‘This and that — listen, I can’t talk for ever, you know. I got a part-time job, got to go out to it. Call me again, maybe?’
‘Perhaps you’d let me give you lunch? If you could spare the time?’
‘Lunch? Out to lunch? Me?’ She laughed. ‘Nah, you come to my place. When my husband’s here.’ He grinned at that. She must be over fifty, and still being coy about meeting a man she didn’t know. ‘These days, who knows what sort of villains there are? You could be anyone. You can come when my husband’s here. Maybe my son as well. That bother you?’
‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I thought you didn’t want me to talk to your children?’
‘Yeah, well, we’ll see. If you want to talk to me, you have to come to see me when there’s family here. I don’t go out to no lunches. Where are you?’
He gave her the name and number of the hotel. ‘I’ll phone you,’ she said. ‘I’ll talk to my husband and my son and maybe I’ll phone you — ’ and hung up.
He sat and stared at the dead phone for a long time before starting again. Would they all be like this, defensive, that rather queasy amalgam of come-on and stand-off? Should he forget the whole project right now, go home, look for some other subject?
‘Ch-ch-ch,’ he said under his breath, using Mrs Fraister’s sound, but making it harder, like a teacher reprimanding a child, but reprimanding himself. ‘Ch-ch-ch!’
And very deliberately he folded the fax from Frieda and pulled out of his briefcase a slim folder. He’d make his own calls. The others needed more time than he could give them right now. And maybe it would be better to go calling on them instead of phoning first. It was too easy for them on the phone. To go to see them would be to give himself some advantage. Researching a movie was like planning a battle, that was the trouble. You had to fight the very people you needed to be your allies eventually. But that was the nature of the business, so what else could he do? Postpone it, that was what — or at least postpone the hard part of it. Dealing with academics must surely be easier.
But first he made a half-dozen crisp and businesslike calls to secretaries in distant offices. He had the names of people who could be approached about making a package deal for a movie, names culled from the film people in LA he had used in the past. It would be good to have a scatter of appointments that were sure; better than having to go cold-calling on strangers like Mrs Fraister. Not that she felt like a stranger now; English accent or not, she had been too much like those adults who had come visiting when he’d been a child in Newark. Then they’d sent him out of the room; well, Mrs Fraister wasn’t going to send him out of any room. He was on his own now, an adult like them. No more silence or secrets for Abner.
With the appointments made he relaxed and looked at his watch. Almost one-fifteen; had he been talking that long? Most people would be out to lunch now. He’d had trouble with the last two calls he’d made for that reason. Time to go to the next list then; not film people, not possible subjects, but solid background research people. The academics. They, surely, didn’t waste time on long lunches. And he looked at the last of his contact sheets and pondered. None of them in London, that was a drag. How far away were these places? Liverpool? He had a notion that was way up in the North, Beatles country; and there was a query against the name anyway. Joe Lipsher who’d given him that one had been dubious.
‘Might be anywhere now. I talked to him back in ’sixty-three, when I was making Evil Eyes,’ he’d told Abner on the phone from his Hollywood poolside, making Abner very aware of the state of the street outside his Manhattan apartment block where the wind chill factor nearly cut off the legs of passers-by. ‘But you could try. He was a good guy — a Middle East specialist, very up on Israeli politics, you know?’ And then had gone on to talk interminably about his own new film, a space fantasy extravaganza, which had made Abner want to grind his teeth with fury, because he’d placed the call and it was costing him. But what can you do? Climbing painfully on to the film bandwagon always cost you — money as well as effort.
There were two more he’d got from the history professor at his own university, one in Hull — another doubtful starting point, according to Joe; he’d have to check that one on the map — and the other Oxford; and he let his finger stay on that one. Here he knew where he was. One of his older friends at college had gone off to Oxford to get a degree there after he’d finished in New York and he’d written long gossipy letters about it. The nineteen-year-old Abner had been deeply jealous of the life Wallace had led there; accounts of rowing and partying and general whooping-it-up, and damn all about work. He’d spent time poring over maps of England to see where the place was and read a lot about it, especially novels. And when Channel Thirteen had run Brideshead Revisited he’d been glued to the screen. He’d definitely start with Oxford.
‘Geoffrey Hinchelsea,’ he read. ‘Professor of History. 309 Bainton Road, Oxford.’ And he picked up the phone again and dialled the number his own professor had given him.
It rang for a long time, and he was ready to hang up in despair, when there was a click and a rather gruff voice said, ‘Yes?’
‘Eh? Oh — good afternoon,’ he said carefully. No more risks were to be taken. He’d gone in much too hard on Mrs Fraister. Time to be careful. ‘My name is Wiseman, Abner Wiseman. Professor Jansen of City University in New York suggested that Professor Hinchelsea could give me some assistance with a project that — ’
‘What sort of project?’ The voice was still gruff and very abrupt but, he now realised, a female one. Full of bad temper, he thought and bit his tongue to stop himself snapping back.
‘It’s to do with the effect of the German concentration camps on survivors,’ he said even more carefully. Tell this woman — clearly the dragon the professor kept at his gate — that he was engaged on a movie and he’d get no further. He’d come across these bitter old battle-axes before. If they could stop people getting to their employers they always did. He’d have to be very skilful, very delicate with this one.
‘I could write to ask for an appointment,’ he said, not exactly threatening but making it clear he wouldn’t be easily put off. ‘It really is important to me to have some access to the material the Professor — ’
‘Not much point in that,’ the voice said sharply. ‘Waste of time. When do you want to come?’
He was taken aback. He’d expected more stonewalling than this. ‘Well,’ he hesitated. ‘What would suit you?’
There was a short silence and then she said, wearily. ‘It really makes no difference. Just give me a day and a time, and you can see the material you want.’
He lifted his eyebrows. Just like that? Was she that much in control of her employer?
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow then. What time?’
‘Ah — it depends on trains,’ he said, startled at the promptness of her acceptance. ‘I’m staying at a hotel in Leinster Gardens in Bayswater, and — ’
‘Paddington’s round the corner,’ she said. ‘There are trains every hour or so as far as I know. I don’t come up all that often. Morning or afternoon?’
‘Ah — morning?’
‘Right. I’ll see you then. Three-oh-nine Bainton Road. Just off the Banbury Road, halfway to the big roundabout. Goodbye.’ And the phone clicked and left him once again holding on to a dead buzzing line.
He hung up, irritated. Was this a pattern of life in this country? Did everyone slam the phone down on everyone else? It had all stopped being at all like cosy film comedies.
Suddenly he’d had enough. He needed air and a lot of it. Abner shrugged on his overcoat and packed away his briefcase, and went out, passing a sour-looking chambermaid in the hallway outside who had been waiting to come into his room to fix it; and that reminded him. He’d have to think hard about where and how he was to live if he was staying any length of time. And if he was staying at all.
But right now, he decided as he came out into the street and stood in the thin February sunshine star
ing round, right now, I’m a tourist. Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, the whole foot-slogging schmear. And he turned on his heel and began to walk towards the main Bayswater Road at the far end of the street, aiming for trees he could see in Hyde Park just beyond. This was London, and he was here and it was time to enjoy it. Whatever happened in the future.
Four
The train journey to Oxford pleased him enormously. He liked Paddington Station, big, shabby and cavernous and not remotely like the sort of train stations he was used to; and found the train equally delightful, looking strange and interestingly foreign as it did; and above all, the passing scenery captivated him. First the decrepit housing and factories and shop backs they passed, all of which was familiar in its spirit if not in its detail. Every city has tattered edges to its skirts, he thought, as the buildings slid by the windows, and he could look down into battered yards and piles of rusting cars and assorted junk, and then grinned at his own flight of fancy. You’d think he was writing a fancy novel rather than setting out to make a gritty honest movie. But then the buildings and the suburban stations stopped passing and they were in countryside, soft for all its winter harshness, and remarkably green. It made him marvel a little; he’d heard that Ireland was the green place, but southern England was emerald enough for anyone, though there were plenty of yellows and buffs and browns as well to set off the starkness of the skeletal trees that lined the railway. He liked the houses they passed, too: small, stocky and infinitely cosy looking, with tidy back yards and swings for children, and here and there a paddling pool; and he tried to imagine what it might be like to be a child living in such redbrick neatness, playing on that swing and in that minute pool, riding in those little cars that trundled on the wrong side of the roads which snaked past the train windows, and felt a sudden tightness in his throat.
He mustn’t do it, he must not; to think about children was to push him back too close to memory. Not permitted at all.
At Oxford station he lingered for a while, standing by the bookstall and pretending to check out the magazines and papers there while he gazed round covertly. It had a dusty dishevelled look; people hurried by with their heads down as though ashamed to be seen or else loitered sulkily, and he thought, why is it that places of travel are always so very melancholy? The pleasure he had been feeling ever since the day started began to drain away, and he turned over one of the magazines, staring down at it sightlessly. He did want to make this movie, he really did; he wanted to make it for himself, for all the other people like himself and, he could not deny, for Hyman. The old man had lied to him, cheated him, had robbed him of his youth and heritage, but still he owed it to him even though he wouldn’t have wanted it. No matter what, the movie had to be made. Yet here he was, on his way to collect useful background research and filled suddenly with uncertainty and a sort of — what? And he prodded at and turned over and over the mood in his mind, finally identifying it. Distaste. He felt dirty, as though he were pushing himself into intimate places where he had no right to be. So his parents had kept silent about what happened to them? So that woman Hilda Fraister didn’t want to talk to him, had left a message at the hotel while he was out that she’d rather he didn’t visit her, thank you? So what? Hadn’t they the right to be quiet? To hold back their memories just as he did? Had he any right to go turning over the stones under which they had crept to comfort themselves?
But he couldn’t allow that thought to take root. It had become almost an obsession with him, his anger with his parents. The first memories he had were of lonely emptiness, of being different, of being unloved. They had erected barriers between themselves and him, and he would never forgive them for that, he told himself, standing in the dusty melancholy of Oxford station. Never.
This really was crazy behaviour, he thought then. It had to stop; and he put down the magazine and turned on his heel, ignoring the disapproving stare at his failure to buy from the woman behind the counter, and followed the signs for taxis. He had a map of the town and could have walked, he suspected, but he wanted to get there now, before he changed his mind again.
The cab rattled him over a bridge — they called that river the Isis, didn’t they? Or was it the Thames? He knew both were around here somewhere — and then through commonplace streets, travelling northwards as far as he could tell. And he made a grimace at himself in the dimness of the rattling old taxi. In this country they didn’t seem to bother much with defining the compass points. And after all, why should they? It made sense in a town like Manhattan on its grid, but here where streets twisted and turned so absurdly it made no sense at all.
But then he was in a long, very straight road, which definitely ran north; he was aware of the morning sun moving up to its zenith from his right, and he stared out of the window at the heavy dull houses and wondered what sort of home this Professor Hinchelsea might have. As big as some of these bold brick places with dripping gardens overgrown with dingy bushes? Or would it be somewhere smaller and neater with the sort of charm the houses he had passed on the train had offered? A big place, he decided as the taxi trundled on. Big and handsome with the smell of expensive cigars about it, and perhaps good brandy. Wallace had written a lot about the high life these dons enjoyed. An odd word, he’d thought, ‘dons’, but maybe apt enough after all; maybe it was a sort of mafia they ran here. He’d heard that places like this, where everyone fed on everyone else, were like that.
The house at which the taxi eventually stopped after turning sharply left surprised him so much that he checked it with the driver, who stared at him in bucolic patience and said, ‘You said Bainton Road, didn’t you? Well, this is three hundred and nine. See? On the gatepost?’
And he looked at the battered letters, the three dangling awkwardly sideways on a single screw, and paid the man and then stood and stared as the vehicle went chugging away back to the Banbury Road.
It was a narrow street and the houses that lined it were equally mean and small. Attached to each other in a long row, with occasional breaks between the blocks and with garbage cans sitting drunkenly beside some of the battered front gates, each house had a minute garden and scrubby hedge in front of it. They looked dusty and tired, as though they’d been there for a very long time. Staring at them he felt a wave of tiredness of his own. Two days since his arrival; plenty of time to get over the effects of his journey, but now he felt the weariness and thought — I should have had something to eat first. It’s been a long time since breakfast. Maybe the Professor will offer me some lunch of some sort? It may not be the kind of house I thought it would be, but maybe the hospitality will be there, all the same.
The path was made of old red bricks set on edge, and there was a row of rather battered tiles also set on edge to separate it from the patch of lank grass that lay in the very middle of the very small front yard. Clearly the hedge had drained away what nutriment there was in the soil, leaving it dispirited and dingy, and he thought suddenly of the row of plants on his window sill in his Manhattan apartment, and how carefully he fed and tended them. There was a stab of homesickness sharp as a needle, and he rang the doorbell firmly to push it away.
He heard it ring inside, muffled and forlorn as though it was as tired as the hedge and the grass behind him and he stood there listening, needing the sight of a cheerful human face, an open door, a warm welcome — and he tugged at his tie in the manner of a man steadying his spirits, and squared his shoulders a little, preparing to set his practised smile on his face.
By the time the door opened the smile had long faded. It seemed that whoever was inside was in no hurry to respond and he glanced at his watch irritably and then lifted his hand to ring again. It was eleven-thirty, for Christ’s sake; no one could say this was too early and the woman, whoever she was, had said, ‘morning’.
But the door opened silently even as he reached again for the bell push and he pulled his hand back sharply, as acutely embarrassed as though he’d been caught trying to steal something. Abner quickly push
ed his smile back into place, albeit a little lopsidedly.
The door had opened only a little and he could just see someone peering out, but it was hard to see who or even what it was. Man, woman? Could be a goddammed dog for all he could see. Though it would have to be a tall one.
The silly thought helped and he relaxed a little. ‘Ah, good morning. I’m Abner Wiseman? I called yesterday, made an appointment to see Professor Hinchelsea. I was told this morning would be fine, so can I see him please?’ And he widened the grin, deliberately ingratiating.
Grudgingly the door opened more widely and he could see the person behind it. Definitely a person. A tall thin figure, with a pale face that was a blur in the dimness of the house behind until the figure stepped forward and he could see better. A girl, about — and then he stopped. Definitely a girl and not a woman, yet there was no way he could judge her age. She could be as young as twenty or as old as ten years more; or even older than that. Usually he was a shrewd judge of such matters; movie directors had to be. But this girl with her taut pale face and cloud of frizzy dark hair was one of the inscrutable ones. She had a pair of large round glasses behind which wide dark eyes were very watchful, and as he stared at her she pushed them from her nose up to the top of her head, where they sat incongruously looking like car headlights. That was the way the beach girls — tall, tanned and luscious California beach girls — wore their shades. To see the same mode on this rather gawky and very unluscious creature was decidedly odd.
She was wearing shapeless dusty black trousers over old sneakers and over that a white T-shirt and long black cardigan, obviously a man’s for it was far too large and had the sleeves rolled up in bunches over thin arms and bony hands. She saw him glance at her hands, which he could see were red with roughness, and shoved them deep into the pockets of the old cardigan.
‘You’ll have a job doing that,’ she said shortly. ‘Come in,’ and stepped back, holding the door wide.
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