‘Is it something bad?’
‘No, no, good! Oh, do guess, Matt! Something better than anything, the best present you could have.’
‘Could I lift it?’
‘No! Not that kind of present.’
‘Daddy.’
Idiot. You thoughtless bloody halfwit. Just because you don’t care if you never see him again.
‘No, darling. But you’re warm in a way. It’s a person.’
His face changed. ‘Not — is it Tolly?’
‘YES!’
He let out an inarticulate sound and threw himself on her. When he spoke again his voice was high and shrill and his freckled cheeks were flushed scarlet.
‘When? When? When?’
‘She’s coming. I don’t know when exactly. But you can start looking forward to it because it’ll be soon.’ But instead of leaving it at that, she had to go on. ‘And when she comes, you and she are going to live in Scotland. You’ll stay with Granny and go back to your old school, and in the holidays you can come to London, or I’ll come up to Scotland, and we’ll do all sorts of lovely things together.’
His wild joy faded a little as he took this in.
‘You mean I’ll be living with Granny and Tolly and you’ll be here?’
‘Darling, listen. I have to earn money.’
‘Can’t you earn money in Scotland?’
‘Not so well.’
He stared at her, all the excitement gone from his face.
‘Would you rather be with Tanya than with me?’
‘Darling, no. It’s not like that.’
‘What is it like then?’
‘I know it’s hard for you to understand, but I want a better sort of job. I want to do something interesting and exciting, something worthwhile. And there are more of those kinds of jobs in London.’
It sounded, even in her own ears, very thin. Drowned out, almost, by the sudden hollow sound of the warning bell.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
They settled down, with difficulty, to wait till Maggie had saved enough for Tolly’s fare.
Maggie discovered that she was quite adequate to the challenges of market researching. The work in general wore her out physically, at least until she got used to all the walking, bored her rather a lot, but afforded her not inconsiderable satisfaction. She could do it; she had one foot on the ladder of self-sufficiency and self-respect.
She did the legwork from nine till three, then devoted the next few hours to Matt and did the paperwork at night. This did not leave much time for Tanya, which both troubled Maggie and relieved her. Being in her friend’s company at that moment did not give much subjective pleasure. Yet when, one Saturday, Tanya announced that Oliver would be coming to lunch and that it was a ‘party’ to which Maggie was invited, she was pleased.
‘And there will be champagne,’ said Tanya. ‘Oliver got the part.’
‘Are you glad?’ Maggie asked.
‘What can you mean?’
‘You know what I mean. In your situation, I might not like anyone having a job.’
‘I am not like that.’
‘Sorry. I thought everyone was.’
Tanya waited a moment while Maggie drank some coffee and then said, in a suddenly dangerous voice, ‘You are just waiting for it, aren’t you, Maggie?’
‘Waiting for what?’
‘For me to — to break down again. To have hysterics. To take to drink or something.’
Maggie put down her mug.
‘I’m actually waiting for you to look as squarely at the situation as you’re now looking at me.’
‘I’m looking at you because sometimes one sees even old friends as if for the first time.’
‘Oh dear! What have I done to bring this on?’
‘You don’t like Oliver, do you?’
Much startled by this unlooked-for turn in the conversation, Maggie blinked and said, ‘Well —’
‘I knew it.’
‘Now, just a minute! Give me a chance. I don’t dislike him, of course I don’t! I just — wish — he would be a little more — supportive of you. He seems to me to be thinking mainly of himself in all this.’
‘The best way he can help me is by helping himself,’ said Tanya with unTanyalike sententiousness.
‘How does that work?’
‘Well, Maggie, when one is lovers with somebody, it is a partnership, so that if one person has work it is in a way as if both did.’
‘I don’t believe that’s true in your case. What possible comfort can you get out of Oliver having a job when you haven’t?’ asked Maggie brutally. ‘Anyway, I don’t quite know what you call being lovers and partners. Doesn’t that involve living together?’
‘Tell me, Maggie. What is your definition of friendship?’
These swerves in topic were beginning to unnerve Maggie, but she answered as best she could off the top of her head. ‘I suppose — giving support and — sharing things —’
‘May I tell you mine? Friends are for making you feel good. And you are being a very bad friend this morning, by my definition.’ She got up with her dishes and walked statuesquely through into the kitchen.
‘Why is Tanya being funny?’ Matt asked when they had gone into their room to smarten up enough to match the arrangements for lunch.
Maggie had long ago stopped trying to pull the conventional wool over Matt’s eyes with platitudes when he showed this kind of acuity. She simply said, ‘Tanya is having problems.’
‘Worse than yours?’ Maggie had begun, not without doubts, to confide at least the surface things to Matt as they lay in bed in the mornings for the routine fifteen minutes they allowed themselves between the ringing of the alarm and getting-up time.
‘In a way. You see, Tanya’s never been married, so she’s always depended on herself for money. Actresses don’t tend to save much, and as you see, she’s wildly generous.’
‘She mostly buys things for herself.’
‘Only lately. Because she’s unhappy. People often do that. But having us here at all is generous, Matt. I’m not paying rent, even. She wouldn’t let me.’
She paused, reflecting. It occurred to her that her own situation in this flat was only tenable as long as she did conform to Tanya’s definition of friendship, no matter what that was. As soon as she ceased to do so she would have to move out. At the moment, the latter seemed the preferred option; it was all getting too complicated, too wearing… Maggie simply didn’t feel capable of coping with Tanya’s problems on top of her own. Pulling the wire-bristled brush through her bushy hair and staring at herself in the little baroque mirror Tanya had hung on the wall for her, Maggie thought: I’ll do my sums tonight. I can’t keep us on what I’m earning now. How much would I need, not to do it well but to do it at all? More than I’ll ever earn in market research, that’s for sure.
When she emerged, nicely dressed, at 12.30, the doorbell was ringing. This was odd because of course Oliver had his own key.
‘I’ll go!’ shouted Matt.
‘Probably some man to read the meter,’ Tanya surmised.
But it wasn’t. Matt came back leading a total stranger, a slightly overweight young looking man of about thirty-five with dark blond hair neatly combed into a wave, and horn-rimmed glasses. He was sharply dressed in flannels and a rather loud tweed jacket. He glanced at Maggie, then round the room, and finally at Tanya. He gave the impression of wanting to shade his eyes.
‘Hallo!’ he said, advancing on her bravely with outstretched hand. ‘I’m Ronnie Makepeace.’
‘Are you really?’ asked Tanya coolly. She allowed her hand to be shaken, and then waited expectantly. The stranger waited too. After what seemed like several minutes of silence, he repeated his name with a crestfallen inflection. Both women continued to look quite blank.
‘Didn’t Oliver tell you he’d invited me to lunch?’
Tanya shot Maggie a look, which Maggie easily interpreted as one of bewilderment and annoyance.
‘No, h
e didn’t, to tell the truth. Who are you?’
‘Really, that’s too bad of him. How embarrassing. Well, I’m a sort of producer.’
There was a second’s pause, and then Tanya opened up her petals like some exotic and possibly flesh-eating orchid in a time-lapse film. She covered the ground between them in one swoop, gathered Mr Makepeace up and bore him to the sofa, where she seated him amid the jewel-cushions and had a glass in his hand before he had contrived to draw breath.
‘But how very fascinating, Mr Makepeace —’
‘Ronnie —’
‘Ronnie.’ She gazed at him, entranced and entrancing. ‘Perhaps Oliver wanted you as a surprise for me! It is sweet of you to come. Are you producing Oliver’s play?’
He gagged briefly on his drink.
‘I say, this is terribly strong — No. Actually, I’m not.’
‘So how did you meet him?’
‘I produced him ages ago. In a farce.’
Tanya tinkled with laughter.
‘Oliver in farce! Really and truly? Dropped trousers, curates in bed, lots and lots of doors? I can’t imagine it! Can you, Maggie?’
She turned for one brief moment away from her unexpected guest and gave Maggie a frenetic, cross-eyed look of appeal. Maggie took the hint. Shepherding Matt, she melted away behind the partition and got on with the lunch — an act of pure unvarnished friendship to make up for her earlier lapse. She would have liked to be around herself if, as Tanya all too clearly hoped, this was some kind of ad hoc casting session masterminded by Oliver.
But after about ten minutes, she detected through Matt’s chatter an altered note in Tanya’s eager voice, and soon she heard her footsteps approaching the kitchenette.
‘Must just glance at the petit marmite…’
The petit marmite was in no need of glancing at — Maggie had everything well under control — so she turned to wave Tanya back to Ronnie, but Tanya’s face was a study in disgust and disappointment. She wrote in the air the letters ‘N.B.G.’
‘Why?’ Maggie mouthed back.
‘Left the theatre. Gone into television.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ Maggie whispered, making a great noise with the dishes.
‘Darling, don’t play Cinderella!’ Tanya cried suddenly, nearly making Maggie drop the plates. ‘Go and talk to Ronnie while Matt and I deal with the garlic bread!’ She was writing in pencil on the shiny top of her small Easiwork, ‘BEC. HE’S IN TV NEWS’.
Maggie snatched the pencil, scrawled a four-letter word and scurried out to keep Ronnie from feeling neglected. Her main feeling was one of annoyance with Oliver. Why on earth had he lumbered Tanya with this perfectly useless stranger who would only spoil their intimate little celebration without even the possibility of being of the least help? Probably some aberrant impulse, born of Oliver’s total insensitivity to Tanya’s basic needs…
She chatted to Ronnie politely. He was rather nice, in a boyish, self-satisfied kind of way. He sat with his knees apart and the soles of his shoes together, expounding about the still comparatively new and innovative news service provided by Independent Television, which, he rather smugly explained, had broken a lot of fresh ground, and ‘really made the old stick-in-the-muds at the Beeb sit up’. Its newscasters were not mere ciphers but personalities in their own right; its reporters had developed a new technique of street interviewing and hard-hitting questions; and on top of that, they were giving radical new opportunities to women.
‘Why, have you any female newsreaders?’
‘Newscasters,’ he corrected her. ‘No, not so far, but we do have a woman producer — Welsh, swears like a navvy —’
‘She doesn’t sound very feminine.’
‘No reason why women shouldn’t swear if they feel like it; it’s an aspect of equality. And of course, we were the first to have girls as reporters.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Maggie. ‘I think I’ve seen one. She always seems to do the sillier stuff.’
Ronnie bridled visibly. ‘No, no, nonsense! Well … of course it’s more appropriate for a woman to do the fashion shows, the royals, the human-interest stuff and so on —’
‘That’s what I meant.’
‘But she has to be ready to tackle the hard news too! Take yesterday,’ he said, settling into his chair with a wriggle of his quite large behind. ‘That plane wreck. Fantastic! Came down smack on a village, mercifully not far from London. And at teatime. What luck! We just managed to rush a crew out there, do an into-camera piece and interview some witnesses, and rush the film to the lab by DR in time for the early bulletin —’
‘Did a girl go out on that story?’
‘What? — Oh, yes! That’s what I was going to tell you. Great stuff. There she stood in her sweater-and-pearls and not so sensible shoes, in this smashed-up village street in the midst of all the wreckage and bodies —’
‘Bodies?’ asked Maggie in horror.
He drooped a little. ‘Well, no. To be truthful, the actual bodies had all been cleared away before she got there. But for all you could see on the screen, it could easily have been bits, mixed up with all that rubble.’ He was so carried away, he didn’t notice how Maggie was looking at him. ‘Of course, the news editor wouldn’t have sent her on a story like that, only there happened to be no one else in the newsroom. And in the end it worked out marvellously. Cameraman had the sense to do a couple of cutaways on her face. She looked really, you know, stressed, moved.’ His cheeks swelled like pink bubble-gum with pride. ‘You’d never get any of those po-faced male reporters at the Beeb showing a bit of sentiment on a story; they’re like so many bloody automatons.’
‘What experience do you have to have, to be a reporter on TV?’ Maggie asked, her curiosity at last aroused.
‘It’s astonishing what varied backgrounds our reporters have. One or two old lags from Fleet Street, of course. Couple of ex-lawyers — great training for grilling the politicians! We’ve got a new boy straight from Oxford, but he’s not up to much, bit wet.’
‘But the girl?’
‘We’ve got two. One graduated to us from steam radio. The younger one, who did the plane-crash, I think was in showbiz.’
Maggie sat up. ‘You mean, an actress?’
‘Yes.’ He seemed defensive. ‘Some quite serious people get stage training. Why not?’
‘No reason. None at all,’ said Maggie thoughtfully.
Oliver arrived at last, glowing with triumph and an armful of flowers and quite oblivious of having blundered. They had a rather brittle little lunch party round the revised table, but the champagne, Maggie noted, stayed in the fridge. Then Maggie prepared to remove herself and Matt, as she had earlier promised.
But Tanya had abandoned her plans. She came into Maggie’s room and whispered, ‘No post-prandial beddy-byes today. You might as well stay for coffee, not to mention helping with the dishes.’
‘Don’t blame Oliver. Perhaps he didn’t know Ronnie had changed jobs.’
‘Of course he bloody well knew! Wait till I get him alone.’
Ronnie took his time, but he left at last. Maggie saw him down to the front door and they shook hands.
‘Thanks for telling us about your work,’ she said. ‘It was all news to me.’ He laughed uproariously at her little joke. She felt a bit sorry for him. He must be pretty thick-skinned not to have guessed how Tanya felt.
‘Why don’t you come along one evening and see for yourself?’ he was saying. ‘We’re just near the Aldwych. Come on Friday; I’ll take you up to the studio and you can watch the late bulletin go out. It’s quite exciting.’
When was the last time a man had asked her out, even on this basis? A hundred years ago?
‘All right. I’d like to.’
‘What about bringing your boy?’
Now Maggie definitely warmed to him.
‘Thank you, that is kind of you. He’d love it, I’m sure.’
She went back up the stairs slowly, pondering. As she reached the landing out
side the flat, Matt came out.
‘They’re fighting,’ he said.
She listened. The voices inside were not unduly raised. ‘No they’re not —’
‘They will be soon. Tanya’s cross.’
God, I wish I had my own place! she thought. It was very difficult, living tangled in somebody else’s fringes. As she and Matt crept along the wall of the big room like mice, trying to be invisible, she felt as if they were cutting through some tangible atmosphere. At the far end, Tanya and Oliver were sitting opposite each other, not yet shouting, quite.
‘He’s not even in the business any more! How could you have thought he’d be any use to me?’
‘Why dear darling girl, because he’s “not in the business”. You’ve got to face facts.’
‘What facts? What facts?’
‘Ronnie is in a position to help you.’
‘Help me how? I don’t understand what you’re talking about!’
As Maggie and Matt reached, and slid through, their bedroom door, Maggie heard Oliver say, ‘Their older female reporter is leaving, and they’re going to hold auditions for —’
Maggie shut the door swiftly. It was insufficiently thick to cut off Tanya’s barely-articulate shriek of fury, ‘Audition? Me? To interview people in the street? Are you completely —’
Matt was looking at her philosophically.
‘You see?’ he whispered. ‘I told you.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Maggie was glad she hadn’t got to ask Tanya to babysit that Friday night. It was nearly a week since the lunch-party, but the mood was still strained. Living with a person in Tanya’s state of mind is fairly hard graft at the best of times, and Maggie’s times were not of the best; she was finding it increasingly difficult to show proper sympathy and to fulfil Tanya’s criteria of friendship — especially since she suddenly found herself playing pig in the middle, with Oliver trying to get her on his side.
‘I simply couldn’t come to lunch and celebrate my new job without doing something for Tanya,’ he explained to Maggie over the phone. ‘Why can’t she realise she’ll have to gravitate into some other branch of the media? She’ll never get another legitimate acting job as long as she’s blacklisted by Equity. Our agent told her so very frankly when Tan phoned her.’
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