Fallout (14 page)

‘If me and Paul can go tomorrow night I’ll cover for you on Tuesday,’ said Luke.

‘Good,’ said Paul. ‘What’s it called?’

‘
In Custody
.’ Leigh studied the review. ‘
New actress
– they always say that, probably been at it for years –
inspired
.’

‘Who is she?’ asked Luke.

‘Nina Jacobs.’

‘Never heard of her,’ said Paul. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Busman’s holiday,’ said Paul, the next night as they stood in the heated crush of the Nag’s Head bar, five minutes to curtain. ‘Did you hear from Flowers?’

Eric Flowers was a West End manager who had been to see
Cartwright
twice, and Paul had called his office since but had no reply.

‘He’s probably here,’ said Paul, looking around and lighting a cigarette, his big shoulders hunched. ‘The bastard.’

‘This will transfer.’

‘Probably, yeah.’

The crowd had begun to move towards the door to the upstairs theatre. They drained their glasses and went with them. ‘But it might not be as good as they say. Might be shit.’

‘I hope it’s not,’ said Luke. ‘We could be at the Grafton.’

Paul crushed his cigarette out in a fire bucket as they passed. ‘Right, yeah, we don’t spend enough time there.’

Luke smiled but he would have spent every night at the Grafton, even with Jack Payne as counterpoint to the harmony. He would have slept there.

They kept seeing people they knew, and a group sitting in front – four girls together – flicking their shiny hair from their eyes, were glancing over their shoulders at them both.

‘You’ve probably shagged about half the chicks in here,’ Paul whispered to Luke as the lights dropped into blackout and Luke choked on his laugh to stop it.

There was murmuring, and then quiet. The house-lights went to black. They sat in darkness for what seemed like a long time. Long enough for the audience to fall silent, and throat-clearing to stop, then just long enough again for discomfort to settle over them. The waiting stopped being collective, and became each person’s private thoughts, vulnerable.

They waited. The silence grew heavier. It stretched to its tightest, most dangerous moment. Then, making them jump, there sounded a muffled clanging noise.

At first it seemed like a distant bell, rhythmic, but it became clear that it was a succession of metal gates, closing, nearer and nearer to them in the pitch dark.

Luke felt the tension of the audience around him. Part of his mind enjoyed the stagecraft but more deeply, unsettled, the ancient, animal part hated it. Feared it. He did not think,
I know this, I’ve been here
, and yet he was flooded with sadness; pain unlocked and alarming. And still – darkness. Abandonment. Then a distant scream and the physical walls of the auditorium were dissolved by the echoing sound that came as if from a corridor, or a cell, and now Luke knew what he was remembering. He had heard too many screams like that in his life to have to try to place this. This was Seston Asylum. This sound was his. He looked about him; told himself he had a choice, he wasn’t forced to stay there with the doors closing on him. He could get away. He would have shut his eyes to it but he was in the dark already. He felt Paul move beside him but he didn’t think he had made a sound. He didn’t think he had forgotten himself, it was only his breathing that had changed. No one would know he was not all right. The shutting metal doors approached, louder, one by one, and then – the opposite sound: the slow squeak of thick hinges as a door, offstage, was opened and cold light came from the direction of the sound. Bleak though it was, it was respite, bringing him back to the present. And in that grateful bliss of reason a woman walked onto the stage.

He almost laughed. She was just a girl – too young. This couldn’t hurt. But then he began to look at her.

She was blindfolded and she wore a grey dress of thick cotton. Another piece of material was around her mouth, both that and the blindfold were tied at the back, and her arms were also bound behind her, also with material, or rags. Her feet were bare. Blindly, she inched towards the middle of the stage. Her hair was long and dark, separated into wettish strands by sweat or blood. The light was harsh and dust in tiny particles floated all around her.

Reaching centre-stage she felt around, tentatively, carefully, with her bare feet, and then knelt, facing out. For long moments her chest rose and fell beneath her gown as she struggled, sightless, to stay balanced. Luke felt ashamed that he could see her, but she could not see him.

Then there was the sound of heavy footsteps in the imagined corridor and she turned fearfully. Luke felt the audience waiting. A dark, bearded man in fatigues came onto the stage. He went to stand behind her. She waited, trembling. The man stood close behind her, seeming to enjoy the waiting. With a smile he reached out a hand and eased the gag from her mouth as if with love. Then with both hands he undid the blindfold and removed it. Nina’s face was revealed. She looked out at Luke.

The steep North London alleyway behind the Nag’s Head glistened with wet cobbles. Luke paced up and down waiting for the stage door to open and Paul stood apart, watching him.

‘Wish we had a stage door at the Grafton,’ Paul said. ‘Classy, this is.’

He was embarrassed to be waiting by a stage door. He hadn’t done that since he was twelve and went to see
The Mousetrap
for his birthday, clutching an autograph book in his chocolate-smudged hands.

‘What can you say to her anyway?’ he asked.

Luke jerked his head, twitching off the intrusion.

‘Seriously, Luke—’

‘I know!’ Luke stopped, facing him.

Paul didn’t think he’d seen him so – he looked for the word –
upset
, before.

‘What are you doing, man?’ he asked gently, with a feeling something bad was happening to his friend, or going to happen.

‘I just want to meet this girl,’ said Luke.

‘Yeah, but there are lots of girls . . .’ That was an under-statement. Paul shrugged. Gave up. There was nothing to be done.

‘I just think, I just want – she seemed unhappy.’

‘Of course she was unhappy. Not a barrel of laughs these Argentine prisons.’

‘She needed help.’

Paul turned away from his illogical pain.

‘I’m going. This is nuts,’ he said, feeling suddenly like his own mother drawing the line at a tantrum. The yawning world of a grown-up future before him. He realised he was scared.

He started down the alley towards the busy street and the traffic and then stopped.

He smiled at Luke, reassuring. ‘You coming, or what?’

‘I’ll stop here,’ said Luke, avoiding him.

There was the banging sound of a kick on metal and the stage door opened, clattering. Nina Jacobs, with the actor who had played the interrogator, Henry Fidele, and another man came out into the alley.

Luke stopped still and stared at her.

She glanced at him.

The man they didn’t know was a slight figure in a camel-hair coat. He took in Luke, then Paul, with a glance, raised his eyebrows and the three of them walked away up the steep alleyway towards a single street light.

As she went, Nina turned and looked over her shoulder at Luke, who was staring at her. She kept looking and he kept watching her. Then she turned away.

The three of them walked into the spotlit pool of the street light, and then disappeared into the dark beyond. Laughter. Footsteps. Silence.

Paul and Luke were alone.

‘You didn’t speak to her,’ said Paul.

Luke shook his head. He looked down to the ground, diminished.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

Tony and Nina said goodbye to Henry on Upper Street. He took her straight home.

‘Aren’t we going out?’

‘Not tonight. Did you know those two?’

‘Who?’

‘At the stage door.’

‘I had a feeling I’d seen one of them before . . .’

‘He was very handsome,’ said Tony. ‘Which one?’

‘The dark one – both, actually,’ he said lightly. ‘But the one you were staring at, he was particularly handsome, in that Jewish way.’

Nina was shocked at the phrase. ‘That Jewish way?’

When they got back to Tite Street, Tony turned on the hall lights and swivelled slowly to face Nina. He took her face in his hands, closed the door with his foot, shrugged off his coat, and kissed her. It was their first kiss. He held her gently and his lips were soft.

‘You were absolutely marvellous tonight,’ he said.

Nina observed the moment curiously. The months of seduction, the bullying rehearsals, the teasing; all of it had led to this predictable kiss. She felt distant from him, still defined by her working self. He kissed her again, his tongue parting her lips.

She wondered if she wanted to leave or if she ought to stay and go up to his room. What her mother would say, if she did. He was stroking her head, like the soothing of an animal. Then his hand gathered the long clean hair into a ponytail at the base of her neck, and tightened. He was holding her by her hair.

‘What is it?’ he said, noticing she had frozen with surprise. Her heart had begun to beat rapidly. He was breathless, she noticed. His eyes were shining, half-closed, as he watched her.

‘You’re holding my hair,’ she said clearly.

He tightened his grip.

‘I’ve got a surprise for you,’ he said, as if to a child.

Nina felt him tug her hair all together in his fist. It wasn’t at all painful. She realised he was leading her slowly towards the stairs.

‘Come with me,’ he said.

They went up the stairs like that, awkwardly, two flights. Her neck ached from being held sideways. At the bedroom door he released her. She straightened, jittery with freedom, and he laughed.

‘What?’

‘It’s funny,’ he said. ‘The way you always do what I want.’

He went to the drinks tray he kept in the corner, between the window and the wardrobe.

‘Sit on the bed,’ he said, busying himself with glasses and bottles.

She sat on the edge of the bed and took off her coat, leaving it heaped around her for comfort.

He came over with a Martini glass, bright with gin, and knelt down in front of her. He held out the glass. The icy gin tipped and glinted. In the bottom of it was a diamond ring.

‘Will you marry me?’ he said.

Nina stared at him. She looked down at the ring under the inches of alcohol like sunken treasure, the large stone clutched in the platinum claw.

‘You seem surprised,’ he said.

‘Of course I’m surprised.’

He put his finger into the gin and scooped up the ring on his index finger. He held it out to her, dripping, and she opened her mouth automatically. He slipped the gin-wet finger and the spiky diamond ring into her mouth and she closed her lips around him.

‘Suck,’ he said.

She sucked the gin from the ring as Tony drained the glass and swallowed, with a grimace of distaste.

He removed his finger from her mouth, the ring still wedged on the end of it, and put down the glass on the carpet. He smiled very warmly at her.

‘Darling,’ he said.

She realised he was on one knee to her.

‘You are so beautiful and you are so talented. Isn’t this romantic? Do you like my surprise?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘I don’t think I know what romantic is.’

‘You’ll see with me, beautiful Nina, I promise,’ he said.

He embraced her. He held her very tightly, with his lips to her ear.

‘Say yes,’ he whispered. ‘Say yes. Say yes. Say yes.’

She felt the warmth of his hug. She felt beautiful. ‘Yes,’ she said.

He released her and taking her slim hand in his, he slipped the still-wet ring onto her finger.

Paul and Luke took the last tube home and didn’t mention the play. Usually they deconstructed everything they saw exhaustively, but not this. Paul talked about rehearsals and Luke listened, and tried to get himself back, and pretend. At Barons Court they bought some stale chips for half price by the tube station just as the chip shop was closing.

At three o’clock in the morning Paul and Leigh were woken from deep sleep by Luke shouting. It was an incoherent cry from some far-off place. They lay rigidly, waiting, but there wasn’t another sound.

In his room, Luke had sat up in bed to be sure he wouldn’t risk returning to the terror of his dream. He was sweating. Cold. Imprisoned. He thought of Nina Jacobs kneeling blind and bound. The play had cut him open and there she’d been, offering herself up to be saved. He had been stripped to nothingness and then the pretty sight of her, like an answer. She had seemed so right to him. She seemed to call out.

Kafka’s
The Penal Colony
was about to open and it felt inconceivable it would be ready. Jack had taken to bringing a half-bottle of whisky with him to rehearsals and rebuffed the actors’ appeals for help, distancing himself from the seemingly unavoidable approach of failure.

‘This is horrible,’ Leigh whispered urgently to Paul as the cast stumbled through the first act of the dress rehearsal. ‘They have to go out there tomorrow.’

Luke held himself back with difficulty – watching sideways from the back of the room. He knew what he would have done with the play but he wasn’t the writer, he wasn’t Jack. The afternoon was a cold failure.

Because of
Cartwright’s Army
’s success on opening night the house was full but there was no gratifying buzz, no delight, and the actors’ mutual congratulations afterwards were only to comfort one another. Jack blamed Kafka. The rest of them blamed Jack.
The Penal Colony
had been reduced to a heartless fable.

The audience had gone. The seats were empty. Patrick turned out his lights upstairs and left, his big nose bunged up with a cold and the smell of defeat. The rest of Graft sat glumly around two tables downstairs. Jack had insisted they all stay, and sat, feet planted wide, glaring morosely. The actors were looking at their watches, resentful at having been the messengers to deliver such poor work. Leigh was pretending to read a manuscript from the collection she carried in her sack-like shoulder-bag and Paul was leaning back against the wall, chair tipped on two legs, staring at the brass light-fitting above his head.

‘All right,’ Jack said, looking around the waiting faces.

Luke sat astride his backwards chair with his legs sticking out, bent forward over the table and making patterns in the wet beer-rings with his finger, forehead resting on the back of his other hand as he listened.

Graham, the writer, took out the script and sat surrounded by pages, biro and type mingling miserably on the lines, and waited, pen poised.

‘I know what’s wrong here,’ Jack announced, looking from face to face. ‘It’s the bloody torture machine. It has to go.’

‘What?’ said Graham.

The actors exchanged glances.

‘
The Penal Colony
is a play of ideas, not gimmicks,’ said Jack. ‘What fantasy world are we trying to conjure here? We need to remove the machine. We’ll take it down tomorrow.’

Paul, weary, appalled, looked at Luke but Luke didn’t raise his head. He had been distracted ever since
In Custody
and Paul didn’t know if he was even listening.

Jack turned to the cast. ‘And again, folks,’ he growled, ‘can we take down the
feeling
? We know we’re in a theatre, we’re not children, don’t patronise us.’

‘Jack,’ said Paul, ‘this can all wait until tomorrow—’

‘How can we lose the machine, Jack?’ Graham interrupted, ignoring him. ‘It
is
the play. And we’ve opened.’

‘Work in progress, Graham,’ said Jack; it was one of his catchphrases. ‘Work in progress.’

‘But The Explorer examines the machine,’ said Graham. ‘How will he do that if it’s not there? It’s miraculous, what Luke did – it’s what I imagined. It’s straight off the page.’

Jack took the bottle from his pocket, unscrewed it and slopped whisky into his glass, ignoring him.

‘My play worked before,’ said Graham shakily. ‘It doesn’t now.’

‘It’s true,’ said Leigh; ‘it was a good play.’

‘No fucking machine!’ Jack shouted suddenly. ‘Why can’t you all see?’ He stared from one to the other. ‘We’ll come in early tomorrow. Eight o’clock. Spend the day. We’ll chuck out the bloody machine. We’ll sort it out.’

‘Excuse me,’ said The Condemned, ‘I’m supposed to be at my aunt’s wedding.’

‘For Christ’s sake!’ barked Jack, slamming his glass down onto the table. ‘Is this a nursery school?’

There was a silence, and then –

‘Okay. Right,’ Graham said, cramming the script back into his canvas bag with trembling fingers. ‘Fine. Fuck off.’

And he stood up and left, slamming the door behind him so that the remaining few customers in the pub jumped and stared.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Jack. ‘
Writers
.’

The Prisoner, The Explorer, The Soldier and The Condemned looked at one another.

‘Er, Jack,’ said The Prisoner. ‘Actually you can’t call us before ten.’

‘Sod Equity,’ said Jack.

‘Well, sod you,’ said The Prisoner, ‘I’m going home.’ And he did.

The other actors followed, without a word, leaving only Luke, Paul and Leigh.

‘Thank you, Jack,’ said Paul. ‘Super.
Marvellous
.’

There was a silence. Ron, behind the bar, glared at them.

‘We’re not called Graft because it sounded good to you lads,’ said Jack, speaking more slowly the more vitriolic he became. ‘I want to do
significant work
, not just an alternative to the goggle-box. If this play
is
a dud, it’s an honourable dud.’

‘If you say so,’ said Paul evenly, staring up at the ceiling.

‘
The Colony
falls between two stools because you can’t get over your bourgeois hang-ups. You three, you’re just
playing
.’ He knocked back his whisky, saw that his half-bottle was empty, and patted his pockets for change.

‘Jack!’ said Luke, animatedly, looking up. ‘You’re talking out of your arse.’

Paul tipped his chair forward abruptly, suddenly alert.

Luke was smiling. ‘They call them plays because they are fucking plays, Jack. You’ve got it backwards.’

‘Have I, Luke?’

‘You’re denying the muse.’

‘Am I?
Denying the muse
.’

People could react like that to Luke, Leigh thought, because he was unafraid of mockery. He didn’t mind what he said.

‘Yes,’ said Luke. ‘You see a dead world, and you’re wrong. It’s a miracle you didn’t fuck up
Cartwright’s Army
, and that was mainly because Paul didn’t let you and the script was watertight.’

Leigh was leaning forward in her chair; she could not stop looking at him – so was Paul, with a particular, humorous pleasure.

Jack stared.

‘Listen,’ said Luke, in the spirit of somebody generously explaining a thing, ‘who are you to say there is no value in the construct when the construct is all we have? The play should
play
. Look at the semantics: art. What is
artful
, full of art, artfully done? You think
art
is bourgeois and
beauty
is bourgeois. Form – the crafting of drama as if it were a quartet, a painting. You say we’re just playing, but we
have
to. Playful and artful. See? I don’t get why you want to make theatre when you think the world is flat like you do. It’s round. You’re trying to regress to some touring Bible-lecture in the fourteenth century, and no breath of life in it. But even those were called
mystery
plays. You don’t even
want
to ascend the brightest heaven of invention.’

Jack laughed his rage out. ‘He’s quoting
Shakespeare
to me! Jesus Christ—’

‘Yes, Jack, because clearly you’ve overlooked the Renaissance. You have to
not make things flat
. You want to make Graft flat. But I don’t want that. Do you, Paul? Do you want that?’

Paul was startled. ‘Me? No.’

‘Leigh?’

Leigh swallowed. ‘No,’ she said.

There was a silence.

Luke went back to making shapes with the beer-rings on the table.

‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ said Jack.

Paul stood up portentously, but instead of speaking, he left the table.

‘He’s gone to the Gents,’ said Leigh, helpfully.

Then Luke looked up at her and smiled. He put out his hand and nudged her face – her jaw – with his thumb, as if to say,
Hello, just saw you there
. Leigh smiled back and then looked away from him, and down as her heart contracted. Sweet. She closed her eyes. Pain. Ridiculous he didn’t know. He wouldn’t care if he did.

Jack coughed, loudly, picked up his glass and stared into its emptiness.

Paul returned from the toilet and sat down, heavily. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘All right then.’ He looked from one to the other of them. ‘It is a shame. But I think it’s time we called it a day. Leigh?’

She nodded.

‘Luke?’

Luke stared, entirely surprised at this turn of events, trying to take it in.

‘Too fucking right,’ said Jack.

‘We’ve had a fair run,’ said Paul. ‘And the lease is up next month. Jack?’

‘The name is
mine
,’ said Jack. ‘Graft.’

Luke frowned in confusion. ‘The name?’

But Paul shrugged. ‘If you like. I’m off home. Coming?’ he said to the other two, and the three of them got up.

Leigh went over to Jack and embraced him, awkwardly, her bag slipping heavily off her shoulder.

‘Goodbye, Jack,’ she said.

Jack didn’t move. ‘You children fuck off and play, then,’ he said.

And with that their company was over.

They walked to the car in silence, separate. Paul got into the driver’s seat and Leigh got in next to him. It was a moment before Luke got into the back.

‘I can’t believe this has happened,’ said Leigh.

Paul glanced at her then put the key in the ignition. He turned it but there was no sound from the engine, just the empty click of no connection.

‘Shit,’ he said.

They sat in the silent car. Paul turned the key again. And again.

‘It’s dead,’ he said. ‘Damn.’

They sat staring at inertia.

‘Oh bloody hell,’ Leigh said, in utter misery, but did not cry.

‘It’s all right,’ Paul said as she leaned over into his arms. ‘We’ll get the bus.’

It was after midnight. Luke stood in the middle of the sitting room while Leigh made tea and Paul rolled a joint and put on a record. None of them wanted to end the night badly.

‘It’s too bright in here,’ said Leigh, turning off the overhead light with her elbow as she came back in. She put the tea on the table and lit some candles, then she sat next to Paul on the sofa. Luke hadn’t moved from where he was standing.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean that to happen.’

‘You don’t have to keep saying it. It wasn’t really you,’ said Paul. ‘Things end. Things change.’

Luke supposed that was true, he knew it was, but he had not thought this would end. His endings had been about survival; this felt like a death.

‘Okay?’ said Paul.

‘Yeah, of course,’ he answered, automatically, and stopped himself from saying he was sorry again. He leaned back against the armchair and put his head down on his arms. He thought about loss and that he was powerless.

Paul and Leigh never got high if they were working, only at parties, or together in bed sometimes. Now seemed as good a time as any. Neil Young was singing about dreams and lies – slow, fearful melancholy – and they passed the joint between them.

Luke didn’t smoke hash; he never had. He had an instinct he ought not. But now he felt the strong need to join with the other two. They were toasting one another over the grave of their shared work. They didn’t want to cry over it, they wanted to laugh. He reached out for it and Leigh handed him the joint and leaned back against Paul, waiting to feel better, or different.

Because Luke didn’t smoke at all it hit the back of his throat in a solid burning mass and he coughed, violently, leaning forward and disgusted by it.

‘Oh God, Luke – no, you’ll throw up,’ said Leigh, laughing at him. ‘Give it here.’

Luke shook his head and said, ‘Shit. God. Awful.’

‘Blow-back,’ said Paul.

Leigh looked at him, quizzically.

‘If he wants it,’ said Paul. ‘I’m not doing it,’ shuddering at the idea of man-to-man smoke exchange.

‘Blow-back, Luke?’ said Leigh, coolly, with an eyebrow slightly raised.

Luke knew what that was, he’d seen her and Paul a hundred times, their lips coming close together like a kiss and the smoke blown gently into the other’s mouth. Then usually they did kiss.

‘Will I cough?’ he said.

‘Not so much,’ said Paul, laughing at him.

Leigh came down off the sofa to the floor opposite him.

‘Here,’ she said. She took a drag, very ladylike, not like she did when it was for herself, but politely, because it was for Luke.

Paul watched smilingly from the sofa as Leigh leaned towards Luke. He came forward to meet her, closing the gap between them halfway each, slightly embarrassed. Closer. She looked into his eyes, trying not to smile with the smoke in her mouth. Luke thought how kind she looked, as if she were giving him medicine, or blessing him. They came together. Luke allowed his lips to open and Leigh blew. She blew the smoke coolly, slowly, in a steady, narrow stream into his mouth as he breathed in. It didn’t burn. He exhaled.

‘It’s really strong stuff,’ said Paul.

Luke looked at her. ‘Yeah, go on. Again,’ he said.

She took another drag, deeper, and when they came together they could feel the warmth of their lips, faces so close, not touching. He breathed in, trying not to get turned on by her and not succeeding.