by Anna Maxted
Alas, that’s not what he would be telling them this time.
I arrived at the London Palladium at seven fifteen sharp. There was no need to upset Jason more than necessary.
‘You look smart,’ he said, as I squeezed through loud crowds of children in the foyer.
‘Thank you.’
Smart?! Has any woman ever been so humbled? Now that I was newly blessed with 20/20 vision, it amazed me that Jason couldn’t see the gaping holes in our relationship. Still, I smiled, and waved my jumbo pack of Maltesers at him. He smiled, and waved his jumbo bottle of Evian at me. ‘I had to wait five months for these tickets,’ he said.
‘You are kidding me.’
‘What?’ said Jason. ‘You look upset.’
I sighed. ‘You tell me something like that, and it makes me realise that I don’t understand people. My job is about understanding people.’
‘You always said it was about facts.’
‘Yeah. Well. It is. But it’s also about understanding people.’
‘You always said it wasn’t!’
‘Jason. That’s probably why I’m not that good at it.’
We found our seats, ten rows from the stage, and sat in them. Jason let me know that the tickets cost over a hundred pounds. I felt dreadful so I bought him a programme. I could refund him sixty quid later. (He’ll spend over a hundred quid on tickets, yet won’t pay a fiver for a programme, preferring to spend the evening confused. As much as one can be confused by Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.)
Truth is, despite the fear of what was to come later, I quite enjoyed sitting there. I liked watching other people engage, booing and hissing the actor playing the Child Catcher. The problem I have with musicals is I can’t get past people bursting into song as if it’s natural. They get a funny look on their face moments before.
Jason had said the performance was sold out, yet three rows in front of us, there were two empty seats. That made me wonder. Is it like booking an exercise class for some people? Yes, I will go to the theatre, it’ll do me good, afterwards I’ll feel so pleased I’ve gone … and then they back out at the last minute. Jason ‘nipped’ to the toilet and I considered whether the woman in front of me could possibly have a larger head. Not content with that, she’d blowdried her hair into peaks. Perhaps after the interval she’d return wearing a top hat.
I jerked in my seat. I’d caught a familiar movement, looked up, and there was Jack. Fuck. I blushed, and shrank in my seat. I was so quick to sense the possibility of his presence it was as if I was looking for it. I was embarrassed in front of myself. He and some guy were picking their way into the empty seats. There was the usual arrogant aura, but Jack didn’t look up. Please don’t see me with Jason, please don’t … If I didn’t have the worst luck.
The possibility of running into him hadn’t occurred to me, although I knew from Jack that one of the main duties of being an actor’s agent was to go to the theatre. You went to the theatre at least three times a week. It was about building relationships with people, as your standing in the industry was everything. There were so many actors. It wasn’t difficult to sign clients. The trick was to sign good clients.
As your confidence grew, you took out casting directors, to see these clients of yours perform. You took them to press nights, first nights, aftershows (aftershow parties, darlings), and it was a great bore. You also supported your clients, whether they were playing Othello or Caractacus Potts. Often, you snuck in at half-time, if you thought you could get away with it. I guessed this was what Jack was doing. But even so. Bloody Chitty. I was cursed, I knew it.
I wondered who his companion was. I saw his profile as he turned to speak to Jack, and my stomach clenched. Did I know him? You can see a person once, and consciously forget what they look like instantly, be unable to describe them if asked. And yet, your brain stores that information for you. You will recognise a person you’ve seen once for a second, even if you think you won’t. Greg once attended a police lecture, where the audience was shown fifty faces in a flash of one second each. Then, they were shown fifty more faces, and asked to say if each face had featured in the first showing. ‘Yeeesssss’ replied the audience as one, ‘Noooooo … noooooo … yeeesssss.’
My brain said ‘Yeeeesss,’ and yet I couldn’t place him. Was he a casting director? A client? A friend? I tried to assess their relationship without staring. I failed. Jack turned round and looked right at me. Stupidly, instead of gazing through him, I ducked. Greg would have been ashamed. I wriggled upright again and forced a miserable smile, as Jason plopped into his seat. ‘OK, darling?’
‘Fine,’ I said.
Jack stared through me. If I’d had the option of covering Jason’s head in a black bin liner I would have done. This couldn’t get much worse.
Jack murmured in his friend’s ear. The man started, or at least, made a jerky movement, but didn’t look round. I tensed. To my dismay, Jack was approaching our seats.
‘Hannah,’ he said, in an apparently normal voice. ‘Jason. Congratulations.’ He didn’t meet my eye.
I laughed nervously. People-reading was essential to my job. Greg was always preaching about the foolishness of going into an encounter with a preconceived notion of how it should turn out. ‘To get what you want,’ he said, ‘you must adjust yourself to the situation. Not the other way round.’ Much of people-reading was, he insisted, about making elementary, common-sense observations and acting on them. I rarely did this. I was poor at making elementary, common-sense observations. But as we stood there, leaning on our worn red velvet seats, I knew that I had to get Jack away from Jason, fast. Jason was not going to hear the news of our cancelled engagement from anyone but me.
‘Jason,’ I said, ‘this is Jack Forrester. I—’
‘Jack!’ cried Jason. ‘I remember you from school. How are you? Thank you for, er, sorting things out with Hannah. I do believe it’s best to start a marriage with an, er, clean slate—’
‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I need to go to the … freshen up.’ (Jason hated the word ‘loo’.) ‘You were on your way out for a cigarette, weren’t you, Jack?’ I mouthed, ‘Please,’ and he followed me from the auditorium. ‘I’ll explain outside,’ I said.
He didn’t reply, and I couldn’t bear the silence, so I said, ‘Who’s that man you’re with?’
‘Jonathan Coates. Our old drama teacher.’ Jack stared at me, expressionless.
‘Nice of him to come over and say hi.’
‘Oh … well,’ said Jack.
I was being bullish to disguise my despair. Why hadn’t he crushed me with a retort about cheating? He was rarely speechless, and I wondered, why now?
He recovered fast once we were in the foyer, gripping my arm above the elbow, and saying, ‘So, Hannah, you’ve done it again. Except this time poor old Jason’s playing the part of the gullible bastard.’
I shook my head. Well, perhaps there was a similarity, but it was for entirely different reasons. With Jason, the betrayal was because I didn’t love him. With Jack, it was because I’d loved him too much and, aged nineteen, I hadn’t trusted the feeling he evoked in me. And hadn’t I already explained this to Jack, after Grandma Nellie’s funeral? He had a short memory. Standing here now, I could see that I’d changed. But I could also see that to Jack, I’d stayed the same.
‘Look, Jason has be—’
‘Jason is a lovely guy and an absolute fucking retard,’ said Jack, into my face. ‘I can’t believe you’re going through with this.’
I’m not, I wanted to say, but instead I murmured, ‘Ah, a closet Telegraph reader. Up the Revolution!’
His anger stunned me into irrelevancies. Like before, I couldn’t defend myself. If he was always going to condemn me, whatever I said, what was the point?
Jack let go of my arm, and screwed up his face. ‘Know what, I can believe it. Jason doesn’t understand you. He has no idea what you’re like as a person. What you want. What you fear. What in the world scares Hannah. I know. Darling.’
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The way he said ‘darling’ was worlds apart from how Jason said it. Jack said ‘darling’ like it was a threat.
‘That eejit out there is right in one thing. You fear intimacy, you fear it like other people fear violent death. What he doesn’t get, is that that’s why you’re marrying him, so you can keep him at arm’s length till you both fucking kill yourselves at the pointlessness of it all. What he also doesn’t get is that your fucking problems didn’t start with me, they started waaay back.’
‘What?’
‘If you can’t see it now, you never will, and that’s because you’re a coward, Hannah. You can’t admit you’re wrong, not even to yourself. You cannot take criticism of the one person who should be criticised, what he did was … and, and one day, when you’re a sad old lady, you’re going to look back on your life and regret you wasted it.’
I made a small sound in my throat. ‘Thank you for that. For impact, it certainly beats a card. As ever, you assume the worst of me. You never give me a chance. For your information, Jason sprang that Telegraph thing on me, and I’ve not been able to reach him since I left you. I’m hoping to terminate our alliance after the show.’ I paused. ‘I am aware that every new minute that I don’t tell Jason makes me a cheat. But, I have his feelings to consider and I can’t just blurt it out. Also, I don’t think anyone in my life has ever been as hostile to me as you are.’
Jack stared at me, disbelieving, then stood away, waved his hand as if to let me go. Then he grabbed my wrist, bent his head to my ear and said, ‘I’d have looked after you for ever, if you’d let me.’
I shook him off and ran. Jason frowned as I took my seat. ‘Are you OK? You took ages. Was there a queue? Or was it –’ he lowered his voice – ‘tummy trouble?’
I nodded, stared ahead, grateful for the dimming lights. I opened my eyes as wide as they could go, blinking fast, to keep them dry.
‘Isn’t the car spectacular?’ whispered Jason.
I preferred the Vauxhall, I thought, but I didn’t say it, just nodded. Whatever Jack said had a way of sticking. The words spun round my head, making me dizzy. All the time Jase had wittered on about intimacy, it had seemed like a joke in a foreign language. I thought it meant that he felt undermined by my confidence and strength. Fear of intimacy was a phrase used by people who felt threatened by independent women. That’s all I was, independent. Because, ultimately, you can’t depend on anyone. Not even your mother.
But when Jack made the accusation, it rang true and it meant something else. He didn’t just say it and say it and say it like Jason did, until the words ran into each other like wet paint. He put it in context, so its consequences were lit in flames. I was scared of intimacy, and he was right, that was why, only last week, I’d agreed to bind myself to a man who didn’t understand me, didn’t know me, never would. I was backing out, and that gave me some cheer, because surely this meant progress? But the tears still queued to fall, and that was because Jack had shucked out the unwilling truth like an oyster from its shell.
Fear of intimacy meant fear of love, fear of giving it, fear of getting it, and that translated to a loveless life. That wasn’t independence, that was insanity. I didn’t want that. But my fear of intimacy was there, embedded in my heart, like a fear of the dark. I didn’t know why, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know. I collected other people’s secrets and that knowing made me feel superior, it was a flimsy foil against my own weaknesses. I knew one thing that terrified me. Jack was right. It didn’t start with him. It had started waay before. Of course, it was linked to my mother. I should have paid more attention to how her behaviour had made me act. No. Feel.
But there was more to it than that. We all need something to worship; it’s about having faith in the ultimate goodness of life. No one wants their idol to fall. They need to believe, like they need to breathe. Which is why the papers don’t print half the dirt they have on the celebrities we regard as national treasures. People take disillusionment badly. It can break them. If the great and the good are corrupt, then the whole world is corrupt and what is the point of existing? It was comforting to uncover the corruption of those who didn’t matter to me. But if Jack was suggesting my father was in any way at fault, I didn’t want to know.
Chapter 27
The show ended and I gave Jason a long hug, to thank him. I think it was also an apology for what I was about to do to him. He held on as if he couldn’t believe it. (I was an ender of hugs, not an initiator.) I felt uncomfortable, and there was a fixed smile on my face, possibly a grimace, but I forced myself to stay put. Happily, the person sitting next to me – the fattest person in the theatre, needless to say – said, ‘Sorry, can I get past?’ so I had a legitimate excuse to pull away. Covertly, I glanced at where Jack had been sitting. He’d gone.
‘That was brilliant!’ said Jason. ‘Well, Truly Scrumptious! Shall we find a place for coffee?’
‘Jason,’ I said. I couldn’t wait for the coffee. I had to tell him now. I took his hand. ‘Look. I have something to tell you.’ I looked into his brown eyes and saw fear, and it shocked me. I added, quickly, ‘Greg insisted I work tonight. I am so sorry.’
Jason laughed, I think with relief. ‘No worries. The caffeine would only have kept me awake.’
I smiled, tight-lipped. Then sat, blank-faced and immobile in the cab home. I was a coward. But it was one thing resolving to tell him, quite another thing to face him and speak. The truth? I couldn’t end it again, I realised. It would scar him. He was a delicate soul, twice would be too much. Jesus, what would I do?
I had a nasty half-hour before an idea presented itself, ping! I nearly cracked a smile. He would have to end it. Jason Brocklehurst must regretfully break my heart.
Now I had to think of how to effect such an occurrence.
I sat in my car, across the road from Charlie’s house, a video camera on my lap, and thought about my job. I won’t lie to you, I thought it was cool, it made me feel a bit of a hero. We at Hound Dog got results with meagre resources – we really did live off our wits – and that made me proud. When the police do a follow they use a twenty-five-man team and eight vehicles. Each one will be behind the target for only forty to fifty seconds. The max we’ll use is three agents, one car, and a motorbike. There’s quite a stream of old coppers in this industry, and Greg is always saying how shocked they are at how we manage, the spoilt brats. It’s not so easy when you can’t flash a warrant card.
And yet, just then, I did not feel the tiniest bit a hero. I felt like a bad guy. I’d done the usual: filmed the street name, filmed the house. Now I was watching it. An upstairs light went on, at eleven oh-seven, and off, at eleven twenty-four. In the window was an Action Man doll, suspended from a makeshift parachute. Genius that I was, I guessed this room was Charlie’s. Maybe he couldn’t sleep. Maybe his mother had brought him a glass of milk, or Coke, or read him a story. Thanks to Gabrielle and Jude, I was newly attuned to the world of mothers and their children.
I found good mothers intriguing. Gabrielle, for instance, had once told me off for singing, ‘Nik nak paddywack,’ to Jude. (For the uninitiated: ‘This old man, he played one, he played nik nak on my tum, with a nik nak paddywack give a dog a bone, this old man came rolling home.’) As far as I could tell, this was amicable nonsense. To Gabrielle, I was singing to my year-old nephew about a paedophile.
‘On my tum?’ she kept saying. ‘What is an old man doing playing nik nak paddywack, whatever the hell that is – it sounds incredibly suspicious – on a child’s tum?’
‘Some people sing it, “on my bum”,’ I replied, to reassure her that I was responsible enough to have chosen the clean version. My reassurance was poorly received.
Likewise, she paid an extraordinary amount of attention to the tiny details of Jude’s daily life that would simply not occur to normal people (Ollie, for instance). She moved his highchair around the table so he didn’t always have the same view. She dressed him in dungarees because she felt that trouser el
astic would be tight on his fat little tummy. She reassembled his cardboard box house every night, so one morning he’d waddle into the lounge to a studio flat, the next, an open plan penthouse. Once, she saw a fox in the garden, and she yelled from her study, ‘A FOX! Everyone, a FOX!’ Nanny Amanda was made to cease and desist from a nappy change, and Jude was held, naked, up to the window to see his first fox. ‘Woof!’ he said, pleasing compensation for the Dobermanesque pooh he then did on the carpet.
I was in awe at the care that Gabrielle took with him. Apart from the fact that we’d all like our own personal butler, there was something redemptive about that kind of love. I felt that as long as there were mothers – and fathers, of course, and fathers – in the world who loved their babies with the inexpressible passion that Gabrielle loved her baby, there was hope for us all. Which brought me to the Hound Dog client who had cost Jason his post-Chitty coffee. The vile pig. On what worthy cause was he going to spend the money that he planned to withhold from his five-year-old son, Charlie? Beer? A new stereo system? Pec implants?
I watched a Ford Fiesta pull up and a young man jump out. He was holding a bedraggled bunch of flowers, but no overnight bag. He sprinted up the concrete path and – knocked gently. Oh Lord, he was a pro! The door was pulled open, and Charlie’s mother flung her arms around him and they kissed. Then, as if he’d planned it to kill me softly, a small boy in pyjamas elbowed his way past his mother and received a high five and a big hug for his trouble. I, the intruder, looked away. My video camera was aimed at the floor, where it had a fine view of the Coke cans, Ribena cartons, old print-outs of maps, Snickers bar wrappers, crisp packets, and small change obscuring the dust mat. I lifted it, slowly, pointing the lens towards the almost identical house, opposite. Night vision recordings were of terrible quality; no one would notice. I sat around till two thirty, on the grounds that it had to look as if I’d waited in vain for the boyfriend to show.