‘OK,’ Rosa said. She raised her glass. ‘Cheers’. He tipped his bottle towards her. She said, ‘Well, what did you mean?’ ‘Please forget it—’
‘I meant not to mention it but now I have and I’d like an answer. What did you mean?’
He hunched forward over the table. He looked weirdly glamorous. Perhaps it was the exoticism of the scarf. It was made of silk, the kind of rough silk that came from somewhere in the Far East.
‘I’d really rather—’ ‘Lazlo,’ Rosa said, ‘please’. He gave her a quick glance.
‘Well, I suppose I just thought you – you gave the impression of taking things for granted’.
‘What things?’
He shrugged.
Your mother. Your parents. Having a home, somewhere to go to’.
Rosa put her hands in her lap. She looked directly at him.
‘Haven’t you?’
‘Not really. Not like that’.
‘Haven’t you got parents?’
‘My father lives in Arizona. My mother married a Russian and they have two children and live in Paris. My sister is a medical student, nearly a doctor, and she lives in hospital accommodation’.
‘And you?’
Lazlo looked sheepish.
‘This is turning into a sort of pathetic Dickens-style sob story—’
‘Where do you live?’ Rosa said. ‘In a room—’
‘Where?’ ‘Maida Vale’. ‘Well, that’s—’
‘Kilburn, actually,’ Lazlo said. ‘In a room in a house belonging to my sister’s ex-boyfriend’s grandmother’. Rosa leaned forward.
‘Why?’
‘Because she charges me almost nothing because she likes having a man in the house. She’s panicked about security’.
‘Is it awful?’
Lazlo was silent. ‘Depressing?’ Rosa said.
‘Well,’ Lazlo said, ‘I don’t have hang-ups about old people, but this is pretty extreme. She won’t ever open the windows’.
Rosa took a swallow of her drink.
‘Does it smell?’
Lazlo nodded.
‘So when this play is on, you’ll be travelling from Kilburn to Islington?’
‘Lots of people do,’ Lazlo said. ‘Theatre people all have to live in awkward places’.
‘Theatre people,’ Rosa said mockingly.
He flushed.
‘I am one,’ he said, ‘I’m an actor. So is your mother. I don’t know why you feel the need to sneer’. ‘I’m not sneering—’ ‘Well, that’s what it sounds like’. ‘Sorry’.
‘OK’.
‘I am sorry,’ Rosa said. ‘Truly’.
Lazlo said nothing.
‘Please,’ Rosa said, ‘I am truly sorry’.
He looked up slowly.
‘I believe in it,’ he said.
‘The theatre?’
‘In acting,’ Lazlo said seriously. ‘In – in its radiant energy. In being possessed, and passionate, yet still yourself after a performance. I like having to concentrate this way, I like having chosen something so difficult it makes me display fortitude’.
‘Well,’ Rosa said, ‘I certainly hadn’t thought of any of that’.
‘You didn’t listen to your mother’.
‘My mother never said anything like that in all her life’.
‘She didn’t need to,’ Lazlo said vehemently. ‘She didn’t need to say it. If you’d ever taken her acting seriously, you’d have seen it’.
Rosa said nothing. She fidgeted with her glass. Rising up in her, unwanted but not to be denied, was a peculiar wish to say sorry again somehow, to show herself in a better light.
She said slowly, ‘Your room. Your room in Kilburn—’ He looked irritated, as if dragged back to banality from something much more compelling and important.
‘What about it?’
‘Have you told my mother?’
‘What?’
‘Have you told my mother,’ Rosa said, ‘about how you have to live?’
Chapter Ten
‘I hope you’ll be comfortable,’ Russell said from the doorway.
Matthew was standing by the window of his old bedroom, looking down into the garden. His cases, all very orderly, were on the floor. He had his hands in his pockets and the set of his shoulders from behind was not one that Russell could deduce anything from.
He looked at the walls. Edie had not removed a single childhood picture.
‘Of course,’ Russell said, ‘you can change anything you want to. No need to live with Manchester United 1990’.
Matthew said, without turning, ‘I don’t mind’.
Russell said, ‘I am so very sorry about what’s happened’.
‘Thanks’.
‘Anything we can—’
‘It’s much harder than I thought it’d be,’ Matthew said. ‘Emptier’.
‘Yes’.
Matthew turned. He looked as if he hadn’t slept for days.
‘When you go back somewhere, it’s not the same—’ ‘Or perhaps,’ Russell said, ‘you aren’t’. Matthew looked at the bed. ‘I haven’t slept in that for nearly seven years’. Russell moved into the room and put his hands on Matthew’s shoulders.
‘Poor Matthew. Poor old man—’ Matthew shook his head. ‘It’s not that I’m not grateful—’ ‘I know’.
‘I just feel – such a bloody failure—’ ‘Try not to. Things are much harder now’.
‘Are they?’
‘I think so. We were stifled by too little choice, you are panicked by too much’. Matthew looked round the room. Russell said gently, ‘You don’t want to be here—’
‘I thought I did’.
‘Maybe it won’t be for long. You have a job, after all’. Matthew nodded. He pulled a face. ‘Flat sharing—’ ‘Perhaps’.
‘Hard,’ Matthew said, ‘to go back to’. ‘Harder than this?’ Matthew nodded. ‘For the moment’.
Russell took his hands away. He said, ‘Sorry, old son, but we do have to talk about money’. Matthew looked puzzled. ‘Money’.
‘Well,’ Russell said, ‘as you say, coming back somewhere is never the same as when you were first there. Coming back home as a salaried twenty-eight-year-old isn’t the same as living at home as a student’.
Matthew took a step backwards.
‘I thought,’ Russell said, ‘that you and Mum had discussed it’.
‘No’. ‘Well—’
‘I see,’ Matthew said, ‘I see. Of course I do. I was just a bit taken aback—’
‘To have me mention it?’
‘Well,’ Matthew said uncomfortably, ‘maybe mention it even before I’d opened a suitcase’. Russell sighed.
‘Like all awkward topics, I want to get it over with’.
‘You do—’
‘Yes’.
‘Couldn’t you have waited,’ Matthew said, slightly desperately, ‘until we were having a beer or something?’
Russell sighed again.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘let’s postpone the topic until later. Stupid me. As usual’.
Matthew bent to retrieve a chequebook from his briefcase.
‘No, Dad. The subject’s broached now. Why don’t I write you a cheque for the first month?’ ‘Matt, I really didn’t—’
‘What d’you want?’ Matthew demanded. He looked suddenly rather feverish. ‘Two hundred pounds a month? Two hundred and fifty? Three hundred?’
‘Don’t be—’
‘All in?’ Matthew almost shouted. ‘Two hundred and fifty all in and do my own ironing?’ Russell shut his eyes.
‘Stop it’. ‘Stop what?’
‘Stop being so melodramatic and putting me in the wrong’.
‘Melodramatic? Couldn’t you have waited, knowing how I was feeling, seeing how I was feeling? Couldn’t you just have exercised a bit of bloody tact?’
Russell opened his eyes.
‘Probably,’ he said tiredly.
Matthew stooped to find a pen in his briefcase.
‘How much do you
want?’
‘It really doesn’t—’
‘Look,’ Matthew said, ‘you started this, and it’s all gone wrong, so let’s finish it and get it over with. How much?’
‘I haven’t talked to Mum—’
‘Mum probably wouldn’t talk about it anyway. This can be between you and me’.
‘You manage,’ Russell said, ‘to make a perfectly reasonable adult request sound very sordid’.
Matthew sat down on the edge of the bed and opened his chequebook and looked up at his father.
‘Dad?’
Russell didn’t look at him.
‘Two fifty all in, and as you know no ironing is done in this house unless you do it yourself’.
Matthew wrote rapidly and then tore the cheque out of the book. He held it out.
‘Here’.
‘I do not want to take this—’ ‘You asked for it’.
‘But not this way. I didn’t want it now. I just wanted to talk about it, raise the subject. I never meant it to get out of hand—’
‘In my experience,’ Matthew said, ‘the danger of things getting out of hand is there whenever anyone opens their mouths’.
Russell folded the cheque into his hand.
‘Thank you’.
Matthew said nothing. He stood up and watched his father slowly turn and walk out of the room. Then he moved forward and closed the door firmly behind him.
‘It’s Ruth, isn’t it?’ Kate Ferguson said.
Ruth turned round. She was holding a small melon she had just taken from a pyramid on a market stall.
‘I’m Kate,’ Kate said. ‘You probably don’t remember. I’m a friend of Rosa’s, Matthew’s sister. We met once, ages ago, at that concert in Brixton, we—’
‘Oh,’ Ruth said. She transferred the melon to her other hand. ‘Oh yes. Kate. Sorry, I was sort of concentrating—’
‘What are you doing here?’ Kate asked. ‘I thought you worked in the City—’
Ruth put the melon back in its place on the pyramid.
‘I do. But I live here now’. She gestured out towards the edge of the market. She said, with a complicated kind of pride, ‘I’ve got a flat on Bankside’.
Kate hesitated. Something in Ruth’s expression and tone was half expecting her to say, ‘Wow. Lucky you’. But something else, at the same time, suggested that, even if Ruth would have loved such a straightforward reaction, she knew it was too luxurious to hope for.
Kate put out a hand and briefly touched Ruth’s sleeve.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘Rosa told me. Just a bit’.
Ruth said quickly, ‘It’s so brilliant here, all this air and views and location. And then, Borough Market on my doorstep—’
‘I always shop here on Fridays,’ Kate said. ‘I leave work early and come here’.
‘Yes’.
‘Goodness knows what I’ll do when I can’t’.
‘Can’t?’
‘After the baby’.
Ruth looked at the swell under Kate’s jacket. ‘Oh, congratulations—’
‘It’s a bit of a surprise,’ Kate said. ‘We’ve only been married a minute. I’m still rather shell-shocked. I keep thinking about being away from work, not coming here, not zipping out to the movies—’ She looked at Ruth’s black briefcase bag. ‘Sorry—’
‘Why sorry?’
‘Not very tactful’.
Ruth said, ‘Rosa told you about Matthew and me?’
‘Yes’.
‘We’ll have to see how things work out—’ Kate nodded.
‘It’s just,’ Ruth said in a rush, ‘that however enlightened you are, you both are, you still seem to be swimming against the norm. If you’re a woman earning more than a man’. She glanced at Kate. ‘Sorry. I don’t know why I said that’. She looked round, at the fruit-and-vegetable stalls, at the surging crowds of people. ‘You must think I’m mad—’
‘It’s on your mind,’ Kate said, ‘like being pregnant’s on mine’.
‘Will you go back to work?’
‘Yes,’ Kate said, and then, in a different tone, ‘probably’.
‘I hope it’s easy,’ Ruth said earnestly.
‘So do I. I’m hopeless at being uncomfortable, never mind in pain—’
‘No, I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean having the baby. I meant afterwards. I meant I hope it’s easy deciding what to do after the baby’.
Kate gave her a smile.
‘Thank you’.
‘I mean it’.
‘I know—’
‘I never knew,’ Ruth said, ‘that deciding was going to throw up such problems. I always thought decisions meant the end of something difficult, not the beginning’. She put a hand out and picked up the melon again. ‘Why is the only way you learn something the hard way?’
* * *
Edie was sitting sideways on a moulded plastic chair in the dimness at the edge of the hall. She had her arms along the back of the chair, and had leaned forward to rest her chin on them. About ten feet away, on the small bare stage illuminated by clumsy lights that had plainly been installed a very long time ago, Pastor Manders and the carpenter, Engstrand, were rehearsing the opening of Act Three. Engstrand was being played by an actor called Jim Driscoll who had, decades before, played Edie’s comedy sidekick when she was presenting a children’s television programme. He had been young and wiry and gingery then. He was older and skinny and greyish now, standing in front of Pastor Manders with a kind of obsequious malevolence that he seemed able to convey without uttering a syllable. He had his hands clasped in front of him, swinging slightly away from his stooped body, and his face was raised towards Ivor with a stretched and ingratiating smile. He managed to look, Edie thought, both simian and sophisticated. He managed, too, to look a very subtle kind of threat. She shifted a little in her uncompromising plastic chair. In a minute, she would have to go and join them. In a minute, Mrs Alving would come in from the garden, dazed by calamity, and say, in a voice Edie hadn’t quite decided upon yet, ‘I can’t get him away from the fire’.
The fire, Freddie Cass had explained to Lazlo, was metaphorical as well as actual. The fire that burned the orphanage built in his dead father’s name was also the fire that was consuming all the lies that had been told to protect him and, in the process, his own life as his inherited malady began to possess and then devour him. Edie could see that Lazlo loved this kind of direction, loved falling under the spell of such fatalism. He’d come to find Edie afterwards, eyes shining.
‘I know what it’s about now, it’s not just something that’s happening, it’s something that had to happen, and you don’t know it yet, as my mother, because you’ve always thought you could protect me, by telling lies, by keeping the truth from me’. He gave Edie a quick, fervent hug. ‘This is amazing’.
He was sitting on the floor at the side of the stage now, in jeans and a shrunken grey T-shirt, hugging his knees and watching the others. His arms, wound round his knees, looked to Edie like a boy’s arms, rather than a man’s, not just because they were thin, but because they were slightly unformed, slightly tentative. Whether they were the result of Lazlo’s genetic make-up, or the result of the haphazard way he lived, was uncertain, but they lent a pathos to his absorption, a pathos that had been uppermost in Edie’s mind ever since Rosa had telephoned and said, in the throwaway way she had, at the end of a conversation, ‘D’you know where Lazlo’s living?’
‘No,’ Edie said, ‘why should I? He’s rather private about all of that. Somewhere in West London—’
‘Kilburn,’ Rosa said.
‘Well,’ Edie said, ‘not the perfect journey to work but not impossible—’
‘He lives,’ Rosa said, ‘in a room in someone’s granny’s house and she won’t open the windows because she’s panicked about burglars and it smells like a cat’s lavatory’.
‘Poor boy. Why is he living there?’ ‘It’s all he can afford—’ ‘What about family—’
‘All over the place,’
Rosa said, ‘and they don’t care’.
‘Surely—’
‘Mum,’ Rosa said, ‘he didn’t tell me all of this. I had to get it out of him’.
‘And why are you telling me?’
‘Because,’ Rosa said casually, ‘it’s the sort of thing you like to know’.
Edie sat up a little straighter and took her gaze off Lazlo’s arms. Then she put it back again. She thought of the house in Kilburn. She thought of Lazlo ravenously eating bagels after the first rehearsal. She thought of Lazlo taking off that T-shirt and devising some forlorn and unsatisfactory way to launder it. She thought of Matthew – unhappy but somehow safe – back in his own bedroom. She thought of Rosa’s empty bedroom next to it, and Ben’s, on the floor below.
Freddie Cass turned towards her from the stage. He didn’t, as was his custom, raise his voice.
‘Stage left, Edie, please,’ he said.
‘Dear Laura,’ Ruth wrote via email, ‘I need someone to talk to. Or someone to think aloud to. Please read this through to the end. Please’.
She paused and took her hands off the keyboard. She had set up a table – trestle, black, very expensive considering its construction hardly differed from the table her father used for one of his meticulous wallpapering sessions – in the window of her new sitting room so that she could glance up from her laptop and look out at her amazing view. There was nothing else much in her sitting room except the leather sofa – which Matthew had insisted she take – and a television and two tall metal lamps that threw their light modishly on to the ceiling.
‘It isn’t that I don’t want things,’ she’d written to Laura. ‘It’s more a case of adjusting to buying them on my own. It feels as if everything in my life has suddenly sort of liquefied – it’s quite exciting but it’s unnerving too. Perhaps I should just wait until I’ve calmed down a bit’.
Laura hadn’t replied to that message for four days. Ruth knew she was writing a lot and had even explained, slightly mortifying though it was to have to do so, that without Matthew to talk to, and being in a very preoccupying and distressing situation, which required a lot of talk in order to attempt to get her thoughts in some kind of sequence, she needed both a listening ear and a response. Laura, mindful of the fact that Ruth had nursed her steadily through a variety of affairs and a broken engagement prior to the lawyer in Leeds, said that of course she was always there when needed. The trouble was, Ruth thought, staring at some gulls riding the wind above the river, that even if people were there, as it were, they weren’t always there in the right spirit. Laura, however well-intentioned, inevitably had her spirit diverted by the prospect of her future, by the right fridge in her kitchen, the right music at her wedding. And I can’t blame her, Ruth thought, I certainly can’t resent her, but I haven’t yet got to the point where I can work through my thinking by myself. If, indeed, I ever get there.
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