You, Me and The Movies

by Fiona Collins

  We’re waiting to use the anti-bac, but the man is in the way. I want to wash my hands of the long, cathartic journey and go in and sit down on my chair so I can take a breath, get my head round Perrie’s email. Where is Lloyd? How did she find him? Has she actually told him his father is in hospital? I’m a little annoyed, but not surprised by her propensity for the enigmatically dramatic. She has become quite a character, in my mind. With that fringe and that cardigan. I had said as much to James as we were buzzed in.

  ‘She’s a drama llama,’ I’d said. ‘Fancy just sending that! I’ve found him. Didn’t she have time to write anything else?’ I’d rolled my eyes, but at the same time I was excited. She’d found him. She’d found Lloyd!

  ‘Our Perrie is very mysterious indeed,’ James had replied, like an elderly scholar.

  ‘Cryptic!’ I’d qualified, but I couldn’t wait to hear more. I’d bashed an email back to Perrie on the way into the hospital – Where is he? – and I keep checking my phone to see if there’s a response.

  The man in front of us is now doing his hands carefully and way, way too slowly at the wall-mounted dispenser. His coat is almost down to his ankles but his ankles are bare and tanned; one them has a multicoloured tweedy band wound round it. He’s wearing very white, new-looking trainers. His thick head of blonde hair is wavy and sun-streaked and when he turns his head slightly to one side I see that he is bearded – a young Father Christmas.

  ‘Oh, hi, you two!’ It’s Fran, bustling up to the desk. Her hair is in a little blonde-tipped topknot today so she resembles Pebbles from The Flintstones. ‘You’ve arrived together, tonight!’

  ‘We’ve been to the Midlands,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, right. Anything nice?’ She looks excited.

  ‘Work,’ I say, smiling at James.

  The man finally finishes doing his hands. He shoves them in his pockets and looks around him as though he is lost.

  ‘Can I help you?’ Fran asks him, as I turn to use the dispenser. ‘Who are you visiting?’

  ‘Mac Bartley-Thomas,’ says the man, from behind me. ‘I’m his son.’

  My heart takes a sideways lurch, like a kettlebell in one of those God-awful classes I used to take when Christian accused me of getting fat. I turn around. ‘You’re Lloyd?’ I ask. I horrify myself by clutching at his arm with a still sticky hand and he looks rightly horrified, too.

  ‘Yes, I’m Lloyd,’ he says, now adding puzzlement and who-the-hell-are-you to his glare. He takes his hands from both pockets but makes no move to shake either mine or James’s, who is standing like a sentry and staring at us both.

  ‘I’m a friend of Mac’s,’ I say. ‘I’ve been visiting him almost every day. Did Perrie contact you?’

  ‘Perrie Turque.’ He nods and I notice he has a slight Australian accent. ‘Turque’ goes up at the end. ‘That woman’s quite the detective.’ Actually, that was me, at least initially, I want to say, though I know I won’t get credit for this historic reunion, with the forthright Ms Turque in the picture. How come she’s only just emailed me when he is already here? ‘Where’s Dad?’ Lloyd’s eyes are scanning the beds in the ward one by one, left to right.

  ‘Over there,’ I say, ‘in the middle.’ Lloyd’s eyes travel along the beds and he starts when they alight on Mac. I try to see Mac in him. Lloyd would be late twenties, wouldn’t he? Is that right? Whatever, he looks older. Weathered. Has he just flown in from Australia? If so, Perrie must have found him at least twenty-four hours ago.

  ‘Have you flown in from Australia?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah, the Whitsundays.’ Again his voice rises at the end but his words mean nothing to me. ‘They’re islands? I run a scuba diving school?’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘Perrie said.’ Lloyd is looking at me oddly; it’s making me feel really uneasy. ‘This is James.’

  ‘And what’s your name?’ The sentry is ignored. No handshake is offered. Lloyd’s eyes, periwinkle blue like Mac’s, are lasers on me above his bleached beard and his freckled nose.

  ‘I’m Arden.’

  Lloyd’s blue eyes with their fan of crinkly ripples at the corners widen. It’s hard to tell how he is feeling. He looks vindicated, somehow, indignant, slightly repulsed. Does he know about me? Does he know who I am? I feel all panicky, a bit faint. His eyes are asking so many questions I can’t process them all. Oh God, I think he knows.

  He starts walking towards Mac’s bed. James and I fall into step with him.

  ‘It’s fantastic, really fantastic. I didn’t know what would happen. We’ve just travelled back from the Midlands. I’m so glad you’ve come.’ I am talking utter nonsense, a defence of mine that has never achieved very much. At the same time I’m frantically wondering if Perrie mentioned my name to Lloyd, but why his look of revulsion? He can’t know, can he?

  He just walks, his expression in profile stern yet unfathomable. We are at the bed now. Mac is fast asleep, his hair flopped above a pale face and parted lips. Lloyd goes and sits down by his side, on my brown chair. James and I stay back. We don’t need to gatecrash the moment when Mac opens his eyes and sees his son. I feel we shouldn’t be witnessing it at all. But we can’t exactly turn and leave so we hang back awkwardly – shuffling supporting cast in a silent movie, widening our eyes and rolling our lips in at each other.

  Lloyd places his hand on Mac’s, which is palm down on the bed, fingers splayed.

  ‘Dad?’

  Nothing happens. Mac is dreaming, I think. There’s a rapid flickering under his eyelids. He’s dreaming of the movies, not knowing a cinematic moment of his own is about to take place, if he would just open his eyes.

  ‘Dad?’

  The flickering stops. Very slowly, and like his body is fighting against it happening, Mac opens his eyes. Lloyd is smiling uncertainly at him and Mac’s eyes are widening and his mouth forms the shape of a smile, in return, and he is crying silent tears which course down his face. Lloyd leans down towards his father. His enormous coat is restrictive and it creaks as he bends forward to place his hands on Mac’s upper arms; he is shiny creaking polyester to Mac’s laundered cotton. Lloyd moves his hands to Mac’s shoulders; he rests them there as he looks into Mac’s face. Mac is just smiling, smiling; his arms still down by his sides and his fingers flickering, like they are skating across piano keys. Several seconds pass – fleeting, endless – and Mac’s tears continue to run their silent river down colourless cheeks.

  Lloyd’s face is all red when he straightens up, squeaking in that coat like an unoiled door. He gets a tissue from the box on the side of the bed and dabs it under Mac’s eyes. It has been a moment, one of those rare ones in life that really, really matter. I want to cry for the second time today – for Mac, for me and for my dad, again – but resist; I can’t go there and I can’t over-egg someone else’s pudding. Nobody wants my saccharine tears over someone else’s drama. It’s not like Imitation of Life, that weepie film Mac had talked about all those years ago, a melodrama for others to weep over; this is Mac’s life. Love is pinned and hangs on moments like this.

  We pause, held in an awkward tableau. Lloyd and Mac now just staring at each other; James and I are standing back like a couple of incidental pawns in a nothing-to-do-with-us chess game.

  Lloyd beckons us over to them with his index finger. It has a gold signet ring on it.

  ‘Dad and I haven’t seen each other for a very long time,’ he says, as we arrive at Mac’s bed.

  Mac – looking utterly exhausted by it all – is tearing up again, his blue eyes flecked pink where there once was pistachio. This time I pull a tissue from the box and he blinks as I gently blot his eyes with it. I wonder exactly how many years it has been, father and son?

  Lloyd pulls two chairs over from the next bed, one in each hand, scraping them noisily along the floor. He gestures for James and me to sit down so we do, although I feel we should really go. I only sit for a few seconds.

  ‘I’ll go to the coffee machine,’ I say, hoiking my bag on to my shoulde
r. ‘I might go to the café as well, get some cake. Do you want to come, James?’

  ‘No, I’m OK here,’ James says. He has his legs stretched out in front of him, probably resting after the long drive. I can see why he’s reluctant to get up, but surely he must want to leave Mac and Lloyd to it?

  ‘Really?’

  ‘OK, I’ll come.’

  We wander to the café along the yellow corridors.

  ‘Quite something,’ he says. ‘A father-and-son reunion.’ I wonder how James feels about it, considering his own history – that he never saw his father again after he and his brother left with their mum in the middle of the night. I still can’t think about mine – too difficult, today – but I realize, with a jolt, that I’ll never see my mother again, after the decision I made in James’s car. I consider this brand-new fact, hold it up to the light in my mind. It looks pretty good, actually. I don’t think it will ever make me cry.

  ‘It was lovely,’ I agree. Mac has no idea I was responsible, but I have given him his movie moment, from my metaphorical director’s chair, and I’m proud of myself – another brand-new fact, or at least one I haven’t seen around for a while.

  We buy cake, a hot chocolate, a tea. Something for Lloyd (I’m still worrying about his indignant eyes), in a paper bag – the default combo of a sticky bun and a milky coffee in a lidded Styrofoam cup.

  ‘Oh heck, I forgot to turn off my phone; someone’s calling me,’ says James, as we trail away from the counter with our stash. We deposit everything hurriedly on a table and he pulls his phone from his jacket pocket. ‘Hello?

  ‘Urgent estate agent wankery,’ he says, with a handsome grimace, after the call has ended, a deal which might fall through unless he legs it to a house half an hour away and placates a high-maintenance woman who carries a tweed-wearing dachshund puppy in her handbag – and he dashes from the café saying he hopes to see me tomorrow, at visiting, and thanks me for my company today.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ I call after him. And thank you, I add silently to myself.

  I sit at the table; I eat half of my cake and drink my tea. Lloyd walks in, glancing around him. He’s still got his coat on.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, looking up. ‘I was going to bring you a coffee.’

  ‘It’s all right. Dad’s really sleepy, after all the excitement. I thought I’d come and find you.’ He sits down in James’s vacated chair. ‘I won’t beat about the bush?’ he says, fixing those blue eyes on me. His beard is ridiculous, I think. It’s not even hipster but full-on Grizzly Adams. ‘I know who you are.’

  ‘Oh?’ I say. I open the paper bag and put the milky coffee and the sticky bun on the table.

  ‘I know Dad had an affair with you, at Warwick, when Mum was pregnant with me, and before.’

  ‘Oh.’ I’m shaking a little, suddenly. All my historic guilt about Mac and Helen and Helen’s pregnancy floods back to me and threatens to knock me off my chair.

  ‘It is you, isn’t it? You used to be that girl.’

  I don’t like his crinkly eyes and his silly beard. I don’t like the way he is looking at me, like I’m responsible for all the ills in this world. ‘Yes, I did,’ I say. Well, I can hardly deny it. Why else would I be visiting Mac if I wasn’t that girl? ‘Sorry.’ My ‘sorry’ is as weak as my tea, and I realize I sound a bit surly. Something about this man is making me layer defiance on top of guilt, and I wonder just how badly Lloyd needed to come and have his say that he left the bedside of his just-rediscovered father, sleepy or not.

  ‘You were the first but you weren’t the last,’ he says. I know this, of course: Mac had told me he hadn’t had an affair before me; Perrie had told me he’d had loads after. If Lloyd is trying to shock me with this revelation he can shock elsewhere. I’m still shaking, though; this is pretty awful, being confronted by your former lover’s son, after nearly thirty years. The son of the woman that lover betrayed. The innocent victim of your crime. It might be something dramas are made of, but it’s not a particularly great movie moment for me, and the remorse bubbles up again. ‘Dad had affairs up until I was seventeen. I don’t know why, to tell the truth. He and Mum seemed fairly happy on the surface. As people can be.’ He sips at his coffee, through one of those annoying little holes in the lid. ‘I found out about you just after he and Mum got divorced.’ Divorced … I thought so. That had to be the only outcome for Mac and Helen, didn’t it? I feel pleased Helen got the chance to make a new life for herself, after me, and after all Mac’s affairs. I imagine her living happily alone in a garret somewhere, an elegant long grey plait over one shoulder, frowning over a complicated thesis. The tiger woman.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say again, with a bit more feeling. I want a happy ending for Helen; she deserves one. Lloyd ignores me.

  ‘I was helping Dad sort out the attic and amongst his Warwick photos I found one of you and him, in his bed, inside a copy of that book he wrote, The Language of Celluloid. I asked him who you were and when it was, and he told me about you … He was caught out at first, uneasy, but then he sounded proud about it – all misty-eyed and nostalgic – and I hated him for being like that. “Arden …” he kept saying, like he couldn’t help himself … I asked him why he had ended it with you and he told me it was because of me. Because I was coming. I don’t know if that’s the truth.’

  Well, the truth is it was because I found out about you, I think. But his father is already not coming across very well – nor me, obviously – so I leave it there.

  ‘I guess he thought I could handle it because I was seventeen but the truth is I couldn’t. He made it sound as though I was the saviour of the marriage, but I knew that wasn’t right because I knew about all the other affairs, after you. He thought he’d covered them up for all of those years but I knew, and so did Mum. All that stuff about them drifting apart, divorcing “amicably” was nonsense. He’d been playing around for years, starting with you.’

  ‘Starting with me,’ I repeat. I feel sick. ‘Did Helen … did your mum know about me?’

  ‘No, and I didn’t tell her. Why make things worse?’

  ‘No,’ I reply, at a loss at what else to say. Helen knew about all the other affairs but she never knew about me. She was saved the worst of the pain.

  Lloyd sighs, almost a huff. ‘Look, my mum’s a fantastic woman. She’s a fantastic mother, kind, clever … I don’t know what he was doing with you, or anyone else …’ Well, I’m not going to spell it out for him … ‘All wrapped up in ego, probably, knowing Dad.’ Yes, I could believe that. Mac liked to be adored, that was pretty much gospel. But he had adored me; that was history. ‘I hated my dad for what he’d done. I couldn’t see him after that, after finding out about you. The fact he was with someone when Mum was actually pregnant with me was just too much, after everything else I knew. I was pretty angry. After seeing that photo of you and Dad I went travelling and never came back. Well, I came back for a while, ran a bar in London, but I never told him – though I think he found out, after I’d moved on. I just kept moving on. Not talking to Dad just became a part of being away, my new life. He just didn’t feature and that was OK by me. It was so easy not to think about him. To just let the time drip on and on without making contact.’

  How awful for Mac, I think, whatever he’d done, to have his boy gradually slip further and further away from him. I wonder if it was from this moment – the moment Lloyd left him – that Mac’s light began to dim; that he started to slowly fade, to lose his charisma, his ‘Macness’ …

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say – again – aware I’m beginning to sound how I was with Christian. Always apologizing. I’m desperate to change the subject but the subject is too big. Mac was sleeping with someone else when his wife was pregnant. It’s pretty huge; I felt it when I discovered it, twenty-eight years ago. I have no mitigating circumstances, not for the son of my lover, except that Mac and I loved each other and it was everything to us. Was it an ego thing? Did that play a part for both of us, at the start? I was in need of va
lidation, to have my presence in the world acknowledged and revered in a way my parents never could. In Mac’s case, was there simply too much of him to confine to one person, too much Macness to be admired and adored for only one relationship to satisfy? Was kind, confident Helen – his intellectual equal, his opposite bookend on the academia bookshelf – up on her own pedestal, out there somewhere, and Mac needed someone in his thrall? Possibly. I was definitely that someone. Did we need each other in a way we couldn’t even articulate?

  ‘Have you been in touch with him all along?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘It was completely accidental, me finding him here.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Well,’ I say, ‘I was visiting someone else and Mac was here.’

  ‘A happy coincidence,’ says Lloyd sarcastically.

  ‘Something like that.’ I really want to go back to the ward now.

  ‘How did Perrie find you?’ I ask him. There, a subject change …

  ‘Ah,’ he says, with a smile that looks a little like Mac’s. Good, he’s happy to change the subject, but I worry he will return to it. That he isn’t done. ‘Her network of spies. She’s always had them. The backpacking, jet-setting community. She put out her long feelers, I guess, and she somehow found me, in my tiny dive school, on the north shore of a tiny island in the Whitsundays.’ He sounds so proud. He flashes me a bigger smile and I think, Oh God, there’s Mac, and I wonder if Perrie’s feelers had ever tried to find Lloyd before, for Mac – his literal water baby. ‘She called me and told me about Dad, about the accident. It was the day before yesterday, I think, my time frame is screwed.’

  Perrie’s obviously was too. Or she just forgot to tell me. ‘And you dropped everything and came back?’

  ‘Yes, pretty much, despite the fact I was in the middle of running a course. I got on a plane as soon as I could, after a lot of rearranging and logistics. Shall we go back to the ward?’ he says, standing up and abandoning his half-finished coffee and untouched bun. ‘I just wanted to tell you I know who you are. Put you in the picture, as they say. There’s no point in me pretending.’