Between the Regions of Kindness

by Alice Jolly

  Arriving outside the green room, she turns right, heading for the stage door. She needs the darkness, the night, for there it will be less obvious that she is losing her shape. The door opens with a clatter and she steps out into a dash of sharp night air, a splatter of rain. She turns her head away from the lights that glare from the bar opposite. Shadows move in the narrow street, a woman laughs raucously. Mollie pushes her head down into the folds of her stole, hurries on and so bowls into the front of his jacket before she’s even seen him. She doesn’t need to raise her eyes to identify him. Stepping back, she tries to dodge past but he moves fast.

  Why did you cancel the car?

  She doesn’t look at him.

  Excuse me, please. I’m in a hurry.

  But I want you to have dinner with me.

  Now she looks up, sees the blunt face high above her, the crest of red hair.

  I’m sorry but I think I’ve made clear—

  He mimics her words in a silly, squeaky voice. Then says, Come on. And lays his hand on her arm, steering her on towards the end of the street. He’s never dared to touch her before and she feels the grip of his fingers as an act of violence. But she doesn’t pull away, allows him to push her on down the street. Her heart starts to beat again, blood washes through her veins. If she has dinner with him then she’ll remain distinct from the night, her hands will return to their normal colour, she’ll become the woman who gets into the car that waits at the stage door. Even as she makes this decision, she smells disaster, sees a flare of flame, hears the scream of braking tyres, breathes in the smell of singed hair.

  But still they walk on. London dances past them, liberated after months of snow. There were icicles a yard long, a car driven across the frozen Thames. Now that warmth has finally come people feel it like an electric current, swing their arms, smile for no reason. Lights and traffic, pubs swelling out onto the pavements, shop models blank-faced in the lighted windows of passing stores. A newspaper headline reads – Profumo denies affair with model. Another announces – Closure of more than 2,000 railway stations.

  A homeless woman sits on the street cuddling a dog and drinking a bottle of beer. A black girl smiles from a doorway, her hair standing out in a perfect circle around her head, fluffy as a dandelion clock. Mollie is conscious of the height and weight of the man beside her. He’s holding up the buildings that line the street, keeping the traffic off the pavements. His head even supports the sky as it bristles with neon below a low, slim moon.

  The restaurant is in a basement room, the air thick with the smell of marijuana. The wallpaper swirls and rubber plants crowd close to the table. Paper doll, dressing up, so many clothes, so many colours, so many ways to be. Rufus orders champagne and oysters. He wears a dark suit with narrowed lapels, a narrow tie. Is he Irish or an Italian with red hair? Rumour has it that he’s Nigel Dalking from Dudley. Now that he’s opposite her, she’s reminded of all that she doesn’t like about him. His size, his bulk, that ghastly red hair which he should wear short but doesn’t. And his face – blunt and heavy, with thick lips, wild eyebrows, mean eyes. Mollie likes her men slim and sleek, sophisticated, genteel. She’s had plenty of them, but has always managed things discreetly. Mollie Mayeford is a classical actress, not a chorus girl slut.

  Rufus Ravello is only an understudy and would never have performed at all if Mervin Ratch hadn’t lost his front teeth in an incident involving a fast-moving pavement. Rufus can do nothing to further her career – and she wants to do nothing to further his. Now she worries that he might use the wrong cutlery or be rude to the waiter but he plays his part with exaggerated style. They speak about something – the lead actor and his bad breath, the offer she’s received to go to America. MGM, Seven Arts. Rufus knows all that, of course. It’s all the gossip at the theatre. And she may get a Broadway audition as well. New York, city of dreams. Yes, she longs to see King Kong hanging over the Empire State Building.

  It would be so easy just to say – because I’m going to Los Angeles, New York, I need a copy of my birth certificate. And then she could describe it to him – making it all sound rather funny, a jolly jape – the rows of desks behind glass. And the way that man kept saying, Are you sure? But that really can’t be the case. And the birth certificate with the wrong date. What a joke. Can you believe it? But she can’t say any of those words. Instead she sees the bald man’s hands, like something small and dead. They sway and fragment in her head, as though reflected in water.

  So exciting to see King Kong hanging over the Empire State Building. New York, city of dreams. Of course, it won’t really be like that. She’ll never get there, not now. Breath sticks in her mouth, refuses to travel down her throat. She smiles determinedly, laughs a little, drains a glass of champagne. Do not let him see the truth, the fear. She clings tightly to her knife and fork, the stem of her glass. I have drunk too much, she thinks, but knows that’s the least of her problems. The coffee is poured, the slim mint chocolates eaten, the restaurant is growing quieter. Mollie is frightened by the spaces around her. Things may slip through the gaps, be lost for ever. People even. Are you sure? Because that really can’t be the case.

  You must take me home, she says to Rufus.

  No, not yet. I want you in my car. I want to drive you – somewhere.

  He allows no opposition, asks the restaurant to find a cab and sweeps Mollie into it. His hand is once again locked onto her arm and Mollie has to make an effort not to place her hand over his, just to feel the solidity of it. The garage where he keeps his car is near St Paul’s, he tells her. The cab swoops down towards the river that is garlanded with strings of glittering lights. Across the water the slab-façades of County Hall and the power station crouch in the darkness. All of London is laid out just for them. Rufus takes Mollie in his arms and kisses her. He’s surprisingly gentle, runs his tongue along the top of her lip.

  The cab stops in a back street and they get out. Rufus takes keys from his pocket and unlocks the doors of the garage. Mollie waits as he heads into the darkness, hears the car door click open and then the engine start. The car glides out – it’s ivory with a red soft top. Brand new, a Daimler Dart. Rufus winds down the window. Knobs and dials wink on the dashboard, the interior is all red leather.

  Come on. Get in.

  As soon as the door is shut, he slams the car backwards, then pushes his foot onto the accelerator, speeding out of the mews and into the main street. London spins dizzyingly past – Holborn, Tottenham Court Road, Oxford Circus, Piccadilly. Mollie slides across the red leather seats until Rufus puts his arm around her, turning the wheel with only one hand. The engine roars beneath them and the car moves without the slightest jolt. Trafalgar Square, the Mall, Hyde Park. Mollie laughs, clings onto his arm, as he takes a tight corner at Victoria. In Sloane Square, he jumps the lights and the windscreen of another car is suddenly close, enclosing a hollow-mouthed face. Mollie screams, Rufus brakes and tugs at the wheel. Mollie is flung forward and then back again, but as Rufus howls with laughter, she joins her voice with his. Behind them a car horn is blaring again and again.

  Mollie thinks of Mervin Ratch and the fast-moving pavement. Rufus was there that night. You’ve got to put two and two together. But Mollie had never believed the gossip. Rufus slams his foot down again and shops, buildings, parked cars, lighted bars, merge together in a clash of colour. Tyres squeal, faces turn in shock, somewhere a siren sounds. Finally Rufus jerks the car into Chelsea Wharf, close to the river. And there they sit, shocked by the sudden stillness and silence, watching the river and the strip of dull yellow light which burns above the rooftops, bleeding into the blackness above.

  You know I’m in love with you, Rufus says.

  And I’m not in love with you.

  Yes. I know. But I think you will be soon.

  He kisses her again, slides his hand up her silk-stockinged leg. She’s seized by panic. She doesn’t want him, repeats this over and over again to herself. I do not want this man, I do not want him. But
she’s made out of cloud, or rain, or river water and so can do nothing to resist. She needs oblivion and Rufus’s desire may prove enough to wipe her out entirely, erase her like a faint pencil line smoothed from the page.

  Come on, he says. Let me take you home.

  But he doesn’t take her home. Instead the car idles up the King’s Road, comes to a halt outside a mansion block near the Chelsea Hospital.

  Is this where you live?

  Where my friend lives but he’s away. I can’t afford a garage and a flat.

  She follows him through a half glazed door into a marble and chandelier hall, up discreetly carpeted blue stairs. The steps narrow as they climb. The flat is right at the top with a cramped door but inside the sitting room is spacious with patio doors leading on to a terrace. White sofas surround a vast glass-topped table which stands on a zebra rug. Mollie thinks suddenly, achingly, of Ludo. Rufus is so much bolder but only because he has no kindness in him and has failed to see the danger. Now he goes to a drawer and produces a tiny white paper packet and a mirror.

  You’re a fake, Mollie says.

  Of course, he says. Aren’t we all? If you can’t pretend, you die.

  As Mollie bends over the white powder her face appears for a moment in the mirror – her nose huge, her eyes distorted, her mouth crooked. She breathes in and a wave breaks inside her head. She splutters, coughs and sniffs again. The wave rushes at her once more, causes such a surge of elation that her feet leave the ground. Like a child’s balloon, she’s floating away across the city, past the church spires and office blocks, the bridges over the Thames, all across the hop fields of Kent, out towards the open sea.

  What’s that door? she asks.

  It goes out onto the roof.

  Can we go out? I want to see the river. The sea. I must.

  Later.

  He leads her through to the bedroom, which is lined by endless cupboards with mirrored doors. Fragments of herself and Rufus flicker all around her. A camera is mounted on a tripod and a black leather chair is pushed into a corner. The bed is six foot wide and spotlights are positioned above so that their circular lights illuminate the crumpled satin sheets.

  Take off your clothes, he says, and so she does, feeling the cool air of the bedroom touching against every corner of her flesh. What does it matter now? She had anyway grown bored of perfect little Mollie Mayeford and her pretty ways. Without clothes, Rufus is less than she expected. His body is too long, his legs short and bowed. He carries the marks of a man who drinks and eats too much. In her mind, she weighs revulsion and desire although finally what she feels is of no importance. All that matters is that his desire should be enough to wipe her out entirely. He moves towards her and eases her down onto the bed. For a while he kisses her gently but then he stands her up, turns the black leather chair around and positions her over the back of it, does something which she’d always thought to be illegal. She feels the thrill of humiliation, tries not to cry out as her hips are pushed against the back of the chair, again and again. She knows he’s driven by hate, by the desire to damage her. In her mind, she pleads with him to stop but her lips remain tight shut.

  Afterwards, collapsed on the bed, she can’t keep back her tears. Oblivion can only erase her for a while. He comes to her, holds her, wraps her in the satin sheets. But she can’t settle, feels herself set alight, possessed. Pulling away from him, she stands up and looks at herself in the many mirrors. And there it is, as she had expected. A seven-armed beast, or perhaps a black devil, or a serpent, clinging to her back, crawling up her leg. See what she and Rufus have released. A line has been crossed, they’ve entered into forbidden knowledge. Mollie finds Rufus beside her, shuts her eyes, presses herself into his arms. He knows that he’s seen the beast as well, even though he might deny it. And so now she’s bound to him forever. This will never be discussed but is printed into the marrow of the bone.

  Please, she says. Please. Let’s go out onto the roof.

  Why?

  Please. I need air. The sky.

  She does not say – even now, the possibility of escape.

  The river. I want to see the river. The sea.

  Rufus pulls on a shirt, jacket, trousers, finds a bathrobe for Mollie. She follows him through the narrow door into the sitting room and out into the night. Ahead of them, steps lead up into a corridor along a gutter, onto a section of flat roof. The night air is shivering, wet with dew, buffeted by a shaggy wind. Mollie feels the damp wooden steps under her bare feet, the sandpaper scrape of roofing felt. Every sensation is gloriously magnified. Her skin is thin as tissue. Around her a jungle of chimneys rises, a hieroglyphic alphabet of TV aerials. The stars hang low enough that she might catch hold of one and pull it down, pluck it like an apple from a tree. Here Mollie is connected to nothing at all. Balloon. Park. Floating.

  Where is the river? I want to see.

  She leans against the sloping tiled roof to steady herself. Above her hangs a frosted glass window. Rufus appears with a bottle of champagne, the cork explodes across the sky. So much better to be out in the air, Mollie thinks, shuts her eyes, feels her body sway and dip. She hears Rufus speak to her, sees him offer a glass – but behind him the devil is there again, black and clinging. She seizes the champagne, pours it down.

  And then the words break from her, jabbering, running away from her across the roofs like scurrying ants. That’s not my birthday, not my birth certificate. In Coventry a dog was running down the street with a child’s arm in its mouth.

  Rufus grips her arm, shakes her.

  The man at Somerset House, his hands. And then I asked about Mollie Mayeford, and she’s dead. Dead all this time.

  But we’re all dead, Rufus says. Of course we are.

  No, no. You don’t understand.

  Mollie pulls away from him, runs back down the wooden steps, into the sitting room where the zebra rug drifts high above the floor, ready to depart through a window like the Arabian Nights. And Ludo calls to her, warns her, offers to take her back home with him, back to Canal Street in Worcester and the photograph albums, the ice-perfect world of that Austrian lake. So kind of you to offer, my darling, but it’s too late. In the bedroom, Mollie finds her acid evening bag, pulls out the birth certificate, hurries back up onto the roof.

  Look, she says. Look.

  Rufus will not take the paper from her but still the words keep running away from her. They multiply everywhere – by tens, by hundreds – running across the roof like spiders. It will be impossible ever to stamp them out. I need to ask my mother but she never wrote. I tried again and again to get in touch.

  Mollie. Shut up.

  I wrote again and again.

  Shut up.

  Not known at this address, Mollie thinks. But my mother was still there. With my stepfather, laughing, leaving. Violets on the lawn. I never minded much about her but he was different. You’re really my daughter, of course you are, the best daughter a man could have.

  Never stopped missing him.

  Shut up. Shut up. Rufus is shrinking as fast as she is. All the pretending is falling away. Nigel Dalking from Dudley and a pencil mark on a piece of paper, easily erased, are entirely alone, together on the roof of this borrowed flat. Do not let the balloons float away. She looks at him and the layers are all peeled back, fear meets fear in yearning eyes. And Mollie knows that she’ll remember this moment forever, just as she’ll remember the black clinging beast. The turning in the road, all that might have been but will not be. Because Rufus is recovering himself, will never admit to any of this, will never allow it again, is searching now for the way to bring them back to themselves – or away – forever.

  She feeds him the line, speaking in a squeaking, hysterical voice. And the house sliding down the lawn, collapsing slowly.

  Shut up, he says. What does it matter? It’s a piece of paper. Give it to me.

  I can still use it to get a passport.

  But when he snatches the paper from her, she doesn’t resist. The
passport doesn’t matter any more and Rufus knows that. All that matters is that the evidence of that long ago lie should be destroyed. The paper rips in Rufus’s blunt fingers, each piece is torn again and again. Fragments of white float into the night, caught in the twisting breeze. All gone now but still Rufus bends down, picks up a fragment caught on a roof tile, tears it into halves, quarters. Mollie stares into the damp greyness, watches the pieces drift away. Rufus is right. What does it matter? The clerk at Somerset House made a mistake. If she wants a passport she can simply borrow one from someone who looks like her. She knows plenty of people who’ve done that. Exile will become home, pretence the only reality on which she can depend.

  Gone. Gone. She shouts, turns back to Rufus, kisses him. Dead, she says. And so now we can do anything, anything. I want to see the river. Where is the river?

  She clings to his hand, pulls at it. So this is the way it will be, this is the byway they’ve taken. And now she needs to know just how far he’ll go. Pretence can only grow, expand, accumulate. Truth and dare. Or a dare which covers the truth. Together they’ll perform their lives. Make the gestures big, the emotions grandiose. Enunciate the lines clearly. Spell it out for the audience or they will not understand.

  I’ll see the river if I climb up.

  No, you won’t.

  You think I can’t.

  I know you can do anything.

  He’s right. She can do anything. And so she starts to climb. The tiles are slippery and her hands grip at nothing. But she’s determined. She feels Rufus watching her, steadies her bare feet on the slope. The wind catches at the bathrobe. Soon she is up, her bare legs straddling the ridge of the roof.

  I still can’t see the river. I need to get up on the chimney.

  A light comes on at the frosted glass window, the outline of a figure appears. The window rattles as the figure tries to pull it open. An arm appears and the edge of a sink, with a toothbrush standing up in a tooth mug. Mollie begins to stand, fluttering, taking care not to look down. Beyond the buildings on the other side of the square, that’s where the river must be, but still she isn’t high enough. She knows that she will not fall because he’s there. She sees his face below – grey, suspended, featureless.