by William Boyd
“You all right?” he asked.
“Yes, of course. I enjoyed myself. I’m very happy.”
He sat down on the bed and kissed her.
“What’ll we do?”
“We can’t tell anyone,” she said. “Nobody must know.”
“But I want to see you again. A lot.” He gently touched her cheek with his fingers. “You’re terrific, Anny. I really like you. I’ve never met anyone like you.”
“Then we have to be very careful. Be discreet. No one can know. No one must guess or have a suspicion.” She thought further. “When we’re shooting on set we just have to be professional—you know, like friends.”
“Kind of difficult. Now.”
“No one can know, Troy. My life is too complicated.”
He shrugged. “All right. Have it your way—we’ll be very careful. We’re actors, after all. Well, you are.” He looked at her shrewdly. “You’re not married, are you?”
“I’m divorced. But I have…Another friend.”
“In America?”
“In Paris.”
“That’s all right then.” Troy smiled. “Out of sight is out of mind, as they say.”
“Out of sight, but very much in mind.”
Suddenly she grabbed the back of his neck and pulled his head towards hers, kissing him strongly.
They broke apart. Troy looked a bit stunned.
“Go,” she said.
“Anny, I can—”
“Go.”
“No.”
4
Talbot looked at Reggie Tipton and smiled, trying to ignore his sour mood, trying to be friendly, trying to be convivially understanding, though he was actually thinking what an insufferable, deluded, self-important little man Reggie was.
“I thought—forgive me—that we were meant to be at Beachy Head this morning,” Talbot said, evenly.
“We will be. I just need to get this pick-up.”
“What pick-up? It wasn’t on the schedule, Joe says.”
“Last-minute thought of mine. Joe’s up to speed, now. Just Anny—big close-up. Thinking, she doesn’t have to say anything.” He joined up his thumbs and forefingers to make a notional rectangle and held it up to his face—as if, Talbot thought, I couldn’t quite grasp the concept of a “big” close-up. He really could be tiresome, Reggie.
“One big close-up. One shot, no more than ten minutes. Trust me, Talbot. We’ll get everything done today.”
“Fair enough, you’re the director. Where is Anny, by the way?”
“Hair and make-up. She was late. Unfortunately.”
“Do we know why?” Talbot still maintained a faint smile.
“No. Or at least I don’t know. She was told the pick-up time, the car was there. We called her room—she didn’t answer. We waited. She came down an hour later.”
“I see. Is she all right?”
Reggie scoffed. “How can Anny Viklund be ‘all right,’ given her history? She’s behaving fairly well—we’re lucky—that’s the best we can hope for.”
“You cast her.”
“Sorry, Talbot, that’s not fair. I was under massive pressure to cast her, from you and Yorgos.”
“Not true. Yorgos wanted her, for some reason. I wanted Suzy Kendall. Or Judy Geeson.”
“Suzy Kendall would have worked. Could have been great…” Reggie frowned, as if imagining his film in a parallel universe.
“Or if not her, that singer. Whatshername,” Talbot said.
“Lulu?”
“No. Sandra Shaw.”
“Sandie Shaw…Can she act?”
“Reggie, it’s not difficult,” Talbot said. “At least not in this film. She’d have been perfect, Sandie Shaw—opposite Troy Blaze. Damn sight cheaper than Anny Viklund.”
“It is difficult, acting, actually,” Reggie said, a little petulantly. He lowered his voice and drew Talbot a few paces away from the camera crew.
“Talbot, would you do me a huge favour and not call me ‘Reggie’ on the set? If you must use a name please call me Rodrigo. Please. It’s important to me. I’ve changed my driving licence, passport, everything—it’s how I want to be known, professionally, anyway. It’s very important to me.”
“I’ll try and remember. Sorry. It’s all very odd, I must say. I’ve known you as ‘Reggie’ for years.”
“I’m credited on this film as Rodrigo Tipton. It’s a whole new beginning for me—everything might change.”
“All right, all right. Rodrigo.”
“Thank you.” Reggie/Rodrigo sighed. “Anyway, I suppose it is pretty amazing to have Anny Viklund in a little British film. Did you see how much money The Yellow Mountain has made? Tens of millions. And she looks stunning. And Troy seems to get on with her. There are lots of pluses.” He held up his right hand and rubbed the tips of his fingers together. “It’ll pay off at the box office.”
“It had better.” Talbot stopped smiling.
“Hello, darling, what’s brought you here?” Reggie said, looking over Talbot’s shoulder.
Talbot turned to see Reggie’s wife, Elfrida, approaching. The oddest woman, he always thought. Tall, slim, she seemed to be trying to hide her face behind her thick dark hair. She had a fringe down to her eyelashes and her ears and cheeks were concealed by two chin-length curtains of hair brushed forward like a sort of hair-helmet. She often wore heavy black-rimmed spectacles that made the barrier seem even more impenetrable, though, oddly again, her lips were always painted a lurid red. An intelligent woman, obviously, but very strange. He wondered how she and Reggie ever came to be married.
“Elfrida, lovely to see you.” Talbot shook her hand. He had read and enjoyed one of her novels, years ago—couldn’t recall the title.
“Talbot, hello, hello,” she replied, her red lips parting in a quick smile. She had a husky voice as if she were a heavy smoker but he’d never seen her with a cigarette.
“I’ve run out of money,” she said to Reggie. “And the chequebook’s run out of cheques.”
“Excuse us, Talbot,” Reggie said.
Talbot watched them walk away, talking quietly to each other. Elfrida was as tall as Reggie, if not slightly taller. Couples, he thought, how curious they are. He shook the idea away, thinking suddenly of the couple he made with Naomi—no more curious than Reggie Tipton and Elfrida Wing, he supposed.
He wandered off to find Joe and seek an answer to the question of when the hell were they ever going to get to Beachy Head? As he searched for Joe amongst the vans, caravans and the lorries of the set, he slowly realised that almost every transistor radio in the unit was tuned to the same radio station playing the same absurd song. He seemed to be moving from aural zone to aural zone when the song would die away, then, as he passed another group of lounging men, waiting, smoking, drinking coffee, it flared up, playing once more. Something about a cake and a park, and melting green sweet icing flowing down. Oh, no! How long was the damn thing? He kept hearing the same refrain. A park, belonging to a Mr. MacArthur, where a cake had been left out in the rain, and something about a recipe that could not be found. Oh, no! He was no admirer of modern “pop” music but this one seemed unusually abstruse, from what he could understand of the snatched lyrics.
There was Joe.
“Joe! Save me from this madness,” he said. “Take me to Beachy Head.”
5
Elfrida stood at the bar of the snug in the Repulse and ordered another gin and tonic. It was the pub she preferred in Brighton, two streets back from the Esplanade. Smallish, with a saloon bar as well as the snug, and decoratively unfavoured, it boasted only drab, neutral colours: browns, greens, dark grey—nothing themed, nothing garish. No music blaring, no gambling machines or toys for men to play. It was named the Repulse after an early nineteenth-century first-rate ship of the line that went down w
ith all hands in some remote naval battle in the East Java Sea or somewhere—somewhere far from England, anyway, forever commemorated here in a modest Brighton pub, paid for by subscriptions raised by the widows of the crew. There was a framed parchment document in the short corridor on the way to the saloon bar that explained the history. Nice idea, Elfrida thought; a fit way of remembering the drowned menfolk. A place where you could drown your sorrows…She thought she’d quite like a pub as a memorial. Better than a row of books on a shelf. A little pub somewhere with a sign: “The Elfrida Wing.” She took her drink back to her table in the corner, toying with the idea, imagining the pub—her stylised portrait on the sign, bright flowers in window boxes, benches outside, a little beer garden at the back…
The snug bar was quiet, afternoon closing time wasn’t far off, and there were just three other drinkers, all men, apart from herself. She had a sip of her G and T and then searched her handbag (now heavy with a new bottle of vodka) for her notebook. She opened it in front of her and rummaged for her fountain pen. She had no intention of writing anything, she just wanted to look like she was busy with something, thinking—not a drinker, drinking. She doodled some spirals on a new page and then some squares and cross-hatched them dark.
Out of the corner of her eye she was aware of a man who seemed to be looking at her; a man of her age, in his forties, wearing a suit and tie and reading a book. He kept glancing at her. She pushed at her hair and her fringe and then put on her glasses. Maybe he recognises me, she thought, how ghastly. Maybe he’d read one of her novels and was thinking to himself, “Could that be Elfrida Wing over there?” Then she saw him swallow the last inch of his half-pint, stand up and cross the room towards her. She concentrated on her notebook.
“Excuse me, sorry for interrupting, but are you by any chance Elfrida Wing?”
Elfrida looked up.
“No. My name’s Jennifer Tipton.”
“Sorry. It’s just that you look like her. Like her photo, I mean.”
“Who is this Elspeth Wing?”
“Elfrida. She’s a rather wonderful novelist. I’ve read all her novels.”
“I’m a midwife,” she said. “Apologies.” She pointed at her gin. “It’s my day off.”
He smiled at her dubiously, as if not at all convinced.
“I wish I could write a novel,” Elfrida said. That much was true.
“Well, sorry to bother you,” the man said again. “Enjoy your day off.” And he sauntered out of the pub, glancing quickly back at her as he stepped out through the door.
The encounter disturbed her. To think that even after ten years of silence on her part, after ten years of resolute writer’s block, loyal, devoted readers might still recognise her. Terrifying. She had been much photographed and interviewed, particularly after the success of her last novel, she recalled, and then the film and then when she and Reggie got married in Islington town hall. Reggie had arranged for lots of photographers. Reggie wore white and she wore black—it seemed to amuse people. Something about her face, her “public” image—a young woman writer enjoying the acclaim—seemed to linger in people’s minds. Novelists should be—are—the least recognised of minor celebrities, she thought, almost invisible. Conductors, artists, dancers, athletes, magicians, sportsmen, weather-forecasters, quiz-show hosts are far more familiar. But certain novelists seem to remain in the public consciousness. Perhaps it was her hairstyle—her fringe. Maybe she should change that? She finished her gin and went back to the bar to order another.
She sat on in the gloomy pub, drinking, waiting for the call of “last orders,” thinking about the man and what he’d said. “A rather wonderful novelist.” She supposed he had read her first novel, Mrs. Bristow’s Day. How she hated that novel, now. It was short, around 160 pages, and related the day—in great, textured detail—in the life of an ordinary middle-aged woman, the eponymous Mrs. Bristow, who was married and had three grown-up sons, and was simply getting on with the business of living until she died. She goes shopping; she has a bit of a row over a constantly barking dog with a woman who is a neighbour; she goes to a dental appointment. In the dentist’s waiting room she reads magazines and thinks about her sons, where they are and what they’re up to. She has an old filling repaired in a molar then she returns home, pausing to buy an evening paper. Back at her house she prepares her husband’s tea, waiting for him to return from work, then glances at the headlines, pondering the news at home and abroad. She hears a noise and goes to investigate and discovers a young man, an intruder who has broken in through the scullery window. In a panic he attacks Mrs. Bristow and kills her.
The problem that then emerged, she realised, wasn’t the novel’s surprising success. It did exceptionally well for a first novel and she was only just twenty-five, relatively fresh from Cambridge (Girton College)—no, the problem was that a famous literary critic, in his enthusiastic review, dubbed her “the new Virginia Woolf,” as if Mrs. Bristow’s Day was a clever, modern reworking of Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. She hadn’t thought anything of it at first, she hadn’t even read Mrs. Dalloway, but when the epithet was repeated on the publication of her second novel, Excesses (“Elfrida Wing, widely regarded as the new Virginia Woolf, chalks up a second triumph with Excesses”) she began to be a little irritated. Other critics repeated the comparison, thoughtlessly—recklessly, she felt. It was as if Virginia Woolf’s ghost was somehow haunting her life. Mention Elfrida Wing and someone would inevitably say, “Ah, the new Virginia Woolf.” It was on the publication of her third novel, The Big Show, that she realised that her name was going to be yoked to Virginia Woolf’s for the rest of her writing life. “Elfrida Wing, celebrated and acclaimed as the rightful heir to Virginia Woolf, stuns with The Big Show.”
What made it worse was that she didn’t particularly like Virginia Woolf’s novels. She had read Mrs. Dalloway, by this time, and was underwhelmed. She found the novels overwrought and fey. She could see no similarity between her spirit, intellect and style as a novelist and Virginia Woolf’s. But not so for every critic who reviewed her books. Nor her growing army of loyal readers, because the publishers repeated the claim—in bold—on her paperbacks. She began to hate the sight of her own novels. And that was why she stopped writing, she supposed. It was all Virginia Woolf’s fault.
She took a mouthful of her gin and tonic and closed her eyes as she registered the benign, the sublime, effect. Who would have thought that the berries of the humble shrub that was the juniper could inspire this elixir? She felt her head reel, satisfyingly, drew another square in her notebook and shaded it in.
Perhaps, she thought, as she drew a series of arrows, large and small, she was making excuses for what was simply a complete lack of inspiration. Had she merely run out of fictional steam after three successful novels? Maybe—maybe—it had nothing to do with being regarded as the new Virginia Woolf at all…
After The Big Show had been published (sixteen translations, paperback rights sold for a good five-figure sum) she had met Reggie Tipton. Reggie, a very up-and-coming young film director, wanted to make a film of The Big Show. The film rights were acquired for a higher five-figure sum and for a while Elfrida realised she was actually quite rich. She bought a small house in the Vale of Health in Hampstead and she and Reggie had an affair, of course. Reggie’s eventual film, now known simply as Show!, starred Melanie Todd and Sebastian Brandt but even their starry candlepower couldn’t make it a success. It sold many more books for her, however, and she became even richer. Then Reggie left his wife (and children) and she and Reggie married. And then she had her miscarriage. Everything had gone wrong after that, yes, that was the crisis point.
She thought back to those days with some hesitation, reluctant to stir memories. Reggie, when she met him, was married to a humourless, pretentious woman called Marion (“The single biggest grotesque mistake of my life,” he had confessed to Elfrida at the beginning of their affair). Reggie
and Marion Tipton had two daughters, Butterfly and Evergreen, eight and six. When Reggie formally separated from Marion, moved in with Elfrida and divorce proceedings began, she noticed that his allotted quota of visits to the girls steadily diminished. When Butterfly was sixteen she wrote to her father saying she never wanted to see him again. Reggie had shown Elfrida the letter, not seeming too perturbed. Elfrida was more shocked at its cold, unforgiving tone than he was. He continued to see Evergreen from time to time until she too was persuaded by Marion’s undying bitterness to cut all ties to her father. Reggie—secure in the castle of his ego—took it surprisingly well.
For her part, Elfrida always had something of a guilty conscience. She hated the idea that she was in some significant way responsible for this festering pool of unhappiness in the Tipton family, but the heady, alluring energies of their affair overwhelmed all other emotions. And then, shortly after they were married, when she became pregnant herself, she rather hoped that Reggie’s new child would console him for the loss of the other two. But she miscarried in the third month. The resulting hospitalisation and her subsequent year-long mini-nervous breakdown, she now realised, was the watershed in their marriage. She slowly became aware that Reggie was actually somewhat relieved not to be a father again. Her miscarriage, as she put it to herself, led to a corresponding mismarriage. They tried for another child but without success and Reggie seemed to be losing even his faint interest in the idea, anyway, and so the dream of being a mother died. Nothing was ever the same again; Reggie began to have affairs and she stopped writing.
