Armadillo (22 page)

212. The Television Set.
All that was in your head was the deafening noise of the television set and the constant bellowing, cheering, whistling and catcalling that accompanied it. The whole college seemed to have assembled in the common room to watch – what? A football match? Miss World? The Eurovision Song Contest? Formula I? You could hear the slap of your bare feet on the lino as you drew near, could hear the noise levels increase and the rays of white light shining down from the fluorescent strips seemed to spear into your brain like elongated acupuncture needles. Joyce was terrified, crying; you were sick, sick with your rage and fury, and all you knew was that the noise of the television set had to stop. You halted at the door and your right hand reached out for the door knob. You saw your hand grip the doorknob, turn it and push the door open and suddenly you were walking into the common room, shouting for silence, striding into the centre of the crowded room, a hundred pairs of eyes turning towards you.

The Book of Transfiguration

Chapter 15

‘Hello? Milo? Milo? Hello, Milo?’

‘Hello, Mum. I can hear you.’ She had called him on the mobile, the only number of his that the family possessed. He felt as if the air were being slowly sucked out of his lungs – it had to be bad news. He was driving along the Embankment heading west, the river on his left, the morning blowy, grey and heavily overcast, if marginally milder.

‘Everything OK, Mum?’

‘Yes, everything’s fine.’

‘Good.’

‘Did Lobby call you?’

‘No.’

‘Oh… Bit of sad news.’

Something to do with Slobodan, then, that was less worrying. ‘What is it?’

‘Your dad passed away last night.’

‘Oh God. Jesus.’ He began to brake.

‘Yes. Very quiet, very peaceful. It’s a blessing, Milo.’

‘Yes, Mum. You all right?’

‘Oh, I’m fine, me. Everyone’s here. Well, the girls are.’

‘Should…Ah, should I come round?’

‘No point. He’s not here any more. They took him.’

He felt his face tighten. ‘I’ll call later, Mum. I’m in traffic.’

‘Sorry to bother you, darling. Bye.’

Lorimer slowed down and bumped up on to the pavement, switching on his hazard lights. He walked to the stone balustrade, leant upon it and looked down at the wide brown river. The tide was high but, aptly, on the turn, the water now flowing vigorously east, to the sea. He urged tears to come, but they would not. Well, he thought, that’s it: Bogdan Blocj, RIP. He stared at the Thames and tried to think of something profound, some line of poetry, but all that came into his head were facts about Chelsea Embankment (built in 1871-4, cost a quarter of a million pounds, designed by someone called Bazalgette) that had lodged in his brain from some book he had read ages ago. Poor Dad, he thought, poor old fellow – it hadn’t been any kind of life at all, he considered, the last decade. Maybe it was a blessing, a blessing to the five women who had looked after him all those years, feeding him, dressing him, cleaning him, moving him about the house like a potted plant. There was a little consolation, however, Lorimer thought, in the time they had spent together the other day, when he had held his father’s hand, just the two of them alone, feeling his dry, clean hand in his and sensing the slight responsive squeeze. Some comfort in that.

A wooden box bumped up against one of the supports of Albert Bridge and then the current rushed it speedily downstream. Lorimer’s eye seized hungrily on it and freighted it with sententious symbolism: that’s us, he thought, flotsam and jetsam on the tide, hurried along to our ultimate destination, held up here, whooshed along there, stalled in an eddy for a while then flipped over a weir, unable to control our progress until we wind up in the calm estuary heading for the open sea, which is boundless and endless…

The wooden box banged against a pier and was caught and scraped along the wall beneath him. He read the letters branded on to the box’s side, ‘Château Cheval Blanc 1982’. Only in Chelsea, he thought; there was clearly flotsam and flotsam.

280. Lysergic acid diethylamide.
I once asked Alan if my light-sleeping problem, my REM sleep overload and imbalance, could be a sign of neurosis, of some deep, unacknowledged mental crisis, of impending mental breakdown, say.

‘Not in your case, I think,’ Alan said, frowning hard. ‘No, I think we have to look elsewhere. It is true that depressed people sleep less but then they experience little REM sleep – which is often taken as an indication that REM sleep is absolutely vital for our well-being in some mysterious way, as if we
need
to dream, in a fundamental physiological sense. ‘He paused. ‘There’s only one drug that’s been discovered that seems to promote REM sleep and that’s lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD as it is more commonly known. Have you ever taken LSD?’

‘Only once.’

‘How was it?’

‘It changed my life.’

The Book of Transfiguration

According to Flavia Malinverno the film she was working on –
Malign Fiesta –
was a ‘very loose adaptation’ of a novel by Percy Wyndham Lewis, a writer with whom Lorimer was not familiar. As he found a parking spot not far from the empty hospital in Chiswick where much of the shooting was taking place, and duly parked the rapidly rusting Toyota, Lorimer considered he might appropriate the title for his own autobiography, should he ever write one – it seemed to capture the spirit of recent weeks. He wandered towards the hospital past the straggling row of trucks, clapped-out buses, campervans and groups of people in anoraks and windcheaters chatting to each other and drinking from plastic cups – all the signs that announced that a motion picture was being filmed in your neighbourhood. Their lack of purpose, the lethargy, the air of resigned inertia reminded him of a disbanded circus awaiting news of its next destination, or a column of reasonably well-to-do refugees halted at a roadblock for days as officials and militia haggled over whether the motley crew should be allowed across the frontier.

A shivering young guy, ill-dressed against the weather, in just a sweater and a baseball cap, with dripping nose and walkie-talkie, asked if he could help Lorimer in any way. Lorimer had once done an adjust on a film company and had mooched around several film sets in the course of it and so knew what the magic password was, the one that opened every door.

‘Equity,’ he said.

‘The actors are in the main building,’ said the young guy, sniffing robustly and swallowing. ‘You’ll see the signs.’

He followed meandering black cables as thick as his arm into the semi-circular drive, under the grandly columned entrance and in through the main doors. The hall was brilliant with huge arc lights all pointing at an impressive central staircase that swept up and divided against the rear wall, decked with flowers as if for a ball or wedding. Many dozens of people stood around looking at a woman who was fiddling with the flowers and a man with a hand-held vacuum cleaner who was hoovering up every trace of dust and lint from the carpet. From somewhere came a busy sound of energetic hammering. He was the only person in a suit and stood out markedly amongst so much leather and suede, foul-weather gear and leisure wear.

A brisk young woman wearing a headset and carrying a styrofoam cup approached.

‘Can I help?’

‘Equity,’ he said.

‘Actors that way,’ she said, pointing through an ornate doorway.

Lorimer obediently headed off, passing thirty feet of trestle table with many urns and plates, trays and baskets of high-calorie food. People stood in front of it, sampling, munching, sipping, slurping, waiting. He heard a man shout, ‘Kill that blonde, Jim!’ but no one paid any attention.

Flavia had told him that the film was a romantic comedy and the next room, he guessed, contained the set that would concern her and where she would utter her immortal line about Tyimotheh’s subterfuge. There was a glossy dining table with sixteen chairs and laid for a substantial meal, if the ranked silverware was anything to go by More people were polishing crystal glasses and touching up and adjusting the floral table centres. Beyond this set was a long, high-ceilinged room that must have been an old hospital ward, divided down the middle by a row of bulb-ringed dressing tables and racks of clothes. Here he encountered his first actors – men and women in evening clothes of the 1920s, having their hair combed, lipstick retouched, jewellery fastened and checked against the evidence contained in many polaroid photographs.

A woman with wild, backcombed blue-black hair and holding a small sponge asked if she could help. Now that he was amongst actors he fell back on the truth. ‘I’m with the insurance company,’ he said.

‘Oh. You’ll want, um, Fred Gladden. If you don’t mind waiting I’ll get someone to find him for you.’

‘Thanks.’ Lorimer knew from experience that this could take a minute, an hour or might never actually come about, so he moved away and leant against a wall, safe for a while. The minute came and went as he stood there discreetly, arms folded, watching the comings and goings, as meaningful to him as the busy scurryings of an ant colony. Then he suddenly remembered, unprompted, that his father had died a few hours previously and realized that already time had passed when he had not been thinking about him, indeed had completely forgotten about him and his death and this made him unbearably sad. Sad to think how easy it was not to think about Bogdan Blocj, how easy it was to find yourself in a state where you were not regretting that you would never hold his hand again.

His vision shimmered and all the bright lights acquired blurry coronas. He exhaled and inhaled, filling his lungs with air and asked himself what he was doing here, standing around on this film set under false pretences, engaged on this foolish forlorn quest. His father had been dead for a matter of hours, shouldn’t he be doing something respectful, sober, suitably mournful? Such as what? His father wouldn’t care, in fact the old Bogdan Blocj might have approved of something so sexily inopportune, trying to win back his girl… He made another dutiful filial effort, trying to conjure up some idea of the man beyond the idea of ‘Dad’, a man he remembered most readily standing in his brown overall, clipboard in hand, spectacles on the end of his nose, amongst his shelves of well-wrapped cardboard boxes… But nothing else came. The man he knew best had been the smiling, mute invalid, a dapper, silent figure in his blazer and flannels and neat white beard whose twinkling eyes seemed to see everything and nothing at all…Jesus Christ, he roused himself, get a grip: he had his own life to live and it was a life that was going downhill fast. Some sort of brakes had to be applied before the whole thing came apart –

Flavia Malinverno entered the room at the far end, carrying a book, and sat down on a wooden form.

He edged closer, circling round and approaching from the side, unchallenged and unquestioned, realizing that in his classically cut suit people might take him for an extra. Flavia was wearing a black wig, bobbed, with a low fringe that seemed to be resting on her improbably long, false eyelashes. She was reading
Malign Fiesta
by Wyndham Lewis – good for you, girl, he thought, professional, diligent actor – and his heart bulged and sagged with pathetic, humiliating longing for her. But what has anyone in the history of humankind ever been able to do about that sort of thing, he thought as he slid on to the bench beside her – without her looking up – and inched along stealthily, who has ever been able to control that category of pure feeling?

‘Any good?’

‘Well, it’s got bugger all to do with this film, I can tell-’

She looked up at this point and saw him, her mouth tightening at once, her jaw set. Her face was opaque with white panstick make-up, her lipstick was the cherriest of reds and she had a beauty spot in the middle of her left cheek. She wore a dress of taupe
crêpe de chine
and great loops of pearls dangled to her lap.

‘Flavia –’

‘Lorimer, I told you to stay away from me.’

‘No. You have to hear me out.’

‘Look, I’m going to call security, I mean it –’

‘My father died this morning.’

She sat down slowly. The mention of his father’s death had made tears fill his eyes and he could see that for once, perhaps for the first time ever, she believed him.

‘Look, I’m sorry…But that has nothing to do –’

‘You’re the one responsible. If you hadn’t told Gilbert nothing would have advanced this far, this fast. You provoked everything.’

She reached into a beaded bag and brought out her cigarettes, lit one and blew a jet of smoke straight out in front of her.

‘OK, I shouldn’t have, and I regret it, and I’m sorry if it seemed I was using you. Now you must go away.’

‘No. I want to see you again.’

Her jaw dropped in a mock gasp of incredulity. She shook her head as if to dispel a buzzing fly

‘For Christ’s sake, I’m a married woman.’

‘But you’re not happy, I know you’re not.’

‘Don’t you lecture me on the state of my marriage, chum.’

‘Hi. Are you with the Bond Company?’ Lorimer looked up to see a young man with thinning blond hair in a leather jacket and jeans standing there with his hand extended. ‘I’m Fred Gladden,’ he said, ‘Co-producer.’

‘I think he went that way,’ Lorimer said, pointing. ‘I’m with Equity.’ He indicated Flavia. ‘Some mix-up with her union dues.’

‘Oh, right, sorry,’ Fred Gladden apologized, needlessly. ‘They just told me a man in a suit. That way?’

‘Yes,’ Lorimer said. ‘He’s carrying a briefcase.’

Fred Gladden strolled off to look for a suited man with a briefcase.

‘Look at you,’ Flavia said, trying not to smile. ‘Look how you lie. It’s unbelievable, like a reflex, so fluent.’

‘I’m a desperate man,’ Lorimer said. ‘And I think when it comes to duplicity you could teach me a few lessons.’

The brisk young woman in the head set shouted, ‘Scene 44. Dinner party. Rehearsal.’

Flavia rose to her feet and said. ‘That’s me. Look, I can’t see you any more, it’s too difficult. There are things I haven’t told…Goodbye.’

‘What things you haven’t told?’

Lorimer followed her through to the set. Her dress had a low waist which was fringed and the fringe swayed to and fro with the swing of her hips. He felt a surge of desire for her so palpable that saliva squirted into his mouth.

‘Flavia, we must –’

‘Go away, Lorimer.’

‘I’ll call you.’

‘No. It’s finished. It’s too difficult, too dangerous.’

They had reached the set where an elderly, red-faced man was simultaneously talking into a mobile phone and pointing the actors to their allotted seats around the dining table.

‘Flavia Malinverno,’ he said, ‘you’re over there, darling. Just tell the lazy bastard to get his arse down here, he’s got a film to direct.’

Flavia glanced round at Lorimer, still behind her.

‘Charlie,’ she said to the red-faced man, ‘I think this bloke’s stalking me.’

Red-faced Charlie stepped in front of Lorimer and clicked his phone shut. Lorimer’s eyes followed Flavia, watching her take her place at the dinner party.