This was another new Lynden, and Alice found herself beaming. She didn’t know what to make of this rush of eloquence from someone previously so laconic. Although she was pleased that he was confiding in her, she felt that there was something unhealthy in the sudden flow; it was as if the sutures had given way. But she didn’t want it to stop.
‘What really happened to you? I mean why didn’t you become a professional actor? I think you must have been very good.’
‘You may be surprised to hear that there was a girl involved. I’d been offered a place in the Old Vic company. Nothing earth-shattering, but a good start. I was to hold the spear carrier’s spear for him while he carried some other fellow’s spear. But before the season opened I met Gudrun.’
‘Gudrun?’
‘She was Swiss. Still is, probably. I met her at a party. She had this … luminosity. I was insane for her. Our romance was intoxicating, and we decided to marry.’ Lynden had again ebbed imperceptibly back towards the sombre.
‘You know, Edward, you really have no need … I mean I don’t need to know … everything about you.’
‘No, no, of course. I’m sorry, I was just trying to explain why I came to give up acting. The short version is that I went out to visit Gudrun in Geneva. I stayed with her family: stolid Swiss mid-bourgeois. They spoke no English and my German was all learnt from comic books. You know, I could shout schnell, and achtung, and schweinhund, but that was it. After a couple of days she took me to the skiing chalet the family kept in the mountains, in the shadow of the Matterhorn. But this was the summer. It was very beautiful, and isolated. We spent three days walking through the flower meadows – remember, it was the seventies!
‘And then she left me there, on my own. A week passed. She didn’t telephone, or write. Nothing. Silence. I thought that I had done something wrong, offended against some unfathomable Swiss custom. I decided to come home. I was desolate. It took me a month. I hitched, took trains and buses, walked, stopping at every bar I could find. When I got home I found a letter waiting for me. It just said: “There was a test and you failed.” You see, she’d just wanted to see if my love could endure setbacks. I think it was her father’s idea to leave me there without a word.’
‘Edward, this sounds very sad, but weren’t you just jilted? Doesn’t it happen to everybody? I can’t see why you couldn’t continue your stage career.’
Alice was finding the story of Lynden’s woes a little self-indulgent. However, this had the strange effect of putting her further at her ease. She even entertained fleetingly the thought that that might be the purpose of the account. But no, surely no man could be so altruistic as to make himself look ridiculous simply to make her feel more comfortable?
‘I was in no fit state when I returned,’ he continued wearily. ‘I asked for a short break in my contract. They said they’d see. I went to India. I stayed for a year living in a hovel, smoking opium. Then I spent a year trying to stop smoking opium. And then another year looking for spiritual awareness. By the time I got back I was yesterday’s man, without ever having been today’s. My father was pleased, though.’
‘Well, thanks for that. I really don’t know what to say. Are you expecting some similar account of my sentimental education?’
‘What? No, no. I’m sorry I’ve been boring you.’
‘Quite the contrary; I enjoyed listening to you. But perhaps we should get down to discussing the reason for my visit.’
‘Oh yes, my Audubon.’
Alice had carefully prepared her speech. She had sensed that he was an impatient man, and so she wanted to keep it short, her arguments punchy. Even so, there were several important points to make, and she’d timed the full version at eight and a half minutes.
‘Edward, I really think that you should reconsider …’
‘Fine.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I said fine. I’ll reconsider. Or rather I won’t reconsider.’
‘Wha …’
‘Won’t reconsider my original decision to sell. Through you.’
Alice’s mind had slowed down, as if she were thinking through treacle. Not reconsidering … through you. So he was … click.
‘Oh. How pleasing. But the phone call? What’s changed your mind?’
‘You mean why haven’t I changed my mind?’
‘Yes yes.’
‘You really don’t know?’
Alice knew.
‘I suppose it’s because you’re just a vain and silly man who doesn’t know his own mind, and who likes to keep others waiting on his whims.’
Lynden laughed. Alice thought that the laugh might have been a little forced to begin with, but after a second its rolling momentum took over, and the eyes began to collaborate. It was a deep bubbling laugh and Alice found it impossible not to join in.
‘I genuinely fear I may have been rumbled.’
‘So, you admit that this whole thing was a charade to, to …’
‘Persuade you to come back here.’
Although Alice now knew that this was the case, she was shocked to hear it put so bluntly. Shocked and exhilarated.
NINE
Drinking it Over
‘And you expect me to believe that nothing happened? Little girl, all alone in the middle of nowhere, misses the last train – how convenient – has to spend the night, and you’re telling me there wasn’t a knock on the door, and an “oh, I just thought you might like a nightcap or a hot water bottle”, and then out with his tackle and on with the game?’
There was a certain amount of very uncertain laughter from the small group gathered around Alice’s desk. Oakley was there, and Clerihew, and Pam.
Alice herself was paying attention with, at best, half of her mind. That lunchtime she had decided to go back to the crossing. All these months she had been walking miles on elaborate detours to avoid it, discovering new side-streets, and Dickensian back alleys, full of the sort of shops she thought long since banished from London: a saddler’s, an umbrella shop, a tiny printer’s, complete with a man in an ink-stained apron, a shop selling nothing but fountain pens.
But now she faced it again, stood where she had stood.
People flowed around her; she thought she saw some of them stare at her in that casually hostile way that Londoners save for those who get in their way. She half expected to see him there, frozen as she had first seen him, with the look of wonder and acceptance on his face. She tried hard to remain objective, to study herself, probe her own feelings, as if she were conducting a scientific experiment. And, of course, like all experimenters, she had some preconceptions about what she would find. Scientists always knew roughly what would or should emerge from their work. There were no blind leaps, just a nudging forward in the direction already chosen for you, dictated by myriad other minds, by structures and institutions. But within those limits, a mind could stay clear and open and innocent, could listen for the subtle music of nature, could find a kind of truth.
What she expected was a wash of raw emotion, an unmediated surge of passion and anguish through her veins. She had braced herself for the onslaught, convinced that, if she could just withstand it, then she would emerge stronger, more able to face the world.
And yes, it was painful. Her eyes filled with tears. She wanted to stretch out and embrace the perfect, tragic form of the Boy, to protect him from the bone-crushing weight of the world. But there was something contained, restricted in her sadness, as if the genie were raging inside its bottle. She neither trembled nor sobbed. She knew that if she waited for long enough and allowed the surge to continue, then perhaps it would overwhelm her: yes, she could indulge, abandon herself. But that would be her own choice.
A sense of loss, as well as of relief, came with this knowledge of control. She felt almost empty. He was still inside her, but he had lost some of his power, some of his force.
She tried hard to tune back in to the office discussion.
Andrew was camping it up for the crowd, but
Alice could sense that there was something serious and not at all nice burrowing inside his brain. It made her feel uncomfortable and annoyed in about equal proportions.
‘No nightcaps, no anythings. He was the perfect gentleman.’
‘Of course he’d be the perfect gentleman,’ said Pam helpfully. ‘After all, he’s a gentleman, isn’t he?’
‘Oh no, not a gentleman,’ said Clerihew, ‘a lord. In some ways the opposite of a gentleman.’
‘Yes,’ said Andrew rather angrily, ‘it means they don’t bother about dirty lavatories, and swear, and say “what” instead of “pardon”. But we’re getting off the point. You’ve as good as told us, Alice, that he only came back on board because he fancied you.’
‘Ooooh!’ said Pam at the naughtiness of it all.
‘I didn’t say that and I don’t believe it.’
‘Well, he sure as f … anything didn’t want me to come along and persuade him.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Andy, give it a rest,’ said Clerihew, his eyes working feverishly to detect the mood of the group. ‘I think Alice has done a jolly good job. She’s saved your bacon and you should be thanking her, not not …’
‘Not what, you nit?’
‘N-not being horrid to her.’
‘Here here, Cedric,’ said Oakley, who’d come along to congratulate Alice, and wasn’t happy about what he took to be Andrew’s carping. ‘Let’s remember we’re a team, all pulling at the same er, thing.’
‘Yes, one for all and all for one,’ said Cedric.
‘Shut up, Cedric. No one’s suggesting Alice hasn’t done a fantastic job. I was just … I was just …’
‘Annoying little shag, that Clerihew, by the sound of him.’
Leo was offering support in the Red Dragon.
‘Annoying isn’t the half of it. Made it look as if I was pissed off about Alice getting the Audubon back – you know, jealous of her success, me putting my own career before the good of Enderby’s and the Nagasaki Fucking Investment Bank. Which is completely unfair. I was pissed off about Alice getting off with that posh wanker Lynden – my jealousy was purely personal and sexual.’
‘How noble. Does he know that he’s got a verse form named after him?’
‘Clerihew, you mean? Well, he does now. When I first met him I brought it up – well, you’d have to, wouldn’t you? He looked at me completely blankly with those nasty piggy little eyes of his. I said, you know, it’s an absurd short poem of two irregular couplets, commenting satirically on some aspect of a well-known personality …’
‘Commendably well put; what a tragic loss to the academic community.’
‘Screw you. And he still clearly didn’t have a clue. Sorry, I did a rhyme thing.’
‘Excused.’
‘Ta. And you’d think someone would have mentioned it to him. After all, he went to a public school, like you, you great pansy, and surely one of the masters or a smart boy would have said something.’
‘Almost certainly a minor public school by the sound of him. And they don’t teach much beyond mutual masturbation and algebra in most of those.’
‘Bow to your greater knowledge there. Well, I could tell that he thought this, the Clerihew stuff, was all some kind of sly way of getting at him, you know, it’s a short and absurd thing, so are you saying that’s what I am, eh, eh? Which I hadn’t thought of at all, although now I can see that if the dutch cap fits … So anyways, I try to give him an example. All I can come up with is,
Bertrand Russell,
Though bulging with intellectual muscle,
Was something of a failure
When it came to genitalia.’
‘Nice one.’
‘But then he repeated it back, deliberately not rhyming the failure and genitalia, going “fail-your” and “genita-lee-ahhh” to make me look like an idiot.’
‘The swine!’
‘It was worse than it sounds. And it’s not just me. I’m pretty sure that he had something to do with Crumlish getting the bum’s rush.’
‘The amusingly fey fin de siècle chap, straight out of the Aubrey Beardsley Yellow Book?’
‘Yeah. He wasn’t quite my cup of absinthe – I always reckon that camp humour is a cheat, a way of drawing stuff out to earn you extra time to think of something funny, or just elaborate bitchiness, but that’s not a reason to bin someone, not after however many bloody years. And he was about the best expert there. You should never sack the talent. Basic tenet of modern management. But the word is – and I got this from Pam who has a finger in most pies, gossip-wise – that the Americans wanted Crumlish out, and so Oakley and Clerihew cooked up a scheme between the two of them. Clerihew suggested that Crumlish made a grab for him.’
‘Ouch!’
‘Ouch indeed. Now leaving aside the fact that Crumlish had pretty fucking impeccable taste in most things, and therefore wouldn’t touch the fat little shit with his silver-tipped cane, I don’t actually think he was gay. That was his dark secret.’
‘Why didn’t that come out?’
‘The sexual harassment story never officially saw the light of day. It was all just described as down-, I mean, rightsizing. The terms deadwood and new blood were both used.’
‘Can’t resist a mixed metaphor, your management consultant.’
‘And if they really wanted to hack away some deadwood then they could have started with Clerihew who, for all his fawning and his bow ties and his fob watch and his waistcoats, is a fucking idiot; ask him for a valuation and he’ll um and ah and start pulling at his crotch, and sweating, with his hair getting lanker and danker, and his Schubert-style little specs misting up, and the next thing you know he’s in the corner on his back with his legs waving in the air like a woodlouse, with a keeeek keeeek sound coming out of him.
‘Or, for that matter, they could have dumped the enchanting Ophelia. Couldn’t much bear the thought of not being able to drink her in, I mean just the general loveliness of her, any more, but the fact is she doesn’t do anything. And I mean anything. She looks stunning at a sale, but in terms of work you might as well have an inflatable doll. At least they have three functioning orifices. And while I’m on the subject, there’s Oakley, himself who … sorry. We’re fighting old battles. Point is that Clerihew made it look to everyone that I’m a mean-spirited, back-biting, cock-sucking careerist.’
‘Strongly recommend you don’t try cock-sucking and back-biting at the same time: that way lies a slipped disk at the very least. So you want advice about how to get back into Alice’s good books?’
‘God, I don’t know. I’m not sure that the thing is susceptible to rational analysis and considered action. If they don’t fancy you they don’t fancy you.’
‘Defeatist! The one thing you have to remember about women is that they don’t just go by how big your pecs are.’
‘Yeah, I know that.’
‘And because it’s never just a physical thing with them, you’re always in with a chance of winning them round with the force of your eloquence, or your sparkling wit, or, God help us, your sensitivity. The negotiations are always, like the girls themselves, open ended.’
‘Yes, yes, all fine in theory,’ said Andrew, without acknowledging the smut, ‘but it’s easy for you to go on like that when you have hordes of wanton, nubile girl-students hurling themselves at your lectern like nymphomaniacal lemmings.’
‘Ah the poor sweet innocent things. I almost pity them.’
Andrew and Leo fell quiet for a moment as they contemplated the fate of the lemmings. Andrew had long been jealous of Leo’s fabled rutting. Easy access to wave upon wave of pretty eighteen-year-olds had been one of the reasons Andrew had set his mind on an academic career. Not the main reason, nor perhaps even in the top three, but certainly top five. He knew from first-hand experience the false glow of allure that attached to any lecturer not actually old, smelly or brown-toothed. His brief brush with tutoring back during his PhD days had shown him that even he, unsure and diffident as he
then was, could acquire a fan club. Although Leo was a little oddly shaped, Andrew didn’t doubt that his darkly sinister manner and quicksilver intelligence would have the girls shivering with excitement in their dorms, knocking shyly at his door, lingering at the end of lectures, and moaning in frenzied ecstasy as he …
‘What you need,’ said Leo, ‘is another opportunity to shine outside the office. Any socials coming up?’
‘Well, funny you should mention it, but there is, sort of. I was about to bring it up myself. You know we have these semi-regular, totally crap, Friday-night drinks?’
‘Oh yeah, the ones nobody goes to except you and the rubber-band lady, what’s her name?’
‘That would be the ever trusty Pam again.’
‘Pam. Nothing going on there I hope?’
‘Oh no no no.’ Andrew shivered, ungallantly. ‘And it’s not just me and Pam – there’s only so many cake recipes and accounts of who’s had who on EastEnders you can listen to. No, there’s usually a few more of the sadder, less socially adept, who turn up. Not Alice though, even if you’d have to lump her in with the misfits these days. At least not since the first couple of times, before … well, her incident. Clerihew has been known to show his shiny face, just long enough to sponge a couple of sweet sherries or a crème de menthe, or whatever it is he drinks. And, yes, I know I’m not covering myself in glory here by admitting that I go, but it just seems to me that if there’s a drink on, you really should go, whatever the circumstances. Sort of duty thing. Where was I? Oh yes, there’s a new found enthusiasm for the idea of team-building social events. All driven by the Yanks, of course, with their chief eunuch, Oakley, in the van. He was jabbering about a weekend in some country-house-conference-centre place, but the mean sods decided that that was too expensive. Now they’ve hi-jacked the Friday evening two weeks away and made it compulsory. They’ve suggested we bring partners or friends along. Alice has got to be there. She looked less than thrilled but said she’d invite along some friend of hers, called Crepe Suzette or Odin or something stupid, not having a live partner.’
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