Hurriedly she invited me in out of the cold, and I blathered on as my chilled fingers wrestled with the buttons of my parka:
“I saw him, Diana, and he’s a broken man. He’s hooked on heroin or something like that, and it’s eaten him away. He doesn’t look at all like the man you described. He’s a wreck. A wreck as decrepit as the house he lives in. But the properly good news is that he doesn’t have the film any more. I don’t know why he tried to demand money from you again – even he didn’t seem sure. Perhaps his mate Jimmy was just chancing his arm. But Carlisle Collins told me categorically that he doesn’t have it, that he releases you from any claims, that you can go on and live your life without ever hearing from him again. Isn’t that great news, Diana? Isn’t that really great news?”
Such was my burbling excitement at what I had to tell her that I didn’t watch her expression. Her face was so lovely that really it was a surprise I could keep my eyes from it. I expected excitement, gratitude to me for finding him, confronting him, getting the result we surely wanted. I chattered on quickly and blithely, hoping that she’d tell me she was already in love with me like I was already madly in love with her.
But then I stopped speaking and stared at her, and what I saw was not a big, tender, endlessly happy smile. I didn’t see the joy of an MGM musical made glorious flesh. Instead, her eyes had narrowed, her face hardened, her lips turned downwards. She looked forlorn and simultaneously furious.
She even shook slightly when she spoke. “I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand. What do you mean when you say he doesn’t have it?”
“It’s gone!” My voice still clung on to its foolish pride. “You should have seen his place, Diana. Half of it had already burnt down, there was no lock on the door, no windows. There’s no way he could keep anything there. It’s gone! We don’t have to worry about it!”
“Please go a little slower for me, Michael, I’m trying hard to grasp this – he gave it away?”
“No, I think he lost it.”
A tremor of rage shook through her shoulders and she nearly screeched: “What do you mean he lost it?”
Still thinking I was playing the hero, I reached my hand out for her, to reassure her that this was good news. But she slapped it away, jerked herself from my touch. Stunned, disorientated, I took a step back as well, and found myself pressed against the front door.
About now I thought we’d have our hands all over each other, that we’d be tearing one another’s clothes off. Instead I was against the wooden door, feeling so small and insignificant, like an obviously unwanted guest.
“Please, Michael, this is important to me: did you ask him where he lost it? When he lost it?” The force of her anger pushed me back further. Her eyes were wide, her nostrils flaring. “Did you ask him if he looked for it? Whether anyone else could have taken it from him? If he has any idea where it could be? Did you, Michael? Did you?”
The questions came so fast, laced with hurt.
Slowly, I shook my head and stared down at the burgundy carpet. I could hear her jagged and angry breaths, feel her staring at me, waiting for some – any – answer.
“I didn’t see the need.” I squeaked finally. “If the film has gone, it doesn’t matter, does it? He told me he released you from any claims. That’s good news, isn’t it, Diana? That’s surely good news.”
I ventured a glance back up and saw that my words had in no way mollified her. No, she was disappointed and seemingly disgusted by what I’d said. With a stomp of her feet she turned away from me and screamed. Actually bent at the waist and roared from deep down within herself. A tortured, piercing cry.
When she turned to me again, it was as if she’d suddenly aged. Yesterday, her tears had seemed picturesque, beautiful even. Now, her eyes no longer sparkled, they burnt with fury and twisted the rest of her face with them. She swayed a little, her elbows clutched tight at her sides, her hands pushed forward as though they wanted to strangle the air between us.
All those photos on the walls now looked like they’d been taken of a completely different lady.
“What if someone else gets hold of it, Michael?” she demanded. “Did you think of that? What if someone else gets it and tries to do exactly the same thing Carlisle bloody Collins has been doing to me all these years? What happens to me then? They might be even greedier than he was!”
“I think it’s gone for good, Diana. Film like that decays so quickly unless it’s taken care of. And trust me, I’ve been to his house, Carlisle Collins these days is not a man who takes care of anything.”
“But you can’t be sure, can you? You can’t be absolutely and positively sure!”
We stared at each other. Her eyes so red-rimmed, her face so angry; my own expression nothing but baffled as I tried to think of a way to reassure her.
Again she doubled up as she screamed, roaring so loud it seemed to shake some of the vainglorious photos on the wall. I hoped her neighbours were out tonight.
With one hand on the varnished bannister, she straightened up, trying to get herself under control. I could see, through an effort of immense will, the wrinkles smooth away on her forehead. I heard her swallow and take a deep, deep breath as she tried to bring her voice back under control. “You don’t seem to understand, Michael, I need that film! I need it actually in my hands! It won’t be over until that happens, can’t you see that?”
“But the blackmail is over. Carlisle said…”
Diana interrupted, not screaming, just about managing to keep herself calm. “Do you really think I’d listen to what Carlisle Collins says? Do you think I’d trust him? Really?”
Once again, I just peered down.
“I asked you do one thing, Michael,” she wept. “One thing! I wanted you to make this over, but you haven’t, have you? You said you’d help me, but instead you’ve let me down. You’re just like all the others, all of them!”
I’d been in such a hurry to get to her place, to have her in my arms again, thanking me.
“I really think you should leave now, Michael. I’m sorry, I don’t want you here.”
“But…” The word barely made it past my lips. I tried to stare back at her, to let her know how much she meant to me and how much I wanted her in one beautifully meaningful look, but I failed completely. She thought I’d let her down and so I’d let her down.
She reached her arm around me and I obligingly stood out of her way. The front door was opened, and before I’d even managed to do up all the buttons on my parka, I was out in the darkness again. The door slammed furiously shut behind me.
That was the coldest and darkest night I’d ever experienced. It felt even crueller than the evening my father died. At least that had been expected. The distant sound of carollers made no impact on me. They might sing of joy to the world, but none of that penetrated me.
Feeling like I could burst out crying, I determined to walk the fifteen miles or so back to Stoke Newington. I had nothing else to do now and no money to do it with.
Chapter Seven
I’d never had much luck with girls. All the way through university, I only managed to get with two girls, and only one of them became a girlfriend. A short, frustrating and ill-starred affair. There were other lads there – rugby lads, football lads, lads with much more confidence than I could ever have conceived – and they seemed to have girls all the time. I could hear them boasting of it in the union bar, I could see them in action at the union disco, while I sat in the corner with my similarly unsuccessful pals, drank a bit too much then went home alone.
My one relationship was with Janine, an uptight girl from Colchester. The first time we met, I didn’t like her at all. She was too severe, too standoffish and too obviously judgemental. Undeniably, she was cute; pretty, in fact – short and slight, with dyed blonde hair and a heart-shaped face. There was a mole on her left cheek that I found instantly appealing. Certainly more appealing than I found her personality. Conversation seemed impossible. I don’t often find an inst
ant rapport with anybody, but she didn’t even make any effort. I was just some bloke stood in front of her in the melee of a party, and she didn’t want to speak to me and made it abundantly clear that she didn’t want to speak to me.
But then we met again, at another party thrown by other mutual friends, and this time something clicked. We found a shared love of old movies. As we talked about Hitchcock and Hawks and Capra, we realised with a gasp that both of us had had fathers who liked nothing better than trawling the TV Times and the Radio Times, then sitting down with their child at the appointed hour to watch some beautifully shot old classic. She even seemed to find it fascinating that I had a part-time job as a projectionist at the local Ritzy, and peppered me with questions about it. As if knowing how to run a film – an actual film – was one of life’s great achievements.
The very next evening, the cinema club at the union was showing a print of Godard’s Breathless. That turned out to be our first date. We went to bed together that night, drunk and eager, and were a couple the following morning. Maybe it was me telling her, as we headed from the screening to the bar, that she reminded me of the young Jean Seberg which did it. Janine never smiled so widely in my presence again, and that was her only blush.
It was so exciting to finally have a girlfriend, to drop that fact into conversation, to go out for drinks and know we were going to wake up together in the morning. We didn’t last though. Not even close. We fizzled out after six weeks. When we met at that second party, we may have realised that we were both lonely and both liked to watch old films, but it was impossible to build a proper relationship on such a flickering foundation. The reality was that we had a shared interest, not a soul-deep connection. Maybe if we’d been able to stay in bed together all day, alternating between drinking wine and drinking coffee while watching old movies on BBC2, we’d have been okay. As it was, we had to find things to talk about away from that, and that’s what let us down.
After six weeks, she was back to how she’d been at our first meeting, staring at me with barely concealed hostility and struggling to even bring herself to talk to me. Obviously we both knew we’d hit the end. We broke up quietly and amicably in the corner of the local student pub during Thursday night drinks, and after that – even though we saw each other around the city, and knew a lot of the same people – never exchanged a word again.
(The other girl was a one-night stand, a busty blonde who wore a Wonder Woman outfit every night she went to the student union. It got her a lot of attention, even though she clearly wasn’t a patch on Lynda Carter. She literally fell into my lap one night while I was drunk and she was very drunk, and I thought we had a good night. Again though, we never spoke to each other again.)
So the notion that I might go to bed with a proper, absolutely beautiful film star like Diana Christmas was just astonishing to me. The fact that she’d put so much faith and trust in me, actually asked me to help her, was amazing. And the thought that it was now over made me feel as if my insides had been kicked out by a skinhead.
My walk home took me all of that Friday evening. I passed people hanging out in pubs, Christmas revellers, Christmas carollers, and I was completely alone with only a single room in a poky terrace boarding house to look forward to. Cold and pretty much soaked to the skin, I didn’t make it back until one. That was far later than my landlady, Mrs Haverstack, normally let her tenants in. For some reason, she hadn’t deadlocked the door that evening. She did make a point of tutting at me the next morning though, just to make sure I knew that she was aware and thoroughly disapproved.
That Saturday, I woke up with a numb, empty head, like a particularly joyless hangover. Most of the day was spent lying morosely on the communal sofa, staring at the tiny black and white rented set. Normally I had to share the TV and the space, but the other two tenants weren’t about. Clearly, fate had decided to give me a nugget of something sweet.
BBC2 was showing a Bette Davis double-bill, Jezebel followed by Now, Voyager. I watched one after the other with my head laid gloomily on the couch, imagining Diana as the lead in both. Diana’s talents lay in a different direction and obviously she was never going to be a match for Bette Davis, but that didn’t stop me thinking of her in a Southern maid’s dress, or of Paul Henreid (but really, I suppose, me) lighting two cigarettes for her at once. If anyone had seen me they’d have thought I was engrossed, my eyes open and never leaving the screen for an instant, but really I was miles away – fifteen miles or thereabouts – dreaming of Diana.
Sunday I did manage to go out for a walk, just strolling aimlessly around the streets. Miles I walked that day. I passed more than one cinema proudly displaying the ominous setting sun poster for Apocalypse, Now. That was a film I really did want to see, but I didn’t have the energy right then for a three-hour epic. I felt even worse than I had on Saturday. The day before, I’d thought my tiredness was making my desolation ache worse, but actually it was masking it. I felt broken, and so, so alone.
A kind of homesickness overcame me and I called my mum. Standing in a phone box outside Giovanni’s Café on Upper Street in Islington, I put in my ten pence and asked her to ring me back. She was in a good mood, no doubt buoyed by hearing from her only child. London was not her favourite place and me living there was not her favourite subject, but we managed to avoid that bone of contention and talked of other things. She’d retired about eighteen months before and she told me what her friends were up to, about the events she’d been to with the WI. Surely already knowing the answer, she checked that I was still coming back on the twenty-third, and asked again whether there was anyone I wanted her to invite to her annual Christmas soirée. I just smiled and said again, no thanks. It was always my habit to show my face and then get away before the guests started the drunken piano playing. It was good to chat to her though, to get my head out of London, away from my job, and away from the echoing, yearning memories of Diana Christmas’s naked body. Diana with her mellifluous, easily charmed and charming laughter; Diana and the snarl she gave me as she threw me out and slammed the door in my face.
Monday morning came around finally and I left my bed with a sniffle. I had a quick wash in my bedroom sink and cleaned my teeth before breakfast, thinking I’d just pick up a bacon bap when I got to St Christopher’s Place. As always I took a long final look in the mirror to check my hair was in place for now, that my trousers were creased correctly. The morning’s inspection to make sure I appeared presentable. Then I let out a long and desperate sigh,
My main task that day was to write up my interview with Diana Christmas. An interview which was going to have to be cobbled together from half-remembered pillow talk. I let myself out the front door, the first one up as usual, and stepped into the fine drizzle of a cold December morning. In my current mood, it felt good, a cool shower to wake me somewhat.
I’d only got a few steps down the dark pavement before my brooding was smashed apart.
Somebody called my name, yelled it out with menace.
If I’d been smarter, I’d have walked on and pretended I was somebody else.
There were two blokes standing there. They were teenagers really, surely no more than seventeen years old – but with their scars and snarls, they looked far worldlier than I ever had. They shared a uniform between them: faded red bomber jackets, skinny blue jeans, Doc Martens and an air of menace worn proudly and openly.
“Michael Mallory?” one called out again.
“Yes?” My voice came meekly, stupidly.
In a heartbeat I knew what was coming next, but still I didn’t see it. It was both a surprise and no shock at all when I dropped awkwardly to the pavement with blood pouring out of my nose. I stared up at them for just a fraction of a second before my arms flew out around my head to protect myself from an onslaught of shiny polished bovver boots.
I’ve no idea how long it lasted, but I know they spat on me before they walked away. Both of them dug deep into their throats to bring up full loads of phlegm. Then I jus
t lay there, my hands over my head, my blood dripping into the pavement cracks.
All I could do, as I slipped in and out of dazed blackness, was contemplate their final yelled words before they let me be:
“That’s for Carlisle Collins! You murdering fucking bastard!”
Chapter Eight
9th December, 1979
“I just lost control of myself, Michael!”
Diana’s words came quickly, but even though tears flowed down her cheeks and she shook from the emotion of it all, the words themselves were clear. She made sure to articulate them.
“It’s so hard to explain. I’ve tried to think it though and rationalise it to myself all night. I’ve spent every moment of the last two nights awake, trying to work out what happened, why I did what I did. All I can think is that it was such a long time since I’d seen him, and in that period I so intensely hated and loathed him. I feared him, you know – just the thought of him out there scared me so much! I had so many bad dreams about him, for a long time I did nothing but have nightmares about that man night after night. So when I actually saw him, saw him for the first time in twenty long years, and had him sneer at me and insult me and even threaten me – then I just kind of lost control of myself. I’m sorry, Michael, but I just lost control!”
I’d got to work mid-afternoon. There was no way I could call in and tell them what had happened before the ambulance arrived, and I couldn’t find a working phone box in Homerton Hospital itself. So when I was discharged – a bandage and splint covering my broken nose, my ribs taped together – I went straight to the office to explain. To show them, rather than tell them, what had befallen me.
Diana Christmas Page 4