Darling Sweetheart

by Stephen Price

  ‘So,’ he opened his own notebook, ‘you’re working at the moment?’ She nodded again. ‘And how is that going for you?’

  ‘It’s not been easy.’ Her voice fell almost to a whisper.

  ‘Stressful, eh?’

  ‘I heard him. I even saw him.’

  ‘Saw… who?’

  ‘In the bathroom mirror. Things have been… difficult, lately. First I couldn’t find Roselaine, then there’s been the newspapers.’

  ‘Mmm, I had noticed, but who did you–’

  ‘They started printing all this rubbish about me and Harry, now they’re on about me and Jimmy, but really none of it has anything to do with me.’

  ‘Err… slow down, Annalise. I’d like to start with hearing about your life at present. For one so young, you’ve suffered a lot of loss, but just because you’re here with me today, doesn’t mean that you’re unwell again. When the mind is preoccupied or when we are tired, we can see and hear all sorts of things that–’

  ‘It’s not stress,’ she interrupted, pale but emphatic. ‘I know the difference.’

  ‘Hmm. We can be stressed without realising it. You’re in the middle of making a film, aren’t you? That could be stressful. You mentioned the name “Harry” – that’s Harry Emerson, I take it? It’s supposed to be a happy time, but if you two are getting married, then that could be stressful too. Getting married is the fourth most stressful experience you can endure, after bereavement, going bankrupt or getting divorced…’

  She burst into tears.

  Alarmed, Passmore passed her a box of tissues. They were the heaviest yet the softest tissues that Annalise had ever touched; cold, almost like holding water. A strangely detached part of her thought how important it must be for a psychiatrist to have the very best tissues. She dabbed at her eyes.

  ‘Sorry… I’m sorry. But I’m here because I did hear him and I did see him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘F…Froggy.’

  Passmore’s voice lowered. ‘But we both know that isn’t possible, now don’t we? So what we really need to do is to talk about a few of the things that might be causing you some degree of–’

  Abruptly, she stood up. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ He looked up at her agape, as she dropped her used tissue into his wastepaper basket.

  ‘You’ve been very helpful, doctor.’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘Yes.’ She started towards the door. ‘Now I know what I need to do.’

  ‘My dearest Annalise, what you need to do is sit back down so as we can discuss your problems!’

  ‘Thanks for your time. Send me the bill.’

  ‘But we haven’t–’

  ‘Goodbye.’ With the barest of nods towards Lutze, she walked out the door.

  ‘Annalise!’

  Passmore jumped off his sofa and peered out the window. Moments later, Annalise emerged onto the pavement and hurried off towards Marylebone Road.

  ‘Well!’ he breathed, turning to his intern. ‘That was the shortest consultation I’ve had in quite a while! Actresses, eh?’ Lutze made a note in German that, for a top psychiatrist, Passmore was a very poor listener, then clicked her pen and replaced it in her breast pocket. ‘So tell me,’ he tried to look self-important, ‘what do you think?’

  Lutze handed him the file but retained her notebook. Then, she too moved to the door.

  ‘I think that Miss Palatine is suffering from more than just stress, but what else, it is difficult to say…’

  Passmore rubbed his hands together. ‘Which is why I should very much like you to join me for dinner tonight, to discuss her case further. It shall be my treat!’

  Lutze smiled. ‘I am sorry, doctor, but tonight my boyfriend arrives from Berlin,’ she opened the door, ‘and, anyway, I do not think perhaps that dinner would be appropriate.’ She closed the door behind her. Passmore harrumphed. Young people, he thought. You do them all sorts of favours, but they’re never grateful. Such a vexing day; he wondered if a bit of light relief might be in order, on his way home. Something to take his mind off work…

  Annalise walked to Regent’s Park underground station and travelled two stops south to Picadilly Circus, where she had to wait ten minutes for the next westbound train to Heathrow. She sat on a plastic seat and hid behind a free newspaper, but no one recognised her in the constantly chaotic stream of tourists. She felt tired from her sleepless night and long walk. Once aboard the train, she stared at her flickering reflection in the window opposite. It stared impassively back until the tunnels ended and the journey continued overland. At the airport, she used her credit card to buy a ticket and then four hundred euros from a bureau de change. For about an hour, she hid in the darkest corner of the quietest coffee-shop in Terminal 1. When she passed through security, one of the guards recognised her and made a big joke out of getting her to take her boots and belt off, so as he could give her a good look over then tell his mates about that tasty, young actress, whatsername. But she didn’t react in any way and boarded the flight without further incident. By the time it took off, she had fallen asleep.

  Sylvia’s flat was more like an art gallery than a proper home. Every room had white-painted walls and the floor was parquet throughout. And every room housed several paintings that Annalise, not being a connoisseur, did not realise were actually quite rare and valuable until after Sylvia died. There was a Henri-Edmond Cross, a Robert Delauny and even a Mondrian. But the atmosphere, if spartan, was also very calm. And compared to Whin Abbey, it was paradise, because at least Sylvia fed her. For about a month, Annalise did nothing except eat and sleep.

  She forced herself to stop thinking about her father, because those thoughts were just too painful. Her mother had not seemed bothered by her departure and, although Annalise was glad to escape Whin Abbey, a part of her felt guilty about leaving the woman on her own. She felt even more guilt about what she had done to Froggy, but that Passmore man, the psychiatrist, had left her with no choice. Behind Sylvia’s back, during one of his God-awful sessions, he had threatened to have Annalise committed to a mental hospital if she didn’t dispose of Froggy, and the only thing worse than staying at home with mother was the idea of being sent to a mental hospital.

  Sylvia’s flat, for all its tranquillity, was located in one of the busiest parts of central London, right next to Covent Garden underground station, opposite the Nag’s Head pub. Because it was on the second storey, passers-by never noticed it, so Annalise could smoke cigarettes and spy on the world from the safety of her bedroom window. She watched the street performers, and when she knew all their acts off by heart, she watched the tourists watching them. She watched the drinkers outside the pub, which was always crowded. Eventually, she developed a game, centred on the people who stood around the underground, waiting for their dates to show up. Judging by the person who was waiting, she would try to guess what their date would look like. Would they be male or female; young or old; striking or ordinary; the same colour or not; openly gay or apparently straight? She even took to sitting with a pen and paper, awarding herself points when she guessed right and subtracting them when she was wrong. She was usually right but loved being wrong. Sometimes a couple would be so mismatched that she would let her imagination follow them, creating little back-stories for their lives, envisaging their eventual destination.

  Mostly, she pictured them going for dinner at Joe Allen, a basement restaurant tucked away at the far side of Covent Garden piazza. Because it was just a door in a wall, the tourists rarely found Joe Allen; rather it was frequented by actors, experienced theatre-goers and media types. With its American-style wood panels plastered with photos and theatre programmes, it seemed the perfect place for odd couples to hide. She and Sylvia were the definitive odd couple; Annalise knew about Joe Allen because Sylvia brought her to eat there every day before the rush started. Her flat had a good-sized kitchen, but she never used it. Back in the seventies, she explained, she’d been a regular in the original Joe Allen
off Broadway in New York, because it was cheap but served a proper meal.

  Once over dinner, Annalise told Sylvia what all the students at Broken Cross had said about her: that she was a Russian émigré who had trained at the Bolshoi. Sylvia, who always ate sparingly from the seafood menu, laughed and explained that, no, although her parents had been Polish – her birth name was Jachowicz – she had been born and raised about as far from Russia as it was possible to get, in lower Manhattan. There was, however, a tiny grain of truth: she had, indeed, been a child dancer and her father was an exile of sorts. A Hollywood scriptwriter, he had been blacklisted during the anti-Communist witch hunts of the late forties and had ended up scratching a living off Broadway, as well as writing for an upstart medium called television. She herself had started in showbiz at a very early age, as an extra in the original stage production of The King and I.

  ‘No,’ Annalise breathed, her fork halfway to her mouth, ‘you shared a stage with Yul Brynner and Gertrude Lawrence?’

  Sylvia nodded. ‘I was one of the King of Siam’s children.’

  ‘But your accent – it’s so English.’

  ‘Whaddya want, broad Noo Yawk?’ she asked in broad New York, ‘or per’aps madame would prefer l’accent Parisienne?’ She shrugged. ‘One does elocuted English,’ she returned to her habitual tone, ‘because in this country, with its ridiculous class snobbery, it makes life run more smoothly. When I was six, I kept a Louisiana accent up for nearly a year, almost drove my poor momma crazy.’

  ‘But why don’t you still… you know…’

  ‘Act?

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Heart.’ Sylvia’s little alabaster hand touched her chest. ‘A year into The King and I, Gertrude Lawrence died…’

  ‘Oh…’

  ‘… and two weeks after her funeral, I collapsed on stage – everyone thought I had fainted. But in hospital, they found so many heart defects that the doctors said it was a miracle I’d made it that far. A hole between the ventricles, malformed valves; you name it, I got it.’

  ‘But that’s awful!’

  ‘I know,’ she grinned, lapsing back into New York-ese, ‘ya’d never think ta look at me, huh?’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  Sylvia shrugged. ‘What could I do? I had an incredible taste for it, but the doctors forbade long periods of exertion. They told my mother I definitely wouldn’t live past thirteen – that was fifty-seven years ago. So I did the next best thing: I became an assistant to a casting director, a very great woman called Marianne Donnelly, who’d started out in television and ended up practically running a major film studio. Eventually, I became a casting director myself. Back then, I knew them all: Clint, Burt Reynolds – people forget how big he was – Bronson, Steve McQueen… Ali McGraw, a lovely girl… all the Fondas, William Holden… everyone from that whole era. It’s all gone now, you can only see it on celluloid. The movie business isn’t the same any more – it’s run by bean-counters who wouldn’t know a good story if it bit them on the ass.’

  ‘But why live in London, if you had those sorts of connections?’

  Sylvia indicated the restaurant and, by extension, the rest of the city with a flick of her wineglass. ‘The best heart hospital in the world is only a few streets away: St Bartholomew’s? Honestly, the number of times I’ve died in the past twenty years and somehow they always bring me back…’

  ‘Sylvia!’

  A male American voice sounded over Annalise’s shoulder. Kevin Spacey leaned across the table and kissed Sylvia on the cheek. He was wearing a brown cord jacket with a black shirt. Behind him was a stocky, older man with glasses. This man nodded at Sylvia but did not kiss her. Spacey smiled at Annalise then he and his companion moved on to a corner table. Annalise gawped.

  ‘Okay, okay! I believe you!’

  Sylvia smiled. ‘In our game, timing is everything…’

  ‘Who’s he with? Looks sort of familiar…’

  ‘Him? Oh, that’s David Mamet…’

  She woke under bright, fluorescent light. She felt hot, sweaty and deaf. She yawned; her hearing returned with a painful pop and her head flooded with the whine of jet engines. An angelic little girl, her hair arrayed in ringlets, peered at her over the seat in front. Annalise forced a smile. The little girl stuck her tongue out and dropped out of sight. Annalise pressed the overhead button and ordered a brandy and Coke with lots of ice. As the plane began its descent, the pilot said it was half-past six and blustery in Dublin. The brandy made her want another, but the fasten-seatbelts sign pinged and the cabin crew stopped serving.

  The taxi driver from the rank at Dublin airport was foreign. He knew how to get to Kildare but not Kilnarush. Annalise said she would direct him and settled into the back seat, grateful that he was the sullen, silent type. Through the rain and the early evening light, she could see that things had changed a lot since her last visit. Warehouses and apartment blocks reared haphazardly, where once there had been fields. All the way to Kildare, the road was lined with brash new developments. Ireland, she thought, had finally become just like everywhere else, only not as tidy, as if some careless power had littered the landscape with monstrous flat-pack furniture.

  Once away from the motorway, the minor road to Kilnarush still wound past trees and farmland, but the village itself had not escaped the plague of so-called development; swollen with magnolia-painted housing estates, it had more than tripled in size. The Market Square was a mess of cars, grime and rain. She felt no attachment or nostalgia; the Kilnarush that she remembered had been colonised by commuters. She guided the driver out the back road towards Whin Abbey, through bland new suburbs. The mill where Katie Brennan and Hannah Cowen had attacked her was gone, replaced by a row of tatty townhouses. She wondered what had become of her two tormentors and decided that the worst punishment she could wish upon them was that they still lived in a place like this, married and overweight, with broods of fat, ugly children.

  The gate lodge was just a shell now, with its windows, doors and roof removed. It looked far too small for anyone to have ever lived in it; she thought about the Crombies and felt sad. She asked the driver to wait and stepped out into the blackening cold.

  Metal fencing blocked the driveway. It bore signs that said: ‘CONSTRUCTION SITE – DANGER – NO ENTRY; HELMETS MUST BE WORN AT ALL TIMES’. A huge billboard had been erected beside the lodge, topped with purple flags that smacked soggily against the sky. A giant golfer swung his club; behind him, the picture showed a manicured mansion. ‘COMING SPRING 2009: WYNNE ABBEY GOLF RESORT & SPA.’ It was already summer 2009, she thought; the developers had probably run out of money. She pulled her raincoat about her. The driver watched from the car as she squeezed through a gap in the fence.

  The driveway was a mess of churned-up mud; elongated puddles filled the tracks made by diggers. A few of these were parked like sleeping dinosaurs beside a row of concrete boxes – the inevitable housing development, but unfinished. Most of the driveway trees had been felled and a cluster of Portakabins occupied what had once been the lawn. The whin bushes had been ruthlessly cleared, but even in the wet and the dark, she remembered their wild vanilla smell. She sploshed through the puddles, as if hypnotised. Off to her left, the walled garden was also gone – not a brick remained, certainly no trace of her mother’s temple, only a lumpy patch in the ground, crisscrossed by tyre tracks. Where the driveway ended, a vast confection of scaffolding and plastic sheeting shuddered in the wind. It suddenly occurred to her that she might be too late, for it was impossible to tell whether the original building remained underneath or whether it had been completely demolished like the garden, with some new horror waiting to be born. Then, she made out the porch. The front door had been removed but, picking her way through poles and planks, she came out of the rain and found herself standing on the original black-and-white tiles of the hallway.

  There was barely enough light to see by. All the decorative wood – doors, panels and skirting-boards – had been stripped a
way, but the big sandstone staircase still squatted in all its might. Slowly, she climbed it. Halfway up, she stopped and looked back. Her mother lay dead at the foot of the stairs, arms and legs twisted, her purple cloak wrapped around her. Against the black-and-white tiles, it was as if someone had tried to complete a giant crossword puzzle, using a woman’s body and a bucket of blood.

  The coroner had not been able to say whether she’d tripped on the stairs or thrown herself off the gallery. ‘Domestic accident’, the death certificate had read. After Sylvia had taken Annalise back to London, she had never returned to Whin Abbey. Occasionally, she had tried to ring, but on the rare occasions when her mother had answered she had been cranky and dismissive. Eventually, the number had been cut off, and, after that, so had her mother’s life. Annalise had started shooting her second television series when the news reached her. She had not collapsed, she had not cried – for that’s not how things had been between her and her mother.

  Gabriella Ferrer’s distant family – a female cousin and a nonagenarian uncle – had flown her body to London, and Annalise and Sylvia had attended the funeral in St Peter’s Italian Church in Clerkenwell, with its marble pillars and white alabaster cherubs. Then she had cried, but mostly she had thought how annoyed her mother would have been at ending up in a church – she would have much preferred her crazy temple in the walled garden. Sylvia was sterling, charming the relatives, deflecting their questions, giving Annalise nothing more to do than mumble the odd hello. After the cremation at the East London cemetery, she had taken Annalise in a taxi straight to the American bar at the Savoy Hotel, where they had necked a legion of gin martinis.

  A pigeon exploded from the gallery and flew across the recesses of the wrecked hallway; Annalise blinked – her mother was not lying dead at the foot of the stairs, but that’s where they had found her. Almost reluctantly, she climbed the remaining steps then tiptoed along the upstairs corridor. The library door was gone, as were all the panels and shelving. The room looked naked, ready to submit to whatever depredation the builders had in mind. Indeed, there was no way to tell that it had ever been a library. She went to the far corner and stamped her foot until she found the loose floorboard and then knelt down. She used her fingernails to lift it.