‘I wish I had an older brother like you,’ said Nina, impulsively, and then wondered what on earth had prompted her to say it.
Hugo gave a cheerless laugh. ‘Women often say that to me. It’s a way of letting me know I’m Not Their Type.’ His bitten nails scrabbled at the cigarette box. ‘Then when they get to know me better they realize they wouldn’t even want me for a brother. You wait.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ said Nina, mortified that her compliment had been interpreted so shrewdly. She took a sip of brandy. There was no way she was going to finish it without being ill. She’d never liked spirits. Hugo was already helping himself to more. She could pretend to knock it over by accident, but he’d probably just give her a refill. It was better to own up. ‘I don’t like this,’ she said.
Hugo shrugged and took it from her, tipping it into his own glass. ‘I thought you were struggling.’
‘It’s all right on Christmas pudding,’ she said. ‘I should be going, anyway. I’ve got an essay to copy.’ She stood up and patted her pocket.
‘Let me know if you need help deciphering my writing,’ said Hugo, from the floor. ‘I’m told it’s easier if you use a magnifying glass.’
Nina was hunting for her keys. ‘I definitely had them when we were eating,’ she said. ‘I was on my way out.’ She checked her coat pockets, and felt her way around the hem in case they had fallen into the lining. Hugo offered to make a quick inspection of the kitchen, but returned shaking his head. ‘They must be in here,’ Nina insisted, peering under the bed. In Hugo’s spartan living quarters there were only so many places to look, and these were soon exhausted.
‘Damn.’ Nina stood in the middle of the floor, hands on hips. Now she would have to trek over to Martin’s place in Kensington in the middle of this typhoon on the offchance that he was there. It would be pointless trying Jean across the hall: she only slept in her own bed as an absolute last resort.
‘You can stay here if you like,’ said Hugo. ‘I’ll sleep on the chair.’
‘Oh no, thanks, really,’ said Nina. ‘I’ll get the night bus to Cromwell Road. It’s no problem.’ Even as she spoke there was a machine-gun clatter of hail on the window.
‘I won’t molest you. In spite of what you may have heard,’ said Hugo, wearily. ‘You’re not that gorgeous.’
‘I haven’t heard anything,’ Nina retorted, too quickly. ‘I’m not scared of you.’ Her heart was pounding. She’d have to stay now, if only to prove that she held no brief for college tittle-tattle.
‘So stay then.’
‘All right, I will.’
When Nina awoke the following morning, it was still dark and it took her a moment or two to remember where she was. Her dress, which she was relieved to find she was still wearing, was twisted tightly round her; there was a great bolt of fabric under one armpit, and the imprint of one of her cuff buttons on her cheek. Through the gloom she could make out the slumped figure of Hugo, half out of the armchair, his arms flung out like a dead man’s. She ran her tongue over unbrushed teeth. There was a foul taste in her mouth. She tried smelling her breath by huffing into her cupped hands: empty cigarette box with a hint of onion. Unravelling herself from the bedding she slipped out into the empty hallway, the click of the door causing Hugo to stir in his sleep and edge an inch or two further over the lip of the chair.
In the bathroom Nina splashed cold water over her face and rinsed her mouth. The unforgiving fluorescent light made her skin look pale and blotchy. The button imprint was still visible and a spot glowed on her chin. Not that gorgeous, she thought, raking her fingers through knotted hair.
Back in the bedroom she found Hugo examining his broken spectacles. His creeping progress towards the floor had accelerated dramatically during Nina’s absence and he had woken up to the sickening crunch of glass and wire and a jarring pain in the rear.
‘I wish they’d make these things more robust,’ said the Falstaffian Hugo, in an aggrieved tone, waggling the mangled frames. ‘I found your keys, by the way.’
‘Oh? Where?’
‘Down the side of the chair. I must have been lying on them all night.’
You’re lying all right, thought Nina. That was the first place I looked. But she said nothing, and returned to her room, baffled by the whole encounter.
When she came to copy out Hugo’s essay on the geography of women she found it completely impenetrable. It inferred a vast body of background knowledge, which in Nina’s case was entirely lacking, and was peppered with footnotes and long quotations from unpublished theses and allusions to texts and authorities she’d never heard of. There was no way in the world she would be able to pass it off as her own. In the margins the tutor had occasionally pencilled in Absolutely! or other affirmatives, and at the bottom of the last page was the comment: Excellent. Can I borrow this? Evidently not everything people said about Hugo was unfounded.
15
In the spring of 1976 Guy came across Nina through his involvement with a student production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona at University College, but it was some months before their paths crossed again, with such disastrous consequences for all concerned.
At that time Guy was doing his postgraduate year in primary teaching at the Institute of Education, a step his parents regarded as only marginally preferable to dropping out altogether.
‘I can’t understand why you are choosing to throw away a perfectly creditable degree in Economics,’ his mother had written in one of her fortnightly letters. His decision had evidently rattled her: she had gone on to a third side of Basildon Bond. ‘You will never be well off. You won’t be able to support a wife and family. You won’t be able to afford to give your children the education you had.’
Well, amen to that, Guy thought. Although he had not suffered unduly at school himself, he had seen plenty of others who had. In fact it was recalling his teachers’ botched efforts to make little men of them that had set him on this path in the first place. Already he could see that there had to be a better way to bring up boys: no son of his was going to endure the sort of cruelty that poor old Etchells and others like him had put up with.
Guy had originally considered the idea of secondary teaching as a career, but soon dismissed it. He had observed that people went into it because they enjoyed and wanted to use their subject, and if they didn’t already dislike children, they soon grew to. Those who went into primary teaching did so because they liked children. It was in this camp that Guy felt he belonged. He wasn’t quite sure where this feeling had come from. As his mother pointed out, he didn’t even know any children, apart from that family back home with all those little girls in headscarves, and he’d never shown much interest in them. But Guy had a natural affinity with underdogs: he could recall quite clearly the bitterness of being punished unfairly, and the futility of competing with a preferred younger brother. As a teacher he would never stoop to favouritism.
Guy’s participation in The Two Gentlemen of Verona was one of those accidents born of his good nature. A friend who was studying organic chemistry at UCL had been cast as Launce in a college production and was in desperate need of a dog. Guy, who had no interest in amateur drama, and wouldn’t have dreamed of setting foot on stage himself, had immediately volunteered the services of his parents’ elderly labrador, Bones – the successor to the delinquent Porky – who had seemed to meet all the necessary criteria. He was even-tempered, a little sleepy if anything, good with strangers and unlikely to suffer from stage-fright. Guy, ignoring the STRICTLY NO PETS clause in his rental agreement, had brought him up on the train from Sussex and installed him in his lodgings a week before the performance.
Bones’s brief was to enter with Launce and sit quietly at his feet for the duration of a longish soliloquy, while Guy stood by in the wings to offer silent encouragement. Bones carried this off without a hitch at his audition for the first and last time. At the first rehearsal he stood up and wandered off into the wings, tail wagging, as soon as Launce ope
ned his mouth. On the second attempt he stayed put, thanks to furious offstage gestures from Guy, but barked throughout the entire soliloquy. One of the cast suggested tethering him to a stake, beside which a pile of Good Boy Choc Drops could be placed by a member of the crew during the blackout. Again, Bones proved too ingenious for them, bolting the chocolates within seconds and then barking furiously for more.
It was at this point that Launce, who was beginning to resent having to play the stooge to such a shocking upstager, suggested slipping Bones a mogadon before the show to make him drowsy. Guy refused to contemplate dog-tampering of any kind. The opening night loomed, and there was talk of firing him from the show. Finally it had gone to a ballot of the cast, resulting in the rout of the anti-dog lobby. Guy, who was by now fed up with his role as agent, and had heard more than he cared to of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, had in fact voted against, and would have been glad to withdraw him there and then. But the victors were jubilant: Bones had become a sort of mascot, and his anarchic behaviour on stage was for many the highlight of the play.
Guy arrived a little late for the first performance – though in plenty of time for Bones’s scene – having been caught up in an altercation with his landlord, who had turned up unannounced on the pretext of fixing a washer on the bathtap. In fact he was checking for unofficial tenants: it was not unknown for eight students to share a flat intended and priced for four. Guy had to pretend that Bones, who was looking thoroughly at home, curled up on the sofa, was a stray who had that minute wandered in off the street, and was about to be sent packing. The landlord had looked sceptical, and on discovering half a dozen tins of Chum in the kitchen had threatened to evict the pair of them without notice. ‘And you can kiss your deposit goodbye as well,’ he had said, wagging his finger. Ugly words had then been exchanged, and Bones, roused from his customary torpor by the sight of his master being harangued, had jumped up and snapped at the landlord’s outstretched hand, just missing flesh and bone, but leaving a row of puncture marks in the sleeve of his leather jacket. With threats of magistrates and extermination orders ringing in his ears, Guy had fled from the scene, a by now thoroughly over-excited dog bounding along at his heels.
When the pair arrived at the Collegiate Theatre they found the play under way and the rest of the cast in a state of dejection and disarray. The girl playing Silvia – a plump blonde called Jean who had tried and failed to pick Guy up on their first meeting – had been struck down by laryngitis. There was no question of her being able to muddle through – after a few croaks her voice had given out entirely. There were no understudies, and not nearly enough time for anyone to learn the part from scratch. A compromise had finally been reached, in the form of Jean’s friend, Nina. She would stand in the wings and read the part of Silvia, projecting her voice as best she could, while Jean, on stage, mimed along to the words. The two of them had been practising their lip-synchronization all day, but the effect would nevertheless be that of a badly dubbed film. Guy couldn’t help feeling relieved at the news. The quality of the production was now mortally compromised: the heat was off Bones.
Leaving the dog in the dressing room to be fussed over by his admirers Guy crept into the back of the auditorium. There was Jean, centre-stage, mugging away for all she was worth, while an unfamiliar voice issued from the wings. From a distance the result was not too disconcerting, but those in the front seats would find themselves unable to concentrate on anything else but the frequent discrepancies in Silvia’s miming.
What a ropy, third-rate production of a ropy, third-rate play, he was thinking. People filling instantly in and out of love; a girl dressing herself up as a boy to win back her lover by sheer devotion. Oh, yes, that would work, thought Guy. And as for the so-called comedy: not a joke in sight. But if you dared to point that out to any of this lot you were labelled a Philistine and an ignoramus. And now thanks to his own generosity in coming to the aid of a friend he would probably find himself homeless and fifty pounds out of pocket.
This was the turn Guy’s thoughts were taking when he took up his position in the wings ready for Bones’s entrance, and caught sight of Nina across the other side of the stage, huddled inside an afghan coat, reading the part of Silvia in her head-girl’s voice, by the light of a bicycle headlamp. She was small and slim, with waist-length blonde hair and delicate features. Now that’s more like it, he thought. Shame they hadn’t cast her in the part to begin with. It was much easier to imagine Valentine and Proteus fighting over her than over that scary Jean. Suddenly he didn’t feel so hostile towards Launce for getting him involved, fifty pounds didn’t seem such a huge fortune, and even old Shakespeare had his moments.
‘Ready,’ said Launce, beside him, taking the end of Bones’s lead and patting the packet of Good Boy Choc Drops in his pocket.
Guy nodded. ‘Break a leg.’
‘I’ll break all his bloody legs if he cocks it up this time,’ Launce whispered back as he stepped on to the stage. In the blackout Guy could hear the pitter-patter of chocolate buttons on wood, followed by the sound of eager chomping. The lights came up to reveal Launce sitting on a crate and Bones licking the floorboards at this feet.
‘When a man’s servant shall play the cur with him,’ began Launce, in what he imagined to be a West Country accent. Bones, having cleaned all trace of chocolate from the floor stood up, blinking into the spotlight, and, giving an experimental bark, wandered around the back of the stage looking for seconds.
‘Sit!’ Guy whispered, making furious hand signals. Launce pressed on in a slightly louder, tenser voice. Bones, meanwhile, appeared from behind the crate, sat down, and with one leg up against his ear began to lick himself ostentatiously. There were a few titters from the audience: the first of the evening. ‘Stop it!’ Guy hissed. ‘Bones!’ The dog refused to look at him. Opposite Guy, Nina had one hand over her nose and mouth and was starting to shake. Launce, encouraged by the audience’s laughter, and mistaking its cause, began to throw himself into the part with more vigour, berating the dog enthusiastically and now and then giving it a reproving prod with the toe of his boot. Bones, tired of this sort of unscripted harassment, was on his feet again in no time and heading for the downstage exit. Finding his progress checked by his chain which was attached to the crate he stopped short, a roll of fat bulging over his collar, gave a couple of short barks and began to drag the crate offstage behind him. Launce, realizing he was about to lose his set, quickly sat down on it, nearly garrotting the dog, at which point there was a loud splintering sound, and Bones rocketed out of sight behind the curtain to a round of applause from the audience.
Launce struggled on, raising his voice to drown the last of the clappers, while Bones, who had now disappeared around the back of the cyclorama, still trailing his chain, could be heard rattling and clanking like the theatre ghost and howling each time he became snagged on a piece of scenery.
Guy caught up with the dog on the far side of the wings, being petted by Nina.
‘You’re fired!’ he said, pointing an accusing finger at him.
‘That’s a shame,’ said Nina. ‘He got the biggest applause of the evening.’ She tickled the thick fur of Bones’s throat, while Guy disentangled the piece of splintered crate from the end of the leash.
‘I’d better take him out before he does any more damage,’ said Guy, noticing that beneath the afghan coat Nina was wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt and no bra.
‘Make sure he’s back in time for his curtain call,’ said Nina. They exchanged smiles in the darkness.
‘Are you doing anything afterwards? Are you coming for a drink? Shall we get a drink?’ Guy rehearsed as he walked down Gordon Street with Bones trotting along at his side. He’d never been any good at chatting up women – a flaw he put down to his years of incarceration in a boys’ boarding school. There had been parties at the local youth club back home, during the holidays, but Guy had always been one of the envious bystanders who lined the walls during the slow numbers, watching other more co
nfident blokes claim the prettiest girls. Then when he’d gone to university he’d suddenly met a new breed of woman, who didn’t wait to be asked, and no effort had been required on his part at all. In the last three years he’d never been short of girlfriends, but he’d never felt especially infatuated with any of them. Instead of being attracted to the sort of woman who did all the running, he found he preferred the other sort – who had to be chased and won over, but who might in the end refuse to be caught, and were therefore best avoided. Human nature was so perverse.
By the time he had walked a few times around the block and found a suitable alleyway for Bones to do his business, Guy had almost talked himself into a confident and masterful frame of mind. But when he reached the theatre he found the play had ended, the cast and crew gone and the theatre in darkness. The following night when he reported for duty Jean was back in full voice, there was no sign of Nina, and Bones had been dropped from the cast and replaced by a stuffed Airedale from Camden Market. He never did catch up with Nina. It was left to coincidence, that blind puppeteer, to bring them together.
16
‘Why are you driving slowly, Mummy?’ asked Harriet, from the back seat.
‘Because I’m following someone,’ said Jane, distractedly.
‘Who are you following?’
‘A lady. You don’t know her.’
‘Why are you following a lady?’
‘Because I want to see where she lives. Oh damn!’ The lights at the pedestrian crossing turned to red and Jane pulled up sharply, drumming her fingers on the wheel as an old woman pushing a zimmer frame advanced, inch by inch, across the road.
‘Damn is a rude word,’ said Harriet solemnly.
‘Yes, it is. Don’t ever say it,’ said Jane.
‘I want a grape. Can I have a grape?’ Harriet rustled one of the plastic shopping bags on the seat beside her.
A Dry Spell Page 14