Love Fifteen (21 page)

BOOK: Love Fifteen
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Eugene greeted me at Canford Cemetery and introduced me to his middle-aged wife, adult son and daughter. What did they know of me? He himself only saw me as his mother's favoured private pupil who later became a good friend. His true parentage remained a well-kept secret, even from him. In those days there were so many skeletons hidden in so many closets that the shameful vagueness everyone practised helped keep it all in the dark. Now only Kay and I were alive to tell the tale, though of course never would. Perhaps it's as well that, despite Hazel's hopes, the screenplay
Lest We Forget,
in which we'd all appeared (but heavily disguised), had never become a film. A dozen producers had toyed with it, shown some passing interest, played the enjoyable game of fantasy casting, solicited a few star names and, when they declined or ‘passed' as the current euphemism has it, finally moved on. I'm still finessing it, looking for the right ending that can say enough about Utopia, the real subject, not just about our affair. The many drafts fill a sizeable box on the shelf with twenty or more similar scripts, all promising, none made. And on another shelf almost as many volumes of this Diary that began in the sixties and continues like a tapeworm, covertly fed by my daily stint, growing ever longer. I'm prouder of that than my other stuff. It's the story of a life no-one will ever read, yet which I always write with a semi-awareness that someone might. As it were, with a pair of eyes behind me, another mind always needing to know what I already do. So who else would be interested? Not Hazel now. Eugene, of course, impossible. Kay certainly not.

And there she was, in one of the front pews, my big sister, now also Sister Cathérine! Or
Soeur
to be exact, as her Trappist order is in south-western France. Not far off today, of course, a mere ninety minutes from the local airport. How had she heard? Not from me. Well, nowadays (an old man's word) everyone knows everything, instantly, easily, and her death must have been posted, the funeral announced in the sort of periodical or linkage she's allowed. Do nuns have Internet? In our national press on the obit pages she's ‘Hazel Hampton CBE for services to education.'

She looks pretty good for seventy-seven, in her neat grey habit with the smart headdress. Studious-looking rather than pious, spectacled and upright, but given to the old sudden bursts of tinkling laughter, once the service was over, a sound echoing down sixty years and more. No pious solemnity then. Eugene led me over and was evidently pleased to effect our meeting. My sister, his unbeknownst mother, any resemblances hidden by age and their different skins, – hers pallid, his light brown – and his close-cropped curly receding hair, hers hidden by the modern cowl, he with a satisfied paunch, she skinny as ever. She'd had a dispensation to make this journey, tying it to a visit to another to some convent in South Wales. When the delegates from Hazel's old school moved away, she and I were free to stroll, pretending to look at the floral tributes laid out near the chapel, most from people in Education, some from old pupils and their children and children's children, generations my first lover had helped towards better lives.

“What d'you think of your son?” I asked when we were out of earshot. “I guess this is the first time you've met since you let him go.”

“Not mine. Hers. And a credit to her. A living tribute. Even more telling than those people just moving off.”

“He's a real champ, yes.”

“Oh, that's a grand one!” she said as we paused to read the written card beside an expensive wreath. From the much-married Inky Black in New Zealand.

I filled her in on his later life.

“Clever old dog, I understand, retired rich as Croesus. Spotted a gap in the market, decent airport meals all over Australasia. Much of his fortune went in alimony but there's plenty to spare for his many grandchildren. You know he was always mad for you.”

“T'was not to be. And you? No regrets not to have had a family?”

“I never wanted kids. A factor left out of my make-up. A genetic lacuna. Unnatural, I guess. An inborn lack.”

“Or d'you think perhaps an instinct that was aborted by too much too young ?”

“Meaning what ?”

“Oh, come on, the late-departed taught you more than imperial history.”

“I was never sure you knew.”

I followed as she moved along the grassy verge with its border of bouquets and wreaths. Eugene was thanking and bidding goodbye to those guests who weren't going on to a reception at his house beside nearby Blaise Castle.

“Of course I knew. From soon after she came to tutor you at Villa Borghese. Sometimes you both looked as though you'd just run a marathon.”

“Whereas I hadn't a clue about you and your American friends.”

“Another life, isn't it ? Don't you feel that now we're pushing eighty? We've lived more than one life each?”

“Many more. Though mine less than yours. Look at you-Academic. Theologian. Author. Convert. Religious politician. What's the job description for that bit? Papal Legate ?”

“Hardly. A lowly functionary.”

“Like me on the film of
Henry the Fifth ?
A papal go-fer?”

“Pretty much. But you – soldier, screenwriter, husband twice, lecturer and teacher – in Film, is it ?”

“Media Studies, yeah. Those who can
do
, those who can't blah-blah… How d'you feel about him ?”

We were saying more in this slow saunter than in the previous sixty-something years.

“Happy he's turned out well. His life seems blessed. Otherwise he's a stranger. Seeing him doesn't make the earth move. It's all so long ago, Theo.”

Old age, I wanted to suggest to her, has its consolations, not least a loss of interest in what goes on. But that would be to pretend as usual to be resigned to the living death of an empty life and the loss of my lust and love. She'd clearly replaced her early appetites with a wilful celibacy and a love of God. Or by being as dishonest as I was. Nor did I admit that my libido's not yet entirely quiescent, that the sight of a pretty woman can still arouse ghostly urges, a tentative rising-to-the-occasion. They look at me these days, head on, no evasion, often smiling, knowing I'm unlikely to jump on them, though in fact they still rouse symptoms of the appetite I had for Margo and for poor dear Hazel.

Poor?
What was poor about her ? So Utopia never came. So she was deceived about the way the world wags? So what? When that great world let her down, she lowered her sights, changed her targets. Disillusion came slowly. She never quite lost the optimism that made her believe in my future as a maker of marvellous movies. Or education as universal healer. When I failed her, she accomodated that too and was even proud of my pathetic years in adult education.
Media studies!
The history of film. Film itself a mere pebble on the beach of Art and I was only passing on a few views and a little knowledge to kids who'd decided Film School beats working.

Later, at the reception in Eugene's pleasant home, he asked me again to address the Sixth Form of my old school on Political Cinema. It's where he now teaches History and runs the film society. To stand on that same podium where old Hines bored us rigid except for the one occasion when he introduced Olivier ? No. I couldn't bear the thought of today's back-row boys, the wits of Five C, sniggering over their flickergraphs while as I struggled to hold their interest. Flickergraphs? Do me a favour ! All those miniature cinemas they can hold in a hand and operate with their thumbs. What could I possibly tell them that they don't already know? So no, Gene, not fucking likely. To have old Quasi releasing a load on my balding noddle, I don't think so.

Do I envy them their ease, their multiple options? No need to forge excuse-games notes, wait for films to be shown in cinemas, or hang about outside picture houses for a likely adult to ‘take them in'.

Kay and I went together to the station for our trains, hers to Wales, mine to Paddington and home.

Before sitting to write up the day, I ran the only movie I've actually made, the compilation of me and HeatherHazel, Fred and Rose, Rose and the Canadians, all of us at tea, that I privately call
Villa Borghese
. That wholesome wickedness that others would have seen as sinful, a thirty year old teacher fucking a fifteen-year-old boy. The grainy monochrome images will soon self-destroy so I'd better copy it first. Or download. The day in my home city when Hazel gave me the cans I returned later to the high bridge and stood a long time considering throwing them over. I couldn't. No-one must ever find and project such pictures of shameless joy. And, having replaced it in the can, I ran the Hollywood version, the soft-porn skin flick Margo made when her attempts at an acting career had failed, just like Hazel's brave new world. There she is, with excellent lighting, forever beautiful, giving a flagrant performance well within her narrow range. On the track her whimpers and simulated (I hope) cries of joy never fail to rouse my lust, even now, the last hurrah. She was a lost soul, cursed with a beauty she couldn't handle. Not at all a bad woman either. Good and generous in a way but undiscerning, easily led. By me among others. No regrets though. The part of me that loved her on the 21 was alive still in L.A. and for some time after. Without that erotic adventure, I'd have been merely good, perhaps always regretful. For both of us California was a barren land, as Hazel always feared it might be. I guess I needed both.

How to deal with disillusion, that's half the battle. Hazel's letters remind me that the end of Communism didn't cause her the anguish I'd expected. It was as though she'd known for years and kept the secret to herself that such a vision couldn't ever become reality. She rode with the punch.

Her ashes are being delivered to Eugene. She asked him to scatter them over the gorge from the bridge. This reminded me of old Jimmie's teaching us about Daedalus and Icarus, the boy who flew too high, melted his wings and fell to earth. “Mister Light,” he said one Tuesday morning, “I shouldn't try it if I were you.”

“But, Sir, what about it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all ?”

“No. Feet on the ground then you won't be disappointed.”

THE END

BOOK: Love Fifteen
8.29Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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