A Night In With Audrey Hepburn

by Lucy Holliday

  ‘Er … yeah. I could do tonight, I guess.’

  ‘OK. Shall we go to …’ I went blank.

  Because this meeting with Dad, unlike the many meetings I held with Audrey over the years, hasn’t been endlessly replayed over and over in my head, with a different script and in a different and exciting location. I deliberately haven’t given my father one last thought for most of the past decade; I certainly haven’t ever given a single minute over to thinking where we might meet, if I decided to have it out with him.

  ‘… The Jade Dragon?’ was the only place that popped into my mind.

  ‘In Chinatown? I haven’t been there for ages, but … sure. The Jade Dragon. If it’s still there. Why not?’

  ‘Right. Good. An hour from now? Six thirty-ish?’

  ‘Sure. Six thirty-ish. I’ll see you there, Libby.’

  Though there must have been quite a lot more ish about the six thirty, in Dad’s mind, than there was in mine.

  Because I’ve been here since bang on the dot of half six, and it’s now just gone twenty past seven.

  And there’s no sign of him.

  I’m on my second plate of salt-and-pepper squid (I feel self-conscious just sitting here alone, obviously waiting for someone, and the chopsticks give me something to do with my hands) when my phone bleeps.

  It’s not Dad, texting to cancel. It’s Olly.

  Has he showed up yet?

  This is because I texted Olly on my way into the restaurant fifty minutes ago, to tell him I was about to have dinner with my dad.

  Not yet, I text back.

  Then, a moment or so later, because I’m worried he’ll be concerned about me sitting here all alone, I text a cheery, Squid quite nice, though! and follow this with a ridiculous winking face.

  ‘Oh, Libby.’

  I practically jump out of my skin, a nanosecond after sending this text, to look up and see Olly standing at my table.

  ‘That was … how on earth …?’

  ‘I got on the tube to come here as soon as you texted me earlier,’ he says, sliding into the seat opposite me. ‘You know. Just in case.’

  My heart, which has rapidly been freezing over for the past three-quarters of an hour that I’ve been sitting here waiting for Dad, thaws, instantly, into a mushy puddle.

  I’m sorely tempted to get to my feet, clamber over the table with no regard whatsoever for the plate of salt-and-pepper squid on it, climb onto Olly’s lap, put my arms around his neck and kiss him.

  Hang on, did I say kiss him?

  No, no, no. I meant, obviously, hug him.

  ‘You mean,’ I say, carefully, ‘in case he couldn’t be arsed to show up.’

  ‘Well, you know, it’s quite a journey from … remind me where he lives these days?’

  ‘Holloway Road. Four stops on the Piccadilly Line.’

  ‘Ah. Right.’ Olly looks a bit defeated. ‘How late is he?’

  ‘Forty-five minutes. So far.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ is all he says.

  ‘That’s OK. It was so nice of you to come.’

  ‘You’d do the same for me.’

  ‘What, if your dad had stood you up at the last minute once again?’ I say, with a snort, because Olly and Nora’s dad, Archie, is the sort of dad I’d once have thought only existed in teatime sitcoms made for children: a golden-hearted dispenser of cups of tea and rounds of toast, present for every single one of his (many) offspring’s milestones.

  ‘You’ve been there for me through all my crap, is what I mean. When Mum was so ill right before my exams. When I couldn’t get a loan from anywhere to set up the business. When Tilly died – do you remember?’

  ‘Oh, God, Olly.’ This is the last thing I need right now; a reminder of Olly’s faithful old Labrador, Tilly, or of how devastated he was when she was put down. I can feel tears pricking my eyes. ‘Please don’t talk about that right now!’

  ‘OK, but all I’m saying is that I’m always here for you, Lib.’

  I manage to choke back an unwanted sob. ‘Like Tilly?’

  ‘Yes …’ He seems to stop, suddenly, even though he’s sitting down. ‘Actually,’ he says, ‘no.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No! Not like Tilly! I’m not a bloody Labrador!’

  ‘Well, yes, I know that, Olly, obviously, I just meant …’

  And then I stop.

  Because my father has just come into The Jade Dragon and is walking across the floor to join us.

  ‘My dad,’ I croak at Olly. ‘Here. Now.’

  He looks five years older than the last time I saw him, which isn’t exactly a surprise because it’s roughly five years since the last time I saw him, at his mother’s funeral. He’s wearing his usual garb of skinny jeans, leather jacket and David Bowie T-shirt (which he should probably start rethinking, given that he must have been fifty-eight on his last birthday), and when he realizes I’ve seen him, his lips draw back in the weird forced smile he always pulls when he sees me, as though I’m a slightly tiresome next-door neighbour who’s going to keep him chatting about the weather for half an hour.

  I get to my feet as he reaches the table, and Olly does the same, sticking a hand out towards my dad in a flustered sort of manner. It’s a bit odd, but at least it deals with the thorny issue of whether Dad and I are going to hug or kiss each other in greeting.

  ‘Olly Walker,’ he tells Dad, before adding, ‘I’m not staying.’

  ‘Oh, right … you’re Libby’s boyfriend?’

  ‘No. Just a friend,’ Olly says. ‘But good to meet you anyway, Mr Lomax.’

  I love Olly for the fact that he manages to hover on the edge of politeness while saying this, and yet still somehow make it clear that he thinks my father is a bit of a shit.

  ‘Will you give me a call later, Libby?’ he asks. ‘Doesn’t matter how late.’

  ‘Will do,’ I tell him. ‘Thanks again, Ol.’

  If it weren’t for the fact it would sound really, really odd, I’d call – and I really, really don’t think you’re a Labrador after him.

  ‘Nice bloke,’ Dad says, as Olly walks away from our table, and out of the restaurant.

  ‘He is.’ I sit back down in my seat and pick up my chopsticks, to have something to do with my hands again. ‘The best, in fact. The squid’s good. Sorry there’s not much left. I didn’t know if you were going to make it or not.’

  ‘Yeah. I got held up.’ There’s a slight pause which, with anybody other than my father, would almost certainly be filled with the words, I’m really sorry I kept you waiting. He sits down opposite me, and helps himself to a piece of squid. ‘So. It’s been ages.’

  ‘Five years.’

  ‘That long?’

  ‘Gran’s funeral.’

  ‘Was that five years ago?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Well.’

  Once again, I remind myself to give Audrey a piece of my mind when I get back to my flat tonight. Because this is going even worse than I thought. I’d forgotten, somehow, just how flat and unenthusiastic my dad can be. How it’s not just the way he smiles at me that makes me feel like that tiresome neighbour: it’s the way he talks to me as well. The way he’s always talked to me, in fact.

  As if I’m a necessary evil.

  Well, all right, I’m going to try to do what Audrey advised so that, if nothing else, I’ll be in an even greater position to Have A Go when I see her later. I’m not going to let Dad’s old habits get to me. After all, it’s not like it’s personal to me, this air of detached, world-weary boredom. He does it – has always done it – with everyone.

  ‘So,’ I say in a shaky voice, ‘you tweeted me.’

  ‘Yeah. I saw that video of you doing the rounds …’

  ‘Oh, God,’ I moan, because the thought that my estranged father has seen my naked, dripping bottom on Twitter is just … horrifying.

  ‘Don’t worry, I only saw the first few seconds.’ He looks almost as uncomfortable as I do. ‘But it made me searc
h to see if you were on Twitter, and there you were.’

  ‘Yes.’ Thanks again, Audrey. ‘There I was.’

  ‘Quite a lot of followers, you’ve got!’

  ‘Well, you know …’

  ‘I’ve got about ten or eleven thousand myself.’

  This is why he agreed to see me? To make it clear he’s got plenty of Twitter followers himself?

  ‘And I’m expecting more and more, now that the book is coming out.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I’d heard.’

  ‘Oh, you did?’ This, at least, brightens him up considerably. ‘Yeah, it hit the shelves last Thursday. So I’ve been pretty busy with signings and all that … a book tour coming up. I’m due to record something at the BBC first thing tomorrow morning, in fact, a segment for Woman’s Hour on Radio Four, so I’d better not be too late tonight. Got to be fresh for that.’

  I note, dully, that his age-old reason (OK, excuse) for always being too busy to spend any time with me has morphed, seamlessly, from Busy Writing the Book to Busy Promoting the Book.

  Honestly, right now, I’d actually rather appreciate it if he took a leaf out of Audrey Hepburn’s father’s book, produced a little paper swastika from the pocket of his leather jacket and goose-stepped around The Jade Dragon, because at least that would make me disappointed in him in a fresh, original way.

  ‘… and there’s been a lot of interest from Newsnight Review,’ Dad is going on, ‘and there might be some serialization in the Mail on Sunday, and I’m writing a piece about Cary Grant for the Sunday Times magazine …’

  ‘Did you know,’ I say, conversationally, ‘that Audrey Hepburn once spilled wine all over him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Cary Grant. Red wine. All over his cream linen suit.’

  There’s a flicker of something in Dad’s eyes.

  ‘No,’ he says, in a tone that hints at interest rather than disbelief.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘Just … you know. I read it somewhere.’

  He leans forward. ‘When they were filming Charade?’

  I can’t help wondering, as he asks this, if Dad happens to recall – as I’m doing, right now – the occasion we watched Charade, together, when I was nine or ten. It was at a time, a rare and brief time, if only I’d realised it back then, when he was making sufficiently good progress with the book to mean that he wasn’t cancelling our one weekend a month at the last minute, and that he was in a relaxed mood when I went to stay with him. That Charade night was a Friday, with an entire cold winter’s weekend of movie-watching stretched out before us, and Dad had bought me a bottle of sparkling Shloer and arranged posh deli meats and olives on a wooden platter for us to nibble at, which made me feel as if I’d reached some impossible acme of adult sophistication. He set it all out on his battered little coffee table, and chinked his own glass (of real wine) against mine, and before we settled onto his battered leather sofa to watch the movie, he told me about how he’d first watched the movie with his dad, one damp Sunday afternoon, thirty years ago. Which made me feel simultaneously safe and cosy, and strangely proud, as if I was the newest in a long and noble line of Lomaxes to discover the later works of Cary Grant, and that Dad was … handing me a torch, somehow. And I think he might have felt the same way, too, because he reached over, a few moments after Walter Matthau appeared on the screen, and rested one hand on my head for a full half-minute. Thirty-two seconds. I know, because I stopped concentrating on the movie so I could count them.

  But now Dad sits back in his seat again, with a curt shake of the head. ‘Actually, come to think of it, I don’t think that ever happened.’

  ‘It did, Dad. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Well, it’s a nice little story. But apocryphal, I’m sure.’

  You know what? I think he’s just remembered exactly that Friday night at his flat. And I think he was enjoying my Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn gossip, despite himself, until he felt the dangerous possibility that he might reconnect with me in some way. Be forced, against his will, to acknowledge that we’re more than merely polite acquaintances. That I’m someone he might actually owe a commitment to.

  ‘I don’t think,’ he goes on, lofty again now, ‘there’s much you can tell me about Audrey Hepburn that I don’t know already.’

  ‘Givenchy,’ I mutter. ‘Not Chanel.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I say, because I’m feeling sullen, and furious, and prickly with acute misery, exactly the way I did the last time I saw him, when I decided I couldn’t stand to feel that way any more, and pretty much cut him – without any resistance from his side, I have to point out – out of my life.

  I mean, it’s just not working, is it? For all Audrey’s pep talk, for all her own claims of success at building bridges with a terrible father, I’m not having the remotest hint of success myself. If anything, I’m feeling even worse about it all than I did before he sat down opposite me. It’s this visceral, deep-down-buried ickiness, and I don’t think there’s anything I can possibly do to make it any better.

  Audrey Hepburn was obviously a much stronger woman than I am. As if I didn’t already know that.

  ‘And you’re still in the extras game, yeah?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You’re still an extra, on TV shows? At least, that’s what you were up to the last time I saw you.’

  ‘Oh … yes. Well, actually, no. I’m stopping all that, I think.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, I’m thinking of going into something else … jewellery design, maybe.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, I saw all those people tweeting you about a necklace, or something.’ He reaches for a piece of squid. ‘So your mother’s finally letting one of her daughters step off the stage, then, is she?’

  I don’t like – I’ve never liked – his tone when he talks about Mum.

  ‘And she’s still in the agenting game, I take it?’ he adds.

  The extras game … the agenting game … could he make it any more obvious that he regards these jobs as a bit of a joke, compared to his high-faluting academic one?

  ‘Not really. She’s setting up a stage school franchise, in fact.’

  ‘Oh, Christ, she’s finally got around to inflicting that on the world, has she?’ He rolls his eyes. ‘She was going on about that even back when I was married to her. And that’s where my profits from the house are ending up, presumably?’

  ‘Dad.’ I don’t often call him this. Even when I was much younger, he always preferred it when I called him ‘Eddie’, which I used to think was a sign of how cool and chilled he was, but I eventually came to realize was just another way of him avoiding being a father to me. In fact, there’s a small chance I’m calling him ‘Dad’ now just to get back at him for being so rude about Mum. ‘You don’t seriously think you ought to be getting half of the money from the house, do you?’

  ‘That’s between your mother and me.’

  ‘Well, no, it’s not, actually. You were the one that brought it up, just now. And you’re the one who brought in the lawyers. So really, at the very least, it’s between Mum and you and your solicitors.’

  He presses his lips together so tightly that they become a thin line of displeasure, but he doesn’t say anything.

  I take a deep breath. ‘I mean, don’t you think it’s a bit unfair, Dad, after all these years when you didn’t so much as pay a single month’s worth of—’

  ‘So, jewellery, eh?’ he interrupts, in a voice that makes it clear he has absolutely no intention of discussing the house; that he’ll shut down, as he always does, any attempt at discussing anything uncomfortable. ‘Isn’t that a tough career to carve out? Hard to make a living, unless you’re really good at it.’

  ‘I’ve just given a necklace to Emma Watson, as it happens,’ I say, tightly.

  ‘Emma who?’

  ‘Watson. You know. The little girl from the Harry Potter films. International mega-star. Fifteen million follow
ers on Twitter.’

  ‘Oh, her. Right.’ He pauses for a moment, seemingly unsure how to respond – or, perhaps, simply incapable of putting the words that’s and terrific together in a two-word sentence, like a normal person would. ‘Well. It’s a start.’

  Right at this moment, something snaps.

  No. Snaps is the wrong word. I feel myself snap, like an overstretched elastic band, when I’m with Mum, and she’s getting on my nerves about my career, or going on and on about me sabotaging all her efforts to find me work, or waxing lyrical about my sister’s talent, looks and ambition, in comparison to mine.

  This is different. It’s not an elastic band, snapping. It’s a long, thick, heavy rope, one that wrapped itself around me tighter and tighter over the years, so gradually that I didn’t even notice it – and it’s uncoiling.

  Because for the first time in my life, I can see what an absolute arse he’s being and it’s not getting to me. I can see that he’s feeling shit about something himself – what I’ve just said about the mortgage payments?; the fact I’ve got more followers than him on Twitter? – and he wants to make himself feel better.

  But whatever the reason that’s making him behave so charmlessly and childishly, whatever the reason that makes him unable to give me a hug or a kiss when he sees me, whatever the reason he wants to put me down, I suddenly twig that it’s his problem.

  His failing.

  It’s sad. It’s terribly sad. But I’m not devastated.

  Is this what it feels like, I want to run home to my haunted Chesterfield and ask Audrey Hepburn right now, when you finally get there? When you realize that he just is what he is, and that expecting him to be any better is like expecting the tide to roll back just because you want it to?

  ‘Oh, and while we’re on the subject of Twitter …’

  ‘Were we?’

  ‘You just mentioned Emma Watson’s fifteen million followers, didn’t you?’

  ‘I did, Eddie. Yes.’

  ‘… why don’t you maybe tweet a link to my publisher’s webpage, whenever you’re next on Twitter? Just mentioning my book. I mean, what with all those people asking about your bracelets, or whatever, I’m sure some of them are going to be interested in reading a book your father’s written.’