Ease

by Patrick Gale

  A-levels followed, and Oxbridge. Domina won a scholarship to Girton and was sent on a trip to Europe as congratulatory preparation: Paris, Venice, Florence, Rome, Athens, then back to Sussex and the Reading List. At the convent they had studied little beyond the set authors of the syllabus. Faced with the sum total of English erudition outlined on three crisp sheets, Domina panicked and read her way through three and a bit centuries before arriving at Cambridge that autumn with little to show for her effort, beyond the fact that she had done so.

  Domina’s parents were not religious, they were Catholic. Religious parents watch over their offspring’s soul: Catholic ones give it a Catholic education. The forms were observed. Rosaries, crucifixes, an annunciation by a query-pupil of Duccio hung in the dining-room, lots of pretty nuns, her great-grandmother’s first communion dress, a painting of her standing in the thing clutching Debrett’s because the only Bible around was quite the wrong colour, and a deep and utter vacancy where sex education might have been. There was sex, certainly. Sex bubbled in the paths of the growing girl. She had sat with her dolls in the summer-house, gravely watching her father suck the buttons of Tamasin Boyce’s slowly opening blouse. She had held solemn discussions with callow youths on the subject of women’s liberation and the aesthetic influence of the Virgin Birth. She had pottered in and out of the studio where some naked friends of Jacoby’s were posing for a Modernist sculpture of Diana and Endymion. When it came to what to do and how to avoid subsequent compromising disclosures, however, Domina had only inexplicable gestures and no knowledge upon which to rely. Whatever the state of their souls, Nanda Brookenham and poor knowing Daisy retained the physical vestige of their honour. At the end of her first Freshers’ party, with three and a bit centuries of verse and prose, a strong line in arch small talk, and enough fashionable names for dropping to break a man’s feet, Domina found herself in a dark room in King’s, under a rather drunk young man with a spotty back. Some weeks later she found he had left her with more than the unlovely recollection.

  She wandered around for a few days, aiming at a sense of sin and falling wide of the proper mark, then paid a visit to a man in Ipswich whose anonymous services were advertised on slips of card torn within days from the college noticeboards, The abortion had been short and thoroughly unpleasant, not least in the equanimity with which she discovered it could be faced. No one, not even Randy, had ever been told. Enlightenment ensued; with it, a discovery that she could write wittily about every facet of human life and not just every but one. With it also came a progression of increasingly interesting young men which culminated in one Randy Herskewitz. Champion of student rights and proletariat intelligentsia, he was incidentally the best thing thought up for bed since breakfast.

  5

  They first met in the Arts Theatre Ladies. Domina was suffering from cystitis and had to leave Randy in the auditorium and limp out before the first half was quite over. It was the premiere of her Footlights revue, the first to be written by a single author, and they were loving it. She wanted to sit and hold Randy’s big hand and bask in the laughter, but her kidneys possessed less sense of occasion. She hurried, near cross-legged, to the Ladies, locked herself in a cubicle, sat down and sighed.

  ‘Congratulations,’ someone called out.

  Domina had glimpsed someone sitting on a ledge by the wash-basins as she ran in. She called up at the gap over the door:

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It was you that wrote the thing, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So good it makes me sick. Congratulations, as I say.’

  ‘Thanks again. How did you know it was me?’

  ‘I got here early and asked the director to point you out – what’ sername, “Virginia Bingham”.’ The voice slowed up as it read out Ginny’s name from a programme. ‘Next half’s better, though,’ it continued.

  The discrepancy between the occasion’s joy and the person’s lugubrious tone made Domina smile as she readjusted her frock and opened the door. She grinned as she walked over to join her at the basins, and started to wash her hands. Black, pudding-basin hair, head like a potato, crumpled, antiquated dress in blue satin.

  ‘How d’you know?’ asked Domina.

  An ashtray was spilling at the woman’s side.

  ‘I’ve got a script. Cambridge actors make me throw – used to do props for the Marlowe Society – so I went backstage as soon as I’d heard enough, and got an ASM to flog me his script.’

  ‘What?’ Domina laughed.

  ‘Fiver. Get it off him after the show. It could be your first earnings.’

  Domina dried her hands.

  ‘The actors are really quite good, you know,’ she said. ‘Jill St Clair’s great.’

  ‘Hate actors.’ She sucked fiercely on the last inch of a cigarette, then crushed it in the ashtray. ‘Want an agent?’

  ‘An agent?’

  ‘Yes. You’re very good. Makes me sick, as I say. I’m an agent. I keep you in work, get you the best deals: you keep me in Woodies – say eight per cent – and give me the push if you’re not happy after six months.’

  Her frankness appealed. Domina knew all about agents from her father, but felt incapable of snubbing this one. This fat, funny one, chain-smoking Woodbines in a ladies’ lavatory. She hesitated:

  ‘Look. I don’t …’

  ‘Bristol Old Vic in August, Royal Court first week in September – if they like your stuff, which I know they will. I’ve got the backing, the goodwill and eight days left to find someone new.’ She slapped the dog-eared script with the back of her hand. ‘You fit the bill.’ She grinned. Domina saw a gold tooth and was lost.

  ‘OK. I can’t think straight now, obviously, and I’ve got to get back in there and see what they’re doing.’

  ‘You can choose an assistant director and sit in on auditions.’

  ‘Oh come on. I’m really interested and excited and … give me your number. I’ll call you tomorrow morning. Are you up for the night?’

  ‘With my old tutor out at Kingston. I’m here till about three tomorrow.’

  ‘Great. Let’s have lunch.’

  ‘026–9959.’

  ‘026–9959.’ Domina murmured as she scribbled in her programme.

  ‘Des Turner. Des as in Desirée as in pink-skinned potato.’

  The lucky break would undoubtedly have come without Des’s help. Given her father’s contacts, Domina knew that luck was scarcely involved. Her motive was a combination of a half-articulated desire to prove her professional independence from Pharos Company, and a long-standing talismanic attitude to atonement. From the first pretty dress and school fees envelope, Domina had felt an obligation to reciprocate good deed for felicity; a childish watercolour for a dress, a poem or a flower arrangement to ease her discomfort over the fees, gifts for others on her birthdays. As the blessings of fate grew in moment, so her grateful expiations took increasingly long-term and human forms. The success of the first play found Ginny the post of assistant director in the London transfer and took Domina on an overdue visit to her mother; that of the award-winning second saw an aberrant spate of church-going, confessions and all; that of the latest, which has won her a coveted prize, is driving her to dedicate all profits to an obscure RAF orphanage. The acclaim that greeted her revue, a revue that transferred to the West End for an unprecedented student run, was honoured by the adoption of Dr Desirée Turner as her literary agent.

  Des still wore her hair like Henry V, but now it was streaked with silver. Her office was still a seedy room over Gloucester Road tube station, but she could now afford to pay an assistant reader-cum-typist. She specialized in playwrights and screenplay writers and now had several successes on her books, but Domina had remained her number one.

  Her hands full of glossy carrier bags, Domina climbed the familiar greasy stair-carpet past the flatshare agency on the first floor and the nurse employment agency on the second and reached the door proclaiming:

  ‘D
.B. Turner BA. PhD.

  Literary Agent’

  where she dropped her bags and rang the bell. The PhD was on heroic verse drama of the nineteenth century, or something equally unlikely.

  In the course of the lunch that Domina had bought her the next day in Cambridge and in the course of numerous ones she had bought her since, it had emerged that Des should have been a don at Newnham or an aggressively cerebral novelist, had tried to be both and had failed through a debility of amour propre. The latter prevented her from finishing any creative or academic venture, however promising its beginning. The PhD had only been completed because the disastrous love affair of the moment happened to be her supervisor. Domina’s welling pity tended to dry at source on the reflection that by some mystery of fate and animal magnetism, Desirée Turner had never been without a lover of some description as long as they had known each other. To be sure, these shadowy figures were invariably problematical, traumatic even, but a failure is somehow less of a failure when she gets her oats. Des opened the door, releasing a gust of Woodbine and Chianti.

  ‘Oh my God, look who it isn’t! You’ve had your hair cut somewhere absurdly expensive and you’ve been wasting money in King’s Road and now you’re going to sit down and tell me what in Christ’s name is going on.’ She picked up a few bags as she talked, and waddled ahead of Domina through the nicotinic haze to her desk. ‘Paulette’s getting married on Saturday, so we’re getting pissed to help her forget.’

  Paulette smirked at her desk. ‘Oh, I’m ever so sorry to be leaving, you know,’ she said, with a giggle. ‘Would you like a glass, Ms Tey?’

  ‘No thanks, Paulette. Actually, could I have some coffee?’

  ‘’Course. I’ll get it straight away. Milk and one sugar, do you?’

  ‘No sugar, thanks. I’m trying to cut down.’ As Paulette meandered into the corridor that served as a kitchen, Domina sank into a chair opposite Des and called after her, ‘Congratulations. What’s the lucky man’s name?’

  ‘Geoff. We’ve been going steady for four years now, and as it’s a leap year I waited till the special day came along and I thought, why not, so I popped the question.’ She giggled again.

  ‘Good for you.’ Domina smiled across at Des. ‘Shame to have to lose her so soon,’ she consoled in a weighted undertone.

  ‘Yeah,’ mumbled Des, but gave the genuine reply by a heartfelt grimace and a loose flapping of the hand that wasn’t clutching her Woodbine. ‘Sure you don’t want a drink?’ she went on.

  ‘No. Promise. I’m not very good at red wine without food.’

  ‘Gives me gut rot too, but I must be past caring.’

  Paulette returned and set down a steaming, chipped mugful for their guest. ‘Milk and no sugar. Now I must be off or I’ll miss the butchers.’ She drained her glass with a dribbly grin, threw a magazine into her bag and headed for the door. ‘I’ll post the letters on my way, Des, OK? See you tomorrow. ’Bye.’

  ‘’Bye,’ they both replied, and waited for the shutting of the door to relax them.

  ‘Now,’ said Des, ‘first things first. Here’s your mail.’ She opened the top drawer and took out two bundles and slid them across her blotter to Domina. ‘“Domina Feraldi”, that’s your fan mail, and there, “Ms Domina Tey”, is your private correspondence.’ Domina had written under her mother’s surname from the start – ‘Domina Tey’ had always sounded like a clause from the Tridentine mass. ‘Why the latter is being forwarded to me is what I want to know,’ Des continued.

  ‘I’ve run away, that’s all.’

  ‘Have you left him, then?’

  ‘Not left, just left. He knows I’m coming back.’

  ‘But why? You adore him. Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I know. It’s simply that I was getting worried about my work.’

  ‘But working at home must be so easy. You’ve a comfortable house, peace and quiet, loads of neurotic and over-aware neighbours to give you material. Did you argue?’

  A train plunged beneath the office and rattled the windows. Domina waited for it to pass.

  ‘No. Nothing like that. It’s not really to do with him. It’s just that … well … no, it is slightly to do with him.’

  ‘Thought so.’

  ‘But he hasn’t done anything wrong. It’s only that having him there all the time, worrying about his new book, beavering away in the study … I mean … I always find time for him when I’m working and … well … his being so preoccupied makes me feel rather small. And the others have been setting me thinking too, dropping heavy hints that it’s all getting a bit safe and samey.’

  ‘Virginia Bingham is a poisonous old soak. I don’t know why you …’

  ‘Who said anything about Ginny?’

  ‘She’s the only badly insecure friend you’ve got.’ Des stubbed out her Woodbine and burrowed in her bag for another packet. As she looked up and caught the fond grin in her client’s eyes she grunted, ‘Well, the only one in Clifton. Anyway, I’m a professional associate, which doesn’t count.’

  ‘OK, so Ginny’s been foul, but she’s also quite right. Home is too secure. I’m running out of material and having Randy doing a Susan Sontag impersonation doesn’t make it any easier to watch my increasing lack of intellectual or emotional gristle. My stuff’s getting wordy and predictable.’

  ‘Well, no … I –’

  ‘Don’t protect me. Any fool knows that there’s a limit to the number of plots you can weave around menopausal lecturers and novelists.’

  ‘You haven’t run out of them yet.’

  ‘But you admit that that’s all I’ve been writing about.’

  ‘What the hell? People love it. You’re answering a chronic need among the discerning …’

  ‘… Guardian-reading.’

  ‘… Guardian-reading, professional-oblique-arty masses. Good for you. Long may you reign. And God help me if you start writing sub-Strindberg.’

  ‘But Des.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think I’m getting bored.’

  Desirée took a deep drag as she mulled this one over.

  ‘Where are you staying?’ Perfect tactic: Domina brightened up.

  ‘Oh God, it’s such fun! All my teens I yearned to be able to live in total squalor in a bedsit somewhere.’

  ‘Virginia Woolf phase – I remember it well.’

  ‘Yes … living in squalor, with a geranium on the window-sill and nothing to eat but coffee and digestives, with a typewriter and a houseful of peculiar little men.’

  ‘And an eccentric landlady, who gives you material for short stories which you send in to a hand-printed quarterly somewhere off Tottenham Court Road.’

  ‘Exactly. And I’ve done it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m living in a top-floor bedsit by Queensway, with no view, in a house full of odd little men and an old bag downstairs who used to be a mortician.’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘I wait. I’ve got the Olivetti. If anything stirs, I’ll get tapping. It has to be better than pouring gin down Ginny’s gullet and taking Randy pots of tea.’

  ‘Does he know where you are?’

  ‘No, and I’ve explained to him that he’s got to humour me in my hour of need and not try to find out. He can forward all the mail to you and you can forward it on to me.’

  ‘All sounds a bit Marie Antoinettish to me, but OK. If you think it’ll help.’

  ‘Good girl.’

  Des paused, then asked, ‘Are you certain there’s nothing badly wrong that you haven’t told me?’

  ‘Yes, quite certain, Eeyore.’

  ‘Good,’ said Des, pulling a fat brown envelope from a wire tray and poising a severely mauled biro above it. ‘Presumably you’re living under some ridiculous pseudonym, in case any of the little men sees your name in Time Out?’ she said, doggedly humouring.

  ‘No. Just Tey – Time Out only lists me as Feraldi – but here I’m Mrs Tey.’

  ‘Divorced botanist?’

&
nbsp; ‘Not quite. Widowed schoolteacher from Durham. Poor dear Paul was a canon there until he died recently from something mercifully quick.’

  ‘Kids?’

  ‘We haven’t got onto that yet.’ Domina faltered. Des was bending over to empty the laden ashtray and did not see her flinch. As she sat up again, Domina caught her eye and laughed, ‘I think I’m probably barren. Anyway, I’m down here flat-hunting and looking for a new post.’

  ‘And/or hubby.’

  ‘Of course. Someone settled and mature. Perhaps a professional widower with two children in their late teens and a rambling house on Clapham Common.’

  ‘Write about it.’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t.’

  ‘Why not? It makes a change from lecturers and novelists, and it’s too absurd to get mistaken for the truth. Anyone else know where you are?’

  ‘Not a soul, and you’re only to give it away in a case of dire emergency.’

  Des yawned widely as she said, ‘And presumably, in Virginia’s case, only in a bad attack of impending death.’

  6

  The Paragon

  Clifton

  Bristol 8

  Avon

  So you’ve gone. You breeze into the study with a pot of coffee and a plate of langues des chats, pat me lightly on the shoulder, breeze out again and the next thing I find is a note on the kitchen table saying you’ve gone. What is this ‘spiritual growth’? Don’t they sell it at Dingles? That was a joke. I never make jokes so this must be serious.