Stories (35 page)

“Now,” she said, sitting back, having taken the edge off her hunger, “let’s get to work.”

He said: “I’ve thought it over very carefully—how to present you. The first thing seems to me, we must get away from that old chestnut: Miss Coles, how extraordinary for a woman to be so versatile in her work…. I hope you agree?” This was his trump card. He had noted, when he had seen her on television, her polite smile when this note was struck. (The smile he had seen so often tonight.) This smile said: All right, if you have to be stupid, what can I do?

Now she laughed and said: “What a relief. I was afraid you were going to do the same thing.”

“Good, now you eat and I’ll talk.”

In his carefully prepared monologue he spoke of the different styles of theatre she had shown herself mistress of, but not directly: he was flattering her on the breadth of her experience; the complexity of her character, as shown in her work. She ate, steadily, her face showing nothing. At last she asked: “And how did you plan to introduce this?”

He had meant to spring that on her as a surprise, something like: Miss Coles, a surprisingly young woman for what she has accomplished (she was thirty? thirty-two?) and a very attractive one…. Perhaps I can give you an idea of what she’s like if I say she could be taken for the film star Marie Carletta…. The Carletta was a strong earthy blonde, known to be intellectual. He now saw he could not possibly say this: he could imagine her cool look if he did. She said: “Do you mind if we get away from all that—my manifold talents, et cetera….” He felt himself stiffen with annoyance, particularly because this was not an accusation; he saw she did not think him worth one. She had assessed him: This is the kind of man who uses this kind of flattery and therefore … It made him angrier that she did not even trouble to say: Why did you do exactly what you promised you wouldn’t? She was being invincibly polite, trying to conceal her patience with his stupidity.

“After all,” she was saying, “it is a stage designer’s job to design what comes up. Would anyone take, let’s say, Johnnie Cranmore” (another stage designer) “onto the air or television and say: ‘How very versatile you are because you did that musical about Java last month and a modern play about Irish labourers this’?”

He battened down his anger. “My dear Barbara, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise that what I said would sound just like the mixture as before. So what shall we talk about?”

“What I was saying as we walked to the restaurant: can we get away from the personal stuff?”

Now he almost panicked. Then, thank God, he laughed from nervousness, for she laughed and said: “You didn’t hear one word I said.”

“No, I didn’t. I was frightened you were going to be furious because I made you walk so far when you were tired.”

They laughed together, back to where they had been in the theatre. He leaned over, took her hand, kissed it. He said: “Tell me again.” He thought: Damn, now she’s going to be earnest and intellectual.

But he understood he had been stupid. He had forgotten himself at twenty—or, for that matter, at thirty; forgotten one could live inside an idea, a set of ideas, with enthusiasm. For in talking about her ideas (also the ideas of the people she worked with) for a new theatre, a new style of theatre, she was as she had been with her colleagues over the sketches or the blue material. She was easy, informal, almost chattering. This was how, he remembered, one talked about ideas that were a breath of life. The ideas, he thought, were intelligent enough; and he would agree with them, with her, if he believed it mattered a damn one way or another, if any of these enthusiasms mattered a damn. But at least he now had the key; he knew what to do. At the end of not more than half an hour, they were again two professionals, talking about ideas they shared, for he remembered caring about all this himself once. When? How many years ago was it that he had been able to care?

At last he said: “My dear Barbara, do you realise the impossible position you’re putting me in? Margaret Ruyen who runs this programme is determined to do you personally; the poor woman hasn’t got a serious thought in her head.”

Barbara frowned. He put his hand on hers, teasing her for the
frown: “No, wait, trust me, we’ll circumvent her.” She smiled. In fact Margaret Ruyen had left it all to him, had said nothing about Miss Coles.

“They aren’t very bright—the brass,” he said. “Well, never mind: we’ll work out what we want, do it, and it’ll be a fait accompli.”

“Thank you, what a relief. How lucky I was to be given you to interview me.” She was relaxed now, because of the whisky, the food, the wine, above all because of this new complicity against Margaret Ruyen. It would all be easy. They worked out five or six questions, over coffee, and took a taxi through rain to the studios. He noted that the cold necessity to have her, to make her, to beat her down, had left him. He was even seeing himself, as the evening ended, kissing her on the cheek and going home to his wife. This comradeship was extraordinarily pleasant. It was balm to the wound he had not known he carried until that evening, when he had had to accept the justice of the word “journalist.” He felt he could talk forever about the state of the theatre, its finances, the stupidity of the government, the philistinism of …

At the studios he was careful to make a joke so that they walked in on the laugh. He was careful that the interview began at once, without conversation with Margaret Ruyen; and that from the moment the green light went on, his voice lost its easy familiarity. He made sure that not one personal note was struck during the interview. Afterwards, Margaret Ruyen, who was pleased, came forward to say so; but he took her aside to say that Miss Coles was tired and needed to be taken home at once: for he knew this must look to Barbara as if he were squaring a producer who had been expecting a different interview. He led Barbara off, her hand held tight in his against his side. “Well,” he said, “we’ve done it, and I don’t think she knows what hit her.”

“Thank you,” she said, “it really was pleasant to talk about something sensible for once.”

He kissed her lightly on the mouth. She returned it, smiling. By now he felt sure that the mood need not slip again, he could hold it.

“There are two things we can do,” he said. “You can come to my club and have a drink. Or I can drive you home and you can give me a drink. I have to go past you.”

“Where do you live?”

“Wimbledon.” He lived, in fact, at Highgate; but she lived in Fulham. He was taking another chance, but by the time she found out, they would be in a position to laugh over his ruse.

“Good,” she said. “You can drop me home then. I have to get up early.” He made no comment. In the taxi he took her hand; it was heavy in his, and he asked: “Does James slave-drive you?”

“I didn’t realise you knew him—no, he doesn’t.”

“Well I don’t know him intimately. What’s he like to work with?”

“Wonderful,” she said at once. “There’s no one I enjoy working with more.”

Jealousy spurted in him. He could not help himself: “Are you having an affair with him?”

She looked: What’s it to do with you? but said: “No, I’m not.”

“He’s very attractive,” he said, with a chuckle of worldly complicity. She said nothing, and he insisted: “If I were a woman I’d have an affair with James.”

It seemed she might very well say nothing. But she remarked: “He’s married.”

His spirits rose in a swoop. It was the first stupid remark she had made. It was a remark of such staggering stupidity that … he let out a humouring snort of laughter, put his arm around her, kissed her, said: “My dear little Babs.”

She said: “Why Babs?”

“Is that the prerogative of James. And of the stagehands?” he could not prevent himself adding.

“I’m only called that at work.” She was stiff inside his arm.

“My dear Barbara, then …” He waited for her to enlighten and explain, but she said nothing. Soon she moved out of his arm, on the pretext of lighting a cigarette. He lit it for her. He noted that his determination to lay her, and at all costs, had come back. They were outside her house. He said quickly: “And now, Barbara, you can make me a cup of coffee and give me a brandy.” She hesitated; but he was out of the taxi, paying, opening the door for her. The house had no lights on, he noted. He said: “We’ll be very quiet so as not to wake the children.”

She turned her head slowly to look at him. She said, flat, replying to his real question: “My husband is away. As for the children, they are visiting friends tonight.” She now went ahead of him to the door of the house. It was a small house, in a
terrace of small and not very pretty houses. Inside a little, bright, intimate hall, she said: “I’ll go and make some coffee. Then, my friend, you must go home because I’m very tired.”

The “my friend” struck him deep, because he had become vulnerable during their comradeship. He said, gabbling: “You’re annoyed with me—oh, please don’t, I’m sorry.”

She smiled, from a cool distance. He saw, in the small light from the ceiling, her extraordinary eyes. “Green” eyes are hazel, are brown with green flecks, are even blue. Eyes are chequered, flawed, changing. Hers were solid green, but really, he had never seen anything like them before. They were like very deep water. They were like—well, emeralds; or the absolute clarity of green in the depths of a tree in summer. And now, as she smiled almost perpendicularly up at him, he saw a darkness come over them. Darkness swallowed the clear green. She said: “I’m not in the least annoyed.” It was as if she had yawned with boredom. “And now I’ll get the things … in there.” She nodded at a white door and left him. He went into a long, very tidy white room that had a narrow bed in one corner, a table covered with drawings, sketches, pencils. Tacked to the walls with drawing pins were swatches of coloured stuffs. Two small chairs stood near a low round table: an area of comfort in the working room. He was thinking: I wouldn’t like it if my wife had a room like this. I wonder what Barbara’s husband …? He had not thought of her till now in relation to her husband, or to her children. Hard to imagine her with a frying pan in her hand, or, for that matter, cosy in the double bed.

A noise outside: he hastily arranged himself, leaning with one arm on the mantelpiece. She came in with a small tray that had cups, glasses, brandy, coffeepot. She looked abstracted. Graham was on the whole flattered by this: it probably meant she was at ease in his presence. He realised he was a little tight and rather tired. Of course, she was tired too; that was why she was vague. He remembered that earlier that evening he had lost a chance by not using her tiredness. Well now, if he were intelligent … She was about to pour coffee. He firmly took the coffeepot out of her hand, and nodded at a chair. Smiling, she obeyed him. “That’s better,” he said. He poured coffee, poured brandy, and pulled the table towards her. She watched him. Then he took her hand, kissed it, patted it, laid it down gently. Yes, he thought, I did that well.

Now, a problem. He wanted to be closer to her, but she was fitted into a damned silly little chair that had arms. If he were to sit by her on the floor …? But no, for him, the big bulky reassuring man, there could be no casual gestures, no informal postures. Suppose I scoop her out of the chair onto the bed? He drank his coffee as he plotted. Yes, he’d carry her to the bed, but not yet.

“Graham,” she said, setting down her cup. She was, he saw with annoyance, looking tolerant. “Graham, in about half an hour I want to be in bed and asleep.”

As she said this, she offered him a smile of amusement at this situation—man and woman manoeuvring, the great comic situation. And with part of himself he could have shared it. Almost, he smiled with her, laughed. (Not till days later he exclaimed to himself: Lord what a mistake I made, not to share the joke with her then: that was where I went seriously wrong.) But he could not smile. His face was frozen, with a stiff pride. Not because she had been watching him plot—the amusement she now offered him took the sting out of that—but because of his revived determination that he was going to have his own way, he was going to have her. He was not going home. But he felt that he held a bunch of keys, and did not know which one to choose.

He lifted the second small chair opposite to Barbara, moving aside the coffee table for this purpose. He sat in this chair, leaned forward, took her two hands, and said: “My dear, don’t make me go home yet, don’t, I beg you.” The trouble was, nothing had happened all evening that could be felt to lead up to these words and his tone—simple, dignified, human being pleading with human being for surcease. He saw himself leaning forward, his big hands swallowing her small ones; he saw his face, warm with the appeal. And he realised he had meant the words he used. They were nothing more than what he felt. He wanted to stay with her because she wanted him to, because he was her colleague, a fellow worker in the arts. He needed this desperately. But she was examining him, curious rather than surprised, and from a critical distance. He heard himself saying: “If James were here, I wonder what you’d do?” His voice was aggrieved; he saw the sudden dark descend over her eyes, and she said: “Graham, would you like some more coffee before you go?”

He said: Tve been wanting to meet you for years. I know a good many people who know you.”

She leaned forward, poured herself a little more brandy, sat back, holding the glass between her two palms on her chest. An odd gesture: Graham felt that this vessel she was cherishing between her hands was herself. A patient, long-suffering gesture. He thought of various men who had mentioned her. He thought of Jack Kennaway, wavered, panicked, said: “For instance, Jack Kennaway.”

And now, at the name, an emotion lit her eyes—what was it? He went on, deliberately testing this emotion, adding to it: ? had dinner with him last week—oh, quite by chance!—and he was talking about you.”

“Was he?”

He remembered he had thought her sullen, all those years ago. Now she seemed defensive, and she frowned. He said: “In fact he spent most of the evening talking about you.”

She said in short, breathless sentences, which he realised were due to anger: “I can very well imagine what he says. But surely you can’t think I enjoy being reminded that …” She broke off, resenting him, he saw, because he forced her down on to a level she despised. But it was not his level either: it was all her fault, all hers! He couldn’t remember not being in control of a situation with a woman for years. Again he felt like a man teetering on a tightrope. He said, trying to make good use of Jack Kennaway, even at this late hour: “Of course, he’s a charming boy, but not a man at all.”