The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life

by William Nicholson

  Jesus where did he learn this monstrous fidelity? Nick the bolter, Nick the heartbreaker, where are you now?

  Wind ruffling his hair, sky shining round him like a halo. Lines on either side of his mouth. His eyes on her, never leaving her, needing her, wanting her. Old lovers are the best, they say. Anxiety shed, mutual desire pre-established, bodies no surprise. Except for the effects of passing time and childbirth and breastfeeding, nothing as firm as it once was. There was a time when she was so proud to hold his naked body in her arms. Her own naked body her gift.

  His naked body in my arms.

  Look away, Laura. Look away now and never look back.

  ‘We’d better get back.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘We’ll go now.’

  Then he kisses her. This is a non sequitur, she thinks, as she feels his arms pull her close, his lips find her lips. She does not resist or push him away. That would be unkind. And she has in a way invited it.

  Oh, this is a kiss. Long time since I’ve been kissed like it matters. Except now that it’s come, it doesn’t matter after all.

  He holds her in his arms, her head on his shoulder now, and she sees the green playing fields of the school in the valley below. White dots of schoolboys playing cricket. Could be Jack down there.

  She feels no guilt because she knows this is an end not a beginning. She’s kissing goodbye to her youth, and to the hurt she has hoarded for too long.

  So they part, and as she lets him go she feels the hope leave him at last.

  They follow the descending path down the flank of the hill.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘You must have known I could never just walk out on my life.’

  ‘I can do it.’

  ‘You’ve got less to hold you.’

  ‘I have nothing to hold me.’ He throws her a look in which for the first time he allows her to glimpse his desolation. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You’ve got your work. Your works of art.’

  ‘I buy and sell. That’s all.’

  ‘Then do something else.’

  He gives a soft laugh.

  ‘This was my something else.’

  He has felt the brush of her pity in that kiss as a fatal wound. He makes no more attempts to persuade her. He is withdrawing into whatever fortified place remains within him, for darkness is descending, and with night comes enemy attack. He wants to be gone from her now.

  She drives him back to his hotel.

  ‘Don’t let it be another twenty years,’ she says.

  He gives a half smile, a shrug, and turns away. As he goes up the steps into the hotel he raises one hand in a backward wave, but he does not look round.

  When Laura takes off her walking jacket in the hall at home she finds the envelope he gave her. Inside the envelope is a plane ticket, a First Class open-dated return flight to Los Angeles, costing $12,600.

  54

  The animated Coca Cola bottle sails majestic as a space ship above the traffic. As it turns it grows in size, until the droplets can be seen gleaming on its glass flanks, promising cool refreshment to the swarm of people gushing out of the underpasses, bunching at the road crossings, streaming down the pavements. Then when the image can come no closer it dissolves into red lettering, a simple breathtakingly outrageous claim: the Real Thing.

  Henry crouches on the pavement at the corner of Regent Street and Piccadilly by the Clydesdale Bank, seeking the exact point at which an approaching pedestrian’s head is level with the illuminated advertisement high above. Pale sunlight fails to dim the show of coloured lights.

  ‘This is where we do it,’ he says to Christina, who stands behind him notebook at the ready. ‘Has Aidan arrived yet?’

  ‘Just got here.’

  They walk back together to Jermyn Street, where the crew minibus is parked in a specially reserved space outside Rowley’s restaurant. Ray and Oliver are peering in the window of Trumper’s, excited by the array of male grooming aids. Aidan Massey is standing by the minibus, watching himself in the tinted window while Rowan works on his hair.

  ‘Yo, Henry,’ Aidan says, not taking his eyes off his reflection. ‘What’s the word on the shirt?’

  He’s wearing a deep blue open-necked shirt. Henry barely glances at it.

  ‘Looks great, Aidan.’

  Ray comes over to him.

  ‘So where’s the shot?’

  ‘We’re going to do it on the walk.’ He continues to Aidan. ‘You’ll be surrounded by other pedestrians, the bustle of the big city etcetera.’

  ‘Sure, boss. No sweat.’

  ‘Milly’ll come and get you when we’re ready. Won’t be long. Christina, stay here with Aidan while we set up, will you?’

  Christina looks a question at Henry: what have I done to deserve this? But Henry’s already moving on with Ray and the crew.

  Already moving on. A smooth untroubled motion, as if he’s floating over the steep-pitched roofs and sharp spires of the world. The events of the weekend, trivial though they may have been, have brought about a change in him. In his heart Henry has resigned from the great game of self-assertion. His anomalous position no longer has the power to hurt him. He performs his duties today solely as a courtesy.

  Remarkable the power you accrue when you stop caring. With power comes tolerance. Let Aidan Massey primp his hair, seek admiration from car windows. I smile and move on. I’m out of here, brother. I’m not at your service any more.

  His gaze lingers on the people in the street. So many of them wear the expression he knows so well, the empty faces made featureless by the unending succession of unrewarded days. They do their best work for the glory of others. Afraid, they sell themselves as cloak-bearers to follow in the train of those few who dare to demand lives of their own. But what they fear is less terrible than what they have.

  Let me be real.

  ‘Set up here, Mo. On the deck. You’re lining up Aidan with the Coke ad.’

  ‘I’ll radio mike him,’ says Oliver, ‘but it’s going to be guide track only. You’re going to have to post-synch it.’

  ‘Let’s see what we get, okay? It’s only a short piece.’

  The crew sets up the camera. Henry crosses the bus lane and walks back to the camera several times so that they can mark the focus points.

  ‘You’ll want cover,’ says Ray.

  Henry nods to Milly to fetch Aidan. He stands looking down Regent Street at the stumpy silhouette of a tower in the distance. To his surprise he realizes it must be the Houses of Parliament on the far side of St James Park.

  A lanky youth accosts him.

  ‘What you filming then?’

  ‘Educational video.’

  The youth drifts off.

  Aidan joins them, murmuring his lines under his breath. Henry explains the shot, demonstrates the start and finish spots, both of which have been marked on the pavement by Mo in yellow camera tape. Aidan stands for a moment gazing across Piccadilly Circus at the animated Coke ad, and sees its message flash up. He nods in appreciation.

  ‘Nice one, Henry.’

  They rehearse twice, then they shoot.

  ‘Images have the power to create reality,’ Aidan Massey declaims to the faraway camera as he strides through the crowd of pedestrians. ‘Images trigger responses we can’t always control. Desire. Envy. Anger. Do we really want to be manipulated like this? Maybe we should rise up against the images, tear down the advertisements, smash the glowing screens, sweep the visual pollution from our streets. If you find yourself nodding as you listen to me, then you’re an iconoclast. In the seventeenth century you’d have been smashing stained-glass windows.’

  Inevitably there are glitches. On the first take Aidan is obscured by a man with a child on his back. On the second take Aidan mistakes his cue, and by the time the camera has completed its pull from the Coke ad he has already started his walk. The third take is acceptable, but Aidan believes he can do better. The fourth take also dissatisfies him.

  ‘It’s fine,’ says
Henry.

  ‘Why would I want fine when I can get brilliant? Where’s your fucking ambition, Henry?’

  He speaks without aggression, but also without the slightest concern for Henry’s feelings. He has not reckoned on the change in Henry.

  ‘Your show, Aidan. Your glory. Why should I give a fuck?’

  This too spoken in the same easy tone. Aidan is amazed, then outraged.

  ‘If you don’t give a fuck, what the fuck are you doing here?’

  ‘Christ knows. Inertia, I suppose.’

  ‘That is not sodding good enough!’ Aidan’s rage is growing positively religious. ‘We’re making a top-quality show here and I expect total professionalism!’

  The crew stand round with their eyes on the ground, savouring every word. Christina tries to intervene, but Aidan Massey brushes her aside.

  ‘No, Christina, this is serious. How am I supposed to have confidence in a director who tells me he doesn’t give a fuck?’

  ‘He doesn’t mean it, Aidan.’

  ‘Then he’d better convince me,’ says Aidan, staring at Henry, breathing hard.

  ‘Or what, Aidan?’

  ‘Or I ask for you to be replaced.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then you’re fucking history, boyo.’

  ‘Then I’m history.’ Henry grins at that. ‘Sounds good to me.’

  He turns on his heel and strides away from them across Piccadilly Circus. He hears the beating of drums, he hears the singing of angels. He’s walking on air. He’s whizzing.

  As he reaches Shaftesbury Avenue, moving fast, no idea where he’s going other than away, he hears footsteps pounding up behind him, and there’s Aidan Massey.

  ‘Slow down,’ he says, panting.

  ‘It’s okay, Aidan. You win. I’m gone.’

  ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘Barry’ll sort something out. You’ll be fine.’

  ‘You know the Bar Italia? Best coffee in London.’

  * * *

  It’s a traditional old-style Italian bar on Frith Street. Three or four metal tables outside with people drinking coffee in the pale sunlight. A long narrow room inside, mirrored all down the wall facing the bar. Henry has no desire for a coffee, but Aidan Massey won’t take no for an answer. He herds him into the bar and orders two double espressos and sits them down on two high leatherette stools by the mirror wall. There’s a narrow Formica shelf for the coffees.

  ‘Okay,’ says Aidan Massey. ‘I’m an asshole.’ He says it the American way. ‘You think I don’t know it? There’s nothing you could tell me about myself, nothing, that I don’t already know.’

  ‘Aidan, you don’t have to justify yourself to me.’

  ‘I know I don’t have to. But I want to. Ask me why.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re good. Because you’re so good you make me good. Because I don’t want to lose you.’

  ‘You said in front of the entire crew that you could do my job better than me.’

  ‘I was pissed off. I’m no director. To tell the truth, you’re not that hot as a director either. What you are is an amazingly talented writer. You think subtle and you write plain. That’s rare, Henry. I try to do it. Sometimes I manage it. But you – you’re a natural.’

  Henry hears him with astonishment. This is not the Aidan Massey he knows. The shock is not the late rush of praise: it’s the revelation of Aidan’s self-knowledge.

  ‘So,’ Aidan goes on, ‘big surprise, I want to steal your stuff. Why wouldn’t I? It’s great stuff. And, big surprise, you don’t like that. But we can sort this fucker out. We can do a deal.’

  ‘Jesus, Aidan, I wish you’d talked like this before.’

  ‘Why would I? If I can get it easy, why bleed for it? You think I like telling you this shit? I tell this to nobody. How’s the coffee?’

  ‘It’s good.’

  ‘Best coffee in London. Listen to me, Henry. I don’t know what you think I am, but whatever it is, I’m not that guy. Here’s who I am. I’m my own act of fucking will. I’m one-hundred-per cent self-invention. My dad sold greetings cards. We lived on a Wimpey estate. I’m not even working class for Christ’s sake, just low-achieving, high-conforming, medi-fucking-ocrity. Then one day I decided I was clever enough to read on my own, and I spent the next twenty years in libraries. On my own. Now I teach at Yale, I teach at Cambridge, I write books, I do television programmes, I review, I give opinions, I sit on committees – I do every fucking thing I’m asked to do, because it was a long lonely time coming. I take on too much, I cut corners, I trample on people, you think I don’t know? But that’s my life now. That’s how it works. If you don’t like it you’re free to cut me loose. I can understand that. But there’s something else you can do. You can do a deal with me. You can use me to get what you want.’

  He pauses. He fixes Henry with his intent gaze.

  ‘That is, if you know what you want.’

  Henry stares back in silence.

  ‘Do you know what you want?’

  ‘God knows.’ Henry finds himself impelled to tell the truth. ‘I know some of it. I know I don’t want it to be like this.’

  ‘So how do you want it to be?’

  ‘I don’t know that I want to be a director. But I like history. I’d like to go on working in the field.’

  He listens to himself talking, like a schoolboy to a careers master. But he has no way to say the real words. People don’t have that conversation. How can he say that for months now, maybe years, he’s felt like he’s on the point of falling?

  ‘So you want to write.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Come on, Henry. Help me here. Write what? Articles in learned journals? Books?’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘You know what you’d be paid for an article? A hundred if you’re lucky.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘A book – you could write a bestseller, you’ve got the talent. But I’m not sure that’s the kind of book you want to write. And anyway you’d have to live while you’re working on it. An advance of maybe £20,000 to see you through maybe three years.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Is that the plan? Holy poverty?’

  ‘There’s no plan.’

  ‘Okay. I get the picture. So let me tell you my favourite story. It’s a true story, about Gandhi. You know Gandhi came from a prosperous middle class background, he went to the best schools, he trained as a barrister, he got married, he had a son. Then he changed. He became the Mahatma. He gave up everything, out of pure idealism, and led a life of true poverty. He sent his son to the village school, which was quite incapable of giving the boy the kind of education Gandhi himself had had. Then one of Gandhi’s wealthy followers offered to pay all the school fees to give the boy the best education money could buy. Gandhi accepted. His son was very excited. But when the time came for the boy to leave and go to his fine new school, Gandhi picked out a poor village kid and sent him in his son’s place. His son hated him for that. He determined from that day on to reject everything his father believed in. He became a drunkard, he visited brothels, he was a parasite, a burden, a bum. His father died a martyr, mourned by the whole nation. His son died only six months later. For days his body lay unrecognized and unclaimed among the nameless street corpses.’

  He taps the sand-coloured Formica shelf with his index finger to drum in his story’s moral.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he says. ‘I think Gandhi was a great man. But he didn’t have to do that. He could have reached a deal.’

  ‘Like you have.’

  ‘Fucking right. Like I do every day. I’m dealing all the time, getting a little of what I want, giving a little I’d just as soon not give. That’s called living in the real world.’

  ‘The real thing.’

  Aidan Massey laughs his rich laugh.

  ‘Coke isn’t the real thing. But a world where marketing men can make you value Coke by calling it the real thing – that’s the real t
hing. We crave authenticity. So they use that craving. It’s not ironic, Henry. Irony’s just one of our ways of dodging reality.’

  ‘I’m with you there.’

  ‘So do a deal.’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’

  ‘Go on working with me. Go on writing lines for me. That way you get paid, you get out of the house, you get status. Okay, so I get all the credit. But right now that’s the way the cards are dealt. You want to be the star, get down to work. When you’re not working with me, you work for yourself. Take all that energy you expend on resenting me and pour it into becoming you.’

  ‘I have a family too.’

  ‘So get up early. Work late. The day is longer than you think. No one said it was easy.’

  Henry shakes his head. Against all expectations he’s warming to Aidan Massey.

  ‘You may be right.’

  ‘Look, no one gets the life they want. Not me, not anyone. But if you’re lucky you get good times along the way. Be grateful, brother. Enjoy the parade. It’s going to pass on by, believe me.’

  ‘Do you enjoy the parade?’

  ‘You bet I do.’

  Henry shakes his head again. He means this gesture as an acknowledgement of Aidan Massey’s powerful vitality, but the star misunderstands him.

  ‘You think I’m fooling myself, don’t you? You think I’m somewhat ridiculous. But you know what? I don’t care.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re ridiculous at all. If anything, I envy you. I wish I had your energy.’

  ‘You have got my energy. Everyone’s got energy. But most people’s energy is all used up by their anxieties. People are far crazier than we ever guess.’

  ‘Don’t you have anxieties?’

  ‘No,’ says Aidan. ‘But I’m an asshole.’

  ‘You say that like an American.’

  ‘Like I said, I’m one-hundred per cent self-invention. I’m still working on it. I’m a work in progress.’