‘My dear chap,’ said Quilley. ‘Whatever for?’
‘I’m phoning for the police, Mr Ned!’ cried Mrs Longmore from downstairs. ‘I’m dialling nine-nine-nine now!’
‘Either sit down and explain your business at once,’ Quilley said sternly, ‘or Mrs Longmore will phone for the police.’
‘I’m dialling!’ called Mrs Longmore, who had done this occasionally before.
Alastair sat down.
‘Now then,’ said Quilley, with all the fierceness at his command. ‘What about a little black coffee while you tell me what I have done to offend you?’
The list was long: played him a fool’s trick, Quilley had. For Charlie’s sake. Pretended to be a non-existent film company. Persuaded his agent to send telegrams to Mykonos. Made a conspiracy with clever friends in Hollywood. Prepaid air tickets, all to make a ninny out of him in front of the gang. And to get him out of Charlie’s hair.
Gradually, Quilley unravelled the story. A Hollywood film production company calling itself Pan Talent Celestial had telephoned his agent from California saying that their leading man had fallen sick and they required Alastair for immediate screen tests in London. They would pay whatever was necessary to obtain his attendance, and when they heard he was in Greece they arranged for a certified cheque for a thousand dollars to be delivered to the agent’s office. Alastair returned from holiday hot-foot, then sat on his thumbs for a week while no screen test materialised. ‘STAND BY,’ said the telegrams. Everything by telegram, note well. ‘ARRANGEMENTS PENDING.’ On the ninth day, Alastair, in a state of near dementia, was instructed to present himself at Shepperton Studios. Ask for one Pete Vyschinsky, Studio D.
No Vyschinsky, not anywhere. No Pete.
Alastair’s agent rang the number in Hollywood. The telephone operator advised him that Pan Talent Celestial had closed its account. Alastair’s agent rang other agents; nobody had heard of Pan Talent Celestial. Doom. Alastair’s judgment was as good as anyone’s, and in the course of a two-day drunk, on the balance of his thousand dollars’ expenses, Alastair had concluded that the only person with the motive and ability to play such a trick was Ned Quilley, known in the trade as ‘Desperately Quilley’, who had never concealed his dislike for Alastair, or his conviction that Alastair was the evil influence behind Charlie’s zany politics. He had therefore come round in person to wring Quilley’s neck. After a few cups of coffee, however, he began protesting his undying admiration for his host, and Quilley told Mrs Longmore to get him a cab.
The same evening, while the Quilleys sat in the garden enjoying a sundowner before dinner – they had recently invested in some rather decent outdoor furniture, cast-iron but done in the original Victorian moulds – Marjory listened gravely to his story, then to his great annoyance burst out laughing.
‘What a very naughty girl,’ she said. ‘She must have found some rich lover to buy the boy off!’
Then she saw Quilley’s face. Rootless American production companies. Telephone numbers that no longer answer. Filmmakers who cannot be found. And all of it happening around Charlie. And her Ned.
‘It’s even worse,’ said Quilley miserably.
‘What is, darling?’
‘They’ve stolen all her letters.’
‘They’ve what!’
All her handwritten letters, Quilley said. Going back over the last five years or more. All her chatty, intimate billets-doux scribbled when she was on tour or lonely. Marvellous things. Pen-portraits of producers and members of the cast. The dear little drawings she liked to do when she was feeling happy. Gone. Whipped from the file. By those awful Americans who wouldn’t drink – Karman and his frightful chum. Mrs Longmore was having a fit about it. Mrs Ellis had gone sick.
Write them a filthy letter, Marjory advised.
But to what effect? Quilley wondered miserably. And to what address?
Talk to Brian, she suggested.
All right, Brian was his solicitor; so what the hell was Brian supposed to do?
Wandering back into the house, Quilley poured himself a stiff one and turned on the television, only to get the early-evening news with film of the latest beastly bombing somewhere. Ambulances, foreign policemen carting off the injured. But Quilley was in no mood for such frivolous distractions. They actually ransacked Charlie’s file, he kept repeating to himself. A client’s, dammit. In my office. And son of old Quilley sits by and sleeps his lunch off while they do it! He hadn’t been so put out for years.
CHAPTER EIGHT
If she dreamed, she had no knowledge of it when she woke. Or perhaps, like Adam, she woke and found the dream true, because the first thing she saw was a glass of fresh orange juice by her bed, and the second, Joseph striding purposefully about the room, pulling open cupboards, drawing back the curtains to let in the sunshine. Pretending to be still asleep, Charlie watched him through half-closed eyes, as she had watched him on the beach. The line of his wounded back. The first light frost of age touching the sides of his black hair. The silk shirt again, with its gold furnishings.
‘What’s the time?’ she asked.
‘Three o’clock.’ He gave a tug of the curtain. ‘In the afternoon. You have slept enough. We must get on our way.’
And a gold neckchain, she thought; with the medallion tucked inside the shirt.
‘How’s the mouth?’ she asked.
‘Alas, it appears that I shall never sing again.’ He crossed to an old painted wardrobe and extracted a blue kaftan, which he laid on the chair. She saw no marks on his face, only heavy rings of tiredness beneath his eyes. He stayed up, she thought, recalling his absorption with the papers on his desk; he’s been finishing his homework.
‘You remember our conversation before you went to bed this morning, Charlie? When you get up, I would like you please to put on this dress, also the new underclothes you will find in the box here. I prefer you best in blue today and your hair brushed long. No knots.’
‘Plaits.’
He ignored the correction. ‘These clothes are my gift to you and it is my pleasure to advise you what to wear and how to look. Sit up, please. Take a thorough look at the room.’
She was naked. Clutching the sheet to her throat, she cautiously sat up. A week ago, on the beach, he could have studied her body to his heart’s content. That was a week ago.
‘Memorise everything around you. We are secret lovers and this room is where we spent the night. It happened as it happened. We were reunited in Athens, we came to this house and found it empty. No Marty, no Mike, nobody but ourselves.’
‘So who are you?’
‘We parked the car where we parked it. The porch light was burning as we arrived. I unlocked the front door, we ran together hand in hand up the broad staircase.’
‘What about luggage?’
‘Two pieces. My briefcase, your shoulder bag. I carried both.’
‘Then how did you hold my hand?’
She thought she was outguessing him, but he was pleased by her precision.
‘The shoulder bag with its broken strap was under my right arm. My grip was in the right hand. I ran on your right side, my left hand was free. We found the room exactly as it is now, everything prepared. We were scarcely through the door before we embraced each other. We could not contain our desire a second longer.’
With two steps he was at the bed, rummaging among the tumbled bedclothes on the floor until he found her blouse, which he held out for her to see. It was ripped at every button-hole and two buttons were missing.
‘Frenzy,’ he explained as flatly as if frenzy were the day of the week. ‘Is that the word?’
‘It’s one of them.’
‘Frenzy then.’
He tossed aside the blouse and allowed himself a strict smile. ‘You want coffee?’
‘Coffee would be great.’
‘Bread? Yoghurt? Olives?’
‘Coffee will do fine.’ He had reached the door as she called after him, in a louder voice: ‘Sorry I swiped you, J
ose. You should have launched one of those Israeli counterstrikes and felled me before I thought of it.’
The door closed, she heard him stride away down the passage. She wondered whether he would ever come back. Feeling utterly unreal, she stepped gingerly from the bed. It’s pantomime, she thought – Goldilocks in the bears’ house. The evidence of their imagined revelry lay all round her: a vodka bottle, two-thirds full, floating in an ice bucket. Two glasses, used. A bowl of fruit, two plates complete with apple peel and grape pips. The red blazer draped over a chair. The smart black leather grip with side pockets, part of every budding executive’s virility kit. Hanging from the door, a karate-style kimono, Hermès of Paris – his again, heavy black silk. In the bathroom, her own schoolgirl’s sponge-bag cuddled up beside his calf-skin holdall. Two towels were offered; she used the dry one. Her blue kaftan, when she examined it, turned out to be rather pretty, in a heavy cotton with a high, demure neckline and the shop’s own tissue paper still inside it: Zelide, Rome and London. The underclothes were high-class tart’s stuff, black and her size. On the floor, a brand-new leather shoulder bag and a pair of smart flat-soled sandals. She tried one on. It fitted. She dressed and was brushing out her hair when Joseph marched back into the room bearing a tray with coffee. He could be heavy, and he could be so light you’d think they’d lost the soundtrack. He was somebody with a wide range of stealth.
‘You look excellent, I would say,’ he remarked, placing the tray on the table.
‘Excellent?’
‘Beautiful. Enchanting. Radiant. You have seen the orchids?’
She hadn’t, but she saw them now and her stomach turned over the way it had on the Acropolis: a sprig of gold and russet with a small white envelope propped against the vase. Deliberately, she finished her hair, then picked the little envelope from its perch and took it to the chaise longue, where she sat down. Joseph remained standing. Lifting the flap, she drew out a plain card with the words ‘I love you’ written in a sloping, un-English hand, and the familiar signature, ‘M’.
‘Well? What does it remind you of?’
‘You know damn well what it reminds me of,’ she snapped as, far too late, she made that connection in her memory, as well.
‘So tell me.’
‘Nottingham, the Barrie Theatre. York, the Phoenix. Stratford East, the Cockpit. You, crouching in the front row making cow eyes at me.’
‘The same handwriting?’
‘The same hand, the same message, the same flowers.’
‘You know me as Michel. “M” for Michel.’ Opening the smart black grip, he began swiftly packing his clothes into it. ‘I am all you ever desired,’ he said, without even looking at her. ‘To do the job, you don’t just have to remember it; you have to believe it and feel it and dream it. We are building a new reality, a better one.’
She put aside the card and poured herself some coffee, playing deliberately slow against his haste.
‘Who says it’s a better one?’ she said.
‘You passed your holiday in Mykonos with Alastair, but in your secret heart you were waiting desperately for me, Michel.’ He darted into the bathroom and returned with his holdall. ‘Not Joseph – Michel. As soon as the holiday was over, you hurried to Athens. On the boat you told your friends you wanted to be alone for a few days. A lie. You had an assignation with Michel. Not Joseph – Michel.’ He tossed the holdall into the grip. ‘You took a taxi to the restaurant, you met me there. Michel. In my silk shirt. My gold watch. Lobsters ordered. Everything you saw. I brought brochures to show you. We ate what we ate, we talked excited sweet nothings in the manner of secret lovers reunited.’ He unhooked the black kimono from the door. ‘I tipped lavishly and kept the bill, as you noticed; then I took you up the Acropolis, a forbidden journey, unique. A special taxi, my own, was waiting. I addressed the driver as Dimitri –’
She interrupted him. ‘So that was the only reason you took me up the Acropolis,’ she said flatly.
‘It was not I who took you. It was Michel. Michel is proud of his languages, of his abilities as a fixer. He loves flourish, romantic gestures, sudden leaps. He is your magician.’
‘I don’t like magicians.’
‘He also has a genuine if superficial interest in archaeology, as you observed.’
‘So who kissed me?’
Carefully folding the kimono, he laid it in the grip. He was the first man she had met who knew how to pack.
‘His more practical reason for taking you up the Acropolis was to enable him to take discreet delivery of the Mercedes, which for his own reasons he did not wish to bring into the city centre during the rush hour. You do not question the Mercedes; you accept it as part of the magic of being with me, just as you accept a clandestine flavour in whatever we do. You accept everything. Hurry, please. We have much driving to do, much talking.’
‘What about you?’ she said. ‘Are you in love with me too, or is it all a game?’
Waiting for him to answer, she had a vision of him physically stepping aside to allow the shaft to speed harmlessly past him towards the shadowy figure of Michel.
‘You love Michel, you believe Michel loves you.’
‘But am I right?’
‘He says he loves you, he gives you proof of it. What more can a man do to convince you, since you cannot live inside his head?’
He had set off round the room again, poking at things. Now he stopped before the card that had accompanied the orchids.
‘Whose house is this?’ she said.
‘I never reply to such questions. My life is an enigma to you. It has been so since we met and that is how I like it to remain.’ He picked up the card and handed it to her. ‘Keep this in your new handbag. From now on I expect you to cherish these small mementoes of me. See this?’
He had lifted the vodka bottle halfway out of its bucket.
‘As a man, I naturally drink more than you. I don’t drink well; alcohol gives me a headache, occasionally it makes me sick. But vodka is what I like.’ He dropped the bottle back into the bucket. ‘As for you, you get one small glass because I am emancipated, but basically I do not approve of women drinking.’ He picked up a dirty plate and showed it to her. ‘I have a sweet tooth, I like chocolates, cakes, and fruit. Particularly fruit. Grapes, but they must be green like the grapes of my home village. So what did Charlie eat last night?’
‘I don’t. Not when it’s like that. I just smoke my post-coital fag.’
‘I’m afraid I do not allow smoking in the bedroom. In the Athens restaurant, I tolerated it because I am liberated. Even in the Mercedes, for you I occasionally allow it. But never in the bedroom. If you were thirsty in the night, you drank water from the tap.’ He began pulling on the red blazer. ‘You noticed how the tap gurgled?’
‘No.’
‘Then it didn’t gurgle. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t.’
‘He’s an Arab, isn’t he?’ she said, still watching him. ‘He’s your archetypal Arab chauvinist. It’s his car you’ve nicked.’
He was closing the grip. Straightening, he gazed at her a second, partly in calculation and partly, she could not help feeling, in rejection.
‘Oh, he is more than just Arab, I would say. He is more than just chauvinist. There is nothing ordinary about him at all, least of all in your eyes. Go over to the bed, please.’ He waited while she did so, watching her intently. ‘Feel under my pillow. Slowly – take care! I sleep on the right-hand side. So.’
Cautiously, as he commanded, she slid her hand under the cold pillow, imagining the weight of Joseph’s sleeping head pressing down on it.
‘You have found it? I said take care.’
Yes, Jose, she had found it.
‘Lift it carefully. The safety catch is off. Michel is not in the habit of giving warnings before he shoots. The gun is a child to us. It shares every bed we sleep in. We call it “our child”. Even when we are making passionate love, we never disturb that pillow and we never forget what is underneath it
. That is how we live. Do you see now that I am not ordinary?’
She contemplated it, how it lay so neatly in her palm. Small. Brown and prettily proportioned.
‘Have you ever handled such a gun?’ Joseph asked.
‘Frequently.’
‘Where? Who against?’
‘On stage. Night after night after night.’
She handed it to him and watched him slip it inside his blazer as easily as if he were putting away his wallet. She followed him downstairs. The house was empty and unexpectedly cold. The Mercedes stood waiting in the forecourt. At first she just wanted to leave: go anywhere, get out, the open road and us. The pistol had scared her and she needed movement. But as he started down the drive something made her turn and gaze back at the crumbling yellow plaster, the red flowers, the shuttered windows, and old red tiles. And she realised too late how beautiful it all was, how welcoming just as she was leaving. It’s the house of my youth, she decided: one of the many youths I never had. It’s the house I never got married from; Charlie not in blue but white, my bloody mother in tears, and goodbye to all that.
‘Do we exist as well?’ she asked him as they joined the evening traffic. ‘Or is it just the other two?’
The three-minute warning again before he answered. ‘Of course we exist. Why not?’ Then the lovely smile, the one she would have tied herself to the railings for. ‘We are Berkeleians, you see. If we do not exist, how can they?’
What’s a Berkeleian? she wondered. But she was too proud to ask.
For twenty minutes by the quartz clock on the dashboard, Joseph had barely spoken. Yet she had sensed no relaxation in him; rather, a methodical preparation before the attack.
‘So, Charlie,’ he said suddenly, ‘you are ready?’
Jose, I am ready.
‘On the twenty-sixth of June, a Friday, you are playing Saint Joan at the Barrie Theatre, Nottingham. You are not with your regular company; you have stepped in at the last minute to replace an actress who defaulted on her contract. The scenery is late arriving, the lighting is still on its way, you have been rehearsing all day long, two of the staff have gone sick with influenza. The occasion is so far clear in your memory?’
The Little Drummer Girl Page 21
