Postscripts

by Claire Rayner

  ‘Sooner or later you’ve got to forget it, Abner,’ Miriam said, and came to the window to join him. ‘I’m beginning to do it. I’m even beginning to be able to forgive her. How’s that for a change?’

  He looked at her sharply. ‘What?’

  ‘Barbara, Basia. The teller of stories of hell and damnation to little girls at bedtime.’ She turned a slightly twisted smile on him, and he saw her eyes were brighter than usual and thought, she wants to cry. I’ve hurt her — and he reached to take her hand.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It only happens sometimes. I’m getting over her. And Geoff. It’s quite agreeable in a way to be able just to say to myself — I’m sad because my parents are dead. It’s normal to do that, to mourn them properly. You haven’t done that for Hyman yet, have you?’

  ‘Of course I have — long ago. He’s been dead two years.’

  ‘So what? Time has damn all to do with it. You’re still trying to get over his loss.’

  ‘How can I grieve his loss, when I never really had him?’ he said then, almost savagely, and then bit his lip.

  ‘You see what I mean?’ she said as his eyes, too, brightened dangerously. ‘You’ve a long way to go yet. There’s still Frieda to deal with, isn’t there? As long as you think about the right things and don’t blame the wrong ones.’

  ‘Blame the wrong ones?’

  ‘If you get into a great lather over having a huge success with Postscripts and don’t use the benefits sensibly then you’ll be blaming the wrong things. What you have to do now is look at yourself and decide the best thing for yourself. Here and now. Not the little boy who was so shut out of love. Not the man who uncovered the diamond scam — though it was a good thing to have done, and you certainly stopped it happening — none of those. The here and now, Abner. Where do you go from here? That’s what matters. If you choose wrong, fair enough. But don’t, if you do make the wrong choice, try to blame what went before. It’ll be because of you, now, that you make the choices. No one else. Oh hell, I’m ranting on. Do I make sense?’

  ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘I just wish it was so easy. Forgetting what leads up to the here and now — I’m not sure I can.’

  ‘It’s not forgetting so much as looking at it differently. I did that after — you made me do that.’

  He smiled down at her, for again she was standing very close. ‘I did?’

  ‘Well, there was a sort of line drawn, wasn’t there? It isn’t every day you get to have sex for the first time. Before there was the old me and afterwards — well, it was all different. I could start from there, that here and now, instead of always looking backwards.’

  ‘You want to be careful. You’ll have all the sisters after you, suggesting it just takes a man and his trusty weapon to change a girl’s life.’

  ‘It wasn’t just that!’ she said, suddenly angry. ‘It was all of you — I mean it was both of us. It was — oh, damn you to hell and back, you know perfectly well what I mean!’

  He managed to laugh, and was grateful for that. It made the sickness, already receding slowly, move away even more. ‘Yes, I know, I shouldn’t tease. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Listen, Abner, tonight — is it going to be all right? Can you deal with it? It looks like you’ll easily snatch the award you’re up for, you know. I’ve been listening to the TV. They’re all making odds — Speilberg’s Sleepstate and Chetwynd’s new one are the only Best Picture contenders, but you could have your own golden doorstop by the time the evening’s out. Are you ready to deal with that?’

  ‘Such a nightmare for a movie-maker,’ he said mockingly and then put both arms round her and held on tightly. ‘Oh hell, Miriam, I’m scared shitless.’

  ‘That’s all right then,’ she said and her voice was muffled because he was holding her so close. ‘That’s the way it ought to be. But don’t blame it all on guilt. You can’t expiate it for the whole world, and you can’t expiate it for yourself. Just tell the stories and get on with living, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ he said and kissed her hard.

  ‘And I must now go and re-do my face, and you must go and get dressed properly,’ she said calmly and extracted herself. ‘The sandwiches’ll be curly and the champagne warm by now, but will you have some? I can’t see you eating any dinner tonight and you need something inside you to keep you going — that’s why I ordered it.’

  He laughed. ‘You get more like a Jewish mother every day.’

  ‘Well, I’m not, nor likely to be. Don’t start that again.’

  ‘Who’s starting anything?’ He was feeling better by the moment. She was, as always, the most exhilarating person to be with that he knew, the only one who could bring him back to common sense. He loved her more with every day that passed and that was a problem in itself, the way she was.

  ‘As long as you don’t. We’ll think about all that later. Not now.’

  ‘And who’s fighting the past now?’ he said and then held up both hands in mock surrender as she turned to flare at him. ‘Pax! Not another word, I promise. Only, while you’re dishing out the common sense, remember to lick your spoon occasionally, hmm? Now, forget the sandwiches, I’ll eat dinner. Go and get yourself fixed up and get someone to haul Cyril down from the roof. We’ve got to be moving soon. It’s gone six.’

  ‘Right,’ she said. And flashed him the broadest of grins. ‘Oscars, here we come.’