Voices in an Empty Room

by Francis King

  ‘It comes to neither of us.’ Sybil is delighted by the ignorance which has led Mrs Lockit to assume that a sister and spouse should have equal rights to a dead man’s estate. She is even more delighted at Mrs Lockit’s discomfiture. She smiles, suddenly she is radiant, ‘I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed. Neither I nor my sister-in-law get a penny of that money. It’s sad, in a way, because my sister-in-law and her children could have done with it. It would be no point in your asking her for help. And there is absolutely no point in asking me.’

  Mrs Lockit frowns, biting her lower lip between teeth which are as small, white and sharp as those of a ferret. Then she says, ‘There are things that could come out that you wouldn’t want to come out.’

  ‘Nothing could come out that would worry me in the least – or worry my sister-in-law. You can go and tell your lies to the police, you can even get your nephews to corroborate your lies. But the police aren’t going to be interested in a dead man. And the newspapers aren’t going to be interested in a dead man. No one’s interested in a dead man.’

  She stops at that. She suddenly realizes what she has said in that last sentence. No one is interested in a dead man. Corollary: a dead man is interested in no one.

  Mrs Lockit heaves herself up to her feet. She looks oddly diminished, as though, in the few minutes in which Sybil has defied her, she has suddenly suffered some long, wasting disease. Her face is no longer ruddy, but yellow. She stoops and effortfully picks up handbag, string bag, plastic bag. The straps of the last, which is crammed full, bite into her pudgy wrist. ‘ I’ll be on my way,’ she says, raising an invisible white flag. Then she gazes at Sybil with a reluctant admiration. ‘Well, fancy that about the legacy. You and his wife must have been pretty sick about that.’

  Sybil shakes her head. ‘Not really. We’d have liked the money, of course. But one’s never disappointed if one fails to get something which one wasn’t expecting anyway. Is one?’

  Mrs Lockit edges nearer to Sybil. ‘ I wonder if I might ask you for a favour, mam?’ She has never called Sybil ‘mam’ before.

  Sybil nods graciously; but mixed with the sweetness of her triumph is the bitterness of defeat. Hugo loved that boy, Hugo killed himself. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I suppose you couldn’t spare me a fiver? The fare was more than I expected and I find myself short.’

  The impudence of it delights Sybil. It would also have delighted Hugo and Henry, since it would have confirmed their low opinion of humanity in general and of women in particular. ‘ Of course,’ Sybil says. She takes up her bag, removes her wallet from it and pulls out a five-pound note. ‘Are you sure that’ll be enough?’

  Mrs Lockit hesitates. Then she says, ‘Oh, yes, thank you. Ample.’

  ‘Good.’

  Sybil presses the bell beside the fireplace.

  ‘Who gets all that money then?’ Mrs Lockit asks.

  ‘What money?’ Sybil deliberately pretends not to follow.

  ‘Sir Henry’s.’

  ‘Oh, it goes to a nephew. His closest living relative. An accountant in Brussels. I met him once,’ Sybil smiles. ‘Would you like to see the solicitor’s letter? I have it somewhere here.’

  Mrs Lockit shakes her head. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

  Lavinia wakes early.

  Last week she visited her doctor, an occurrence rare for a woman of her health and stoicism, to ask for a prescription for some sleeping pills. Her doctor, an amateur actor and constant theatre-goer, always allows her all the time which she wants, and even himself protracts their interviews when she is eager to end them, despite all the impatient patients in his waiting room. ‘Well, it’s understandable, your not being able to sleep, after what you’ve been through.’ An elderly, precise man, who has come belatedly to an interest in what he himself calls ‘the mind factor in diagnosis’, he leaned across his desk, his cuffs white against hands brown from the use of.a sunlamp. ‘What form does your insomnia take? I mean, do you have difficulty in dropping off or do you wake too early?’ ‘I drop off at once.’ The phrase perfectly describes her sense of literally falling, from a great height, into some deep and dark tarn. ‘But then at three or four or five I’m wide awake again.’ He nods. ‘That figures. If you can’t drop off, it’s usually a sign of anxiety. If you wake too early, a sign of depression. You’re depressed.’ ‘Yes, I’m depressed,’ she agreed. ‘You ought to be working. You owe it to yourself, you owe it to us, your public.’ ‘ Perhaps. But I don’t want to work.’ She owed it to Stephen not to; but she did not say that. The doctor shook his head, in reproof, and then drew his prescription pad towards him. ‘Have you seen this Don Quixote at the National?’ ‘ No. I haven’t been to the theatre for a long time.’ ‘I’d forgotten what a boring novel it really is. But I like the penny-two-farthings.’ Since Lavinia not only no longer went to the theatre but did not even read reviews of plays, she had no idea that what he meant by ‘the penny-two-farthings’was the antiquated tricycles which did service for Quixote’s horse and Sancho Panza’s ass.

  Lavinia took one of the pills but none the less she has woken at nine minutes past six. She feels muzzy and faintly sick, as though after too many glasses of sherry on an empty stomach, but she knows that she will not be able to fall asleep again and so she gets up. Today is the day when, in Sybil’s flat, she will be meeting that woman whose journalist husband was killed in the Falklands. In her present state Lavinia, who usually has a remarkable memory, cannot recollect the woman’s name. That annoys her. It is as though, in the middle of a long run, she had suddenly dried.

  When she has dressed, she has no appetite for breakfast; and so, having drunk a cup of coffee, black and unsweetened – though she no longer acts, she is still careful of her figure – she decides on a walk. It is such a beautiful morning and she always enjoys wandering through streets deserted except for cats, paperboys and milkmen. As she passes Henry’s house, she looks up at the windows. The curtains are not closed, there is no single indication that he is not still there; and yet the house gives back a dead reverberation. She thinks of those terrible Village parties of his, cheap glasses half-filled with what the neighbours on the other side would call ‘kitchen sherry’, a few bowls containing salted peanuts and potato crisps, and Lucy, Mrs Lockit, clearing everything away and thumping corks into bottles with the palm of her grubby hand at the stroke of seven-thirty. The giant dahlias are in bloom. Ugly flowers, so stiff, gaudy and scendess. But Henry loved them, telling her more than once, ‘Silly snobbery of people who affect to despise them!’

  She walks on, her step amazingly buoyant, in her simple skirt, blouse and sandals, her legs and arms bare. A youthful builder in paint-stained dungarees, walking past on the other side of the road, whistles at her, not realizing that she is a woman in her forties. She enjoys that whistle, as she has always enjoyed the applause when she has walked on to a stage, the staring and nudging when she has gone into a shop or entered a railway carriage, and the jostling, smiling and asking for autographs outside the stage door.

  The front, like the streets, is all but deserted. An elderly man, his face purple and streaked with sweat, jogs past her slowly, his elbows tucked close into his sides and his feet shuffling. Far out, on the edge of the sea, there is a woman with a small mongrel dog. The woman stands motionless, a hand raised to her eyes, as she stares out towards the red-streaked horizon. The dog scrabbles with agitated paws in the sand by a groin. Then the woman raises a hand to her mouth.

  Distracting Lavinia’s attention, two fishermen in cloth caps and cardigans on this day of an Indian summer, glide past her, silent and dignified, on old-fashioned bicycles with high handlebars, their rods on their shoulders.

  After that, she hears someone calling her name. ‘Lavinia! Hey, Lavinia!’

  She turns. Far behind there are two male figures in open-necked brilliantly patterned short-sleeved shirts, blue denim shorts which look as if their owners had themselves ripped off their legs to truncate them, so ragged are their ends,
and multi-coloured sneakers. One of them, who has the stocky physique and battered face of a fly-weight boxing champion, Lavinia recognizes. The other, who is like some emaciated bird, she has never met. She waits for them to catch up with her.

  ‘Lavinia love! I was going to telephone you this morning. Aren’t these coincidences just amazing! I was saying to Drew, I must see Lavinia Trent before we go, and blow me if there, in front of us, was Lavinia herself!’ He turns to, the young man, who is standing shyly a few paces behind him. ‘Lavinia – this is Drew Schultz. Drew – Lavinia.’ The young man, who is American, holds out a hand from which a gold bracelet, with an identity disc on it, dangles. He has a small gold stud in his right ear. Above it his hair sweeps thickly away, like a black wing. As Lavinia and Drew shake hands, the other man, who is called Eddie Moran, tells her, ‘Drew is the most brilliant designer. I first came across his work at Louisville and I then persuaded him to come over here.’

  ‘With no difficulty I may say,’ the American puts in, smiling at Lavinia.

  ‘Let’s get ourselves a coffee some place.’ Eddie is not American but, constantly commuting across the Atlantic, he tends to use Americanisms and even a vaguely American accent. ‘We passed a café with some tables out of doors.’

  Lavinia looks at her watch. ‘It’s not yet eight. Nothing will be open. You’re up very early.’

  ‘Always am. So’s Drew. Successful people usually have three characteristics in common. They eat fast, they dress fast, and they wake up early in the morning.’

  ‘You could come back with me. I might even grill you a kipper.’

  ‘God forbid!’

  ‘Well, make you some toast then.’

  ‘Fine!’ Eddie links his arm in hers.

  ‘Where are you staying?’ Lavinia asks.

  ‘Oh, with the Naylors – as always. It’s sometimes hard, they bicker so much, but they’d be deeply, deeply hurt if I went some place else. Do you see them?’

  ‘Not for ages. I’m losing touch.’

  ‘Bad girl!’

  Drew lags behind them from time to time, to stare out towards the empty beach and the sea; then he hurries to catch up. ‘It’s so beautiful here,’ he says at one point. ‘Just beautiful. I envy you living here.’ But, in fact, he is getting bored and is eager to return to the bars and clubs of London. Eddie is so much older than he is, he talks about nothing but himself and the theatre, and that remorseless voracity for food, gossip, work, money and fame no longer turns him on, quite the contrary.

  Lavinia makes coffee in the kitchen, while the two men sit at the round table in the bow-window, looking alternately at her and at each other. Eddie is conscious of a dead resonance from the empty flat beneath him, once inhabited by Stephen, just as earlier that morning Lavinia was conscious of a dead resonance from the next-door house, once inhabited by Henry. Eddie used to wonder if Stephen might not be gay; but the boy was so far from being his type that he never investigated.

  ‘You look terrific,’ Eddie says, as Lavinia puts a cup down before him. ‘Don’t you agree, Drew?’ Drew nods and then mumbles ‘Thanks’, as he takes the cup that Lavinia is now holding. ‘Seeing you ahead of me, I thought, ‘‘Wait a minute now, wait a minute, who’s that young girl?’’ And then I realized – God, it’s Lavinia!’

  ‘Not young, not a girl. A middle-aged woman.’ Lavinia sits, coffee cup in hand, beside them.

  ‘What I wanted to see you about …’ Eddie throws out his legs and then spreads them far apart, so that the denim pinches the flesh, covered with reddish hair, of his muscular thighs. ‘You know about this season of mine.’

  Lavinia nods.

  ‘First London, then Broadway. Jean and Terry are coming in on it. But the point is – I also must have you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, sweetie, you. I want you for my Beatrice.’

  ‘Oh, it’s too late for that.’

  He does not understand her. ‘ Too late! What are you talking about? The best Beatrice I ever saw was Diana Wynyard’s – I was a schoolboy at the time – and she was not so much in the first flush of youth as in the first hot flush of middle age.’

  Lavinia shakes her head. ‘Sorry. I’ve retired. Positively last appearance. You know that, Eddie.’

  ‘But, Christ, it’s so stupid, it’s so bloody stupid!’ Suddenly he is genuinely angry and indignant, not pretending to be so. ‘You know the parable of the talents. What you’re doing is wicked, apart from being stupid, bloody stupid. If people are damned for wasting their talents, then you’ll be damned.’

  Lavinia enrages him even further by responding with a sweet, gentle smile and a murmured, ‘More coffee?’

  ‘I don’t want any more of your fucking coffee! I just want you to say, if not yes, then you’ll think about it.’

  ‘Sorry, Eddie.’

  ‘Stephen’s death wasn’t your fault. You were a terrific mother to him, everyone in the business knows that. So why should you go on punishing yourself in this way for it? It’s just masochism, that’s all.’

  Lavinia shrugs and looks away from them both, out into the garden. Those terrible photographs and cuttings shower down on her, as though they were razor-blades. Her flesh recoils, smarts, oozes an invisible blood.

  ‘You’re so obstinate!’ Eddie cries out, not realizing that this is what people always say of him. ‘There are times when I really hate you.’

  Drew is shocked; but then, throwing back her head, Lavinia begins to laugh and at that he knows it to be all right.

  ‘Well, we’d better be on our way. Jean and Terry will probably be wondering what has happened to us.’ Eddie pushes himself up from the table. He is not a man to waste time. Mission unaccomplished. ‘Think about it,’ he says. ‘Please. Think about it, I beg you.’ He puts a hairy arm round her and she feels his moustache on her cheek as he kisses her.

  Drew says, ‘Well, it was a real privilege to meet you, Lavinia. It’s something I’ve always wanted. And thanks for that coffee.’ To Lavinia’s surprise, he then leans forward and, his hands on her shoulders, gives her a kiss first on one cheek and then on the other. Unlike Eddie, who smells of sweat, as though he had just emerged from a boxing ring, Drew smells of Caron Pour Un Homme.

  Though Eddie tells her that they’ll let themselves out, Lavinia goes with them to the door. Drew says, ‘You have a lovely home here!’ at which Eddie shouts, ‘But she shouldn’t be sitting around in a lovely home! She ought to be acting!’ The two men go down the steps and, as they do so, Lucy, Mrs Lockit, emerges from her basement, in one hand a capacious handbag and in the other a string bag and a Marks and Spencer’s plastic bag. Eddie and Drew stare at her hat and she stares at their bare, sunburned legs. Then she calls out, ‘Good morning, Miss Trent! You’re up bright and early.’

  ‘Well, so are you!’

  ‘I’m on my way to an interview for a job. And also to call on a friend. The other side of London, near Maidenhead.’

  Lavinia never for a moment suspects the ‘friend’ to be Sybil.

  ‘Well, have a good day,’ she says. ‘I hope the job works out.’

  ‘I’m not in a hurry,’ Mrs Lockit says. ‘I’ll only say Yes when I’m sure it’s absolutely what I have in mind.’ Henry’s nephew has already been taking legal advice about dislodging Mrs Lockit from the basement. Then she says, ‘Aren’t you ever going to let that flat of yours? It seems a shame to leave it lying empty. Particularly with this housing shortage.’

  ‘I’m thinking about it,’ Lavinia answers coldly. But this is a lie. She cannot bear the idea of that dead resonance of the basement suddenly clearing and sharpening. There is a troubled spirit there and she does not want him troubled yet further. She often goes down there and wanders from workroom to kitchen, from kitchen to bedroom, from bedroom to bathroom, from bathroom to lavatory, as she did on that day when she found that figure, clad only in a pyjama jacket, dangling from a pipe.

  ‘Bye, Lavinia!’

  ‘Goodbye, Lavinia. And again – thi
nk about what I said to you.’

  ‘Goodbye, Miss Trent.’

  Lavinia hears none of them. She turns and goes back into the house.

  ‘You’re prepared to let a stranger and a conman have it, but you won’t let me. That’s fine, just fine.’

  ‘I lent it to the stranger and the conman. A car of that size will be no good to you. I’ll sell it now and on your birthday I’ll give you a smaller one.’

  Eric scowls down at his eggs and bacon. ‘But that’s the car I want. Don’t you understand? I want Daddy’s car.’

  Oliver looks at his mother, raises his eyebrows and shrugs his shoulders. It is his way of saying: Don’t give in to him, I’m on your side.

  ‘A car like that costs a fortune to run. How do you imagine you’re going to pay for the petrol? And a garage has only to see a car like that to up its price for repairs. Don’t be silly, Eric.’

  ‘I plan to work part-time as mini-cab driver. I met this chap. He does it at weekends. He never pays tax. Clears, oh, a hundred and fifty, two-hundred quid on just a Saturday and Sunday.’

  ‘And how are you going to be a mini-cab driver if you’re at the university?’

  Eric looks petulant. ‘I’m not all that sure I want to go to university.

  What’s the point? At the end of it all, you’re unemployed just like anyone else.’

  Bridget wishes, yet again, that Roy were here to cope with this boy who is in every way beyond her: beyond her intelligence to reach, her love to encompass, her authority to dominate. ‘Well, you must do what you think best,’ Bridget says with a grudging sorrowfulness. What he thinks best is less and less what she thinks best.

  ‘There is no point in Daddy and Mummy spending all that money on your education if, at the end of it, you throw everything up,’ Oliver remarks priggishly.

  ‘Oh, mind your own fucking business!’

  Roy would have ordered Eric to leave the room for that. Bridget says nothing. The boys are now always fighting among themselves but she has learned that it would be as foolish to intervene as in a scrap between two young bull terriers. She can only look on, terrified and appalled.