Reality and Dreams

by Muriel Spark

  Cora and Ivan had by now set up an efficient office in Paris fitted with more sophisticated investigative equipment and information-receivers, where clues, indications and probable sightings of Marigold were abundantly recorded. Ivan no longer claimed she was still in Europe. She had been seen in Peru, in Cochin and parts of Southern India, she had been seen in Georgetown, Washington and in Pakistan.

  Cora’s brief affair with Marigold’s brother-in-law Ralph was over. Claire had somehow got him a managerial job, a better one than he had before. He had returned to his wife, Ruth, who had no inkling of his affair with Cora and refused to believe it when Jeanne rang her up to tell her.

  ‘Back to reality,’ he said at the first sign of a return of his impotence with Ruth. She was annoyed.

  Cora was fascinated by her new boyfriend, Ivan the investigator, and their flat in Paris. Marigold had become part of their career.

  Tom sought a meeting with the boyfriend of the camping-site, he who had last been known to see and speak to Marigold in the flesh. ‘Put word round,’ Tom said, ‘that when she turns up I intend to star her in a film. I think her star quality. She is photogenic. I never realised it, but she is. Put round the word. I will show footage of her face. Not on paternal grounds. On artistic grounds.’

  ‘Put round where?’ said the young man. ‘I haven’t a clue who she sees.’

  ‘Have a try,’ said Tom, handing him an envelope. The money was received without comment, stuffed into a pocket of a young man’s jeans, perhaps to bear fruit, perhaps not.

  ‘If she turns up,’ said Tom, ‘I will do everything she wants, short of supporting drugs or terrorist activities.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘I owe no explanation.’

  Cora faxed that Marigold had been seen for certain in Brazil in a clinic for plastic surgery. ‘Be quick,’ Cora wrote, ‘as she’s definitely there now, having a face change.’

  As with the other sightings this proved to be a false alarm. ‘Marigold,’ Tom observed to Claire, ‘would in any case never change her face. When she looks in the glass she does not see the interesting face that she has, she sees absolute beauty, I’m convinced. Love is blind.’

  It was possible, he knew, that some of the sightings — there was a very likely one in Cork — were genuine. But the investigators always got there a day too late. She had been, yes. But she had gone.

  Tom’s lawyer, Fortescue-Brown on the phone: ‘Can you look in at the office or can you make it convenient for me to come to you?’

  ‘What about?’ said Tom.

  ‘That change in your will. It’s been in abeyance for some months.’

  ‘What change in my will?’

  ‘What you called me about when you were in hospital. There was a girl involved. I hope, in fact, you’ve thought it over.’

  ‘Girl?’ — He must mean the hamburger girl. Tom marvelled at his past dream, now exhausted by the reality of the film and his actual boredom with the tiresome, real Jeanne. ‘Forget the alterations to the will,’ he said.

  ‘Scrap them all?’

  ‘All. They’re a thing of the past.’

  In fact, Tom was immersing himself into an altogether new story for a film.

  Let us go then, you and I, …

  He was indulging one of his favourite dream-games:

  ‘If Julius Caesar came back to life, you take him up in a lift, you take him up in an aeroplane. What would his reaction be? Caesar would have understood Ascot but an electric kettle would have had him foxed. You bring back the Brontës and stage a rock-concert outside their house at Haworth. What would their reaction be? You bring back Sophocles and play him Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 …’

  ‘There’s no end to it,’ said Dave. ‘No end to it.’

  Historical shifts had started fertilising in Tom’s mind. ‘My new film,’ he eventually told Dave, ‘is set in Roman Britain towards the end of the occupation, around the fifth century A.D. I have this centurion, he really doesn’t want to uproot himself, Britain has been his family’s home for over two centuries. His brothers and cousins are mainly civil servants and might stay on. But my man is in the army, he has to go. Orders from Rome. The legions were needed to defend Rome at that period, you see.’

  ‘I better look it up in the encyclopaedia. What’s his name?’ said Dave.

  ‘I don’t know yet. Call him Paul. Call him anything. He’s married with children. He has a servant, a Celt, a native of Britain. That’s what the story is going to be about, mainly.’

  ‘Is he gay?’

  ‘No. But he’s devoted to his Celt who is a most eccentric type. The wife tolerates the friendship, but his daughter, no. She’s a fierce one. Striking looks, not good-looking in fact plain ugly. But striking. Jealous, fierce, vindictive through and through.’

  ‘Sounds like Marigold,’ said Dave.

  ‘Now that you mention it, yes,’ Tom said. ‘In fact I would offer Marigold the part if I ever set eyes on her again.’

  ‘Would she accept?’

  Tom paused to think this over quite a long time. Eventually, he said, ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. Perhaps not.’ Tom reached out and took the photograph of Marigold that he had given to Dave to prop up in the front of the taxi, just in case Dave should come across her in his day’s work.

  ‘Has it occurred to you,’ Dave said, ‘that Marigold has a psychological problem? Really and truly, Tom, she can’t be altogether right.’

  ‘I never actually thought much of that,’ Tom said, studying the photograph.

  ‘They say you don’t, with your nearest kin. It’s the last thing you think of. The realisation sometimes comes slowly.’

  ‘I’ll talk to Claire. It could be. You know, I wonder if she’s alive and if so, where she is.’ Tom slipped back the photograph. Marigold did look not quite balanced; something about the eyes.

  ‘Too rich,’ said Dave. ‘You see on the T.V. shows, people looking for missing persons. They’re nearly all poor. They find missing people at the railway station, at cafés, in bars, at bus-stops. That’s the sort of place where they are sighted. But Marigold … Has she touched her money?’

  ‘Not that we know of. But we don’t know of all the places, the countries, where she could have kept her money.’

  Tom’s centurion and Celt continued to amplify in his thoughts and mind. The story was already like a tree; it put out branches, sprouted leaves.

  Cedric (provisional name of the Celt — Tom made a note ‘Look up names, see if Cedric is right for the period.’) was to be gifted with second sight. He could see into the future, the near future to give plausibility to his forecasting capacities, and the distant future, which sounded quite crazy, dangerously so in those days of popular suspicions and superstitions. Tom’s Celt could ‘see’ for instance, the Field of the Cloth of Gold, the building of Versailles, the discovery of Florida. Wildest of all, he could see men walking on the moon. This last vision he was to be warned about. Diana, the goddess of the moon, was still a considerable political force in the Roman Empire and beyond. And here in Britain the Druids ruled the people. Tom’s Celt babbled about motor-bikes. He could also foresee tomorrow’s weather with an accuracy which would incense the Druids. As the centurion and his Celt took shape as characters Tom grew more and more enthusiastic, convinced he had a first-class film idea. He would have to map out the story, prepare a treatment, raise money, think of casting. It made Tom very happy to be once more lost in his profession.

  ‘I need a strong hard woman. Fierce.’ (His Celt’s lover.) ‘Someone like Marigold,’ he told Dave.

  ‘I’ll have to shoot in Northumberland and in Italy,’ Tom told Claire. ‘The Italian part should be pleasant for you.’

  ‘I’ll come,’ said Claire.

  Sometimes Tom had the feeling that Marigold was quite nearby. According to Cora and Ivan, still lingering in Paris, sightings were still being reported on their network. She had been ‘seen’ in Greece, Puerto Rico and Vienna all in one wee
k. Since the shooting of Dave Interpol had taken an interest in finding her; how deep their enquiries went no one would know.

  ‘They should pack up that Paris office,’ Tom said to Claire. ‘It’s a useless extravagance.’

  ‘Let them enjoy themselves a little longer.’ He knew she meant by this to put in a plea for Tom not to be a spoil-sport.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  In the uncertainty of Marigold’s being dead or alive, her husband, James, told everyone he felt he should not press the subject of divorce. He came to see Claire one late afternoon. She poured him a drink. She looked at him and wondered, ‘Could he possibly have murdered her?’ His whereabouts at the time of her disappearance had been vaguely on the American continent. It was a question that inevitably passed through her mind whenever she saw, or even thought of, anyone who had been connected with Marigold. James was aged thirty-nine, clever, balding, with big dark-framed glasses and the trace of a beard. He appealed to Claire less, now, than he ever did. However, she thought it unlikely that he should have killed a wife, presumably for gain, when he could get money out of her any other way.

  Tom had faith in James’s scholarship. He had recently appointed him technical adviser on early Roman sites, for his new film.

  Claire said, ‘Have you seen the police lately, James?’ He did not immediately reply. Then, ‘Oh, you mean about Marigold? No, they’ve left me alone.’

  For some reason Claire didn’t like the sound of ‘No, they’ve left me alone.’ Nor was she easy with his answer to her next question. ‘Are you prepared to have another try with Marigold?’

  He looked puzzled. ‘Another try with Marigold?’

  ‘When she comes back.’

  ‘Oh, when she comes back. Look, Claire, I don’t think she’ll ever come back to me.’

  ‘Do you mean you don’t think she’ll ever come back at all?’

  ‘No, I don’t mean that. My guess is as good as yours as to what’s happened to her, and I’ve no way of guessing, no clue.’

  Claire saw she had probed enough. It was unfair that everyone concerned with Marigold was obliged to suspect everyone else. ‘If she’s doing this deliberately,’ Claire said, ‘I’ll never talk to her again. If she has fallen foul of someone and is dead, I’ll never forgive myself.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you forgive yourself?’

  ‘I don’t know, I really don’t know,’ said Claire. ‘It can happen that you have a sense of guilt about somebody without having done anything in that regard.’

  She was relieved to hear him say, ‘I know what you mean. I feel exactly the same way about Marigold. Perhaps she wants us to feel guilt.’

  ‘Perhaps. In fact, Tom refuses to feel guilty. We can do no more than we are doing to find Marigold. Tom says he refuses to distort his soul by suppressing his true experience of his daughter just for appearances.’

  ‘I’m glad of that,’ James said. ‘I’m glad he’s given me this wonderful job. It might have been construed as disloyalty to Marigold. Everyone knows our marriage was splitting up.’

  ‘Tom is very professional,’ Claire said. ‘He wants the best people, always, for his film. And you’re the best available historical researcher for the present film. Besides, he’s convinced that Marigold hired the hit-man.’

  ‘Yes, I think she would do that.’

  ‘You think she would?’

  ‘Yes, she would,’ said James. ‘I was married to her a very short time but I did learn not to count on her equilibrium.’

  What they were both wondering was, ‘What could she do next?’

  The title of the film was to be Watling Street, the name of the old Roman road stretching diagonally across the south-west of England; although this was not a Roman name, Tom’s Celt was able to foresee that the charming name of the famous road was Watling Street from the ninth century onwards under the occupation by Danish forces.

  The street itself stretched from the present Hyde Park Corner in London to Wroxeter near Shrewsbury. Wroxeter was at the time of Tom’s centurion the city of Viroconium, remains of which still exist. Now, the Celt ‘saw ‘in advance whenever he tuned in, everything that happened in Watling Street as he himself called the road. He babbled about a ‘self-service laundry at Maida Vale’, about a ‘battle of Bosworth Field between Tamworth and Hinckley’; he raved about the goings-on at ‘The Black Swan’ at Grendon. He said it was cold at Lichfield three miles off Watling Street under black and grey puff clouds. It was, he said, a heavy, undulating landscape. There was a wild animal collection at Whipsnade. Tom made long notes about what his Celt foresaw ‘in the year 433 A.D. on the site of the future Watling Street.’ He was intent on writing at least the first draft of the script. Under ‘Possible Names Early Britons’ he listed ‘Morgan, Bronwyn, Iolo, Huffa, Cedric, Gareth.’ For the centurion he stuck to his first thought ‘Paulus Aurelius’, for the Celt, Cedric was changed to Dennis, then back to Cedric again.

  Cedric the Celt had to be a star, but one with a strong wild face, the face of a young man sent mad by complete knowledge of the future, and yet with little control over his own life, belonging as he did to his centurion. And the centurion, Paulus Aurelius? Tom did his best not to model him on himself, or at least on his own self-image, but finding this was impossible he gave in and decided he could compose better if he was the model for Paulus Aurelius — what the hell? Then Tom couldn’t sleep at nights. For a week he puzzled over the casting of Cedric the Celt. Night after night before his closed eyes, and practically on his pillow in the morning, looking at him, looking … he could see the dark sullen ugly face of Marigold, herself. ‘I know of no star to resemble her,’ he said to Claire, ‘but she haunts my dreams as the Celt, Cedric the sorcerer. I feel he would look just like her. It’s absurd there are no star actresses like her.’

  ‘Get someone, anyone, any boy,’ said Claire, ‘and make an actor of him.’

  ‘Easier said than done,’ said Tom.

  Let us go then, you and I, …

  He explained to Dave what he was looking for. ‘A squat dark fellow. If possible hardly any neck. Deep-set tiny black eyes. He could have a kindliness about him but he has the tragic future written on his face. He belongs to the world of legend and yet he is alive and real in the fifth century.’

  ‘I’ll keep a look out,’ said Dave.

  ‘It’s unlikely you’ll find anyone like it,’ said Tom. ‘But remember Marigold’s photo. Keep it in front of you.’

  ‘It might not be so unlikely,’ Dave said. ‘You know there are a few youths around who look like what you want. A few more than you might think.’

  ‘They would have to act,’ said Tom.

  ‘That would be up to you,’ said Dave in his wisdom.

  Charlie Good, Claire’s late and most recent lover, was having a snack lunch in a pub in Gloucestershire when he saw Marigold doing the same. Charlie was a freelance physiotherapist. He had lived-in with Claire in their capacious house at Wimbledon all the time Tom had been disabled. Tom had first suspected his presence in the house by the promptness with which Charlie appeared on the occasions when his own physiotherapist and masseur was absent a day, or held up for some reason. ‘I’ll get Charlie,’ Claire would say, and without much delay Charlie would appear with his jars of aromatics by Tom’s bedside or beside his chair. Claire had hardly bothered to cover Charlie’s presence as a permanent guest. She had parted amicably from Charlie, and in a way that suited him, by the time Tom began to get about again.

  When he came across Marigold, however, Charlie Good was getting short of funds, a condition which was more or less a chronic norm with him. Perhaps shortage of money sharpened his eyes: he noticed, first, a sullen-looking youth at a corner table. A bad face, he thought, I wouldn’t trust him. The youth wore a brown leather jacket over a grey jersey and a check shirt, blue jeans, heavy, black, muddy boots. But something about the hands, the hands … Charlie looked more carefully and discerned Marigold. He looked away, pretending to be lost in his dreams; he loo
ked into his beer. He ordered another and remarked to the landlord on the filthy weather.

  Charlie drank his beer and left the pub. He went out to his ancient Rover and there he waited among the other vehicles, five of them, drawn up outside the pub. The rain was heavy. Marigold appeared. Charlie ducked. She made for a camper, gave a melancholy look around, got in and drove off. Charlie followed her and watched her dive into a sad field next to a cemetery.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The reports from the Paris ‘organisation’ or ‘network’ as Cora and Ivan called it — sightings of Marigold in Honolulu, or up the Amazon as they might be — were regularly passed on to the police by Tom. It could have been that these dazzling place-names had waylaid the bored investigators from visualising Marigold in some funk-hole nearer home. Big-moneyed daughters don’t live in sordid, damp discomfort, and if disguised as boys they would likely be living with another transvestite or such like, not alone.

  Claire had all along opposed Tom’s desire to trace Marigold through the police, and now that she was wanted for questioning about the hit and run attack on Dave, Claire was even less keen on the idea. She would not own that Marigold could be responsible for an act of criminal violence. She told Tom, ‘You would incriminate your own daughter before you knew the facts.’

  ‘But she’s mad, don’t you see that?’ Tom was thinking of Dave in the hospital, his brown worn face on the pillow, with his head in bandages, trying not to show pain or fear. ‘It was nearly murder, very near,’ said Tom.