to anyone who’d seen the show, ‘Meet Evie. Meet Eve. My other half. Halves.’

  And if Jack, as planned, had been best man at their wedding that September he’d surely have stolen Ronnie’s joke, perhaps not preventing himself for a moment from slipping back into the role of Jack Robinson. ‘Please join me, folks, boys and girls, in drinking to Ronnie’s other half. Or should I say halves? May he always keep putting her back together again.’

  Instead he stole a great deal more.

  Brighton Town Hall, the Registry Office. It still might have happened, that September, if everything else had been put back together again.

  And she would have been—another line for Jack?—‘married to magic’. As she would by then have understood that Ronnie was too, long before he was married to her.

  But what was wrong with that? Wasn’t it what had lured her in the first place? Magician’s Assistant Wanted.

  * * *

  —

  And did she find out anyway the answer to that central and enticing question? Magic: so how was it done then?

  If anyone ought to have found out, it was her. But here was the crucial catch. If she’d found out, if she’d known, she could never have told, could she? Because that was the deal, the pledge, more binding and unbreakable, it seemed, than even a promise of marriage. So how would anyone ever know whether she knew or didn’t?