The Backward Shadow (3 page)

‘Idiot,
idiot
!' I said a moment later, my face turned down
against his shoulder and our arms round each other too tightly for normal breathing.

‘Who's an idiot? You don't mean to stand there and tell me you didn't know who to expect?'

‘How could I?'

He drew away and looked at me, the blackbird's face that wasn't like a blackbird any more wrinkling up with astonishment. ‘You mean there's somebody
else
who sends stupid cryptic messages instead of just writing a sensible letter saying “I'm coming”?' he asked on a bleat.

‘I thought Dottie?'

‘Dottie schmottie.' He sniffed the pot-roast-scented air. ‘Ah, Bisto! Let's be 'avin' it. I've walked all the way from the village.'

‘But it's miles!'

‘You're telling me?'

‘You're mad!'

‘You're telling me?'

He kissed my cheek lingeringly, and then my lips briefly, and looked at me for a moment. His wise bright eyes seemed to take in every detail, seeing my face and what lay behind it with equal ease.

‘You're all right, aren't you?' he asked, softly but with some surprise. ‘I thought your letters sounded almost too cheerful, but I see now you didn't lie.'

‘I never lie.'

‘That's fairly true, now I come to think of it.'

‘It's not to my credit. I can't put a brave face on anything. If I'm miserable I show it. As you know.'

‘I never did like these noble selfless women who never share anything important like misery,' he said. ‘It makes a man feel left out in the cold. That's one thing you never did with me.' He hugged me again. With each minute that passed I was sinking back deeper and deeper into my love for him. It gave me a panicky feeling. I'd been congratulating myself during the last few months on the completeness with which I had let him go, just when I needed him most—I
had
felt
secretly rather noble and selfless about it, actually. I hadn't wanted to be an emotional burden to him, just when he was beginning to find his feet as a writer and as a man, so I'd waved him an apparently cheery goodbye and gone off to the country with David, leaving Toby to the rigours of his basement flat in Holland Park and his second novel. We'd written occasionally—brief, terse notes from him, ending always ‘Love, Toby,' and from me gay, flippant letters which were intended to convey how well I was making out by myself and how free from responsibility he was. It hadn't been too difficult, because I
was
happy most of the time, but whenever I got his letters or sat down to write one to him I would remember with poignant clarity those extraordinary weeks of our love in the L-shaped room in Fulham, a love which had sprung on me from behind, so to speak, and then grown and deepened as naturally as roots going into the earth until he was absolutely a fundamental part of my life. At such times I would feel the stretched-elastic tension still there between us, dragging, dragging … and the flippancy and carelessness hadn't always gone easily onto paper.

And now here he was, his hands absently slipping up my arms under the sleeves of my cardigan, his eyes watching every tell-tale change of expression on my face. He did not have to look up or down to meet my eyes, in fact if I leant straight forward it was not his lips I kissed, but the tip of his beaky nose. I did it now, from habit, and suddenly he caught his breath and took me in his arms and we stood there in the little tiled hall, oblivious, kissing and kissing …

‘I didn't intend any of
this
nonsense,' he said at last, a little gasp audible in his voice. ‘I just came to see you.'

‘Of course.'

‘And to be fed.'

‘Naturally.'

‘
Not
to resume intimate relations,' he said severely, like a domestic court magistrate.

‘Certainly not. That's quite understood.'

We went into the living-room with our arms companionably round each other.

‘How lovely and cosy it is here!' he exclaimed, looking round. ‘What a difference after my place! An open fire, and comfortable armchairs … Gosh, if I'd known there was all this, I'd have overcome my natural reluctance to see you and wished myself onto you ages ago.'

‘Why didn't you come before?' I heard myself asking.

He grinned up at me from where he'd crouched in front of the blazing logs.

‘I had nothing to show you before,' he said.

He reached into his pocket, and brought out a small book with drab paper covers.

‘What's that?' I said, although I knew.

In the firelight his face was glowing, and all the shadows struck off it so that he looked about sixteen, or even younger, like a thin beaky little boy with tousled black hair and his wrists growing out of his jacket. He held the book up to me, his lips curled up in the tight little grin of pleasure.

I'd often wondered about the novel he had been struggling to write when we were both living in that bug-run in Fulham. This, then, was it—the finished product of all those months of driving himself against the grain of his own self-confessed indolence, dredging up the wisdom that lay beneath his apparently frivolous nature, and sweating out a style which could not be traced to the despised articles from which he had earned a thin living. It felt strange, almost it gave me a sensual thrill, to hold the solid little blocks of pages in my hands, to riffle through them and see the black streaks flipping past, each streak a word written by Toby, accepted, acknowledged as worth-while and printed by other, unknown men who had set their favourable judgement on his talent.

I crouched beside him suddenly, hugged his small head in the crook of my arm, and kissed him. I was moved, for a moment, almost to tears of pleasure.

‘Do you like the title?'

I hadn't looked at it, but now I did. It was
Brave Coward
.

‘Ouch! No.'

He rose on his knees with a roar. ‘
WHAT
!? Why the hell not? What's wrong with it?'

‘It's awful, that's all. I hate those two-contradictory-word titles, like I hate those the-this-and-the-that ones they're always using for films.'

‘The what and the what? What are you talking about?'

‘The-Young-and-the-Squalid, The-Vile-and-the-Sacred, The-Bright-and-the-Brutish.'

‘Never heard of them,' he said blankly, looking at me as if I'd gone mad.

‘You
know
what I mean—titles like that.'

‘But
Brave Coward
isn't—'

‘
Toby
. Look, what does it matter? It's a very
catchy
title—'

‘
CATCHY
!' he yelled. ‘Christ! It's not a pop tune! Catchy! The publishers said it was
absolutely brilliant
.'

‘It probably is. I'm probably crazy.'

‘There's no bloody probably about it!'

‘Okay, then.'

‘Okay!'

There was a long, ill-tempered silence. He took the proof-copy away from me protectively and pretended to be glancing through it. I could almost see the steam rising from him.

‘It's a marvellous title,' he mumbled at last.

‘Yes, darling.'

Suddenly he turned round, flung the book aside, and with a loud snarl of frustrated fury threw himself on top of me. I found myself on my back on the hearthrug, having my head bumped against the floor.

‘Toby! Let go! Get off my stomach, you're curdling my milk!'

‘Funny place to keep it. Say uncle.'

‘Uncle!'

‘Say it's the best title in living memory!'

‘“Uncle” is the best title in living memory.'

‘Aaargh!'

He rose in disgust and stood over me, the book in his hand.

‘You're a nice friend!' he said. ‘I might as well throw the damn thing in the fire as show it to you. I suppose you'll pick holes in every blasted line!'

‘I won't! I—'

‘You won't, because I'm not going to show it to you!'

‘Oh, darling—'

‘What?'

‘I half-think you mean it. You are a baby still.'

‘Don't try me too far! Since you knew me, let me tell you, I've become absolutely the most adult adult I know. I'm so mature I had to shave my beard off for fear of it turning white. Is a lioness infantile because she springs to the defence of her cubs, when some crass, callow, invidious, insidious female
jackal
creeps up and tries to bite their titles off? What do you know about titles, anyway?'

‘Nothing, Toby. Let's forget it.'

‘You're so brilliant, what would you have called it?'

‘How can I—'

‘Just give me one better one. Anything.'

‘The Brave and the Cowardly.'

He turned away, waving his arms wildly as if invoking God's aid. Then he spun round, did an elaborate windup like a baseball pitcher, and flung the book straight into the fire.

For a moment we both remained motionless, paralysed. Then, as one man, we flung ourselves forward. I grabbed the tongs, he the poker, and in a second we had raked the scorched volume out of the wood-ash. Toby sank onto the rug again, and closed his eyes. He'd actually gone pale.

‘Are you completely potty?' I ventured to ask curiously.

‘No. I just can't throw. I meant it to miss.'

He sank slowly down until he was lying with his head in my lap. I stroked his silky black hair and after a while he began purring softly, as of old.

‘I really don't seem to have grown up much, do I?' he said humbly at last.

‘No, thank God.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘When I saw you after that long gap—when Terry fetched you and you came to the L-shaped room, the day I had the baby, and when you came to the hospital afterwards—I could see you'd changed. You were so self-assured. I knew it was a good thing, and yet … I was afraid you'd got too serious, that you'd disciplined the fun out of yourself …' I leaned down and kissed his mouth upside-down. He reached up to touch my face and said ‘Another thing I haven't disciplined out of myself is wanting you. You do look funny the wrong way up.'

‘Let's eat, eh?'

‘Good God, haven't we done that yet? I've stopped being hungry.'

‘That's temper.'

‘It's not.' He drew my head down again and kissed me in a special way he had which made my blood beat suddenly and almost painfully upward, like a steep musical crescendo. The effect behind my closed eyelids was as if a mountain had abruptly risen out of a calm sea, lifting me off the surface of things into a rarified isolation, all commonplaces sinking below me into unimportance and oblivion.

I opened my eyes and looked at Toby. He was frowning deeply, as if concentrating on subduing a sharp pain. His body was utterly still. After a long moment of waiting, he looked up at me and smiled, quickly and painfully, and touched my arm as if in reassurance. He was breathing heavily.

‘No,' he said. ‘I don't think so.'

My first reaction was one of unmixed and bitter disappointment. ‘Why not?' I cried childishly. He smiled and leaned his face against my shoulder.

‘Because, my dear, my darling Jane,' he said softly, ‘all it needs is that, for me to be utterly in love with you again, and you, correct me if I'm wrong, with me. And that would be less than wise.' I said nothing, feeling too desolate to speak, and after a moment he went on:

‘Apart from anything else, I haven't the wherewithal to keep a wife and son. Or two. Yet.'

‘What about this?' I inquired in a faint voice, indicating the scorched proof.

‘A hundred advance, half on sig, half on pub. The sig half's spent, the pub half's mortgaged to the hilt. Do you know how many novels are published every year? Thousands. You only make money from movie sales.'

Trying to recover from what felt like the deathblow of his not wanting to make love to me, I said facetiously ‘I can see it on the marquees now—Toby Coleman's
Brave Coward
—'

‘Cohen, if you don't mind,' he said quietly. He straightened up, pushing back his tousled hair. ‘And that's another thing.'

‘If you
really
want to insult me, try implying that
that's
a factor.'

He looked at me, all the sparkle gone. ‘It can be a factor without you knowing it,' he said.

We stared at each other. Suddenly I shook myself free of the spell of depression I was enmeshed in.

‘I can't think why you're going to all this trouble to explain why you can't marry me,' I said brightly. ‘I don't even remember asking you.' I saw his face soften and begin to lean helplessly towards me, and I got quickly to my feet. ‘My lovely dinner, worth at least three crossed spoons and forks, is now a cinder. Go to the table and wait while I bring you your nice crunchy charcoal.' I went into the kitchen, ran the end of the roller-towel under the cold tap, and held my face in it until the water wasn't cold any more. Then I served the meal. That's the good thing about a pot-roast, it doesn't spoil with keeping, and the wine helped. Toby spent the night in the guest-room and neither of us slept a wink, and in the morning he went away again, leaving the charred novel for me to read. It was so good it hurt me. I wanted to be proud of him but as he wasn't mine, I couldn't. That was when I decided that I would have to go further than Surrey if I were really going to learn self-sufficiency.

MY
father sat down heavily in his favourite chair.

‘Jane dear,' he said seriously, ‘are you going mad, or is it—it probably is—me?'

‘It's me, Father,' I said calmly.

‘Well, that's a relief.' He took his pipe out of his jacket pocket, on the outside of which I could see a dark-brown burn mark.

‘Have you been setting yourself on fire again?' I asked severely.