by PETER DAVEY
Lying awake beside his soundly sleeping wife, he felt exhausted and depressed. He had hoped that re-reading the novel through Nicola’s eyes, riding on the wave of her youthful enthusiasm, might reveal it in a different light. But the sneaking reservations he had always had about it had grown stronger than ever, the irreparable cracks in its structure now seemed to penetrate to its very foundation. He had been crazy to even think of submitting it in that state and he knew that, whatever Nicola said, The Tyranny of Love (or whatever jazzy title she wanted to give it) was never going to see the light of day. He had moved on, he was writing new stuff – better stuff – and he could not see himself ever returning to it. All that time, all that effort, all that pain – it was going to come to nothing.
*
A few days later, Ted found an email from her in his mailbox. It said, simply, ‘Call me. N xx’ then gave a mobile number. He called her late that morning, while Anne was at work.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said the other night,” she said, “About me doing a bit of work on your manuscript. I’d quite like to have a go at that, if you’re still up for it.”
He could not help noticing that her tone was far less buoyant than before. “Well yes, that would be great, Nicola. And, like I said, I’d pay you. Have you got somewhere you can work, though?”
“No, that’s the problem. I’m still crashing with friends.”
“Is everything all right? You sound a bit… down.”
“I’m okay. It’s a pain, though – I’m losing all my girlfriends because their boyfriends keep trying to hit on me. It’s not like I'm given them any encouragement.”
“You need a place of your own.”
“Tell me about it!”
“So, how’s the job going?” he asked after a pause.
“It isn’t.”
Ted hesitated, seeing the situation at the Queen’s replaying itself. “Dare I ask what happened?”
“I just dropped this fucking chip – sorry, pomme frite – on the table-cloth then picked it up and put it back on the customer’s plate. The bitch complained and I got the sack. I mean, for Christ’s sake, it’s not like I’d picked it up off the floor!”
Ted could not prevent a smile. “Did you pick it up with your fingers?
“Of course I picked it up with my fingers! What do you think I picked it up with, my teeth?”
“It does sound a bit harsh. They should have given you a warning.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve already had a couple of those. This prat Gary, the manager, took me on one side and said, ‘Look, nobody likes the customers. They’re all arseholes. But you’ve got to put on an act. You’ve got to smile and pretend that serving them’s all you could possibly want to be doing at that moment. You’re an actress, you should be able to manage that.’ Bastard!”
Ted’s mind flashed back to their first exchange at The Queen’s Head. “But you couldn’t?”
“No I fucking couldn't! Acting’s important to me. It’s the one thing that is. It’s not about being a performing monkey. It’s bad enough getting the sack without having him slag off my profession!”
“Nicola, maybe...”
“Maybe what?”
“Well, maybe you should try being a bit less confrontational. Just be a performing monkey, play the game, and that way you’ll get into a position where you can do stuff you do care about. Try and have a sense of humour about it.”
“Christ, Ted, who’s side are you on?”
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, already regretting what he’d said. “I know it’s hard. I’m just repeating what I’ve heard people say about starting out in the acting profession.”
“I must be in the wrong profession then.”
Ted was groping for some anodyne phrase to soothe or console, but somehow he just seemed to be coming out with platitudes. “You’ve got to have faith in yourself is what I’m trying to say.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Well, I’ve got faith in you, if that means anything. You’re going to fight your way through all this crap and be a great actress – I know it. One day I’m going to see you on stage, or on the screen, and you’re going to bring tears to my eyes.”
“I wish you were up here, Ted.”
He was astonished by what she had just said and suddenly felt hopelessly out of his depth. As he fumbled for a reply, she added, “So we could work on the book together. That’d be good, wouldn’t it?”
“It would. It’d be great. Look, Nicola, are you quite sure you’re all right?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
“Have you got somewhere to sleep tonight?”
“For Christ’s sake, I’m not on the streets! I’m just a bit short, that’s all.”
“Surely… your mother can help you out?”
“I’d rather die than ask her! Besides, her help always comes with strings attached.”
He lowered his voice to a murmur even though he was alone in the house. “I could send you the money up front, then, if you like. For the editing. How about a hundred at a rate of ten pounds an hour? If it you takes you longer...”
“A hundred’ll be fine.”
He was touched by the note of relief in her voice. Poor girl. She was probably shivering on a bench somewhere.
“Give me an address then and I’ll send it straight away.”
That afternoon, he walked into Wemborne and withdrew two hundred pounds in cash from his own savings account – the dregs of his brother’s legacy. He sent it by recorded delivery to the address she had given him then walked swiftly home, wishing to forget as quickly as possible what he had done.
2
He heard nothing more from her, though the money was not returned, so he assumed it had been received and signed for. Then, one evening while he and Anne were watching Gardener’s World, the telephone rang. Anne went to answer it and was gone for nearly an hour.
“One of the children?” he asked when she came back.
“No, that was Marie.”
“Oh God. What did she want?”
“She wanted to ask a favour. I’m afraid I lied and told her you were out so you wouldn’t be put on the spot.”
“That was very thoughtful of you. So what’s the favour?”
“It’s quite a big one, even by her standards,” she said, perching back on her seat.
“Well, come on then, tell me.”
She seemed awkward, as though she were asking the favour herself. Ted guessed she’d promised Marie she would ‘work on him’. “She’s going to Australia for two months and wondered if you’d be interested in babysitting Cordelia. Apparently Gladys has got too arthritic to go down there every day, with the steps and everything. She’s not expecting you to stay the full two months – just as long as you can manage. She thought you might be able to work in peace there, although why she imagines I don’t leave you in peace here...”
“Where’s David, then?”
“He’s in America, working.”
Ted thought for a while. “Right. Well, thanks for not committing me.”
“So you’re going to tell her no, are you?”
“Of course I’m going to tell her no! I hate London, you know that!”
“Well, Richmond isn’t exactly London. It’s lovely out there.”
“It’s all London to me. And the last thing I want is to have to spend two months babysitting that obnoxious cat!”
“She’s not an obnoxious cat. She’s a sweet little cat. And you’ve only got to feed her and stroke her once in a while.”
“The last time I stroked her she scratched me,” he grunted.
“She doesn’t like people touching her back. I think she’s got a sensitive spot. Marie warned you about it, if you remember.”
They watched Monty Don enthusiastically firming in an acer.
“Anyone would think you wanted to get rid of me.”
“It’s not that. I just think a change of scene would do you good. You don’t have to go for the full
two months. You could just go for one. Or even a couple of weeks – just as long as you want. She said she’d be grateful for any time at all you could manage.”
Ted did not reply and nothing more was said on the matter. The following evening, however, while they were in the kitchen preparing supper together, he said, quite out the blue,
“I’d miss you. If I went to Marie's.”
“I’d miss you too. But I’d manage. I really think it’d do you good, Ted. You’ve been so depressed ever since you got that letter and you’re just stuck in this place all the time with hardly any human contact except that bunch up at the Queen’s. And when you’re depressed everything around you becomes associated with your depression, even me.”
“That’s rubbish!”
“No it’s not. I’m just talking about the benefits of a change of scene – there’s no great mystery about it. It's why people go on holiday, after all. I just think you should go up there and see a bit of life, have a bit of fun. Get a new perspective on things. Get back some of that ‘joie de vie’ that made you a writer in the first place.”
Ted considered her words. “And you’re quite sure you’d be all right without me?”
“I’d be fine!”
3
The following Thursday week, Anne spent an hour ironing all her husband’s clothes in the conservatory while listening to Radio Two. As he was moving around getting his things together, he paused for a moment in the doorway and contemplated her back view as she worked – lifting his shirt distractedly, turning it over, spreading it out, her hands moving methodically, efficiently and quite independently of her brain which seemed miles away. The radio was playing an old instrumental version of All of Me and she was swaying gently to the rhythm and singing along to the tune – All of me, why not take all of me? It was something he had not known her do in years.
She dropped him at the station on her way to work the next morning. Before he got out of the car, she said, “Ted, I just want to say this now so there’s no misunderstanding. I’m not going to phone you while you’re in Richmond. Unless there’s an emergency, of course. And I’m not expecting you to phone me.”
“No, okay,” he said, a little surprised. “If that’s what you want.”
“It’s not that I’m not interested in how you get on. I just want you to have a complete break and not be reminded of home or anything to do with home, including me. I don’t want you to have to ask polite questions about how I am or pretend your writing’s going well if it isn’t. I want you to be spared all that, just for a few weeks.”
“It’s not a matter of asking polite questions. I worry about you.”
“I know, but you needn’t. If you’re depressed and want to talk about it, that’s a different matter. I’m just explaining, so you’re not hurt.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Then he took her in his arms. “I hope you enjoy having the house to yourself,” he said.
“Believe it or not, I will miss you.”
“Liar.”
*
It rained on the journey, but by the time Ted reached Richmond the sun was shining. His first task was to track down Gladys, an elderly neighbour whom Marie adored and to whom (by virtue of paying her a small retainer to hold the keys and keep an eye on the place) she accorded the title of ‘my favourite member of staff’. He rang the bell, detonating a cacophony of furious yapping and an old lady’s voice shouting, “Be quiet, you little so and so!” Eventually, the door opened. Gladys was small, grey and stooped, but with a disarming smile.
“Ah! So you must be the famous Mr. Havers! Marie’s told me all about you.”
“Actually the name’s Haymer,” he smiled. “But I answer to Ted. I was just wondering if I could pick up the keys.”
“Ah yes, the keys! The keys! The keys to the kingdom!”
They smiled at each other for a few moments.
“So... if I could possibly have the keys?”
“Ah yes, of course! Silly me! I wonder where I put them?”
Gladys’s obvious dottiness was something of a relief to Ted since he’d feared that his stay in Richmond might be closely monitored, with regular sitreps going back to Marie.
“Well, I hope you manage to do it all right in the flat, Mr. Havers,” she exclaimed when she finally returned and handed him the keys. “Your writing, I mean. So clever.”
Marie and David’s split-level apartment comprised the upper half of a large Edwardian house off Richmond Hill. Ted dumped his bags and provisions in the hall then wandered into the living room. The place was just as he remembered it – sunny, south-facing and minimalist, the stately armoir and other lumps of French furniture – no doubt from Marie’s family home in Provence – blending in thanks to her flair for interior design. He had been there twice in the twenty years they had owned it, once after taking Jess to see Les Misérables for her eighteenth birthday treat and, years later, he and Anne had come for a weekend. Marie had taken them to a very odd play by Genet and then they had tried out a newly-opened French restaurant where Marie, for no apparent reason, had taken a violent dislike to the waiter. It seemed strange to be alone here now, the place silent but for the murmur of traffic beyond the double glazing. He moved to the bay window and gazed out over gardens and woodland parted by a wide bow of the Thames – a view which, but for the tower blocks poking through the horizon and the airliners stacking for Heathrow, might have been painted by Constable. The leaves were yellow now in the afternoon sun and the sparrows and blue tits flitted among the branches just as they did at home.
He went through to the kitchen where he found a letter from Marie explaining Cordelia’s complex feeding regime; then Cordelia herself – a petite, smoky-grey Burmese – was suddenly rubbing against his leg and purring enthusiastically. He returned the greeting with a tentative stroke of her head, then swiftly withdrew his hand. From the French windows some iron steps led down to a terrace and a little walled garden where Marie liked to recline in the summer, drinking Chardonnay and organising her friends’ lives using her cordless telephone. He ascended the short staircase to the landing off which lay the bedrooms. It was hung with old photos, some of which dated from Oxford. There was even one of him and David – both looking slightly the worse for wear – taken during a picnic in Christchurch Meadow. Ted smiled, remembering the occasion vividly since an attractive law student named Anne had been there and he had attempted to dazzle her with his knowledge of post-modernist poetry. David – who was two years his senior and about an inch taller – had his arm round his shoulder, like an older brother.
He appropriated the largest of the three bedrooms, which faced south, away from the road. There was a table which could be moved to the window and would be perfect for work. He unpacked, then went down and opened a bottle of Shiraz – having some difficulty with David’s vacuum-powered corkscrew – then sat in the garden for a while gazing at the pots of geraniums and listening to the aircraft descending overhead. Familiarising himself with the kitchen, he put on some ravioli and refilled his glass. His instinct was to phone Anne, just to let her know he had arrived safely and that everything was okay, but he desisted. He ate his supper watching ‘Das Boot’ – one of David’s huge collection of DVDs – then fell so soundly asleep during the German classic that he lay awake half the night, staring at the ceiling and listening to the distant, unfamiliar drone of traffic. As a recluse and lover of solitude it often surprised him how easily he succumbed to loneliness. He told himself it was the strange surroundings and that everything would be fine once he got settled into work. He fell asleep at dawn, rose late and made coffee but found it almost impossible to get down to his writing.
He forgot to eat lunch and at three o’clock, suddenly ravenous, went down to the sundrenched kitchen and laid into a cottage loaf he had bought on the journey. He made a bowl of soup and forgot to eat it. He decided to go for a walk up to Richmond Park, which lay serenely under a silver-blue sky, and sat on a bench for an hour watching the world around him –
people walking their dogs, people pushing babies, people jogging, people cycling, people performing tai chi, people flying kites. The vast metropolis lay sprawled to the north-east in a violet haze, its incessant muffled roar punctuated now and then by the scream of a siren or a burst of mechanical hammering from some construction site. He thought of the millions of people out there, living their lives as best they could – coping with jobs, with relationships, with problems, each with their dream which was stubbornly refusing to come true. And he thought of Nicola among them, battling on with her own life.
Back at the flat he opened a bottle of Chardonnay, forgetting he had an already-open bottle of Shiraz. He was still having trouble with the corkscrew but mainly because, for some reason, his hands were shaking. He fed the cat and put on some macaroni, then went up to his desk where he sat at his laptop, gazing out at the burnished afternoon sunlight on the leaves. It was absurd. Nicola was out there somewhere – homeless, living off the goodwill of her friends and no doubt stretching those friendships to breaking point. And here he was with this enormous apartment all to himself. It would be a crime, an act of inhumanity, not to invite her there. Then his nostrils twitched and he tore back down to the kitchen. “Fuck!” he shouted, thrusting the congealed lump of pasta under the tap and wondering, in a cloud of steam, how he was ever going to restore Marie's saucepan to its former glory. He leant on the side of the sink and heaved a sigh. Then he fetched his address book, went out to the telephone in the hall and dialled her number.
She answered almost at once, although he could barely make her out.
“It’s Ted!” he shouted. “Ted! The famous author! How’s it going?”
He thought he detected the word ‘terrible’. Then the signal improved. “…You gave me all that money and I haven’t done a stroke of work on your book! I just can’t find anywhere peaceful to concentrate.”