I shook my head.
‘It’s okay. Bring out the tiny violins, eh? I’m just saying how it changed things.’ She’d been slurping at her coffee while she talked, pausing now and then to dab the film of milk from her top lip, and I let her go on speaking. It would be wrong to say I had a strategy—I wasn’t there to extract the information from her in the way that DCI Barber might’ve done—but I will admit that I gave thought to my approach. I allowed her to find a certain comfort level with me. She steered the conversation where she wanted it to go, and in moments when it seemed appropriate, I nudged it back in the direction of my father. I know that this was selfish of me, perhaps even a little callous. You might say it was an affectation worthy of Fran Hardesty himself. I’m not proud of my behaviour, and I wouldn’t act the same way now, but I was eighteen then and still re-learning how to be.
‘Do you remember why they sacked him in the first place?’ I said, not looking at her.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I mean, well, there were rumours.’
‘Oh yeah? Like what?’
‘I’m not sure if I should say. You might not thank me.’
I put my cup down a little too heavily. I sighed. ‘Have you ever had a filling?’
‘What?’
‘Have you ever had a filling? Dental work. You know what I mean.’
‘Sure.’
‘Well, they inject you with that stuff, don’t they? To numb you.’
‘Novocain.’
‘Yeah. That’s it.’ I brought my eyes up to meet hers. ‘I’ve basically been Novocained all over since it happened. You can’t say anything to hurt me, Eve. I wouldn’t even feel it.’
She ran her hand over her scalp. ‘Okay, but I’m not saying it was true. It’s just what I heard. I’m just the messenger.’
‘I know.’
‘All right then—’ She was fidgeting with her necklace now. ‘Some of the crew—I guess it was the people who knew Barnie Seddon pretty well—they said that he’d told them something.’
‘What?’
‘They said your dad got Chloe pregnant twice while they were going out. And he’d made her get, you know, I don’t like to say the word if I can help it.’
‘An abortion?’
She nodded. ‘Well, two of them, actually. Both times. Is what I heard.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘That’s news to me.’ My voice barely lifted. It was not what I expected her to say, of course, but I gave her the chance to explain herself. ‘Why would that be a sacking offence, though?’
‘That was my question, too. But apparently—and I’m just repeating what I heard here—apparently she was crying one time while she was taking Maxine’s make-up off, so she asked her what was wrong. And when she told her, Maxine was like stomping round upset about it. Totally enraged. She rings up Declan Palmer saying she wants your dad gone by the end of the day. So that was it. Palmer called him into his office, and your dad kicked off at him, big time—I remember that. I mean, I didn’t see it ’cause I wasn’t on the set that day, but everyone was saying how he’d chucked a chair and nearly smashed a window.’
I’d been watching her face closely. How the philtrum of her lip began to moisten. How her lids withdrew into her sockets and her pupils darted left to right. I thought that, after everything I’d been through, I’d be able to detect an outright lie the next time one was spoken to me. But Eve had always been a subtle actress, and I couldn’t read her. It made me lean on her too hard, too quickly. ‘How much contact would you say you had with him on set?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She smiled at me uncertainly. ‘Depends what you mean by contact, Monsieur Poirot.’
‘Sorry. That came out wrong. I didn’t mean to sound like I was—sorry.’
‘Don’t worry about it, really. I guess you must absorb the way they speak after a while, eh?’
‘If I never see a policeman again, it’ll be too soon.’
‘Right.’
‘I just meant, how often did your paths cross? That’s all.’
She went quiet for a moment. ‘Look, I don’t recall his every movement or anything. But I saw your dad around a lot. My scenes were filmed quite early in the day, and he’d be there fine-tuning pieces of the set for us, or making something for the next day’s schedule. I’d see him quite a bit between takes, ’cause he’d be off in a corner building something in a rush, like a box for the DP to stand on, or a ramp they’d asked him for, or something they needed fast to get the shot they wanted without, like, the boom op getting in the way or something. He was good at all that stuff, I’ve got to say. He always seemed to be the one who found the right solution. It’s—I was going to say it’s sad, but it isn’t. It really isn’t.’ She took a full intake of breath then quickly puffed it out. ‘I just liked him—I think that’s why I ignored your messages for so long, because I did, I liked him. He would make me laugh sometimes. And, I’ll be straight with you, okay—I fancied him a little bit. I used to flirt with him. Which is why this conversation is particularly . . . you know what I’m saying. This is pretty uncomfortable.’ She gulped down the last of her coffee. ‘I was sixteen and he was in his thirties. It’s bad.’
‘Thirty-six,’ I said.
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m not judging you, or anything, I just—sorry, I interrupted you.’
‘It’s okay.’ She blinked. She rubbed her scalp. ‘I think that’s really all that I can tell you, Daniel. I flirted with him like a teenager, which is what I was. And obviously I feel sick about that now, but—I can’t have been the only one, right? I mean, I don’t want to sound like I’m praising him, but he was a good-looking man. And there were plenty of other girls around who thought so at the time. Chloe included—and she was gorgeous. She could’ve had anyone . . . Christ, I wish I’d ordered food now. My stomach’s burning.’
‘Did he flirt back?’ I said.
‘What?’
‘I’m saying, did he ever try it on with you?’
She held her stung expression long enough for it to pass as genuine. ‘No. Why? Is that what you heard?’
‘I’ve heard a lot of things. I’m asking you.’
‘Who told you that, anyway?’ Her eyes were glistening.
‘Does it matter?’
‘No, but if someone’s been spreading it around, I want to know who.’
I lowered my voice, made sure it came out evenly. ‘I heard it from Chloe.’
‘Jesus, that’s—are you serious?’ Her jaw hung open and revealed a silver stud set in the pillow of her tongue, which struck me as unusual (if only because my grandpa used to say that piercing anything except an earlobe was what a woman did to get attention or to punish herself). ‘You’ve got to know that isn’t true. It’s one hundred per cent not true at all,’ she said.
And I believed her. There was nothing in her attitude or her body language that incited any doubt. She moved to pad her lashes with her wrist. ‘I mean, fuck—is that why he did it, d’you think? Because she thought something was going on between us? Fuck.’
I hadn’t foreseen that she would ask this and it panicked me. I’d wanted to meet Eve because I thought that she might bring me closer to appreciating why, to filling out the landscape of unknowns I lived in. But all that I was doing was redistributing the guilt, creating pain for other people. I could’ve told her so much then—all the things that he’d extracted from her in the car at knifepoint—but I didn’t. I said, ‘I don’t know, Eve, I don’t know why he did it. It’s just what I was told.’
‘He flirted back with me sometimes, I guess. But he never did anything. I was sixteen.’
‘Yeah, I know. I believe you.’
‘I hope so. I really do, because—look, I’m not defending him, but he wasn’t like that.’
‘That’s something, I suppose.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It is. It should be.’ She pushed her cup aside with such a force the spoon dropped from the saucer, off the table. Bending to gather it, she said: ‘I proba
bly shouldn’t admit this, but I didn’t like her all that much. Chloe. She could be weird with me and other girls on set. She was kind of a head-worker. A bragger, too. Like, always telling us about which club she’d been at, how drunk she was, what this man had whispered in her ear on the dance floor, that kind of thing, as if it was supposed to be impressive. I mean, I don’t want to speak ill of her or anything, god rest her soul, and it’s just awful what he did to her. And I’ll probably burn in hell now or whatever, but, since we’re being honest, I just think you need to know that Chloe had her issues. I mean, who the fuck doesn’t?’
‘I appreciate you being straight with me,’ I said.
‘But you know what I mean, though, right?’ She angled her head at me, trying to gauge my reaction. ‘Everybody’s got their problems. I’m not sure why Chloe told you that. It never happened.’
‘I can see that now.’
‘Is that what you’ve been trying to ask me all this time? All those emails?’
I shrugged. ‘It’s not an easy thing to bring up. We don’t know each other. We’re just connected.’
‘Yeah. But still. I could’ve saved you the train fare.’ She leaned back in her chair, waving to the waiter. ‘I can pay for the drinks at least.’
‘No, don’t, please. I think I’m going to order something else. I’m at least a seven now.’
She smiled.
By the time the waiter came, the restaurant was brighter. Phony chandeliers had been turned on, glimmering above the neat white tables. A placid opera was playing in the bar. Eve glanced at her watch and told me her allotted hour was almost up, as though finishing a consultation with a tiresome patient. ‘If I’m not back in there by three fifteen, they’ll get the impression I don’t care about the play, which, come to think of it, is not a bad incentive to hide here for a few more minutes.’ She regarded the waiter. ‘He’s going to need his menu back, and I’m going to need another cappuccino.’
We stayed there together until I’d eaten half my cannelloni. Our conversation settled back into the mode it started out in—a curious civility—while she spooned off the froth and chocolate from her drink and left the coffee. I asked her what was next for her, after the Young Vic, and she said she had a second audition for an indie film in a few days: ‘My first one was a shocker, but the director took pity on me—Richard convinced him I had gastroenteritis, if you don’t mind, which is the sort of thing you pay your agent for. He’s been great for me.’ After the play’s run was over, she was taking some time off, seeing an actor friend of hers in San Francisco who was trying to convince her to move out to LA with him: ‘It’s just a reccy. I’m always like this close to doing it, but something always stops me. Probably the thought of being another walking cliché. At least if I’m a failed actress here I can move into my parents’ bungalow, work at a bookies or something. Over there, I’d have to join a cult or maybe pole dance. That really American sort of failure terrifies me. I could handle something more low-key.’ And she wagged the spoon at me and said, ‘Anyway, what about you? What are your plans for the rest of your life?’
SIDE FOUR
Negative Peace
There is a plaque I keep on my desk now, here in Manhattan. My wife had it specially engraved and mounted on a rosewood base to match the furniture in my office: The smallm an lives his lifeo utside disaster. It’s a line by Sophocles I came across when I was sorting through my mother’s books some twenty years ago. She’d underlined it neatly with a pencil and, in the margin next to it, she’d written: Yes!!! I used to have a plan to get it tattooed on my arm. I went as far as researching the best London parlours where I might have it done, phoning up to ask how much that sort of thing would set me back and making an appointment for the afternoon of my eighteenth, but when the day arrived I lost my nerve. As meaningful as the gesture was to me, I knew a tattoo would upset my mother. She used to say that they were loutish, a sign of an uncultured mind, and even though she wasn’t there to disagree with any more, she still had the authority to overrule me.
The plaque was a perfect compromise. About nine months into our relationship, Alisha and I (still dating then) had been in bed together and I’d fallen into my routine of stroking the tattoo on her right shoulder—a tiny ace of spades, about as plain as it is pointless. She’d asked me what I thought of it. I knew that it meant something to her, despite the fact that she dismissed it as a vestige of a drunken misadventure, so I told her it was part of her and, therefore, beautiful. ‘Yeah, right,’ she’d said, ‘smooth talk. You hate it.’ This had led me to explain about the Sophocles tattoo that never was. Afterwards, Alisha had said, ‘Well, I still think you should go ahead and do it, but I understand your reasons,’ and we’d moved on to discussing something else. It was a few months later that I found a gift-wrapped parcel waiting in my briefcase when I got to work (I’ll be damned if I know how she unpicked the combination). She’d had the plaque made at a trophy store three blocks from our apartment. This is the type of thing Alisha did for me back then, and still does after nearly three years of marriage: she thinks about me, apropos of nothing, and has no expectation that her thoughtfulness will ever be reciprocated. Now, every morning, I see that plaque and feel a sense of purpose. It reminds me of the stable life I’ve managed to accomplish. It anchors me to my desk and sends me home with the resolve to be a better person. If the small man lives his life outside disaster, then I’m hoping to become the smallest man on Earth.
I function in the world these days, and this is an achievement in itself. Still, I can’t help wanting more. Not material effects, you understand—I’m fortunate to own a small apartment in the East Village and my grandparents bequeathed me enough money to stay free of the survival worries that most people have to cope with. I know that this is one aspect of my life in which I’ve been extremely lucky. The company I work for, Vaillant Stack Kinnear, pays me a good salary and I find the job I do sustains the part of me that needs to be continually engaged with unimportant duties—when I’m with clients, I can persuade them that there’s nothing more significant to my well-being than the efficiency of their investments, and I’m valued by the partners here at VSK because they continue to mistake this tirelessness of mine for dedication to the cause. Of course, there are fulfilments that a role in corporate finance cannot give me, but I’ve found these by other means, through volunteering. Two nights a week, I teach free bookkeeping and accounting courses at a community centre in Queens, and I’ve met people there who have worse histories than mine to tell. As well as this, I give free maths tuition to adults preparing for the GED test, and I’ve exacted such a thrill from watching these discounted men and women grasp the rudiments of algebra that I plan to scale back on my hours at VSK and devote more time to tutoring over the next few years. What I have, right now, are the constituents of happiness, and I’m trying every day to make these good things aggregate to something like the happiness I had before. This is what I mean by wanting more. There is such a thing as negative peace, I think: a settled state in which so little has been gained and too much has been lost. I’m striving to restore the sense of wholeness that I used to take for granted as a boy.
It’s important to have targets. One summer, I would like to drive up to the coast of Massachusetts with Alisha, spend the whole of August in a quiet house with views of the Atlantic, and be with her entirely—no backsliding into other Augusts of my life, no measuring our interactions against my parents’ interactions, no recognition of the calendar dates as things to be endured, surmounted. Just the two of us unwinding in the sunshine, being at rest. As she’s skim-reading the local paper on the beach, I’ll say to her, ‘Hey, Lish, anything worth seeing at the cinema tonight? I’m in the mood for something brainless. Can you check?’ She’ll turn to the listings, find the tackiest film on offer: ‘There’s a six thirty we can go to on the seventeenth,’ she’ll say, ‘is that today?’ And I won’t know.
But the prospect of me lasting anywhere outside the city thrum for longer
than an afternoon remains a distant hope—I still need the wakeful patterns of New York to steady me. It is my crutch, this place. All of my vacation days have gone unused since I transferred to the office here. I haven’t set foot on a beach since I was nine years old, when my mother took me down to visit friends of hers in Brighton (my shoes got so filled up with pebbles that I asked if she would put me on her shoulders. ‘What do I look like to you?’ she’d said. ‘A Sherpa?’). There is still some way for me to go before I can so much as glimpse the countryside without my heart constricting like a fist. I still don’t have a driver’s licence, and I won’t be a passenger—if I ever get a cab, I have to be too drunk to notice (Alisha tells me that we took one home after a wedding in the spring, and I threw up each instalment of the seafood buffet on the seats). My sleep is now so conditional on Ambien it likely qualifies as drug addiction. I won’t claim this nightly ritual of mine doesn’t concern me. It certainly perturbs my wife: ‘I’m not saying go cold turkey, honey. I’m saying maybe just take one, like you’re supposed to.’ But I’m frightened that a reduction of the dose will amplify the volume of the noises I hear—I don’t want them to carry forward into daylight. So if a doctor ever cuts off my prescription, I simply find another one to write me up. The practice I am registered with today is out in Westchester, a decent train journey into the suburbs. This is probably a sign that I’m not coping as well as I pretend.
A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better Page 25
