‘Me too.’
Aidan reaches out his hand for Henry to shake.
‘Deal?’
‘Okay. Deal. For now.’
They shake. Then they walk back to Piccadilly Circus without speaking. They walk side by side, in step, newly bonded. For Henry everything to do with his job has changed.
The crew are on the island photographing Eros.
‘Got you some cover,’ says Ray.
Christina looks at Henry with concern.
‘You okay?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’m fine. Sorry to go off like that. But now that Aidan’s explained to me that he just can’t help being a prick, I’ve got over it.’
All eyes turn to Aidan Massey.
‘What can I say?’ He spreads his arms and grins. ‘I’m a prick. Let’s do the piece to camera again.’
55
Is she reading it now? Is she raising her eyebrows at the language, or is she yawning, rolling her eyes? Reading it beginning to end, or putting it down, doing other things, fitting it into her day like an unloved chore? In the school hall, rehearsing his Year Eight actors, Alan Strachan prompts the thin high voices as they struggle with Shakespeare’s verse, his mind on his own lines. He sees her brown eyes scanning the black type, her fingers turning the next page. And feeling what?
James Shaw can’t stop swinging his arms as he speaks.
‘One turf shall serve as pillow for us both;
One heart, one bed, two bosoms and one troth.’
Snorts of suppressed laughter greet the eagerly-awaited line. Alan wonders yet again if he was foolish not to cut it. On the other hand you could say that through this one line Shakespeare has entered the every day speech of these privileged but illiterate children. ‘Sir, Harry has two bosoms, sir, I’ve seen them.’ The chief target of the jibe is Mrs Digby, who is now widely known as Two Bosoms.
Alan is playing the scene for comedy in the crudest possible way. Katie Beale shuffles sideways two steps with each line, heel-toe, heel-toe.
‘Nay, good Lysander, for my sake, my dear,
Lie further off yet, do not lie so near.’
‘Now go after her, James. Heel toe, heel toe. Keep facing the audience.’
Shakespeare as slapstick. But it works. Even in rehearsal they get a laugh. Nothing like laughter to boost a performer’s confidence.
‘For God’s sake keep your arms still, James. I’m going to tie them down.’
‘Sorry sir.’
‘Why do you do it?’
‘Don’t know sir.’
‘Here. Hold this.’
He throws the boy a cushion.
‘Now do it again.’
They’re not bad kids. At least they find it funny. No one’s told them yet that Shakespeare’s educational.
She must have read it by now. Her gaze swept the forty-three pages like a searchlight exposing them to pitiless scrutiny. In this form no one but himself has read it, it has lived all its life in a warm dark room, protected from the bright lights and the keen stripping winds beyond the door. Now his baby has been thrust naked into the world.
An adolescent attempt to shock. The plot only too predictable. The characters mere posturing stereotypes. Not that she’ll say any of it. Really liked your play, Alan. No, really. It’s so unusual. Never read anything like it before. Don’t really know what I think. It’s different.
Oh, fuck. Why did I ever give it to her? Nice going, Alan. First you blub in front of her then you give her your crap play to read.
Only it’s not crap. This is the madness with which Alan lives all the time these days. He’s a genius tied to a fool, back to back, elbows to elbows, shins to shins. However many times he spins about the genius can never see the fool, but nor can he escape him. Sometimes in the mirror of his solitude he catches the wry smile of the genius, sometimes the vacant mouthing of the fool.
This play is startlingly original, vital, funny and heartbreaking. A central device of powerful simplicity, an hour in the disintegration of a love affair interwoven with, counterpointed by, an hour of sexual foreplay. The final breach between the lovers coincides with the release of orgasm. This is highly charged work, no?
Yamma yamma yamma says the fool. It’s a brain-wank, buddy. You’re living in la-la land.
Christ she’s called Elizabeth. She’ll think I named my heroine after her. I’m this sad loser with sick fantasies of what I want to do to her. She won’t even let me in the house.
Just tell me I’m not insane. Tell me I can write.
Why do I want this so much if it’s all a delusion? Why does the act of forming the lines in my head excite me so much that my bowels melt and I have to run to the lavatory unbuckling my belt as I go? Don’t tell me that’s not the real thing.
‘But, gentle friend, for love and courtesy
Lie further off—’
The bell rings.
‘Good, Katie. I like the little push. Next time try giving him a good hard shove. Thank you, James. You can let go of the cushion now. Same time Wednesday, everyone.’
His actors clatter out of the hall, laughing and jostling. Alan replaces the cushion, moves the lectern back to mid-stage for tomorrow morning’s assembly, switches out lights.
Shakespeare had it made. His own company of actors, a theatre to fill, no time to fuck about. Write, rehearse, perform. Imagine Shakespeare wetting himself because some girl he fancied was reading a play of his. Who cares what she thinks? His actors are already learning their lines, he’s halfway through the play after next, the show goes on. If it doesn’t work, fix it. Listen to the audience, follow the tears and the laughter. That’s the way to write. Not this lonely terror.
So like love. The fear of being without talent so like the fear of never being loved. The one a surrogate for the other, no doubt. The hunger for genius a hunger for love.
Just say good things about my play. But mean what you say, lady. I don’t want pity. Only totally sincere awestruck admiration will do. Is that too much to ask? Oh, and let me fuck you afterwards. An awestruck fuck, that would truly be the cherry on the cake.
Yamma yamma yamma. Dream on.
He weaves his way between the slow-moving procession of parents’ cars to the main school. Jimmy Hall is on pick-up duty.
‘Hello, Jimmy. How’s things?’
‘Not so good, Alan. Actually, since you ask, I’m bloody livid.’
The last thing Alan wants to do is listen to Jimmy Hall’s catalogue of disappointments in life, given that to all young male teachers in the school Jimmy Hall represents a hideous warning of what they might themselves one day become. But a moment or two is only polite.
‘What’s got you going, Jimmy?’
‘You know I do work from time to time for the local rag? Well, I turned in a piece on Saturday that was something special. You know, though I say it myself, it had a touch of true artistry. The editor loved it. And what happens? The nationals nick my story! The big boys come barging in and re-work it and get it all wrong needless to say, and my little piece is left to die the death.’
‘I’m sorry, Jimmy. It’s a tough world.’
‘They’re killers,’ says Jimmy Hall bitterly. ‘They’re vampires.’
Alan collects his work bag from his classroom and leaves for the staff car park by the library door. He doesn’t want to meet Liz Dickinson picking up Alice. She expects him some time after seven. The short exchange with Jimmy Hall has depressed him. Easy to laugh at his sad little dreams of journalistic glory, but why should his own dreams be any different?
Though I say it myself it had a touch of true artistry.
Jimmy Hall says it himself because there’s no one else to say it. Just like me. Though Liz may be kind. Except kind has no value. Only true has value. But hey, I’ll settle for kind.
As always it takes a long time to make the turning out of the school lane onto the main road. At this time of day the A27 is a ceaseless flow of home-going commuters, and it’s a rare driver who slows
and flashes his lights to let waiting cars in from side roads. Alan turns on the radio and someone on the PM programme is talking about paternity leave. Tony Blair has decided to take two weeks off to help look after his new baby son, and John Prescott is to be in charge. The Downing Street website has published the first pictures of baby Leo and has crashed under the massive demand.
Why? All the newspapers will carry the pictures tomorrow. You look at a picture of a baby and then what? People are strange.
Onto the main road at last and into the ever-flowing river of human desolation. Not that I know they’re all miserable. They may be happy as Larry in their cars, singing all the way home. The driver behind is right on my tail. What am I supposed to do, buddy? Ram the car in front?
Gentle friend for love and courtesy lie further off.
She won’t be reading it now. She’ll be driving Alice home. She’s read it by now or not at all. Off the main road at last and up the lane to Glynde.
Fucking typical. There’s a car parked in his customary parking space. In fact, a police car. As he goes to his front door a policeman appears from his neighbour’s house.
‘Has something happened to Mrs Temple-Morris?’ says Alan.
‘Did you know her, sir?’
‘No, not really. Just as a neighbour.’
‘When did you last see her?’
‘On Friday. What’s happened to her?’
‘Bad news, I’m afraid. She passed away.’
‘Good God! I didn’t even know she was ill.’
‘The newspaper boy raised the alarm.’ The policeman gives a shrug. ‘The newspapers were jamming up inside.’
‘She seemed fine when I saw her.’ Then he realizes she was not fine at all. ‘What did she do? Take an overdose?’
‘Something like that. We’ll know more when the coroner submits his report.’
‘Has her husband been told?’
‘Husband, sir? There’s no husband.’
‘No husband?’
‘Never been married, sir. We’ve been checking next of kin. Turns out that was just her little story. Would you be available tomorrow, sir? Just for a short statement.’
‘Yes. Of course.’
Alan goes on into his house, profoundly shaken. Not grief at his neighbour’s death: shock at how little he knew her. He sees her now, bathed in the flattering light of his own over-easy assumptions, an ageing woman with too much make-up on her face and not enough to fill her day. The husband she had invented. The smile she synthesized. The over-cheerful voice she faked. All to avoid the shame of being exposed as a lonely, unwanted, fearful, fragile human being.
God in his mercy lend her grace.
Where’s that from? Tennyson, ‘The Lady of Shalott’. Another suicide.
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye
Funny how some lines stick in your mind for ever. Singing in her song she died. Not an overdose, then. More like a fairy curse. Go on seeing the world in your shadowy mirror, lady. If you turn round and look at the real thing, you die. So maybe that’s what she did. Maybe Mrs Temple-Morris took one look at the real world, the world in which she had no husband and no reason to smile, and not liking what she saw chose to leave by the nearest exit.
I can use that, he thinks, the structure of a new play already forming in his mind. A modern Lady of Shalott. A lonely death unredeemed by iambic tetrameters.
He showers and changes, preparing for the coming evening, in the course of which the world’s opinion – which is to say all that is not inside his own mind and under his own control – will pronounce judgement on his play. On his aspirations to be a writer. On his estimation of himself.
My aspiration to be a writer. Which is to say my aspiration to live. My act of engagement with life. To be a writer is to live fully, to be an explorer, to be one of the few who are awake in a world of sleepwalkers. And yet all the time, separated from me by a few inches of wood and plaster, a life has been ending in solitude and silence.
This is the source of his shame. He knew nothing. He never tried to know. He bought the fiction she created, out of pity and laziness.
That was just her little story.
Mrs Temple-Morris a writer too, in her way. Her early work an entertainment for the neighbours, a conventional tale in the comic mode. Her mature work an unheard cry of despair, a tragedy.
Come round some time after seven. Five past? Ten past? He forces himself not to leave his house until seven o’clock. From Glynde to Lewes is barely three miles and by now the traffic will have eased on the A27 so he’ll be there in no time. He takes a bottle of red wine from his modest store.
The house next door is closed and silent. The police car long gone. Alan drives away with a line from ‘The Lady of Shalott’ running in his head.
All in the blue unclouded weather
I’ll know as soon as I see her face if she’s read it. I’ll know what she thinks of it. She won’t tell me the truth but I’ll know.
Lewes is quiet, the shops long closed. He leaves his car in the half empty car park behind the Cliffe, and walks up past All Saints and the Friends Meeting House. He sees Alice’s face at the downstairs front window of her house, looking out for him. She knows he’ll be punctual. He sees her run to open the door.
‘I’ve had my supper already,’ she tells him. ‘It’s school tomorrow so I have to be in bed by eight.’
‘Quite right.’ He enters the narrow hallway.
Liz appears from the kitchen holding a broad-bladed kitchen knife. She looks pleased to see him. Beyond that, contrary to his expectations, her face tells him absolutely nothing.
‘Come on in. I’m chopping onions. Only pasta.’
‘Great,’ says Alan. He holds out his bottle of wine. ‘A contribution.’
‘I’ll do that,’ says Alice. ‘I’m good at opening wine.’
Liz turns back into the kitchen, saying as she goes, ‘I loved your play. We’ll talk about it after Alice has gone up.’
‘Why?’ says Alice.
‘Because you wouldn’t understand it, and because I say so.’
‘Is it at all like Friends?’
‘No, not really,’ says Alan. ‘It’s about a couple breaking up.’
‘That happens in Friends. Ross and Rachel broke up.’
‘This isn’t funny.’
‘Ross and Rachel breaking up wasn’t funny. It was awful. I still think they shouldn’t have broken up, they just go so well together. I just know they’ll get back together in the end. They just have to.’
Alan is re-running Liz’s words, trying to discover from her tone of voice the true opinion that lies behind them. I loved your play. Once again he finds he can be sure of nothing.
‘A terrible thing,’ he says. ‘My neighbour in Glynde, the woman who lives right next door, took an overdose.’
‘That is so sad,’ says Liz, her eyes stinging from the onions.
‘I didn’t know her. But I still feel terrible that I had so little idea.’
‘You said terrible before,’ says Alice.
‘And the other thing I didn’t know was that she lived alone. She pretended to be married. She used to talk to me about her husband. But he was just made up.’
‘Oh, the poor woman,’ says Liz.
Alice is fascinated.
‘She just made up a husband? And everyone believed her?’
‘Well, I did. I suppose I never really bothered to think much about it. You don’t expect people to invent husbands.’
‘I think that is so cool.’
When Liz goes upstairs to tuck Alice up for the night Alan prowls round the living room looking for the copy of his play. He fails to find it. There’s the latest Vogue and last month’s Harpers. Then he catches sight of himself reflected in the mirror over the fireplace. Christ what a scarecrow. He pushes down his unruly hair, tucks in his escaping shirt.
Liz appears.
‘Alice says good night.’
He follows her into the kitchen.
‘Your play. It really is something else.’ She busies herself over the pan of now-boiling water. ‘Totally, totally not what I was expecting. It’s fantastically rude, but it’s brilliant. I don’t claim to understand it all, but really, it’s brilliant.’
O sweet Liz, bringer of joy. Comfort of angels, bread of heaven. Don’t stop. Say more. Pour balm on my soul.
‘You think so?’
‘It’s sharp, it’s funny, it’s shocking. God knows if it could ever be put on. Wasn’t there a play not so long ago where a guy had a sex chat online, pretending to be a girl?’
‘Yes. It was called Closer.’
‘I like yours better. It’s got such a great climax.’ She giggles. ‘Oh, God. Ending, I mean.’
‘The pun is deliberate. If you can call it a pun.’
‘Yes, of course. It’s a brilliant idea. I’ve never heard of a play that ends with an orgasm.’
She turns round to smile at him as he sits by the table, rolling his wine glass between his hands.
‘And you a school teacher, too.’
‘I know. I’m a disgrace.’
The bottle of red wine is now finished so she produces one of her own. Alan needs no more alcohol to be intoxicated.
‘Have you shown it to anyone else?’ she asks him.
‘Not in this form, no. I sent an earlier version to Radio Four, but they didn’t want it.’
‘Radio Four! You must be off your rocker!’
‘It didn’t have all the sex phone call stuff. I added that.’
‘Oh, okay. That would make quite a difference.’
‘So you like it?’
‘I am trying to give you that impression, Alan. But maybe I’m not making myself clear when I use words like brilliant.’
‘You could try saying it all again.’
He grins at her, filled with a great and perfect love.
‘It’s brilliant,’ she says. ‘Your play’s fucking brilliant. And let me tell you, I do not use that word lightly.’
The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life Page 35
