by David Storey
‘I mean it, Rick.’
He sounds further away than ever.
‘Right.’
‘Give my love to Jimmy.’
‘It’s James.’
‘James?’
‘It’s James over here, not Jimmy.’
‘Give my love to James.’
‘Right.’
‘And to Clare. She is still called Clare, I take it?’
‘Sure.’
‘Don’t want to sound too fucking informal.’
‘No.’
‘And lots of love, of course, to you.’
‘You’ve said that once.’
‘Lots of love to you, asshole!’
‘And to you.’
‘Remember how much I love you.’
‘I believe you do.’
He waits again: I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t crying: not him so much as the Whiskey Sour.
‘This is a big thing for me. You and Jimmy.’
‘Me and James.’
‘You and James. And Clare.’
‘Right.’
‘See you, Richard,’ he says, and goes.
I allow the purr to remain in my ear, evoking an image of Gerry at the other end: what time in New York? Maybe early evening. A bar. Someone’s apartment. Maybe someone’s bed, he knows more people there than he does in London.
I’m aware of the dog around my feet and when I reach the landing Clare is waiting by my door.
‘Everything all right?’
‘Fine.’
She picks up the dog and says, ‘He apologised for ringing late. It was the first opportunity he said he’d had. It was good of him to call.’
‘It was.’
‘He really cares about you, Richard.’
‘I know.’
‘Really.’
The dog snuffles at her face: it – her face – is pale in the light from the landing: she is, I realise, wearing no make-up: an older face, marked by lines which give it gravity, bleakness – a softness, however, in the eyes, a look of appeal, if not entreaty.
‘I know he does,’ I tell her. ‘I’m sorry it disturbed you. He could have rung in the morning.’
‘He wanted to be sure. Times between there and here are always confusing.’
A hint of something not exclusive: delaying her departure she has put the dog down and stepped inside the door.
I kiss her cheek.
A moment later she has drawn away.
‘Snuffy!’ she calls from the darkness of the landing, the dog scampering off along the bare wood floor.
The scratching of its nails: I hear a bark.
She has a strategy, I am thinking. Something she has planned. Not childlike, childish, or child-anything: that is me, at this end, I conclude.
3
The following day my half-brother has left for work by the time I get up. Clare is busy with someone downstairs: two places for breakfast have been set on the dining room table. Moments later she appears – wearing a suit: trousers, jacket, low-heeled shoes (practicality, it appears, her theme). She has, she informs me, taken Snuffy back to his owner.
Perhaps I am here to replace the dog, a more articulate distraction: I’ve grown half-inclined to its presence by now.
‘I’ve been out walking,’ she further informs me. ‘I often walk early. James is frequently at work by seven.’
‘Seven?’
Earlier than Gerry when he’s not shooting.
‘He likes to get in before the others. He gets more done in that time, he says, than the rest of the day.’
‘Particularly when he’s writing.’
‘Particularly when he’s writing!’ She laughs, examining me, however, with an enquiring expression. ‘I wondered if you’d like to go into town,’ she adds. ‘After, of course, you’ve had your breakfast. There’s so much I can show you. Mrs Jenkins, meanwhile, is in charge round here.’
A woman, at this point, emerges from the kitchen: stout, companionable, middle-aged: she shows little, if any interest in me – a deference with visitors indistinguishable from indifference which I immediately associate with the contempt shown to the same by Mrs Hodges: she remains at a distance, prohibiting the shaking of hands. Thus does she show, I assume, she knows her place – a mental genuflexion which Clare scarcely appears, if at all, to notice: ‘We’re clearing up from last night,’ she says, as the woman turns away. ‘Normally we have breakfast in the kitchen.’
‘Let’s have it there, in that case,’ I tell her.
‘Oh, there’s much clearing-up to be done today,’ she says, and adds, ‘I’ll bring the tea. Or do you prefer coffee?’
We sit facing one another, James’ empty chair between us, its significance, as she talks – resuming her conversation of the day before – receding. ‘We can look in at the theatre. I often have coffee there on a morning.’
A vacuum cleaner is audible in the sitting room across the hall. What does Mrs Jenkins – like Mrs Hodges (like Mrs Dover) – really think?
Clare gets up and closes the door.
I like her: I like her beyond her increasingly obvious appeal: an animation which, for much of the time, in the past, has been suppressed, certainly confined – if not by marriage, or a house, or even a job (she has, at one time, she tells me, worked for James herself, as well as for ‘one or two others’) – by a ‘consensus’ she has found it hard to confront, let alone deny. Maybe I see too much of myself in her: despite the formality of her appearance, and a subtler application of make-up, I’m aware of an effervescence – restless, trustful, yet something less than naive – certainly not, by Gerry’s definition, provincial.
My immediate instinct is to offer her help: of what kind, however, I can’t be sure: I’m more confused than she is, she further along the road to what might, for both of us, be defined as ‘emancipation’.
‘Perhaps you’d prefer to potter round here,’ she concludes.
‘Town,’ I tell her, ‘is fine.’
We drive in the car: not her car, she insists. ‘It’s James’s. He drives mine, which is smaller and easier to park. A peculiar arrangement. We often go on holidays, or have done, by car. Then, of course, we always take his. Always this country. He hates abroad.’
She has changed, in the interval, into a dress and jacket, the hem of the former, unlike her skirt of the previous day, halfway down her calves. Something in her manner – her tone of voice, her bearing – restricts the intimacy which had characterised her earlier – our earlier – behaviour.
Once clear of the heathland we descend to the buildings familiar from the day before, the town spread out disjointedly across the bed of a valley, a nexus of taller structures at its centre: a tower, a steeple, a dome. Somewhere, amongst it all, presumably, is James: at his desk, in his office, possibly, by this time, writing his ‘thriller’.
‘Let’s try the art gallery! They have such lovely pictures. I’ll show you my favourite.’
We walk a great deal (the facilities for parking restricted): she is, I conclude, exorcising, or distracting, a greater intent. At one point she takes my hand (we are crossing a road) and for a while (on the other side) walk with our arms swinging between us, an immediacy in her manner, frivolous, thoughtless, undemanding.
At the gallery we look at a lot of paintings which have no interest for me whatsoever (works by several of the artists once ‘owned’ – or rented – by Gerry): contemporary art, I tell her, has been suborned by photography.
‘What does “suborned” mean?’ she enquires.
I disclaim, to her amusement, all knowledge of the word.
I delight, not in the pictures, but in her regard for them. They might easily have been dogs, or cats – or even people: or, at one instance, our reflections in the glass: she, me, the room and the pictures behind: we might easily, I conclude, have been a mother and son. ‘Don’t you like it?’ she enquires of one particular representation – of what, precisely, I’m not at all sure: a phalanx of colours that ‘represents’ nothing but itsel
f: she is, I realise, one of those people who take ‘things’ at the level of their intentions.
‘Sure.’
‘You’re a difficult person to please. You realise that?’ she says.
We are in a room with one other person: he, attracted by her voice – its charm, its lightness, its alertness – glances across: an elderly figure, he moves unobtrusively closer.
‘Not really.’
‘Last night, for instance,’ she is moving me away, taking my arm, ‘I thought you very good, but I also thought we bored you.’
‘Not at all,’ I tell her.
‘It must seem,’ she pauses, ‘very dull up here.’
‘Dull?’
‘After all that glamour.’
‘Glamour?’
‘Gerry’s life.’ She shakes my arm with irritation.
‘I find it novel. Unexpected. Enlightening, even,’ I tell her.
‘I suppose that’s to do with Gerry, too.’
‘Gerry?’
‘He brought you up amongst adults. There were never any children about.’
We are leaving the gallery and returning to the street.
I link my arm through hers. ‘I like being with you,’ I tell her.
‘You do?’
‘Much.’
I attempt to take her hand, for her to resist.
‘I feel so under scrutiny,’ she says.
‘From me?’
‘The way you look.’
‘Which is how?’
‘As if you’re thinking.’
‘I am.’
‘Instead of being.’
She has thought about this, I assume, a great deal: not in reference to me but in relation to something more oppressive.
‘We’re being now,’ I tell her, re-taking her arm.
‘Are we?’
‘I like it.’
‘I like it, too.’
‘No judgement of any sort,’ I tell her, ‘is involved. Other,’ I go on, ‘than I like you very much.’
‘Perhaps that,’ she says, ‘we should dampen down.’
She is wearing a plainly-fashioned coat, brown, unlike the one of the previous day, and expressing, like the rest of her clothes, practicality and little else.
‘I am dampened down,’ I tell her.
‘I’m very easily taken in by people,’ she says.
‘How?’
‘I see their good points. James always sees the bad.’
We are walking briskly: there’s somewhere else she’s decided to go.
‘He didn’t strike me that way,’ I tell her. ‘Not least,’ I go on, ‘in his attitude to me.’
‘He’s keen – very keen – to make a go of things,’ she says. ‘I wouldn’t wish to spoil it.’
‘How could you spoil it? Surely,’ I ask her, ‘it’s all the same thing?’
‘Not really.’
I glance across: it’s as if, at that moment, she’s talking to herself. ‘I don’t see any point to things. Or, rather, I do, but I can’t sustain it. I often see things as the sum of what’s been taken away. Those paintings I like. But they don’t, when it comes down to it, make you happy.’
‘What makes you happy?’ I ask her.
‘I don’t like to confess it,’ she says, ‘but being with you. I felt it the moment I met you at the station. Not family. Though that as well. Something else.’
‘Maybe that’s okay.’
‘It doesn’t feel okay.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m old enough to be your mother.’
‘Maybe,’ I tell her, ‘you see me as a son.’
She has, I realise, begun to cry.
‘Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it,’ I suggest. ‘I wouldn’t wish to disappoint you.’
‘Oh, but you don’t,’ she says. ‘It’s quite the reverse. I have your identity confused,’ she adds. ‘I haven’t felt so well for quite some time. James gets so wearied with the way I am.’
‘Gerry with me, too,’ I tell her.
She has stopped to dry her eyes.
‘He worries about you a great deal, I know,’ she says. ‘He doesn’t wish you to go the same way as Martha.’
‘Why should I?’ I ask.
‘No reason at all,’ she says, briskly. ‘It’s just that he finds you very reserved. Not reserved. Withdrawn.’
‘Has he told you that?’
‘It’s what he infers. “See if you can bring him out,” he said.’
We walk for a while in silence: her tears have long since dried.
‘Maybe I shouldn’t have told you,’ she adds.
‘It’s nothing new,’ I tell her.
‘Maybe it’ll help you to understand.’
‘Do you find me withdrawn?’ I ask.
‘Not at all!’ she tells me.
She is examining the shop windows, abstracted, contained.
‘Here we are!’ she suddenly exclaims, and gestures to the opening to a cobbled yard: having released my arm, she now retakes it.
At the end of the alley we emerge in the forecourt of a theatre: of Edwardian design, it has recently been refurbished.
We examine the notices outside, then, at her suggestion, enter the foyer. The atmosphere intrigues her: the red, deep-piled, carpeted stairs, the polished hardwood banisters, the shining brasswork, the overhead chandelier: the photographs (several of Gerry’s confrères), the posters (names from several of his credits, too): an air of expectancy and – I have to face it – enjoyment (how do you get pleasure from all those inflated bums?). She makes enquiries about a performance to which, threading her arm in mine, she draws my attention. She books three seats. ‘Once! Just once!’ she pleads. ‘I’m sure you’ll like it. I’ve seen it twice, in previous productions, and loved it more the second!’
A musical.
‘We can always leave at the interval.’ She laughs. ‘But by then I know you’ll be hooked!’
Her despondency of only a short while before has disappeared: mercurial, guileless: strength, I conclude, as well as charm; vulnerability as well as frankness.
What would the poets have made of such an occasion?
Not much.
I’m aware of someone whose moods change, vicariously, from minute to minute – she dancing (almost, from toe to toe) as she walks beside me in the street.
‘Let’s have coffee! We could have had it at the theatre. They have a marvellous restaurant but I know somewhere just as nice!’
‘Coffee’ turns out to be an early lunch; early lunch is followed by a walk in a nearby square where she is interested in showing me the houses – Georgian, a Victorian church at its centre. ‘I so wanted James to buy a house here, though none was available at the time. Most are converted into flats. I wouldn’t wish to live in one of those. What I like about our present home is its independence. Created by ourselves. Unique. So like James! Do you like independence?’
Maybe, with James, she means something else: the same withdrawal she anticipated in me.
‘Yes,’ I tell her.
Conviviality turned, once more, into guilelessness: a charm, a candour, of which, I assume, my half-brother is enamoured, too.
As we return in the car she enquires if there’s anything else I’d like to do. ‘I don’t want to take up all your time. Perhaps you’d like to wander on your own?’
‘Later,’ I tell her.
At intervals we have encountered people she knows: an intensified burst of animation exceeding anything she has previously shown (a corresponding feeling in me that I slow her down), she introducing me with a delight which intrigues whoever we stop or whoever, more frequently, stops her: ‘Clare!’
She is an exceedingly popular person (I conclude), as welcome an element in other people’s lives as she is, at present, in mine (an ‘authenticity’ about her difficult to ignore or discount): I am, even at this point, reluctant to leave her.
As we reach the car she announces we’ll drive back (once more) ‘the long way round’, and leave th
e town by a different route to the one we left by the previous day, or the one by which we entered that morning.
‘There’s James’ office.’
She indicates a building overlooking the river: a renovated warehouse, conceivably, or a mill.
‘We could call on him, if you like. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.’
‘Won’t we interrupt his writing?’
‘Not a bit!’ She laughs. ‘He works far harder than anyone I know. Don’t be taken in by his diffidence where work is concerned. He’s sometimes not home until after nine. Other times away for several days. Not while you’re with us, however. Maybe,’ she concludes, ‘we’ll leave it till later.’
We pass through countryside characterised by wooded hills, occasional villages and, finally, a lake. We draw up in a lane beside it. ‘There’s a lovely walk from here. Not for today. But I’d love to show you. Do you like the country?’
‘Not much.’ (Better, I reflect, than, ‘No.’)
‘Why not?’
‘I associate it with Martha. When we first arrived she was enamoured of country cottages, villages, rectories. We’d spend hours together searching.’
‘For what?’
‘Clues. I thought it was a game.’ I shrug. ‘To keep me amused. Gerry thought the countryside would soothe her. She’d already started cracking up before we left, though it was put down at the time to a sense of humour. She was noted for her comedy, you know. Irony, at least. An unusual commodity over there.’
‘She had a wonderful sense of fun, I know.’
‘How do you know?’
‘From her films. I scarcely knew her in person. I only met her twice. Each time on passing through London. She was a very comedic person. And very emotional. I liked her very much.’
‘She became fixated on crime,’ I tell her. ‘I thought there was a practical reason why she took me on those walks. Dark glasses. Headscarf. Scruffy clothes. I was embarrassed at times to be with her. I assumed she was doing it to keep me occupied while Gerry was working. Setting up his films. Then I began to suspect there was something going on which was to do with who she was. A personality. I’d had all that in LA, and it had somehow faded over here. For a while no one knew where she was. In Beaconsfield, even, near the studio. Then it got out. People hounding her. Hanging around the house. It all seemed logical, if odd. Which is what life had been with her and Gerry from the start. He was overshadowed by her. Though, of course, I knew he adored her. How he adored her. He went practically nuts when she first cracked up. It was put down to her eccentricity. As you say, her sense of fun.’